PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Amanda Magnus 0:00
A heads up that today's episode of embodied is about online sex work and contains mentions of sex and sex acts. If you'd like to listen to the full conversation later, you can find it in your podcast feed wherever you like to listen.
Anita Rao 0:14
This is embodied, our show about sex relationships and health. I'm Anita Rao. I don't need to remind you what things were like in March 2020. You remember bleak and lonely, and it was against this backdrop that one corner of the internet really started to explode: only fans.
Paris Bush 0:36
The first thing I posted was me getting upside down on my piano, twerking to a DMX song.
Anita Rao 0:46
That's creator Paris bush, and as you might guess, that's not her legal name, but that is how her 10s of 1000s of fans know her. For more than four years, she has been creating content for them on only fans and other digital subscription based platforms. And her work runs the gamut from nude and spicy content to comedic spoofs.
Paris Bush 1:08
A lot of people have an idea of porn and what porn stars should be like, and I just decided to kind of do the opposite of that and just be like very, very realistic, no makeup, no like, fancy outfits I was taking photos with my like iPhone eight.
Anita Rao 1:28
Paris climbed quickly into the top 1% of only fans creators, due to her successfully built brand. Crafting sexy photos and videos is the starting point. But to break into the top echelon of only fans, earners, if you're not a celebrity, requires an immense amount of hustle and strategy. Only fans reports that it has more than 300 million users around the world. And as I've watched this platform grow and boom, I've wondered about the real lives of the creators. When you make a living doing online sex work, what happens to your offline relationship with sex and your body? How does being paid to bring pleasure to others change what you want and need for yourself? Those are some of the questions we'll explore today. Now back to Paris and what was going on in her offline life at the time of that DMX piano video.
Paris Bush 2:26
In 2020 things were very different from me and not great. I was a single parent, and I had a very young toddler that was born with a disability, a feeding disability, so he required a lot of care around the clock, and I was living off of Medicaid and food stamps, and I would get an eviction notice every single month. I would go to churches and be in church basements, like getting saved for them to pay my rent. It was very sad, and things were really not good, and I often posted about how hard things were on my just little private Instagram. And during the pandemic, I got a DM from somebody that I didn't even know, but they followed me, and they were like, Hey, I don't know if you have heard of only fans, but you are really cute and funny, and I just think that you would do really well on there and, like, it's blowing up right now. So if you ever want any help, like, let me know.
Anita Rao 3:40
And had you heard of only fans at that point?
Paris Bush 3:42
Um, I had heard of it, and it made sense for me, because I have always just had a fascination with, like, anything revolving around sex or sexual health, or like, I like to make a lot of like raunchy jokes. So I was very intrigued with the idea, and I am not doing anything else. You know, I'm sitting here at home, miserable and poor. So, yes, let me do this.
Anita Rao 4:09
What was your relationship like with your physical body in that moment, I imagine your nervous system is on, like, high alert, given everything you're going on, like, did you feel like you had a relationship with your sensual self and your physical body.
Paris Bush 4:21
Honestly, it was a big pivotal moment for me, because I actually had just gotten out of a relationship that ended very badly, and I was actually pregnant with my third child at the start of the pandemic, and I ended up miscarrying the baby, and before I miscarried, I I was having to make a decision if I wanted to take on a third child by myself and live this life of like poverty and like struggle, even though I would love the baby, obviously, but I was trying to decide if I wanted to do that or if I to do the maybe responsible thing and get an abortion, and, like, keep focusing on my kids and trying to get us out of this hole that we were in. And I actually scheduled the abortion and decided to choose my children and putting all of my effort into them and getting us out of this place. And when I went to the clinic to get the abortion my appointment, I found out I had miscarried.
Anita Rao 5:29
Wow.
Paris Bush 5:30
So it was this very strange situation, because I got an abortion, but at the same time I had a miscarriage, and it was like experiencing both of those, and I just made this like promise to that third baby that I would just put everything into getting us out of there. Sorry.
Anita Rao 5:49
No, I mean what you're I feel so much heaviness listening to what you're saying. I can't imagine what it was like to go through that and to have all of those things on your plate at one time. Yeah, how did like in that context, how did the message from someone to start only fans land like, I'm trying to like, connect the dots between that heaviness and this like, sense of possibility or something new?
