As marketing approaches go, it’s not the most subtle. Over a close-up picture of a bottom clad in thong and fishnet tights runs the invitation, ‘Buy a piece of my a**e’.
Who does the mystery bottom belong to? Katie Price? No, Kate Nash, the respected British singer-songwriter, who has made the surprising decision to start an OnlyFans account in order to fund her latest tour.
Announcing the move on Instagram, Nash bemoans that ‘touring makes losses not profits’ (tell that to Taylor Swift) and pleads with followers to ‘help me stay on tour, pay great wages and put on a high quality show by buying a piece of my a**e’.
Oh dear. Oh Kate. How incredibly dispiriting.
When she exploded on to the music scene in 2007 with her hit Foundations, Nash was a breath of punky, Cockney-twanged air. She was the kind of rock chick you could imagine opening a bottle of Stella with her teeth and boozing the night away with her roadies. Cool rather than sexy, dressed in retro Fifties gear rather than bum-grazing skirts. An innovator, not a sexualised product dreamed up by middle-aged male marketing executives.
So hearing that Nash has signed up to OnlyFans – the controversial ‘content subscription’ website where sex workers and Z-list celebrities sell all sorts of tawdry digital services – is as dispiriting as learning that Debbie Harry has been rolling around half-naked on her living room floor in order to earn £10 from Gary in Northampton. It’s like hearing that Joan Jett scratched a few extra quid by flashing her thrupenny bits.
Nash is, of course, not the first famous lady to monetise at least one part of her anatomy this way. This summer Lily Allen opened an OnlyFans account, where for £8 a month subscribers can gain access to pictures of her feet – and I don’t imagine the majority are podiatry students.
OnlyFans might bill itself as a site where ‘fans’ can interact with ‘stars’, but in reality it is a porn site. The vast bulk of the content is what we might coyly describe as ‘not safe for work’. Punters subscribe to accounts paying between £5 and £50 a month. If they pay a little extra they can send the ‘content creators’ direct messages and ask for bespoke photos or videos.
Fans might request that an OnlyFans star drive around in their underwear, say – or engage in group sex on camera. In an age when porn is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, the OnlyFans creators have to keep upping the ante.
Writhing around on your living-room carpet in a suspender set from Ann Summers is not, for most of us, the stuff of dreams, but the celebs who set up OnlyFans accounts frequently make this seem like a career master-stroke. They’re in control, right? They’re turning the old exploitative porn industry on its head! Cutting out the pimps and middle-men! And making squillions!
Kerry Katona, briefly a singer with Atomic Kitten, has bragged endlessly about the fortune she has made on the site. Kate Nash has framed her capitulation to the male gaze as a ‘punk protest’. Former Hollyoaks actress Sarah Kayne Dunn described her decision to join the site as ‘taking back control’ and ‘having full power over my choices’. Meanwhile Lily Allen has claimed that being on OnlyFans is ‘actually quite empowering’.
Excuse me while my eyes do a 360-degree roll at the mention of the word ‘empowering’, the catchphrase for every vapid influencer and Instagram hottie taking their kit off for money. Receiving a message asking you to ‘bend over a bit more’ or raise your leg up is not empowering — it’s utterly humiliating. If I were to receive such a request from a complete stranger the only part of my anatomy I’d be prepared to raise is my middle finger.
The tragedy is that high-profile OnlyFan-ers like Kate Nash are normalising online prostitution for women who are far more desperate for cash than they are – and thus far more vulnerable.
Yes, yes, it’s a ‘free choice’ for women to sign up and sell themselves. But how free is that choice when you’re a single mother with three mouths to feed and Christmas looming? Or if you’re a student with debts mounting and a gnawing anxiety about how you’re ever going to pay them off?
If some man wants to ‘talk’ to you live while groaning away on the other end of the line, might you just grin and bear it for a few minutes for the cash? And then might you feel a grubbiness no shower could wash off?
On OnlyFans, the cash may come fast but the psychological repercussions will probably come later. A 2022 study in Sexuality and Culture found that sex workers tended to have low levels of mental well-being. You don’t say!
Being on OnlyFans might not be as dangerous, dehumanising and depressing as standing on a street corner waiting for punters, but make no mistake: this is sex work, with all the psychological pitfalls that come with selling your body for cash.
Horrifyingly, there is even evidence that children are using OnlyFans accounts to make money. Though it’s meant to be an over-18s site, Childline has taken calls from younger children who see it as an easier way to earn than sweeping the floors in McDonald’s.
As the mother of three young daughters I despair at the way girls’ aspirations are being skewed. A century on from the Suffragettes and here we are, with seemingly intelligent women like Kate Nash offering online titillation as a legitimate ‘side-hustle’, something to aspire to. No! It’s a grubby sell-out. Hooking thousands of panting followers on OnlyFans is to be pitied, not praised.
Then there’s the reality that OnlyFans – along with the rest of the porn industry – is coarsening the sexual appetites of a generation of young men, leading them to believe that slapping, choking and anal sex are vanilla activities that you might expect by the second date.
In some ways, OnlyFans is even more dangerous when it comes to warping sexual perceptions, because the women aren’t necessarily ultra-glam porn stars but girl-next-door types. Therein lies the appeal, and the danger, too.
So, Kate, go after the dosh if you must. But don’t act as an ambassador for this tawdry brand. And don’t, please, tell us the old lie that taking your clothes off for money is ever rebellious or empowering.
Gio turns lemons into limoncello
Giovanni Pernice and his dancing partner on Italy’s version of Strictly have rumba-ed their way into each other’s hearts. After the character assassination Gio was subjected to in the UK, it’s nice to see him turn lemons into lemonade. Or should that be limoncello?
Adele seemed to spend half her swansong Las Vegas gig sobbing. Again. The woman is a walking burst water pipe.
At the Grammys, at the London Colosseum, at An Audience With Adele, hugging Celine Dion, chatting with Oprah; whatever the occasion, the songstress turns sobstress.
Most recently, it was to mark the end of her residency at Caesars Palace. Perhaps she should bring out a line of hankies next – in her signature black, of course.
Who’d want to go to a Goop party?
Seeing Gwyneth Paltrow emerge glowing from the Goop Christmas party in New York, we can only conclude it wasn’t a riotous event. One pictures the Goop gals clinking glasses of kombucha and talking about their latest macrobiotic cleanse.
Ladies, if there isn’t a mass sing-a-long to the Band Aid single and at least one tequila casualty, it’s not a Christmas party.
Diet advice any idiot can understand
Calorie labels on menus aren’t working because people don’t understand them, apparently.
Oh for goodness’ sake. Eating healthily isn’t rocket science. If understanding numbers into the 100s is too tricky, here’s a general rule of thumb. Chips and burgers bad; salad and water good. There. You can put your calculators away now.
Jenni Murray is away.
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