The Problem with the OnlyFans Paradigm for Women
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You can’t turn a hoe into a housewife” before, but, I would add something you probably haven’t heard, which is, “You can’t turn an influencer into a housewife.”
Of course, even if those things are MOSTLY true, the really interesting question is, “Why?” Why can’t you turn a “hoe” or an “influencer” into a housewife? It’s for related reasons.
A housewife needs to be able to mostly get her validation from the love and appreciation of one man, her husband, along with perhaps her children. A hoe needs sexual validation from a lot of men and so does an influencer, although they get it in slightly different ways. The hoe needs to sleep with man after man to feel worthwhile and validated, while the influencer gets validation by being endlessly complimented by men.
Now, you might be thinking, “Well, I know a hoe (or influencer) who became a housewife.” As do I, but what did it require? It required them to change how they behaved, how they got ego gratification, and how they were validated as human beings. That’s not always easy to do.
The reason this is relevant and ties into OnlyFans is related to something Rian Stone has written about concerning the way many people look at modern relationships in his latest book:
We were raised to believe that taking care of and providing for family is the best and only path to male dominance. Bringing home the bacon doesn’t matter when women can work a forklift or a spreadsheet just as well as you, and the bacon costs $5 at the grocery store. Life has never been easier; therefore, the burden shifts. In this highly developed world of automation, man has become a disposable commodity instead of the essential service he once was. Fathers want their daughters to succeed, so they teach them to be self-sustainable and not rely on men. It’s not at all irrational to raise a daughter to do this. Office work isn’t as hard as manual labor, and divorce is everywhere. It’s bad parenting to expect there to be a perfect man out there who will save her from drudgery. So, since you’re not needed, What’s left? To be wanted.
This is one of the points Rian hammers home in his book. In 2024, to many women, men are a “luxury good.”
Why?
Because the world has changed in a lot of ways that have naturally led to that.
A single woman no longer needs a man to provide for them because they can make their own money. Furthermore, jobs have gotten softer, easier, and more palatable to women over the years. A woman doesn’t have to move cargo down at the docks or pick tobacco to make a living. She can work in a nice, comfy, air-conditioned office and make good money with no physical labor.
Even if a woman does end up with a kid outside of marriage, either because they’re unwed or gets a divorce, the state will step up and force the father to pay support. If that doesn’t happen for some reason, then the state will fill the role of the man and help pay their bills.
We also have to consider that in a post-birth control world, sex outside of marriage is no longer stigmatizing in most cases. Sure, women still don’t want to be thought of as “sluts,” but in a world with Tinder and a “three-date rule,” a woman can actually be very promiscuous without anyone ever thinking of them that way.
On top of all that, look at the messages our overly feminized culture constantly hammers home to women. “You don’t need a man!” “Build your career, date around, and then, if you want, settle down in your thirties.” “Sex work is real work.” “You should want more out of your life than to be a homemaker.” “Don’t put yourself in a position where you’re reliant on a man.”
So, how does OnlyFans fit into that? Well, it encourages young women to leverage what is usually their greatest asset. Their looks.
For the vast majority of women, the hottest they will ever be in their lives will be in their early twenties, so why not use that to make money? Besides, it has a much lower price of entry than other types of sex work.
You don’t need to have sex on camera. You don’t have to let guys touch you or give them a massage and touch them. You don’t even have to get up on stage and strip for a room full of them or necessarily even talk dirty to them on the phone.
As a matter of fact, I’ve heard multiple people publicly say that popular OnlyFans girls commonly have boyfriends, managers, or handlers pretending to be them taking care of a lot of communications between them and their high-paying fans.
For example, Sara Saffari, who is big on Instagram and knows a number of women on OnlyFans, talked with Chris Williamson on his podcast about what’s really going on when the girls are “chatting” with the guys paying them money:
Sara Saffari: Women say that having an OF is empowering. And I think for me, it's just hard to grasp how that can be empowering when you're chatting with men all day or having your management chat with men all day.
Chris Williamson: Vietnamese Virtual Assistant.
Sara Saffari: If you're subscribed to an OF and you think it's her texting you.
Chris Williamson: It's her fat manager.
Sara Saffari: Yeah. It's not her.
Chris Williamson: Yeah. I don't know. I really think it'll be interesting to reflect on this period of monetization especially for women. In ten years, 20 years' time and realize that it was either a brief flash in the pan or the beginning of a tsunami of people sexualizing themselves for the price of a cheeseburger per month.
That’s pretty grim news for the guys paying for OnlyFans, but let’s stick to discussing how this plays out for women.
If you’re a woman who hasn’t grown up going to church, but you’ve heard, “Sex work is real work,” hundreds of times, you may be willing to consider the idea of OnlyFans. From your perspective, the idea of taking pictures and videos of yourself in hot outfits sounds like a lot more fun than working as a secretary or waitress with a much bigger potential financial upside.