Paris Bush 6:16
Well, I was very sad and low when I got that message. I wasn't exactly feeling very sexy, especially with my relationship just ending, and I just felt this kind of like glimmer of hope that this was a chance to get away from all of that and start kind of like a new thing. I was kind of naive at first, so I didn't keep my only fans life separate from my personal life, because I didn't think anything would really happen. But all of the immediate men in the background of my life obviously wanted to subscribe and like, see what was happening. I think that's just like, what happens when you start in onlyfans. So I think it landed pretty well, and I think people appreciated my humor because I knew that I wasn't some like bombshell, like hot porn star or whatever I was, just like a regular mom.
Anita Rao 7:14
So talk to me about that. I mean, there is, like, the videos that you post and people pay a fee to subscribe, but then there's a whole other landscape of content. So can you kind of orient us to like how only fans works in that way, and like the range of content that you are creating?
Paris Bush 7:31
As a creator, there's someone doing everything on only fans. I mean, I started making really authentic, kind of silly things, and then I went all the way to the opposite side of the spectrum, making very explicit, mainstream porn type things. And then I came back now to making what I want to make, and what I think is fun and and hot, and men that are willing to pay for your content kind of have just an appreciation for you making the content so it doesn't always have to be something really, really explicit. They want to pay to get to know you better, or see glimpses into your life, or fulfill some weird or funny, like fetishes they have.
Anita Rao 8:17
How do you set the boundaries around what you want to share what kind of requests you'll respond to, how much of your life you're willing to give people glimpses into?
Paris Bush 8:27
That also is always changing, depending on how I'm feeling or how busy I am. If I'm in the luteal phase of my cycle and I'm feeling really ugly, I'm probably not going to do some really sexy custom video for you, but I have just felt it out over the years, and at first I was just willing to do more for less, and after a little bit of time, I realized that that wasn't very fun for me and did not feel good. So I learned how to have more boundaries with it. But it was definitely a learning experience over time.
Anita Rao 9:07
So you're creating this content, you're making these videos, you're getting subscribers, like things are beginning to really take off. Was there a moment where you realize, like, oh, wow, this is like, this is going to be a primary source of income for me.
Paris Bush 9:27
Yes, it didn't take long, honestly, because I had a lot of time on my hands during COVID, so I worked very, very hard, and it was all over the phone, so it was easy for me to kind of be working all the time, checking only fans and talking to fans. So I think it was when I got recognized in public the first year where I was like, Oh crap. I should probably be more private about, like, my personal life and so word got out in this town that I live in that I was doing that. So, yeah, I had to reel it back in after that.
Anita Rao 10:08
What was your relationship like with your like, sensuality and sexuality offline?
Paris Bush 10:14
During the beginning, it was basically nothing. I had no interest in dating anybody or having romantic relationships. I think I was just so happy to have more financial freedom and have a job that was, like, really successful, that I just put everything into that, and then into my kids and like, it wasn't until maybe two years into it when I started kind of dating again.
Anita Rao 10:44
How did you approach talking about only fans in your dating life?
Paris Bush 10:48
I have always been really straightforward with people. I just say that I'm an only fans model. However, if you're meeting people off of like dating apps that you don't know, strangers, you I definitely waited until I knew them better to let them know what my job was, because it can just be unsafe, and a big part of my job is actually social media, because that is how you bring in all the fans. So saying you are an influencer or a content creator on Instagram or Tiktok, that's not a lie. Basically, that is a big part of it. So I would just use that until I got to know the person better, and then be like, surprise, I do only fans.
Anita Rao 11:34
The growth of only fans was exponential in the pandemic, and Paris was able to turn her work on the platform into a full time job. We'll hear about that just ahead and how she found her way into an exclusive group of creators. You're listening to embodied from North Carolina public radio. You can also hear embodied as a podcast, follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is embodied. I'm Anita Rao. A heads up that today's conversation is about online sex work and contains mention of sex and sex acts. If you prefer to listen later, you can find this full conversation in the embodied podcast feed. Within a year of launching her onlyfans, Paris Bush became one of the top earners on the platform. She'd crossed the 1% threshold, meaning her account was generating more monthly income than 99% of other creators.
