Since the beginning of spring break, I haven't been on Instagram, but that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it. When I recently got a notification that somebody I know posted on the platform, my first thought was, “Oh, another thirst trap.”
And then it hit me – why do we treat a friend posting a flirty selfie for validation differently than a sex worker posting the same thing for money? Why is one seen as self-expression and one deemed shameful?
One of the greatest contributors to my embarrassing screentime of seven hours per day is Instagram reels (I scroll a lot, OK?). And, every once in a while, without fail, I’ll check the comments only to find countless replies saying “OnlyFans detected, opinion rejected,” somehow amassing thousands of likes.
I challenge this assumption that there is a great difference between your neighbor or roommate posting for attention and the ensuing validation, and a sex worker posting the same exact content, but for money.
As a society, we don’t detest the action – the reward is what makes the offense punishable.
Puzzling enough, our culture deeply values money. Walk into the Farmer School of Business and ask anyone there what their goal in life is, and they will tell you they want to be the next Elon Musk … But I’ll hedge a bet they don’t intend to accumulate that wealth by also being the next Breckie Hill. Very contradictory.
We, as college students, use followers and like counts as social currency. Nobody spends hours on Instagram curating an online presence for the love of the game. Oftentimes, seemingly high-end and aesthetic photos are used to garner the perceived meaningfulness and pleasure of feeling connected through involvement.
But it seems the most appalling hypocrisies go unnoticed. In the quest for followers and views, many college students, who will blatantly disrespect and disregard the opinions of a sex worker in a comment section, just so happen to mimic the same social media habits of sex workers.
So, is this all by coincidence? No. Sex appeal is highly marketable, and the clout is quite easy to see. This tells us that society is comfortable with the act, but not the transaction.
The difference between an OnlyFans creator and your friend is that you see your friend as an individual with complex emotions and a life. A sex worker has an untraditional line of income, which confuses the boundaries between occupation and personhood, thereby making it easier for us to reduce them down to a level of impersonalization.
The danger in this unconscious process is great and insidious. When we reduce someone to their occupation – whether that be sex work or anything else – we forget their humanity and begin to dehumanize them.
The vilification of sex workers is exactly what happens to other marginalized communities and, by expanding this principle, makes those same vulnerable groups even more susceptible to public disdain and mistreatment in the future. Such an immense unwarranted lack of respect becomes so normalized that it shifts our perception of what we may consider disparaging or hurtful.
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So many of us view sex work as a threat to ourselves, to our way of life. I’m here to tell you it’s not that deep.
It feels amazing to feel outraged, to get upset at something that is not a threat and harmless. The vitriol we feed to others serves as another function of social media. For the same reasons, we check the comment sections without the intention of offering our own commentary but to check the opinions of others. To feel connected as a part of something larger than ourselves, we collectively complain and fill ourselves with undying rage towards the lifestyles of people we don't know.
Sex work should not be feared. Sex work is work, and sex workers are people.
To the readers: I implore you to question your own biases and how they may be contributing negatively to your community, and maybe log out of Instagram for a week.
Gabriel Slark is a freshman double majoring in public administration and strategic communication from Westerville, Ohio. He is a research assistant for Professor Katherine Kuvalanka and a writer for the opinion section of The Miami Student.
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