If you’re a woman, you know what it is to be vulnerable. Particularly when you’re young, you’re so aware of how your body is viewed by those around you. It’s a highly sexualised commodity, in the eyes of many.
When this commodity is at its most ‘valuable’ is when girls are probably at their most vulnerable.
The popularity of websites like OnlyFans makes that reality painfully stark. While the company argues that their website hosts a variety of content, it is known for sexually explicit videos and images.
If you’ve never heard of OnlyFans, it’s a website where people can subscribe to specific ‘creators’ in order to access their content. They pay for these subscriptions and the creator receives 80% of the fee.
The other 20%, goes to OnlyFans. So, a young female body can be a particularly profitable thing.
Participating in OnlyFans is more common than you might think. Statistics on creators, their ages and how much they are actually earning are, unsurprisingly, difficult to find.
It is estimated that there are over four million content creators on the website. Some creators talk about earning €50,000 in a month on the platform.
So obviously, that kind of money makes the whole thing quite appealing, especially if you’re young and your other option is working for minimum wage.
But estimates of the average earnings of creators are put at €171 per month, something that is generally not spoken about, when a narrative of financial freedom through the selling of explicit material is being spun.
In my experience, there is a definite narrative that OnlyFans is an empowering thing to take part in. The idea that ‘it’s your body, you may as well make money from it’ is something I’ve heard repeated so many times.
And when I’m around people that are my age in particular, it can feel like the wrong opinion, to question whether earning money from pornographic images of yourself could be something other than liberating.
Personally, I’ve always found the notion that sex work is freeing difficult to believe.
The ubiquity of exploitation and coercion within the industry is well-documented. But people seem to psychologically place OnlyFans in a separate category.
It’s sold as a safe way of earning money. It’s virtual sex work, so you’re not putting yourself in a situation that risks your physical safety.
But that’s such an inaccurate presentation of the truth. For one thing, the priority of a business like this is always going to be their bottom line, not the wellbeing or empowerment of their users.
Cases of creators’ videos and images being leaked are common. So too, are cases of creators being stalked and threatened by people who found them through the platform.
If that’s not damning enough, in 2021, the BBC found that girls as young as 13 were able to create accounts where they could contribute explicit material, despite the company’s claim that the platform was for over 18s.
That’s adults subscribing to view explicit content produced by children. And again, in 2024, OnlyFans was investigated by Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator under suspicion that under 18s were accessing the platform.
I understand this is a difficult topic to discuss. But this is too important to avoid talking about. It’s happening. And we must be asking questions.
Because the reality is that the majority of creators on this website are young women. They are earning a lot less than they’ve been led to believe they will.
They’re at greater risk of stalking and their images being leaked than they realise. And there’s so much stigma around the discussion of this reality, that they sign up to this without real knowledge of the potential danger they are being placed in.
And if you’ve signed up to this at 18 years old, there is no doubt that your future job prospects will be impacted.
So, what do you do, if you no longer want to earn money through OnlyFans?
Let’s not be naïve about this, platforms like OnlyFans are a vector for exploitation and victimisation.
As a young woman, I find it so upsetting to think of girls like me unwittingly signing up to something like this.
And records of the victimisation of children is something that should embolden us all. OnlyFans was set up in 2016. This has gone on for too long.
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