Generation so warped they are PROUD to sell their own bodies
We need to talk about Lotties. The former Apprentice star, Lottie Lion, has been making ends meet through a socalled ‘sugar daddy’ website called Seeking Arrangement. Having lost her job due to the pandemic, and missing her former lifestyle, she signed up hoping to meet someone who ‘would buy me a bag or a holiday’.
Meanwhile, Kate Moss’s half-sister, another Lottie, has been charging £50 a pop for a glimpse of her breasts on a website called Glow, which styles itself as an upmarket version of OnlyFans (which, in case you weren’t familiar, is essentially a portal for amateur porn stars). For £35 you can access her derriere, while £1,000 will reportedly unlock access to the Full Mossy.
The fact that either of these women — who, let’s face it, are not exactly in the last-chance saloon of life — should be flogging their body parts in such a way may seem surprising. But today’s young women see nothing unusual about exploiting their bodies.
Indeed, many claim it’s a form of female empowerment. They are ‘owning’ their sexuality, they argue. The men who pay are not exploiting them — they’re the saps. And anyone who disagrees is just slut-shaming.
It is certainly true that if one is in the unenviable position of having to take up the world’s oldest profession, entertaining men from the safety of your own webcam is preferable to being exploited on the streets or in a studio by some ruthless pimp.
But the women on these sites don’t consider themselves prostitutes. Indeed, they would be horrified at the thought. They think of themselves as entrepreneurs — feminists, even.
FOrwomen of my generation, this is a hard concept to get our heads around. We were taught that using sex to get ahead was demeaning and retrograde. Liberation meant being more than just the object of a man’s desire, and you could make your way in the world regardless of whether you looked good in a bikini.
That is because, unlike women such as Moss and Lion — indeed like all of the young women we see posing online in various stages of undress — we didn’t grow up in a post-porn world.
Pornography has always existed, of course; but never before has it escaped censorship by adults, seeping virtually unencumbered into the consciousness of children and young adults.
Today, online porn — a violent, perverted form of sex that feeds people’s darkest fantasies — informs so much about the way the young engage with their bodies, from beauty to sex.
This translates into every aspect of youth culture, from oiled-up ‘influencers’ showing off their cleavages poolside to the rise in demand for plastic surgery such as breast enhancement and butt- lifts, and porn- centric pop stars such as Cardi B, whose videos legitimise obscenity in the name of ‘empowerment’.
What used to be the shocking exception has become the acceptable norm, a self-perpetuating cycle of debasement reinforced at every turn by a prevailing culture that rewards with fame and fortune those who turn it to their advantage. Or to put it another way, Kim Kardashian didn’t end up on the cover of Vogue for her intellect and philanthropical work: she got there because she made a sex tape and ‘broke the internet’ by balancing a champagne glass on her bum.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many should want to do the same? That, in the minds of young women growing up in such an atmosphere, operating a pay-per-view system on OnlyFans seems like a viable alternative to a proper job?
I am even told that some young girls are using these websites to raise money for their university tuition fees. I can hardly think of a more depressing way to spend your gap year.
This, I’m afraid, is the price we pay for ignoring repeated calls for regulation of the internet.
This is what happens when you allow the worst of human nature to influence everyday standards.
The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Sadly, I can’t see how we can ever put it back.