Paris Bush 12:35
I would say people who are making over 15,000 a month are in the top 1% probably. So I have friends that make 50,000 a month. I have friends that make 300,000 a month. It kind of all varies, but everyone that is in my kind of immediate friend group, it's all in the top, like 1% ish
Anita Rao 13:01
Only fans takes a 20% cut of creators revenue, and then there's taxes. So after all of that, Paris was taking home about half of what her account generated each month, which was a life changing amount of money for her and her kids.
Paris Bush 13:16
It took me about a year to get out of fight or flight mode, because I was always in fight or flight mode before that, always stress to the max, malnourished like, and then seeing money in my bank account became like this unreal thing. And it took me probably a year to be like, you're not going to be starving tomorrow, like you're going to be able to pay your rent and you're not going to live in a crappy, like, awful apartment anymore with cockroaches everywhere. And it took me a year to, like, really relax and like, start being like, okay, my needs are met. My kids needs are met. Now we can work on, like, healing and looking forward instead of just constantly, like, living hand to mouth.
Anita Rao 14:01
Paris was open about her only fans work with friends and family, and while some expressed fears for her safety and well being, she says they were mostly supportive, especially when they could see how much it was transforming her personal and financial life. And it was around this time that she also started building a community with other onlyfans creators, in part through a secret app.
Paris Bush 14:25
It's a well known app, but you have to be in the know to get added to the groups, basically. So in 2020 I didn't know there was an app where creators were all talking. I was just like hustling, trying to make money. And I was DMing other models on Instagram or on Twitter, and then finally one of them was like, Are you on the app? And I was like, What do you mean? And they were like, all the models are on this app. And so she added me to the groups, and there's like next Door groups. There's hairy girl groups, there's there's so many different groups, there's 1000s. But I got added to a hairy girl next door group, I think. And from there, is how I met my current group of friends, who are all models,
Anita Rao 15:20
Who added you to a hairy girl, like, how does one get at it?
Paris Bush 15:23
Trying to remember, I it, it was somebody else who saw, I think, that I stopped shaving my body hair. And they were like, you should get in our girl next door group for hairy girls.
Anita Rao 15:35
What was behind the decision to stop shaving?
Paris Bush 15:37
I just kept getting comments from fans that I should grow it out a little more. And from there, I kind of started doing that. And then once I met my group of like, hairy creators that don't shave their body hair, I found that that we had so much in common because they were all so very authentic, and, like a lot of them, don't wear a lot of makeup, and they are definitely doing the girl next door, like genuine personality thing. I really liked the kind of, like protest aspect of it, like it just seemed comical or shocking for a porn star to have like, full body hair, and that was kind of a concept that a lot of people hadn't heard of.
Anita Rao 16:29
We're not just talking about not shaving pubic hair.
Paris Bush 16:31
It's a spectrum, but definitely not shaving your pubic hair, or just having like, longer pubic hair, okay? And then also, like, armpit hair, or there's girls that make tons of money off of nipple hair, or they're happy trails, okay, like it's it's everywhere. What was that like for you to stop shaving after having done that for so long? It was hard, because, honestly, pubic hair grossed me out a lot, and so it was hard for me to have orgasms in my videos, because I was like, this, looks ugly. I don't I don't like this, yeah, and it was this, like, funny thing where my views on it changed over time, because I just got used to seeing it. And I just had never seen pubic hair like, on women before, after a while, I was like, Why did I think this was so weird, this was so crazy, that I was like, feeding into this like, mainstream idea of, like, women not having body hair and stuff.
Anita Rao 17:33
We've talked a lot about body hair on the show, and it's this idea that you have. You're like, oh, there's something, like, gross about it, and you can't name what it is. But then when you actually start digging deeper, you're like, I don't know where that comes, like, there is nothing inherently gross about it. It's something that I have, like, learned to believe,
Paris Bush 17:49
Right?
Anita Rao 17:49
For some reason.
