By Vincent Montoya-Armanios
Bucks County local and popular OnlyFans content creator, who goes by Mimi Oh, reflects on her experience as a trans adult content creator, the challenges of adult content creation under the control of powerful tech corporations, and the role content creators can play in uplifting each other’s work, among other valuable insights.
OnlyFans is a subscription service that allows fans to support content creators’ work directly. While the site is most known for sex work, the site also hosts a variety of other content categories, such as music, cosplay and costume design, and others. OnlyFans has grown in popularity since the onset of the pandemic. About 80% of subscription and content revenue goes to the content creators.
Vincent Montoya-Armanios (Interviewer)
Can you talk about what you were up to before you started your OnlyFans? What work were you doing before?
Mimi Oh
I worked retail, and I’m currently attending cosmetology school.
VMA
What led you to the decision to start an OnlyFans?
Mimi
I had a pretty decent Reddit following already, which is hard to do on Reddit. I’ve been semi-known for posting in the Reddit NSFW community, and I had a few friends and a lot of other people asking me, “hey, why don’t you get started on OnlyFans? I think you’d do really well! I’d love to subscribe to you!”
I considered it for a while. I don’t know why, but it took a long time for it to finally click for me: why don’t I do it? In July [2020] my work, school, pretty much everything was closed, so I decided, okay, let me make a Twitter [account]. When I get a certain amount of Twitter followers, I’ll open up my OnlyFans. So it started, and it’s been great. I’ve been very fortunate so far to have a successful career.
VMA
What were some of the obstacles in your mind before you decided to get going?
Mimi
(Laughs) Oh, it was literally just taxes for me, that’s it. The government hates independent workers. I just did mine yesterday, and oh my god I fucking hated it. But the good thing about it is, there’s so much you’re able to write off once you put the thought into what goes into making your content happen. From anything regarding appearance, to apparel, or just equipment really. It makes things more bearable. And ultimately you end up making more than you initially owe.
VMA
How much do you make on a monthly basis?
Mimi
So far, since November [2020], I’ve averaged about $3,000-6,000 a month. Last month was my biggest month where I made over $6,000.
VMA
And it’s been grown consistently? Or does it kind of go up and down?
Mimi
It’s somewhat consistent. I haven’t had the best income this month, but it’s understandable; I’ve been having a lot of problems with my mental health, so things have been kind of sparse as I’ve just been taking small breaks here and there. I’m doing fairly well still, I would say.
VMA
How have you been treated by your fans? Have they been respectful generally? Are they kind and respectful when you’re not able to produce as much content?
Mimi
Usually! I’m very lucky for that, very thankful for everyone who’s understanding of me. I always say, you’re not obligated to be vulnerable online if you have an online following or you have people that are paying for your content. You don’t really owe anyone explanations like that, but I like to keep a level of transparency with everyone. So I generally make a post across all my social media like, “hey, I haven’t been feeling my best this month, I’m really sorry I have to take a small break, I promise I’ll be back.” Generally people are very understanding. I think, at least in my little corner of the internet, people tend to be understanding of how exhausting the internet can be in regards to sex work.
VMA
Do you think it’s been taxing on your relationship?
Mimi
99% percent of the time, my boyfriend is the most supportive of me. I always say he’s my biggest fan in all of this. There are times when there have been some strains. We have a semi-open relationship for content purposes, so whenever I talk about that aspect of working with other people, you know, it’s not easy. You can have all the trust in the world, and it’s still not easy hearing your partner talk about essentially having sex with other people on camera. It was definitely taxing when I first started, but I think we’re at a point now where it’s not so much.
VMA
You’re pretty tuned into the content creator community. Do other content creators have that same relationship with their fans or is yours unique?
Mimi
Everyone out there has part of their following that’s good, and part of their following that’s bad. I’ve had to deal with some shitty people. I got a pretty decent amount of comments that were fairly racist toward my boyfriend and my relationship when I’d first started making posts about or including him. It’s an instant way to get blocked. I don’t get them as often these days.
It tends to be the same with anyone who’s popular on social media. The people that follow them tend to forget that there’s a person, and I feel especially like that with anything regarding sex work or adult content. I mean, hey, there’s a person here, more than a naked body.
I’ve seen this with some of my friends in the trans community. With some of them recently, their journey with their identity has led them to realize that there’s something else. Not entirely trans, not entirely cis. This tends to get pretty bad backlash. I feel very bad for them, that they have to put up with that just because they thought they were one thing and realized that there’s something else.
VMA
That’s awful.
