Do you think it’s possible to sleep with 100 people in one day? If we take OnlyFans star Bonnie Blue’s account as gospel, she would prove it is. The model’s incredulous sexual tirade has been all over social media and news outlets alike, after boasting she slept with over 100 men during Nottingham’s freshers' week this month, many of them being first-year students. The public’s opinion is split down the middle, with many believing Bonnie and, in turn, chastising her for what they deem lewd and predatory behaviour, whilst the rest deem her a troll or ‘rage-bait’, intentionally sensationalising herself and her acts in order to garner attention either for her self or her OnlyFans, on which the star claims to make £500,000 a year. While I choose to take her story with a grain of salt, many are blindly believing her wild claims, and I think that this frenzy Bonnie has whipped up around her is not only damaging to her image, but the wider social perception of sex workers.
Firstly, the platforming that Bonnie Blue has received over the past few months, due to her provocative social media presence, is damaging to the image that sex workers have fought hard to reestablish over the past few decades. Historically, sex work, and largely female sexuality, has been reduced and vilified as immoral and taboo, an antithesis to a modern civilised society. Seen as a last resort for women, sex workers have been subjected to violence, discrimination and disproportionate homicide since the genesis of modern civilisation. Even in recent times, a cumulative study showed that female sex workers are up to 18 times more likely to get murdered compared to women of different professions, highlighting this disproportionate violence.
However, with the advent of the fourth-wave feminist movement, the preconception of sex workers, enmeshed with violence against women and sexual liberation movements, has vastly improved. Sites such as OnlyFans gave women less dangerous ways to engage in sex work, and the platform’s, along with many other similar sites, entry into mainstream media has allowed the profession to be more normalised and sex workers less ostracised than eras previous. It has led women like Bonnie Blue to become millionaires from profiting off of their bodies, an astronomical contrast to the lives of poverty and desperation that many sex workers had led before.
This change can only be seen as positive. Sex work is no longer taboo and women have increased control over their sexuality and the capitalisation of their bodies, to an extent of course. Yet, if we do believe Bonnie Blue’s claim that she has slept with hundreds of students, I do believe that the normalisation of pornography and platforms such as OnlyFans allow her to somewhat manipulate young boys into soliciting sex from her. Bonnie Blue markets herself as giving boys the experience they need to be sexually successful throughout university.
I don't think it’s unfair to say that many boys will be entering university as sexually inexperienced, and there is a historic and perpetuated stigma surrounding it. Many boys, feeling inferior, are easily seduced by this proposition, wanting to reach the same social strata as their peers, clouding their judgement of the objective power imbalance of the situation. In addition to this, the ever-ludicrous perception of the fact that men should be sexually active and promiscuous in order to justify their masculinity will further push these boys towards entering the proverbial contract with Bonnie Blue. This manipulation is glaringly obvious to me, especially since Bonnie Blue is benefiting financially from the arrangement.
But I don't think the issue is about these boys being swindled out of their money. This predation and soliciting can also manifest itself in more sinister ways. I don’t believe that a boy’s first experience being with a sex worker is a good entryway into their sexual adulthood. Although this is not Bonnie Blue’s fault, nor should any sex workers feel guilty or culpable for the psyche of their clients, explicitly targeting inexperienced young men can corrupt the development of normal sexual inclinations. Bonnie Blue sells a fantasy and a pornographic interpretation of sexuality that inherently objectifies the female body for male pleasure. Impressionable boys could internalise this, and continue it into further sexual experience, as Bonnie Blue has solidified the pornographic archetype of women as sexual objects that so many young men consume, with porn being so readily accessible
As much as I am compelled to agree with the fact that Bonnie Blue’s actions are indefensible, I am critical in separating her from the rest of the OnlyFans community. A big reason for this differentiation is her provocative statements surrounding female gender roles, which lead me to think she is a ‘rage-baiter’. Stating on Jackie O’s podcast that women have a duty to sexually serve and submit to their male partners, and that men are justified to cheat on their wives if she fails to satisfy them, it’s difficult to believe that she stands behind such bold and misogynistic claims. Yet, she is nonetheless perpetuating sexist rhetoric that women are sexual objects that are meant to be dominated and subordinate by men, which is very dangerous when speaking on large platforms. She was invited to speak on a large podcast Saving Grace, hosted by British influencer GK Barry. Her audience is primarily teenagers, both boys and girls, who are susceptible to this sensationalism that Bonnie Blue spouts constantly. By being exposed to these concepts, it may lead to girls’ internalisation of misogyny, as well as boys’ perceptions of women as objects, which may, in turn, lead to sexist and violent thoughts towards women.
Yet, the sensationalised presence that Bonnie Blue has crafted for herself may lead to jeopardising this shift in public perception of sex workers. The more people that Bonnie’s rhetoric reaches, the more anger that her provocative persona will inspire, which will inevitably change perceptions of sex workers. It’s not often that the average civilian will come into contact with a sex worker unless they are specifically seeking one. Therefore, Bonnie Blue unwittingly becomes the figurehead for the average sex worker, an archetype that could mislead many into thinking that she is a representative of the majority of sex workers. Much of the internet has branded her a disgrace to women, and has lumped many sex workers in with this view, that sex positivity and the normalisation of sex work have gone too far. Taking her comments and claims as gospel, they are using it as moral leverage to criticise the progress that society has made at including sex workers as a valid profession.
This sort of content gives sex-negative movements and rhetorics unlimited ammunition to once again reduce the sector to the outer limits of society. As much as we can argue about the ethics of Bonnie Blue’s sexual escapades, any sort of conversation surrounding the star is detrimental to the wider community of sex workers, who have still not reached an equitable position in society compared to other more established professions. The misogynistic sensationalism of Bonnie’s online persona can be interpreted as a performance or marketing strategy by some, but many will be using it as a reference point to condemn sex workers as a collective. The naïveté of podcast hosts and media outlets giving her a platform and a neutral floor to spread her rhetoric is reversing a lot of the progress made by fourth-wave feminism and sex workers in society, and making a caricature of the profession that is still struggling to be socially accepted.
Image taken from OnlyFans Website.