Paris Bush 17:50
Exactly, it's so strange from early on in childhood, like you learn that, you know, I couldn't wait to start shaving when I was a kid, like, I was so excited about it. And I think, like, sexy women were always portrayed as this, like hairless, kind of, like Barbie doll, you know, type person. And then I realized that men actually preferred, like, quite the opposite. It seemed for me and my fans, they thought that a natural like hairy woman with body hair was much more like womanly and and sexy. So I just tried it out, and eventually I really liked it, and now I prefer that over shaving. So
Anita Rao 18:35
Is that when Bush became part of your like, official, yeah, handle,
Paris Bush 18:40
Yeah, I did a name change, and I decided to do the last name Bush, because of the body hair, but also it sounds kind of conservative. You know, everyone thinks of like, George Bush. I think so. I like, I like, how conservative it feels. But then it's like, no, I just have a huge bush. Like, that's, yeah.
Anita Rao 19:02
That's amazing. So okay, so we're talking about, like, your relationship with your own body hair. And then you're reflecting on, like, how men responded. And it makes me wonder about gaze. Like, when you're creating content, are you creating with a specific gaze in mind, or are you creating for your own gaze. Like, how do you think about that?
Paris Bush 19:22
I think that that is definitely something that comes with privilege. And at the beginning of my career, I did not have the privilege of creating things for my gaze because I needed money really badly. So now that I am in more of a place of privilege where I can make content I want to make. I have gone back to making things for like my gaze or for other people, like who aren't just looking for, like hardcore porn.
Anita Rao 19:55
So you met these other creators who are part of this hairy girl group and what started kind of in a group chat as a space of camaraderie and sharing turned into some real life community. Tell me about that.
Paris Bush 20:09
Yes, so we started our group chat because all of us had similar percents, which is important on only fans. One way to get fans is promoting each other on only fans. So we all started promoting each other, and we became this funny, like conglomerate of hairy women. We blew ourselves up basically because we were collabing together, or we were making Instagram videos together and tagging each other and like, it was amazing for like, the friendship side and having fun, but it also, like, just helped all of these subscribers find other models that they really liked. So
Anita Rao 20:54
and you all like, go on trips together.
Paris Bush 20:56
Yes, we try to go on one trip a year, but then we also do, like small trips, because the group chat girls are like, all over the world, so we just can't always all meet up. So now we have kind of like little trips planned all the time.
Anita Rao 21:12
How do you all like when you're together creating this content, like talk about the fetishization of pubic hair and natural hair. Like, how do you all think about that as people who are creating that kind of content?
Paris Bush 21:27
I don't want to speak for everybody, but I would guess that the general consensus is that we all are pro body hair, and we don't really care about, like, what people think about it, and we just, like, are okay with it, and then the making money off of it is like a big bonus. So, yeah, even if there wasn't money to be made with it, I think that everyone would probably still be hairy because they just, we've learned that it's like ridiculous to shape or shave your body hair to appease other people. You know, you should just do what you like to do, basically,
Anita Rao 22:05
I want to hear about. So there was this moment in August 2021 when only fans, as a company said it was going to restrict adult content. So, as you said, there are there's a variety of kind of content. Only fans, but a vast what it's known for is, like, the sexual content. They said they were going to restrict it. There was a huge backlash. Tell me about this moment and how it played out for you and in the group chat, like, what were you all thinking and feeling as people who make their livelihood?