You’ve also probably been getting hundreds of guys telling you that you’re pretty when you’re posting pictures on Instagram anyway, so why not notch up the lewdness level a tiny bit, get paid for those pictures, and put yourself in a position where you’re loaded and feeling really good about yourself because so many guys are willing to pay to see pictures of you?
Is this a bad idea? Yes. Yes, it is.
Why? Well, let’s set morals aside because if you have genuine moral qualms about it, you’re not going to be on OnlyFans in the first place.
First of all, how much of a chance is there that you’re really going to make a lot of money? Depending on who you believe, there are somewhere between 2-3 million “creators” on the site. That’s an awful lot of competition. Granted, there are some people making absolutely staggering amounts of money:
On the other hand, a tiny percentage of them are also making almost all of the money:
300+ creators earn $1M+ per year.
16,000+ creators earn $50,000+ per year.
The median account makes $180/mo. That means ~$140/mo. after taxes.
The top 1% of the creators earn 33% of the income.
The top 10% of the creators earn 73% of the income.
The average OnlyFans subscription is $7.20. Out of that $5.76 is kept by the creator and $1.44 is kept by the platform.
The average OnlyFans account has 21 fans.
At my favorite restaurant in Myrtle Beach, the servers make roughly $35 an hour. In other words, they make more working one Saturday night shift than the median OnlyFans creator does in a month.
Let’s say you do a lot better than the median though. TEN TIMES BETTER! Awesome. Now you’re making $1400 per month in a country where the average person is paying $1326 per month for a place to live. Not that impressive.
It’s a cutthroat, competitive environment – and odds are, you are going to have to go further and further to get fans. The original queen of OnlyFans, Belle Delphine, moved into pornography. Over time, if you stick with it, you’re going to have to push your limits as well – and for what exactly? If you’re one of the top 16,000 creators on the site out of millions and just make $50,000 per year, that’s not really all that great given that the median female salary in the United States is $39,688. Is it worth it, especially when you’re giving up so much?
“Wait,” you may be thinking. “What exactly am I giving up?”
Well, first of all – and you may laugh, but you’re giving up your innocence. Over the course of my life, I have gotten to know several women who formerly did sex work of one type or another. For the most part, they were beautiful, interesting women. They were also, quite understandably given what they did day in and day out, extremely cynical about men and tended to view sex and relationships in a transactional sort of way. You just can’t do sex work without having it change you as a person, mostly for the worse.
In addition, if you commodify yourself in this way, you’re probably going to be making a huge relationship trade-off in the process.
Yes, there will of course be limitless numbers of guys who will want to sleep with you (and perhaps even pay you to do that), but what about long-term relationships? Very few “quality” guys are going to be interested in having a serious relationship with a girl his buddies can look at naked online.
They also don’t want to tell their families that their girlfriend is showing her hoo-hah to anyone paying $10 per month. Then, he has to think about what happens if he marries you and has kids. Does he want little Jimmy to get told “your mom’s a whore” at school while kids pass around naked pictures of her? Who’d want to do that to their future kids?
Are there exceptions to this? Sure. Could there be diamonds in the rough who might not care at all, but may surprisingly turn out to be great guys? Again, sure, but what are the odds? Low. Very low – and one thing almost nobody tells women anymore is that life is long and the time they are going to be at the peak of their beauty is short.
The quality of a man the average woman can potentially pull in at 25 and 35 is as far apart as Myrtle Beach and Los Angeles. That’s not trashing anyone. That’s not putting anyone down. I’ve personally dated some beautiful women in their forties, but my guess is OnlyFans has a lot of women on there making $180 a month at 25 who would have also been beautiful enough to land a forty-year-old millionaire who looked like a fitness model. Five or ten years later? Probably not. Then, it’s, “Where is my Prince Charming?” Well, he was available and ready, but you were on OnlyFans, so he found another princess.
Life lasts a long, long time and OnlyFans is like herpes. It’s with you forever. Women should think a lot more before they go down that road.
It's going to take some extremely good parenting to prevent young women from following this dead-end path on the backs of their youth and beauty. Battling culture that breeds an OnlyFans venue is uphill all the way. I hope there are enough families who still value the standards and ethics of many days gone by, or who are in communities that do so, who will stand stalwart in protection of their children.
I don't blame everything on the Covid shutdowns- but John, did you see that even WaPo is now admitting that it was a bad idea to not factor in the costs to the overall health of the US?- but forcing people to stay home also lead to a lot of bored young people on their social media exploring things like OnlyFans. Something to do and -possibly- make some money. Of course it's a very pointy pyramid, with lots of risk, but if Kim Kardashian, or someone even more vulgar, Cardi B, can make it big... I think moral decline is baked into the cake now, frankly I'm skeptical that this will turn around.