“On my third day, after the usual photoshoot, one of the photographers asked if I would pose nude for him.
It bothered Charak: Why would these photographers shoot fitness models when they were getting paid handsomely by fashion magazines and celebrities? His quandary was soon put to rest. Some even photographed celebrities for covers of influential lifestyle and fashion magazines with an international reach. It took him a little over a week to know that these photographers also worked for A-listers in Bollywood. The fitness modelling gig then opened new doors for him. Our pictures were then used as creatives for muscle enhancement supplements, immunity boosters, and protein shakes.” It entailed him bronzing his body, flexing his muscles with special emphasis on his abs, and posing for the camera. Then one day, Charak’s clients at the gym prodded him to branch into fitness modelling. “But income was dwindling by the day, medical bills kept soaring, and the prospects of gainful employment were also dimming by the day.” “Around five years back, I started as a gym trainer, in part to pay for my mother’s medical expenses,” he told VICE. Like other sex workers on the platform, Charak too feels insecure about the precarity of having to rely on a platform that can ban them one day and walk it back the next. Though some sex workers have welcomed the backtracking, the yo-yoing caused needless harm to an already marginalised community. No other details were provided, nor were these assurances made public. In an email to users, the company said this decision was based on “assurances” from banking partners. The acceptable use policy (AUP) threatened to prohibit content creators from showing “actual or simulated sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, between persons of any sex actual or simulated masturbation any exhibition of the anus or genitals of any person which is extreme or offensive actual or simulated material depicting bodily fluids commonly secreted during sexual conduct,” reportedly because of pressure from credit card companies, payment processors, and potential investors.Īfter many sex workers had already begun deleting and migrating content to other sites, OnlyFans did a stunning U-turn and announced on social media Wednesday morning that it would no longer be banning porn.