Paris Bush 22:36
Yeah, we all had a little bit of a meltdown together at first, I think it was very shocking. I personally was freaking out because I was about a year into it, and I was just seeing like the light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing, and I thought that that was about to get taken away from me again. And everybody who does this job comes from a very unique past, and a lot of us are disabled, honestly, like a lot of us turn to only fans because we can't work a normal nine to five job, or we're single parents. So it was like such a gut wrenching thing when we found that out, because it felt like a huge disservice to sex workers, because we made all of their money like only fans liked to pretend that it was making money from other safe for work, kind of creators, but it wasn't. It was making 90% of its income, probably from sex work. So it was really upsetting, and it caused a lot of kind of political chatter across social media. Sex workers joined together, and we just like attacked hardcore like, this is messed up. This can't happen to us. And everyone kind of freaked out at first, and then we realized that only fans is just the platform, and we're actually like the ones that make the platform. So it doesn't really matter where we are. We just have to decide together, like where we're going next. So we had all decided to move to fans Lee because of only fans saying that, and when they backtracked a week later, maybe it was a relief, but also it created this new thing within the online sex work community, where we realized that we need to be spread out across like everything, because,
Anita Rao 24:38
Yeah, diversify,
Paris Bush 24:39
right? Because we never know when something is going to cut us off. Basically,
Anita Rao 24:45
I want to go back to something you said about how a lot of folks on there are coming to this work because it allows them the flexibility they need for their lives and their responsibilities. How do you think about the stigma of sex work? I guess. At this point in your career, where you have seen the benefits it gives you, but you've also seen the response that it gets in the wider cultural landscape.
Paris Bush 25:11
I think that I have a lot of empathy for sex workers, and I've been on kind of both extremes of it, I've been treated very badly because of it. I've had people stalk me. I've had angry girlfriends find my personal name and address and report me to Child Services, like I've seen the extreme hatred of sex workers. And I've also been on the other side where people put you on a pedestal, and they think you're this, like, amazing, you know, like object. And at this point in the game, I really love being a sex worker, even though it has a lot of risks, it can be scary at times to have stalkers and things like that. I really don't want to stop doing what I'm doing because of fear. I'm the kind of person that's just going to keep doing it anyways. You know, I'm not going to, like, stop wearing a mini skirt so I don't get whistled at. Like, I'm just going to keep wearing the Mini Skirt because I want to wear it, you know, like, completely. I'm not going to conform because all of these men have mommy issues and hate sex workers, you know,
Anita Rao 26:23
Yeah, you're gonna think about like, what part of it feels like you're staying in your power and staying true?
Paris Bush 26:28
Yeah, yeah, that is staying in my power. Like I love doing this, and I love the flexibility, and I just love the community, and I love anything that has to do with sex so and sexual health and sexual education, and it's my passion, so I'm not going to stop doing it because of of some men that might want to turn me into a lampshade, which has I have Been I have gotten that bread before.
Anita Rao 27:01
Okay, well, that is like in the online world you mentioned like at the beginning of this journey, you realized you needed to put some space between you in the community that you live in and your online sex work. How do you do that
Paris Bush 27:17
in the modern age, also
Anita Rao 27:19
in the modern age,
Paris Bush 27:19
it is crazy the technology that exists and makes it so hard for you to be private, yeah. So I just started by basically changing my only fans name to not be my personal Instagram account name. That was a good start. Okay, and so online, I separated my two identities. I stopped telling people in real life, what I do unless I knew them really well, and then I've basically made everything private. If it's a personal account, I've had to take all the like pictures of my kids offline that are public, and I use a fake name wherever I go, okay, because I don't want men to recognize me and then see my real name, and that's pretty much all you can do. I mean, besides, have a very good security system, it's scary. There's websites now where you can upload photos of someone's face, and the website will scan the entire internet for other photos of that face.
Anita Rao 28:24
Wow.
Paris Bush 28:25
So when I put myself into that, it found my only fans pictures and stuff, and then it found my personal photos and stuff. Okay, so like someone can easily like match, yeah. Okay, so I had to make sure my real identity is completely like offline or private, and there's a geo block feature on only fans
Anita Rao 28:46
Tell me about that.
Paris Bush 28:47
You can geo block certain areas. So for instance, I have my state geo blocked so nobody can subscribe to me or see my content from that state. It just says, like page unavailable, okay? And then I also stopped posting nudity online for free, like on Twitter or Reddit or things like that.
Anita Rao 29:10
So this is a very online job. We live in a very online world. You do have two kids. How much do they know about what you do?
