It started with my hellish weekend. I posted a humorous tweet about having made more money from a pic on Onlyfans than I’d ever made writing an article for Vice (back when I wrote for them). Obviously, the joke was meant to highlight that freelance writers are grossly under-compensated for their hard work, while also letting you know to subscribe to my Onlyfans – two pretty important mission statements if you ask me. However, for whatever reason, the tweet “took off” and, as per usual, landed in the laps of Internet Men who proceeded to fat shame, insult, and then ridicule me for engaging in the degrading act of even trying to be sexual, much less profiting from it.
Now, here comes the part where I am more honest than I’d like to be but feel it must be done: this incident sparked a secret fear deep inside me to edge ever closer to fruition. Obviously, I don’t care what these sentient Mountain Dew cans think about my looks or my latest and most public venture into Onlyfans. However, the negativity stirred-up my anxiety around the impact my Onlyfans would have on my peers and future career opportunities. Because what they think does matter to me (to an extent).
The simple fact is, sexualizing myself, no matter how much agency I have over said sexualization, sometimes feels detrimental to my overall respectability. Getting over these fears is incredibly difficult because there’s ample evidence that my fears are valid. My own friends and peers make condescending remarks about others with similar public displays of sexuality. It’s never blatantly whore-phobic, mind you, but always hints at such harsh judgment. There are no digs about sex work as a profession, but more slights about the kind of person (read: kind of woman) who would do such a thing. Namely, that this kind of woman is devoid of intellect and wit. To make matters worse, some of my followers have asked me if I’ve quit comedy just because they see that I’m now on Onlyfans… No, I haven’t quit anything. I’ve simply added a new hustle to the list of numerous hustles I’m currently hustling. Why does venturing into a more sexual side of myself require me to have given up on the more intellectual side of myself?
Needless to say, the incessant trolling brought this anxiety—one I thought I had a handle on—back in a big way.
I have accomplished a lot in my decade as a comedian and writer. Shortly before starting my Onlyfans, a scripted podcast series I wrote and starred-in was released on Audible. That project was a big fucking deal for me. But what I am confronting now is the possibility that being on a platform like OF can tarnish its legacy. I have a real fear of taking steps backward or falling flat after such an important career achievement.
Now that I’m more blatantly profiting from my physical body, am I inadvertently removing myself from the world of artistic and critical respectability? Am I no longer subversive, or punk, or feminist, because I’m creating content that, on its face, caters to men’s sexual desires? Am I suddenly an artless, vain, and shallow person? Let me call out these catastrophizing thoughts for what they are: internalized slut-shaming. I’ve asked myself these questions in the past. I asked these questions over 5 years ago when I first started posting my thirst traps on the ‘gram. I asked again when I wrote articles about my sex life for very little pay. Then again when I created a body-positive strip show and started stripping. I would always have my moments of doubt like I’m having now, but my answer to myself would always end up being, “No, bitch! Of course not!” At the end of the day, I am doing exactly what I want to do.
But, that said, I’m sick of incessantly doubting myself. I’m sick of being plagued with these questions each time I further explore my sexuality. I’m over living in a culture that both generates and validates these fears to begin with. We live in a world where men with cartoon profile photos, too cowardly to show their real face, can tell me I’m ruining my life while they jerk off into the same towel they wipe their face with (it’s the only one they own).
Right up until these cavemen descended upon me, I was having a blissful experience as an Onlyfans creator. I was truly loving the interactions I was having with my fans and feeling stress-free about my content. Not only was OF beginning to be financially lucrative, but I was also getting an actual sense of enjoyment in sharing photos of myself with a digital crowd of supportive, adoring subscribers. I get off on that shit. I’m benefitting from the experience as much as they are. Let’s be frank: I’m the type of person whose kink is to be worshipped. I mean, look, it’s not like I’ve been keeping this side of my sexuality a secret. For years I’ve billed myself a proud, fat, slut. My transition to Onlyfans shouldn’t have been a shock to anyone. Onlyfans just presented me with a new set of challenges: the content is a bit more explicit, as is the stigma around it.
To try and get my mind off my fears of over-exposure, and career suicide, I attempted to watch an episode of Pretend It’s a City but quickly ended-up annoyed and frustrated with the immense glee Martin Scorsese takes in Fran Lebowitz and her endless musings about nothing truly important. Don’t get me wrong, Fran’s musings are humorous, sure, and maybe it’s because I don’t give a shit about New York, but all I could really think to myself while watching was, “This bitch loves to hear herself talk”. Of course, she’s erudite and entertaining and I am not here to bash her (I call everyone bitch, FYI). I just don’t consider her a deity in the way so many of my friends and peers do. I see the appeal, but what bothered me, really, was how I could feel the divide between the clear vanity she projects versus the vanity projected by women who choose to sexualize themselves. Fran’s vanity is acceptable, lauded, and critically acclaimed. Many of the same snobs who revel in her intellectual self-indulgence condemn the sexualized woman’s self-indulgence as vapid, demoralizing, and, worst of all, lacking any depth or substance. For the intellectual elite, taking pride in one’s physical attributes or profiting from one’s body is considered, at best, gauche and unseemly.
