User-generated sexual content platforms such as OnlyFans skyrocketed in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. As many of us were on high alert regularly checking news media for changes to the evolving situation, it was difficult to miss coverage of the sex industry popping up frequently and in diverse publications, from News.com.au to the ABC.
OnlyFans featured heavily with reports of women making “thousands of dollars a day.” Creating pornographic content for the platform was repeatedly positioned as a “cheeky side-hustle”, not only a fun and easy way to “help top up the family income,” but also sexually liberating, empowering and glamorous.
Articles repeating the idea that the sex industry offered quick and easy opportunities for women to improve their financial status were often decontextualised from the increasingly dire realities women faced in the context of the unfolding pandemic. Financially, women experienced a “triple whammy” where they were more likely to lose their jobs, more likely to do more unpaid work, and less likely to get government support.
The pandemic also exacerbated existing structural inequalities and violence experienced by women including social isolation, family pressures, and increased experiences of coercive control, emotional abuse and physical violence by male partners. Financial insecurity and unemployment predominantly affected women already in – or considered most at risk of entering – the sex industry: young women, migrant women, and single mothers.
While women were seeking to make ends meet, men accounted for the vast majority of consumers of pornographic content – demand for which rose exponentially during the pandemic. Yet the Australian media largely ignored this broader context, instead highlighting individual success stories.
I was part of a group of academics, campaigners, and long-time advocates for women and girls, who believed that the messages found in Australian news media warranted closer examination.
Our research set out to discover how the Australian news media reported and commented on the sex industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed 422 articles from 11 Australian news media publications over the first year of the pandemic.
We found the Australian media showed an overwhelmingly positive narrative about the sex trade in general, and especially for OnlyFans. Presented as news articles but reading more like advertorials, reports not only claimed women earned extremely high amounts in short amounts of time – but OnlyFans was positioned as a means to achieve happiness, self-confidence, and personal fulfilment. Selling nudes was presented as a way for women to be in control and have “full autonomy over their own bodies.”
Many even going some way to alleviate anticipated concerns – reassuring women that husband, kids, parents and friends are supportive of their involvement.
Whether sold as a life raft out of pandemic-induced poverty, a cheeky side-hustle, or the route to a glamorous celebrity lifestyle, pornographic content creation was often framed by the Australian media as entrepreneurial and aspirational for the young, modern woman in the age of COVID-19.
While positive stories appeared regularly, there was limited mention of the harms involved or safety concerns. By selling the sex industry to women in this way, we found the media was not only reporting about the sex industry – but actively promoting it.
This is concerning because the narrative pushed by Australian media during the pandemic is contrary to established research, which strongly links the sex trade to negative physical and mental health outcomes.
Not only is the media’s framing of content creation as an entrepreneurial career path in stark contrast to the coercive reality, it is also contradicted by the market structure. While some – highly publicised – content creators earn high amounts, recent reports confirm that most do not. Median revenue for OnlyFans content creators is US$155 per month. A survey of sexual content creators using the platform found earnings varied from US$10-$2000 per month, with an average of US$1000 per month.
A measly amount considering the time and effort that goes in to producing content, not to mention the huge physical and emotional toll in meeting consumer demands for ever new images and one-on-one interactions. User-generated pornography platforms trade on the expectation that, over time, women produce more explicit content for less money, in a highly competitive “race to the bottom.”
Sharing pornographic content via an online platform comes with an embedded risk of harm that platform owners are yet able to prevent or adequately safeguard against, such as non-consensual sharing of images, image-based abuse, blackmail, doxing and living with the fear that your images will reach an unintended audience.
A recent study on OnlyFans highlights additional harms relating to exploitation, including use of the platform by minors as both content creators and consumers, sex trafficking, and an increased risk of grooming for the creation of child sexual abuse material.
Moreover, online platforms act as an “on ramp” into face-to-face forms of the sex industry, where women are often subject to damaging practices, including grooming, coercive psychological and physical requirements or practices, and pressure to perform sexually humiliating acts. Involvement in the industry can lead to significant physical injuries, depression, traumatic stress, and psychological dissociation.
The dominant narrative of the sex industry as a viable and desirable career choice or aspirational lifestyle for women obscures its darker realities and the role that poverty plays in funnelling women into the industry. While news stories focus on women and their choices, they often fail to reveal that it is largely men (as pimps, platform creators, and consumers) who profit and benefit from women’s sexual services.
The focus on individual accounts of success ignores the structural and intersectional forms of oppression that make women more vulnerable to being harmed by the sex industry – it is not only socioeconomic disadvantage but intersecting forms of oppression relating to gender, race, ethnicity and migration status, including sexism, racism and colonisation.
The Australian news media is out of step with international media outlets progressively moving towards greater critique of the sex industry’s harms and its highly profit-driven business models. Acknowledgement of the links between women’s experiences of financial insecurity, gendered violence, and exploitation when reporting on the sex industry is urgently needed in Australian news media.
Read the full report here – Side Hustles and Sexual Exploitation