Paris Bush 29:23
I think again, just like I said with dating and my social media jobs, like I definitely keep it very vague, they know that I'm a content creator. They know I have a following on Tiktok or Instagram, and that's the extent of it. When they were younger, that was the extent of it, I should say. And as they got older, like I was more open about it, not because I wanted to be. It's just because one of my kids just figured it out. They're just too smart. And they were like.Yeah, but how are you making money off of it? Like, I know you have a lot of followers, but like, how do they pay you over social media, you know? And I was like, Uh, okay, and they're learning about all this at school anyways. Like, they have health class, and I've always been a very sex positive parent. I try to be as educated as I can be for them to make sure they have, like, a healthy relationship with sex and their bodies. So I don't go into any more detail than they ask, and I try to keep it very age appropriate, basically,
Anita Rao 30:34
So they know that you are a sex worker, but they don't know exactly what that means.
Paris Bush 30:39
Yes, well, it just depends on the kid. One of them knows that I am an only fans model, okay, they know what only fans is. Their friends have talked about it. Luckily, they are aware of the stigmas that come with it, and they're very private for me, which I hate that they have to do that, but it's a new thing. Like, yeah, nobody has done this before. I feel like this is all happening in real time. So I have always taught her that my job is great and it's something I should be proud of. And she saw firsthand, you know, what it did for our family. So I think everyone has a good relationship with that idea that mom is mom's a sex worker. Yeah.
Anita Rao 31:30
As Paris said, people in her life know that she's a mom and a sex worker, but how has sitting at that intersection for four years shaped her relationship with sex and her body. We'll talk to Paris about that just after the break, plus we'll meet another creator who has thoughts about the future of online sex work. As always, you can hear the podcast version of the show by following embodied on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Today's conversation is about online sex work and contains mention of sex and sex acts. If you prefer to listen later, you can find the full episode in the embodied podcast feed. We've been talking with content creator Paris Bush about what it's like to make her living on only fans. Paris is in the top 1% of earners on the platform and creates content ranging from sexy parodies to mainstream porn.
Paris Bush 32:27
I call my work my art because it is a type of art to me and performance art, you know. So I am an artist like making enough now to support myself and my family and have a farm. So I'm really, like, grateful that I've come this far, but I think for the future, I'm gonna be moving away from sex work. Only fans will sustain itself. Basically, I have over 150 videos. As long as I'm getting subscribers, I have content for them to buy, and it becomes this thing where it just makes money passively, basically. So I would like to keep that going as long as possible, and just focusing the rest of my time on building building up my other social medias, because I also have safer Work social medias about my farm and my farm animals, and that's kind of also my passion.
Anita Rao 33:29
What is your relationship like with sex in your body at this moment?
Paris Bush 33:34
It's always changing, but I think someone told me the other day that I really like having sex a lot, and I have sex a lot, and I was like, Do I really I'm so like, I don't know, it's funny, like, I don't consider myself like a super sexual person, but I think I'm desensitized, because I definitely am doing that every day. So I'm like, Okay, I guess that is a lot for some people, but I keep all of the crazy stuff for my subscribers, and then in my personal life, I'm just very, very vanilla, which is funny to me, but yeah, I I like sex. I like my sex life and my relationship with my body, for sure, but I wouldn't say it's as wild and crazy as the online version is.
Anita Rao 34:24
How about dating? How has this whole experience changed what you're looking for in a relationship and how you approach partnership?
Paris Bush 34:33
It has made dating very complicated, because when you have all your needs met and you have enough money to support yourself and and I already have kids, and, like, this life that I wanted, it kind of takes away all of the like, yearning for, like a partner. You know, I used to really, really want a relationship, because I just wanted, like, emotional support or physical support or financial support, you know, but once you learn how to how you, like, can take care of yourself, it kind of became less important to me. And I'd say I spent a solid chunk of time just like, being alone and enjoying that. And now I am at a place where, like, I do want to, like, share things with someone else, and I want to to, like, have that bond, that like partnership thing and but I'm happy that it's like for those reasons and not because I, like, need someone to pay half the rent. You know,
Anita Rao 35:35
Yep. Okay, one last question, if you could go back to yourself four years ago, at the start of this journey, what advice would you give that version of Paris about balancing her expectations and needs and desires with the demands of this job and what other people are going to ask of her?