No doubt there are a lot of hot, vapid idiots out there. I am very much aware of this. I’ve fucked many of them. Just as there are a lot of wannabe Frans’ who think they have greater intrinsic value than the hot idiots all because they don’t participate in the “shallow” practice of posting thirst traps, or engaging in sex work, or even talking about sex in a genuine and sincere way.
Look, pretentious snobs, I know it’s not entirely your fault you’re like this. We’re all victims of a culture designed to divide us. In the case of women, these divisions lay bare hypocrisy upon hypocrisy. Women are told that to earn respect we must not be overtly sexual, but to be desired we must be sexual. We’re told that we must prioritize our appearance, but to do so also makes us vain. It’s confusing and frustrating. There’s always this line we’re pressured to toe between being sexy and fun vs. being chaste and intelligent and one wrong move, in either direction, can reframe how society perceives us entirely, whether we like it or not. I think that’s what truly bugged me about Fran that evening: she reminded me of how ever-present and inescapable the Madonna/Whore complex is for everyone, regardless of their deep or vacuous nature.
Look at this photo of 22-year-old me. I was fixated on embodying the sentiment that I was, “not like other girls”. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was boy crazy. I wanted the art boys – who presented themselves as better than the other guys their age — because they were more emotionally mature and sensitive. Unfortunately, I was a fat, overly self-conscious young woman, who believed that the only way to attract such a guy was through peacocking my big, carefully curated, personality. I wanted to let people know I was special: “I may not be hot, but look at how cool I am!”
The boys I crushed on liked punk rock, arthouse films, and graphic novels. So, because of their interest in those products, I started reading zines, watching punk documentaries, and buying old VHS tapes. Years went by, and none of these guys were all that moved by how much we had in common. Yet, despite being mostly ignored, I genuinely came to love the media I was consuming. The more ignored I was by the men I thought would want me, the more I needed the art I initially invested-in on their behalf. Funnily enough, that same media eventually empowered me to no longer need their attention.
Initially, I was afraid to display my sexuality because of my size, but also because I didn’t want to come across as another typically self-absorbed girl whose only care in the world was her looks. Those girls, in my eyes, were perceived to be less interesting, less intelligent, and ultimately boring. Years later, when I finally confronted my slut-shaming disguised as elitism, I realized that my real gripe against overtly sexual women was my own jealousy. I wanted to be a slut. I wanted to show off my body and wear lingerie – I wanted to be a fucking sex symbol. I wanted to be like the women whose photos I had on my walls: Lydia Lunch and Elvira, primarily.
These women further incentivized me to embrace my own sexuality. But of course, my idols were skinny and thus, as punk as they were in attitude and expression, also still quite conventional in terms of their body type. It was then I realized that for me to publicly sexualize my fat body was even more punk, even more subversive. That ultimately proved far more interesting than the side of me that looked down upon unapologetically sex-positive women, mostly out of jealousy. Having an “unconventional” body type, and showing my body on my terms, was an act far more disruptive than desexualizing myself to impress men who lived only to regurgitate asinine facts about musicians that no one gives a shit about.
So, today, I say fuck all this bullshit. Fuck the tragically inescapable dichotomy placed upon women who feel like they must pick a side between being smart and being sexy. Fuck me for letting my anxiety surrounding this double standard dominate my life. Fuck me for doubting myself and straying from my true desires. But mostly, fuck the faceless, dangerously hypocritical idiots, who demonize women for engaging in sex-positivity and sex work, while also happily consuming those same women’s content with gluttonous abandon.
Truth be told, I’m the Madonna and the Whore. I’m the writer whose essays you read, the comedian who makes you laugh, and the slut you jerk-off to on Onlyfans. I’m fed up with making excuses for embracing these legitimate sides of myself. I’m tired of feeling like I need to prove myself either way. If you don’t like my prose, don’t read it. Similarly, if you can’t respect me because I’m a slut, I can’t respect you because you have a misogynistic worldview. Conversely, if you can only objectify me while ignoring my creativity… well that’s unfortunate for you but not something I have to correct either. Society can view me however it wants to. From here on, I vow to show all of me: my prose, my humor, my intelligence, and...my bod. Think whatever you like about it, I don’t care (and that’s not only a proclamation to the world but a promise I’m making to myself).