LOS ANGELES — The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern has profiled performer and content creator Lonna Wells, who was recently fired from her job at a Taco Bell in Newport, Arkansas when a customer allegedly identified her as an adult performer.
Wells' plight follows on the heels of the controversy surrounding Lauren Kwei, a New York-based paramedic who turned to OnlyFans to help make ends meet during the pandemic, and was subsequently outed by the New York Post. A profile of Kwei in Rolling Stone last month went viral and prompted a response from U.S. Rep. (NY-14) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted "Sex work is work."
"The Daily Beast reviewed pay stubs confirming her employment and corroborated her story with her husband, who is very supportive of her sex work, as well as another employee, who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation," wrote Stern. "The firing took Wells by surprise, she says, because she’d even disclosed her sex work to her manager... during the interview process and was told that it wouldn’t pose a problem."
Stern noted "multiple calls and emails to Taco Bell’s corporate office were not returned."
Wells explained she began stripping in 2010 and stopped three years later when she married and became pregnant. She returned to adult in 2017 to raise extra money to support her family — largely through Pornhub and OnlyFans — but recently stepped away due to COVID-19 safety concerns and took the job at Taco Bell as a stopgap measure.
“We are tired of watching our community of marginalized workers being shamed and shunned for their time spent working in adult," Alana Evans of Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG) told Stern. "During a time where so many are becoming adult content creators just to put food on their table due to COVID, it’s shameful that Taco Bell would take this stance."
"This is why APAG is taking our fight against occupational discrimination to Washington, D.C. We have had contact with numerous senator’s offices, including AOC, to push to have our occupation added to the list of protected classes. This goal is at the top of the list for our union. We are seeking to have this implemented at a federal level."
Notable media figures including Monica Lewinsky and journalist Yashar Ali have rallied to Lonna Wells' cause. Find her OnlyFans profile here.
Visit TheDailyBeast.com for the full story.
If you want to support Lonna by subscribing to her OnlyFans, here’s the link to her profile: https://t.co/6o7v6hFIKm
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) January 19, 2021
And anyone who wants to object to my posting the link can go fuck themselves. https://t.co/2MyJ5elAVS
difficult to imagine what happened to lonna happening to a man... but let’s hope @yashar can find lonna to help. https://t.co/BK6GXUB81X
— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) January 19, 2021
Image source: TheDailyBeast