Mimi
Yeah. There’s definitely a certain standard of what’s going to be popular specifically within the trans sex work community. That’s generally very thin, very light-skinned or white passing, very feminine and passable, while making content that specifically caters to people who want trans fem people with emphasis on their genitals. Like, a lot of girls tend to forego getting surgery because they’re afraid of losing their following or their income.
It’s another way in which I feel lucky: I’m going to school and I know all of this is going to be temporary.
VMA
Do you plan on stopping with content creation once you finish certification?
Mimi
It’s something I’m definitely going to stop in the future. It started off as something to do for my gender-affirming surgeries, but then I had such rapid growth in such a short amount of time that I thought, let me make this a full-time thing. It’s hard to say when exactly I will stop doing it just because there’s an aspect to it that has helped me so much with finding comfort with myself and my own body. I want to say within five years I’ll probably be done with it.
VMA
How do you think attitudes about sex work have changed recently, and how do they still need to change?
Mimi
That’s such a difficult question. On the one hand, there’s more conversation to make it normalized. On the other hand, I’ve noticed so many measures on social media to silence and get rid of sex workers. Twitter’s known for changing a lot of their algorithms on-the-fly. I remember a couple weeks ago there were talks about completely purging all NSFW content on the website, which was very scary to think about. I was on Tumblr during the purge of NSFW content. Once Twitter does it, where are we supposed to go?
It’s really terrible because even when a lot of major media outlets interview OnlyFans creators, [the interviewees] see things like sex work and OnlyFans as trends. There are people who come in, make a bunch of money for a month or two, and then leave and distance themselves from the community while still profiting from it, like Bella Thorne making a million dollars in 24 hours on OnlyFans. They don’t feel the need to acknowledge or talk about the issues and the problems that are actually going on within the sex work community. Like the issues of social media websites continuously trying to push down the NSFW community, not even just sex workers.
VMA
So they’re destroying potentially thousands of independent sex workers and content creators.
Mimi
I think people like that need to realize that their actions affect the whole community. They need to understand the reality of not just OnlyFans, but the field of sex work and adult content for everyone. There are people who, this is how they put food on the table, and now they’re barely able to make their rent because of people like this. It’s a shame because [for] so many of these stars, it could be so easy for them to just create and open up dialogue about sex work. If they took the time to talk to at least ten people who don’t have the biggest following, they could get a grasp of the reality of this for some people.
VMA
And they could use their platforms to support smaller-following sex workers in a meaningful way.
Mimi
That’s definitely what I try to do. I always try to retweet smaller creators. Every now and then I tweet out, “hey, if you’re a smaller creator and want a retweet just dm me, send me a tweet and I’ll do it for you.”
There are people who charge you for the chance to be retweeted by them. That’s something that’s never really sat well with me because we’re all in the same community, all at the same risk of losing our jobs, so why exploit each other?
VMA
So in your view, there needs to be stronger solidarity within the NSFW community?
Mimi
Definitely. There’s a clear class divide. It’s weird how capitalism tends to come up in ways that you think it wouldn’t.
VMA
Do you see your career as cutting against the grain of capitalism?
Mimi
It’s hard to say. This is what I do full-time, and I’m not struggling or anything to get by; it’s far from it. I have a lot of privileges working in my favor that have gotten me far, and I feel like it’s my duty to give back and uplift those who don’t have the same chances as me.
VMA
What do you think our local community can do to support the sex work community?
Mimi
For one thing: pay for your porn. So many of these sites—like recently with Pornhub and the cleanse of their site—so many of these sites aren’t sex worker friendly, so directly supporting people who make adult content is a really great way.
For another: understand that sex work can mean so many things and all of it is valid and a legitimate means of making an income. Stripping is considered sex work. There are people who are OnlyFans creators whose thing is maybe solo content. There are some people who use it as means of offering like relationship and sex therapy. At the end of the day, all we’re trying to do is make an income.
People also need to realize that there’s so much work that goes into it. You’re putting yourself out there physically and emotionally. There’s such a big vulnerability to it. You hear people say “get a real job, that’s not real work.” It really is because it can create such a strange relationship with sex and sexuality. I know with me, whenever I’m with my boyfriend, and when we’re not making content, there’s a part of my head that’s like “I could be making content from this, but I’m not.” And so I think people need to understand that apart from the physical aspect, there’s a lot of emotional and mental work that goes into doing this and putting yourself out there in such a way.
New to the conversation? Click here to learn more about U.S. legislation that makes sex workers more vulnerable and the movement born from the passing of FOSTA-SESTA.
