A 17-year-old was featured in explicit content on OnlyFans when his 18-year-old girlfriend uploaded a video of them on her legitimate adult account. This is not the only instance of a minor being featured on OnlyFans, a platform that prides itself on its strict user policy.
To give an overview of what OnlyFans actually is, according to the site, it is a ‘platform built for creators and fans. It promises creative ownership, inclusivity, freedom, and safety.
OnlyFans received the biggest push during the pandemic when other sources of income fell short due to numerous lockdowns. The number of users went up from 7 million to a whopping 85 million. Celebrities entered OnlyFans on a red carpet made of millions of dollars. Bella Thorne allegedly made $1 million the day she joined the platform. Sex workers were also attracted to the platform because they were unable to receive customers in their current position.
For young women, OnlyFans dangles as a sweet fruit of glamour, luxury and empowerment. Stories go viral on a daily basis about how women end up buying houses and cars by posting sexual content on OnlyFans. Ideologically, the platform promises empowerment by allowing women to take control of their sexuality and how they wish to express it.. They are able to create the content they feel like putting out there and receive all the financial gains without a third-party intervening
However, the reality is far from glamour and financial successes. Success on OnlyFans is not promised to all users as it may seem in the media. It is a highly competitive site with a huge pool of creators. An average creator only earns $1300 a year. Even a creator in the top 1 per cent would earn closer to $49000 per year. It is the top 0.1 per cent of the creators who receive enough money to buy the Jaguars and the Mercedes that we hear about on social media
Most creators who join OnlyFans with high hopes of living their absolute dream life end up becoming vulnerable to the manipulative and predatory nature of people behind the screens. Some women claimed that they received requests for sex in exchange for high monetary gains. While the big creators can afford to say no, someone strapped for cash, especially teenagers, may not have the luxury to do so. The Internet Watch Foundation reported that 2020 saw a 44 per cent increase in the number of explicit photos produced by minors, out of which girls between the ages of 11 and 13 were the main subset.
As it is a competitive market, many women feel pressurised to create more and more explicit content to maintain the subscriber count. In these situations, they may also end up doing things they may not feel comfortable with. Like all other platforms for explicit content, OnlyFans also runs the risk of providing a space for revenge porn. Moreover, doxxing is quite common, especially when the subscribers become predatory when they hear the word ‘no’.
These stories aren’t outliers. They are rooted in deeper structural flaws. The rise of platforms like OnlyFans can’t be understood in isolation—it is intimately tied to the failures of late-stage capitalism and the enduring grip of patriarchy.
When young women, even teenagers, look at sexual content creation as a viable career path, it is not merely a personal choice—it reflects societal conditions that make this path seem promising when it comes to financial security, autonomy, and recognition. This is not empowerment out of freedom. It is empowerment sold in a marketplace of limited options. Platforms like OnlyFans leave their creators to face all the risks from their subscribers while collecting part of their revenue and facing none of the consequences.
When one is unable to afford rent and turns to OnlyFans for money, is it really a choice? When young women living in scarcity are promised money in exchange for sexually depraved videos, are they really empowered by uploading nude content? For survival, the creators have to monetize their bodies, and there is no empowerment in that. True empowerment lies in the ability of a woman to be her sexual self without any external pressures. And when did empowerment get tied to visibility and desirability? Why is a woman considered empowered only when she is seen and, most importantly, desired?
This is where the concepts of patriarchy seep under the guise of freedom. Women are told that they are taking control of their bodies on OnlyFans, but that control should align with what the market wants. In this case, empowerment gets tied to profitability. Women’s bodies become brands, and the power comes from attention, not autonomy. The more subscribers and attention one have, the more money, power and ‘empowerment’ there would be. Thus, objectification becomes essential for profitability which was never the true motive of feminism. Even the fantasy of luxury and financial freedom promised by the top OF creators is a guise for profits. Established creators need to sell the dream of autonomy and sexual freedom because the more people they bring to the site, the more money they earn through the referral program. Therefore, the promised dream of OF is a facade in itself.
The idea of ‘control’ on OnlyFans needs to be analysed a bit deeper. Who is in control of that platform? As mentioned previously, the profitability from attention is the main aspect of pornographic content. Thus, the consumer is more important because his attention and views dictate what kind of content gets money on the platform. This raises the question: Who consumes and who gets compromised? Consumers are often anonymous, sitting behind their screens, while it is the creators who put themselves out on the internet, hyper-visible and hoping to be wanted by an unknown audience. The illusion of empowerment becomes clearer when we look at how fragile this autonomy really is. When a woman loses subscribers for refusing a custom request, or is harassed for setting boundaries, or is doxxed when she tries to leave—it becomes evident that the platform may empower individual choices, but it does not protect them. The system still rewards compliance, punishes refusal, and commodifies consent. In the end, it is not the creator who is truly profiting from the system but the system itself. The man behind OF paid himself a whopping $472 million in 2023.