Paris Bush 36:00
First of all, I would say, charge more. Please charge more. And, you know, while I promoted myself being like very genuine and girl next door and no makeup and stuff, I also didn't think men would pay as much, because it's such a nuanced kind of thing. And now I realized that, like, that is actually what you should charge way more for, because that is the hardest thing to do, is to be yourself on there and, like, share this, like, very personal life with everybody. So I definitely would say to make sure you up all your prices and, yeah, stay true to who you are and value yourself.
Anita Rao 36:42
I love that.
Paris Bush 36:43
Yes, it it seems like less effort physically, but it's actually more mentally taxing to be yourself on a platform like only fans, because they want to know you and they want to talk to you all day, and it's a lot of emotional labor like a ton.
Anita Rao 37:00
Thank you so much, Paris. This has been a pleasure.
Paris Bush 37:02
Thank you.
Anita Rao 37:07
Like Paris said, posting on only fans requires a certain amount of confidence and vulnerability, but figuring out how to value and put a price tag on your content can be even more challenging when you don't see a lot of other bodies like yours on the platform. That was the case for Maxim Lupin.
Maxim Lupin 37:27
I was just not necessarily thinking, considering that I am a larger like black trans man, that there be a audience for such a thing. Spoiler alert, there is an audience for such a thing
Anita Rao 37:43
Maxim, who goes by Max is an online sex worker with content on a range of platforms, including only fans, just for fans and YouTube. His work explores the intersections of kink and sex ed, but a huge part of his online personality, like that of Paris Bush, is about letting free his sense of humor.
Maxim Lupin 38:05
I have several different parody videos, one of which it's supposed to be a Halloween parody, but this time, I am carrying a knife in my booty and trying to kill a bear with it.
Anita Rao 38:22
It is quite an image. As Max continued creating, he decided to sign up for an additional platform, similar to only fans and functionality, but a little more open to kinky content. It's called just for fans.
Maxim Lupin 38:36
The big consideration between the two platforms, especially after only fans updated their content policy, the type of content that I produce started to be cracked down upon, really, anything that was on the quote, unquote edgier side of sex, so anything that dealt with like kink, etc, was starting to just be removed from the site, if not just heavily censored, because you cannot say certain terms on only fans, even ones that are relatively innocuous in other contexts. For example, if I wanted to talk about meeting up with another model. The word meet is not allowed as it would assume that you are doing full service sex work and meeting up with your fans.
Anita Rao 39:30
So when you first got on these platforms, you mentioned wondering if there was going to be an appetite for content from you as a trans man in a larger body. Is there any disconnect between kind of what does the best on the platform and what feels the best for you to create?
Maxim Lupin 39:51
There certainly can be. At times, when I look at my metrics, I can tell that videos in which I am bottoming tend to do better than videos in which I top. Now in my personal life, I am almost entirely just a top, but it is an unfortunate thing that I find in my personal life as well, that at times, because simply that I am a trans man, I am typecast into this role of being a bottom because I quote, unquote, have two holes or whatever.
Anita Rao 40:25
How has the landscape of folks like you creating content on these platforms evolved in your time that you have been creating?
Maxim Lupin 40:37
It's been, honestly, very exciting to see it evolve, because it kind of feels like, in a way, I was on the ground floor, and now I'm watching all the other floors being built up. And it's, I don't know, I get with a very like, tight chested feeling of like pride about it, because I feel like, at the time, there were, in fact, just a lot of more skinny white people, whereas I feel now there are a lot of more diverse body types, there are more people of color. There are now contemporaries of mine that I can point to that are it's like, there's you, there's you, there's you. I am not the only one in this room. There are more.
Anita Rao 41:26
When I hear you talking, I hear this sense of kind of joy and excitement and possibility, and it reminds me of a video of yours that I watched you create videos on YouTube where you talk to a more general audience about sex work from a political perspective, from a cultural perspective, and you have this whole video where you explore this idea of whether or not sex work is empowering, and listening to you talking. Now I'm brought back to that video and back to that question that you raise, and I would love to have you share how you think about that question, like, is online sex work empowering for you? And how do you feel about the debate around that term empowerment?
