When Teens Joke About Starting Sex Work

Ever been chatting to a teenager or young adult and heard them make a joke about how they should just drop out of school and get a sugar daddy for easy money? Maybe you’ve seen teens joking about how they’ll just start an onlyfans if they fail to get another job or don’t pass their next math test. If you’re a sex worker, you’ve probably even been directly contacted asking for advice, including by young people who want to know how they can do sex work without their parents finding out whilst they still live at home.

A common reaction from sex workers regarding teens who joke about starting sex work is to become angry. It’s often dangerous work, something many of us have lost family over when they’ve found out or that we’ve been extensively harassed for. It’s hard work, sometimes in ways that are quite different from other jobs but hard nonetheless, and it’s frustrating to see that be belittled and treated as easy money.

I see a lot of sex workers respond to the phenomenon of seeing these teens and young people by dismissing them or telling them not to do sex work. It’s assumed that their joking manner means they’d never actually do it and their claim that sex work is easy (especially with the huge risk we take doing it, from in-person to online porn) seems worth arguing about. Often, people will suggest that someone who jokes about it like that has other options and shouldn’t turn to sex work. I’ve heard many say they recommend against sex work unless someone needs to do it.

The flaw in the way many sex workers, including myself in the past, justify this anger to ourselves lies with the assumption that these comments aren’t serious. I urge people to really examine that. You can’t tell everything going on in someone’s life – someone might be financially okay and living at home with their parents, and so might seem like they don’t need to do sex work, meanwhile they’re planning to run away soon and that’s why they’re thinking about jobs like online amateur porn or selling sex or sugaring that have a low barrier to entry.

To give an example from my personal life, when I was 17 and working full-time, I made these jokes. I made quite bad ones, even. I was living with my mother, I didn’t pay rent and was saving the money from my full-time job. Outwardly, I didn’t appear to be someone who needed to do sex work. When I joked about getting a sugar daddy to friends, saying I could easily get away with not having sex with them and that I’d just flirt and lead them on and get money, my comments were notably whorephobic. I clarified that I’d never be a prostitute, but said I’d be willing to sell pornographic pictures or videos. Friends said clichés like “the internet is forever” and warned me about consequences and generally assumed I’d never do it. Of course, I knew things they didn’t, like that my relationship with my mother was so tense that I felt like it’d reach a breaking point any day. When it did, and I got kicked out, I signed up to sugar dating sites soon after.

The thing is, when I made these jokes I didn’t know how sincere I was being. I thought about it in passing, as if preparing myself for the possibility if I reached a point where I needed to. If someone had asked me directly, I probably would have laughed it off. That would have been the time to offer me advice, to walk me through how I could theoretically be safe if I did start, etcetera. Explaining safety tips to someone means informing them of the risks those tips are there to navigate, and then people can risk assess for themselves. Without giving them all of the information, all you’re doing is guaranteeing they’ll be unprepared when they start.

After I got into sex work, and started escorting and working in brothels and camming and got past my “sugar dating” phase, which had rapidly descended into me being sexually abused, I was furious when listening to teens around me joke about getting into sugaring and how easy it’d be. I’d snap at people and say that all of these sugar daddy clients do want sex, that it wasn’t easy and required a lot of emotional work, rant about the dangers. At a certain point I realized: they know. The young people saying things like “I’ll get a sugar daddy and never have to work again” already know that meeting strange rich older men from sugar dating sites is dangerous, they know it’s stigmatized and they know it wouldn’t be that easy. If they believed it was safe and unstigmatized and easy, they’d be doing it already and not joking about it. The jokes are a way to cope and to float the idea of doing sex work among a friend group whilst still having an “out” and a way to say they were just kidding! Whether or not the people who say these things are fully self-aware, that much is apparent to me.

I think that when someone makes a comment about starting sex work, even if it relies on stereotypes and seems joking, we should be treating it as a sincere comment. I’ve started responding by offering safety tips and describing how different aspects of it work. When someone brings up sugaring, I still tell them that “sugar daddies” do expect sex and the idea that they don’t is a cover used to keep these sites from being investigated as being criminal. Often, I’ll explain that escorting earns you more money per hour with less emotional investment, and suggest that since sex is expected anyway then that might be a better bet depending on the amount of money needed. For people who want to keep their client pool very small (or down to one) to avoid some of the stigma and being discovered, I explain how to vet a sugar daddy and how much money they can actually expect to make for how many hours of work. If what they suggested was an onlyfans account, I explain expected earnings and likelihood of being found out by a family member vs ability to make profit. At this point, either the person who made the comment has completely pulled back and is uninterested in how it would work in practice, or they seem contemplative. What use would it be for me to tell them they shouldn’t do it and moralize to them?

You can’t always know if that advice will be used later. Someone might reject what you say and claim they’d never really do sex work, then later go and do exactly that. Other times, they might appear to take you seriously only to disregard your advice completely when they get into sex work.

I don’t think it’s wrong to be angry at young people who act like sex work is easy quick money and who, more importantly, downplay the dangers. Selling online porn or selling sex has a lower barrier to entry that means money sooner and without qualifications. When you’ve been assaulted by client and are dealing with dozens of time-wasters a day, it’s insulting to hear that someone thinks it’s not difficult. Then again, on days where I mark my profile as “available” and six hours later have hundreds of pounds in my hands? Yeah, I can see why they’d call it easy.

Our spaces for sex workers to go to each other for advice and community are 18+ and gatekept. For our own protection from the police, who will look for any reason to punish sex workers who organize, it is important that we aren’t perceived as supporting teens who are engaging in sex work. In practice, that means teens who are doing it have no-one they can rely on or go to.

Often the most vulnerable that young sex workers will ever be is during the first time they ever sell sex, or the first few. If you manage to find someone in the weeks or months leading up to the first time, before they really do it, you have a rare opportunity to provide them with resources and advice. Personally, I’d much prefer to act like a few rude asshole teens were being serious and be able to help one kid.

None of us are obligated to give advice, and we’re entitled to our anger about the way sex work is discussed and viewed, but some teenagers toying with the idea of selling sex aren’t the problem and aren’t where our anger should be aimed.