Tia Zeinab | Staff Writer

In a world where everyone has become a sheer victim of capitalism, people are expected to take any road out of poverty, including selling their bodies. With that being said, sex work has become one of the easiest ways to make money, and many people are doing it. This is not in any shape or form a way to slander sex work, but when it comes to the point where sex workers and porn stars are going out of their way to encourage people to do it and deem it as empowering, that’s when a line should be drawn.

When COVID-19 hit, everyone was desperate to make money, whether by starting their online shops, becoming influencers on social media, or even working as freelancers at home. However, many people took the dark path and chose to do sex work on porn sites or, more recently, OnlyFans. OnlyFans kicked off as a way for celebrities to communicate with their fans during the hard times of COVID; it was merely a wholesome site for celebrity-fan interactions before the world of porn took over. You would see women and men promoting their OnlyFans all over social media by posting a semi-nude and captioning it with “Subscribe to my link in bio.” While I believe that one’s comfort in their skin is the most important value, it cannot reach the point when we’re too comfortable.  It has gotten to the point when women are ecstatic to the day they turn 18, not for a driver’s license, but to start an OnlyFans. When we’re supporting sites like OnlyFans, we’re supporting the exploitation of girls who had JUST turned 18, potential grooming, and borderline pedophilia. When you see a girl who has recently turned 18 and started an OnlyFans, and her numbers on that site are skyrocketing, just be sure that her audience is men who had been waiting for her to turn 18 and start an OnlyFans.

Day by day, OnlyFans became more widespread to the point where modern feminists fully supported it. They would go out of their way with the claim that sex work is “real work” and it’s very empowering. We would see posts on the @feminist Instagram page where they have photos up, promoting an OnlyFans model and, with it, encouraging the sheer and undeniable exploitation of women and men all around the world. To add on, a majority of these models are subjected to sex trafficking and leakage of their photos, so there’s eventually no point in having OnlyFans.

The final straw for me with OnlyFans was seeing celebrities with a lot of money start OnlyFans. The main reason why many people headed to OnlyFans as a resort for finances was purely because of the economic state, so seeing people like Bella Thorne start OnlyFans and make one million dollars off it from day one raises many concerns about whether we, as a society, have pushed the narrative of sex work being empowering a little too much.

In conclusion, this is a public service announcement that OnlyFans and sex work are not meant to be perceived as real work, nor they should be deemed as empowering.