LONDON — Adult content creator, model and writer Ariel Anderssen penned a thoughtful, well-argued rebuke of an article by a writer for right-wing British online magazine Areo which had disparaged OnlyFans models, a response which the magazine published yesterday.
Titled “What It’s Really Like to Be an OnlyFans Performer,” Anderssen’s article dismantled the stigmatizing, mocking generalizations made by Areo’s Nick Comilla, who had described OnlyFans content creators as "desperate, terminally underemployed gig economy workers.”
Areo is a British online magazine with an editorial line — and several writers in common — with right-wing intellectual publication Quillette. Areo’s content — for example, Comilla’s anti-sex work tirade — is curated in opposition to what they consider the “mainstream” (i.e. “Leftist” or “progressive”) of British intellectual discourse.
“There are two ways to go about writing an article about a poorly understood, stigmatized minority,” Anderssen’s eloquent reply began. “One is to find some individuals from that group, and listen to what they tell you before drawing conclusions. The other is to guess — and that is what Nick Comilla appears to have done in his recent article for this magazine.”
After mentioning that she was the only sex worker whom Comilla quoted, and mischaracterized, in his article, Anderssen described herself as “the opposite of an economically disenfranchised twenty-something.”
“I am a 44-year-old professional model with almost two decades experience of the business, a turnover approaching £200K per year and a property corporation entirely funded by my modeling income,” she wrote.
Anderssen pointed out that Comilla spent much of his piece “making unsubstantiated claims about how unpleasant our lives are, with no citations to back them up,” and without having reached out to any actual OnlyFans content creators.
OnlyFans Work Is, Indeed, a Job
As to Comilla’s inference that “OnlyFans work is not, in fact, a job,” Anderssen wrote she wishes “he’d tell Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — my income tax bill last year was enough to pay the entire salary of an NHS nurse.”
But going beyond Comilla’s incredibly ignorant article, Anderssen identified that the real problem is “the widespread social attitude that makes him and many others feel qualified to write about the experiences of sex workers without speaking to any of us. Everyone seems to have an opinion on sex work — which makes sense, given that, at a conservative estimate, 50% of adults have viewed our products and/or interacted with us. But consuming our product isn’t the same as understanding what our job actually involves.”
To read the rest of Anderssen’s eye-opening “What It’s Really Like to Be an OnlyFans Performer,” visit AreoMagazine.com.
For more from Ariel Anderssen, follow her on Twitter.