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I've been doing sex work in some way, shape, or form for almost 10 years now, which feels fucking crazy to say out loud. On and off, retired and un-retired. And in all that time, I'd never met someone who does the same type of fetish work I do: fat fetish and feederism.
Until last month, when I sat across from her at breakfast, ordered oatmeal, and thought: can I actually tell her I hate this? That it's breaking me?
Also, oatmeal? Girl, you are anxious, because oatmeal is objectively not cool and mysterious. Of which I am always trying to be.
She ordered French toast. We talked about everything. Fragrance to Folsom, what we want to do with our futures, what goals we have, and of course things we had in our shopping carts.
And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking: is this person going to be private and sensitive to my emotions? Can I be authentic, or do I have to perform? Do I have to sit here and be like "no, I love this work and I'm really empowered by it" when I'm not? When honestly, I'm breaking?
In all my years of sex work, I've been surrounded by a community of amazing, talented, and beautiful sex workers doing all types of services. But I've never met someone that worked in the fat fetish and feederism space. And for a really long time, that isolation has been hard. The fetish I operate in has its own very specific, particularly toxic culture, and unless you're in it, you really don't get it.
It's rooted in this idea that all fantasy has to be reality. That if you are not actually into the fantasy, you're exploiting it. There are forums speculating on who's "really" into it, back-and-forth fights between models over being "real" and "authentic." It's like this weird witch hunt. And if you aren't actually into it, then you are less valid and exploitative.
Which fundamentally is just not how I believe or operate. If I'm fulfilling your fantasy and performing a service in exchange for money, then it doesn't really matter if I'm into it. I've agreed to doing this for money and made the autonomous choice. It's like being mad that the clerk at Olive Garden doesn't actually enjoy serving me.
I've been burned by this culture before. Amid COVID lockdowns, I was in a Discord group of workers (who often refer to themselves as "models," lol), and one was trying to pull what I could best describe as her own fucking fat version of Zola. She was trying to convince a bunch of new models, people who had just started doing this as a way to make money amid shutdowns, to come to Vegas. Penthouse meet and greet. Fans paying $250-$500. Her boyfriend as security, protecting us from men. She'd even hold the money and organize everything. So kind.
But game recognizes game. I politely suggested that in-person work would require rigid screenings, upfront deposits, a slew of logistics. She blocked me, accused me of starting drama, called me a bootlicker.
I can't lie, that incident really closed me up. I withdrew from all of my community. I was scared for this reputation I had worked to build amongst sex workers in other spaces. And I vowed in that moment to never trust anyone in that fetish again.
So yeah, I was pretty nervous about meeting someone who also did that work in person. Would this person respect my privacy and autonomy? Or would she be weird about the fact that I don't actually want to gain weight, that I'm not into this, that it's just work?
But when I connected with her on a completely different social platform over goth shit and makeup, it felt easier. Safer. And when we finally met in person, over oatmeal and French toast, I realized I could actually be real.
When I mentioned something I was seeing in the work, the weird dynamics, the comments, the forums, she just got it. I didn't have to explain the little intricacies of the fetish. The specific ways this fetish reduces you. The specific ways it makes you feel like a fucking stereotype. She also gets what it's like to be a fat person and hold all these assumptions people have about you, and how that shows up in the fetish.
And when we talked about the authenticity police, she understood. It felt like this weird witch hunt we'd both been subjected to. Porn is porn. If it serves its purpose, then it's good. The performance is the point. The best things in life blur fantasy with reality.
I was able to tell her things I haven't been able to say to anyone else in this space. That for a really long time I was really embarrassed by being a sex worker, in part because of the fetish I catered to. I didn't want to be judged for it. Or worse, I didn't want to be seen as just that: a fat person doing very typical fat stereotypical things on camera. I didn't want people to understand my sexuality that way. Because quite frankly, it's very disconnected from my sexuality.
In some ways that disconnect has been helpful because it creates a sort of boundary between income and sexuality. Like, I'm not monopolizing my kink for capital gain, so there's sometimes a distance. But other times, it's really hard because I feel very reduced to a stereotype. And I think that's what I was able to say to her, over oatmeal and French toast: that this work makes me feel like I'm performing the exact thing I've spent my whole life trying not to be reduced to.
I could tell her that honestly, lately I've been struggling a lot with sex work. I retired once I started making good money in tech, enough to be very comfortable. But with the tech industry in shambles, after my first layoff I went back. And it's still really embarrassing to me, especially as I had branded myself as a retired sex worker turned techie (a pitch I still use, as it still feels true to me). But sex work is breaking me.
There are so many days where I just don't feel beautiful. Like, I legitimately feel ugly. When I asked friends and my partner if they ever felt ugly or usually felt ugly, the answer was unanimously no. And they were like, the level at which you think of yourself as ugly is really... it's not normal. Which I know in part is coming from sex work. From tying my financial success to my appearance. Why am I not worth more? Why are people only seeing me in this one way that I don't feel aligns with me and who I am?
Because the thing about that fetish is that people often point out my fatness. They sexualize parts of it that, admittedly, I have not been accepting of or comfortable with myself. Add that to this weird idea that some of them do not think I'm fat enough, and I often get comments about not being big enough. It's like never-ending. Not enough.
And when I told her about this, the "not fat enough" comments, the way it warps how I see myself, she just nodded. She knew. There wasn't this need to explain how fucked up it is to have thousands of strangers on the internet all telling you different things about your body, and then when you look at yourself, you don't see it, but in moments you do. It's a fucking trip.
Meeting her reminded me that I'm not crazy. That there are people out there who get where I'm coming from, and I'm not alone in this.
I don't have to have all the answers about what comes next, or how much longer I can keep doing this, or how to untangle my self-worth from my appearance and income. I don't know if this meeting is just a moment of relief or if it's the thing that finally gives me permission to leave.
But knowing someone else understands, really understands, makes it feel a little less impossible to figure out. And right now, that's what I needed.
