St. Claire started working as an adult model with her ex-husband. At first, they would go to the gym regularly. This physically and emotionally helped them establish more confidence in themselves. Feeling good fueled them. In the beginning, they would post pictures solo, then together on Tumblr this further branched out to different social media platforms. “I started posting on Instagram a little more and not being afraid. It took me a little while to post the more raunchy content because at first, I didn’t want my friends knowing. Though eventually, it became more normalized for me to post even though I considered it to be a more personal place while Tumblr was more anonymous” said St. Claire.

After becoming more comfortable posting on Instagram she began posting captions every once in a while that would say “If you want to see more go to my Tumblr.” It wasn’t until she met a girl named Eve who lived in the U.K and had a premium Snapchat that St. Claire started establishing her brand, “We were friends on Instagram we did promos together, we added each other on Snapchat then she asked if I had a premium. I told her no, I don’t really know what that is. So she showed me about how she was making money by basically selling her username to see more R-rated content” said St. Claire.

Premium Snapchat allowed clients to pay for monthly subscriptions in order to gain access to her R-rated content. “She told me, I’m doing what you’re doing but, I’m making money off of it. So she helped me set up a premium Snapchat and I sold it four times in one night after promoting my premium on Instagram” said St. Claire. For life-time access she set her subscription up for 30 dollars a month. “Then we both realized Snapchat only allows you to record 59 second videos which really sucks. It was a pain, I wanted to produce more full-filling content. Especially for clients who were willing to pay more money. I wanted to make sure it was worth it for them” said St. Claire.

Instead of individually selling large content each time, St. Claire decided she would create a bundle of content where multiple viewers at once could see it. “I have used this pink Master folder for three years in my google drive, it’s my first bundled collection of porn in my first three years of creating content” said St. Claire. She stopped using this folder in December 2019, that's when she started using Only Fans. We see this a lot in today’s culture that Only Fans is stigmatized as a platform that's only for selling nudity. It’s not. This is a platform where anyone can sell their content, nudity or not. Today her Only Fans contains about 8000 photos and 350 videos. It took her about four years to collect this amount of work. Her goal is to keep expanding her portfolio, she's always searching for new content ideas. "That's what I love most about my job as a sex worker, is that I get to can bring my clients vision to life that they can't find anywhere else" said St. Claire.

While St. Claire has intentionally been doing this for four years, a colleague and friend Kayla Scarponi, is still starting out. “I’m in my third month, I was considering it during quarantine. I started seeing it everywhere across different social media platforms and I wondered if I could make money off of pictures I’ve already taken” said Scarponi. Through mutual friends Scarponi reached out asking for tips. “I was actually super nervous to talk to her. She’s very much established in her brand and in her fan base” said Scarponi.

Originally, Scarponi didn’t plan to tell anyone she knew so she made a fake name on Instagram and Only Fans. “In the beginning some of my friends were my best customers, it made it an easy sell” said Scarponi. Her family members don’t know but it'll be interesting once her uncle sees tax forms from Only Fans. “It’s not that I’m embarrassed or ashamed, it’s more that they don’t need to know this part of me, I don’t have that type of relationship with my family” said Scarponi.

It gets emotionally taxing to keep up with relationships that are created with each client. “It’s a struggle to find the motivation to keep making content, it’s a big commitment as your everyday time goes, I do still work an office job during the day” said Scarponi. There’s so many people who have Only Fans since quarantine last year the competition to be successful in adult entertainment has skyrocketed. “There’s days a lot of the time I don’t feel good enough. I have to remind myself, I’m my worst critic and that the people buying my content aren’t going to care about the things I’m seeing, those days are really hard” said Scarponi.

Down to the bone there are so many parallels the type of work they’re doing is more vulnerable. These women wanted to be adult models in a competitive multi-billion dollar industry. It wasn’t a last resort for them like the way society and stigma amplifies sex work to be. As this can be the case for certain individuals based around circumstance, that raises the question, what can we do in society to push for sex work to be seen as work so its a choice? So there is equal opportunity for men, women and LGBTQ+ people. So there's more education opportunity revolving around the sex industry? (Grant, 2021).

“In addition to dismissing more than 900 open cases related to prostitution and unlicensed massage, Vance also Wednesday dismissed more than 5,000 outstanding Loitering for the Purpose of Prostitution cases (Perett, 2021).

In the future, it is hoped that society evolves and breaks the automatic assumption that love and sex are the same thing, rather than viewing it as two separate entities. There can start to be a push for progress so there is a less violence, less criminalization and more safety guidelines for people who are trying to make a living like anyone else. With more conversations, education and perspective we'll start to see sex work become more normalized with the respect it deserves. Especially in the era of information it's important to keep showing society where to look rather than where they have been looking.