I actually read this article weeks ago but have just been thinking since then. Nursing students needing to pay for school are doing online sex work at sites like Only Fans so they can pay bills or finish school debt free.
Two future nurses in the article lost more traditional nursing-school jobs as nursing assistants due to covid, while another already-working nurse lost her homecare position due to the pandemic when everyone started working from home.
Some women claim that working for online site Only Fans makes their lives easier–such as one student in an accelerated nursing program who started her Only Fans after she found that driving for Uber took up too much time. One young new mother even commented that “I already post borderline explicit content on my social media, so why not get paid for it?”
This thought provoking article makes me wonder how I would have paid for nursing school if I hadn’t been married at the time I went to school? My then-husband worked full time to make sure we had health care, a roof over our heads, and food–but I still left nursing school with over $100,000 in t. I’m still paying these loans off more than a dozen years later. Would I have opened up my own Only Fans in order to pay my rent, or reduce the burden of my student loans? Possibly. An excellent question.
Read more of these stories of want-to-be nurses turning to sex work and how they deal with the stigma: “We’re In Hard Times Right Now.” Meet The Nursing Students Turning To OnlyFans To Get By.