Maxim Lupin 42:11
Yeah, no, it's a really interesting debate, because I feel like there's concerns on the side of sex workers and civilians, ie non sex workers alike, wherein sex workers can feel like the word empowerment kind of diminishes, or others the work that we do compared to other work. And then, of course, there are civilians who are perhaps not as progressive or do not understand, necessarily, the difference between sex work and sex trafficking, of which are very different, so that all being said is sex work empowering. I believe that empowerment can be a useful word to describe some people's experiences. Thus, sex work can be empowering, quite like if you know you are empowered by, say, whatever job that you find yourself at, but it is perhaps the impact that work has, or the what you kind of take away, or what others take away from that work, for example, just being able to sit here on the embodied podcast and talk about the things that make me happy in sex work and to dismiss those fears or More sex negative projections of sex work.
Anita Rao 43:40
Yeah, you said something, actually in another video, where you said, if I didn't have staggering student loan debt, I'd probably only be doing sex work. I love that comment because, I mean, it really stood out to me. It goes against, I think, what a lot of people would assume, which is that you would turn to sex work because you had student loan debt, talk to me about what you mean when you say that
Maxim Lupin 44:06
the amount of time that I spend between the editing that I do for YouTube videos, between the editing that I do for my content on just for fans, between the writing And for YouTube, finding clips, or for just for fans, finding other performers to work with. The amount of time investment is certainly a lot more however, comma when it comes to the management of my resources, the management of my mental health, the management of my body as a whole I feel like sex work and online content creation just does better things for me mentally, not that I necessarily dislike the field that I went into. Otherwise for my civilian work, it's a lot more flexible for me to do online content creation because I have, especially after years of doing it, I have a good idea of the flow of which I work in. And thus, like there are certainly times, especially the time where I was full time back in 2020 that I was really just able to take that time for myself sometimes, and it's not something that a manager or some other boss will be like, hey, no, you need to be here clocking in and doing your eight hours or more a day because we said so.
Anita Rao 45:34
What do you hope that people who come to your content will take away or gain that they aren't able to get from other content creators or from mainstream porn.
Maxim Lupin 45:48
To put it simply, I just want it to be another representation of trans men in kink, especially at the time, there weren't many trans men, or really trans people, I feel in general, in a place where they are being represented in kink spaces, despite the number of trans people that I knew in kink spaces, as my content has evolved, I feel like the theme of kink representation is still there a however comma. There are several more elements that I'm trying to layer on top of it as well. I feel like at the beginning, I took myself not necessarily seriously, but not necessarily as silly as I could get. And with that, I feel like I am in the more of a space where I'm trying to show the jovial, happy, funny side of sex that deserves to be seen, because sex can be pretty funny. It does not necessarily have to be the most serious thing you do in your day.
Anita Rao 46:50
I love this idea of finding the silliness and the play in sex and sexuality has creating content helped you find more joy and play in your sex life off screen as well.
Maxim Lupin 47:07
I feel like my sex life off screen is what informed my want to do more of this on screen. Initially I felt the want to appear more serious as I thought that it would make my content come off as more professional or more polished, or something like that. But as time has gone on, I can I know that I can be just as professional and just as polished, just as sexy as the rest of the people in my space, while also laughing because I slipped on some silicone lube.
Anita Rao 47:45
I love it. Do you see yourself creating content like this in 10 years from now?
Maxim Lupin 47:53
It's hard to say. I really do enjoy creating this kind of content. I feel that it's really rewarding. I feel that it is very mentally stimulating. I am super passionate about queer history and archivism. I'm super passionate about sex work. I'm super passionate about helping other sex workers. I'm passionate about my community, so I would really like to if, if at all possible, however, comma, I'm just not sure necessarily, where the legality of my work will be in the next 10 years. So if it's still legal and I'm still here and not in jail or something, then probably.
Anita Rao 48:45
Maxim Lupin is a Chicago based content creator whose work you can find on platforms like YouTube, Patreon and just for fans, today's episode was produced by Audrey Smith and edited by Amanda Magnus. Kaia Findlay also produces for our show. Nina Scott is our intern, and Jenni Lawson is our technical director. Quilla wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District North Carolina. Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Anita Rao.