Mandi Snow is a little bit dorky. Wearing running shoes like your average mall-walking fitness lady, she stopped an entire posse of top cam models so she could 1) buy a sequined Las Vegas sweatshirt, 2) ogle the Bellagio fountain, and 3) have her picture taken with a giant M&M.
But hey, it was her first time in Sin City.
Snow, in her mid-20s, hails from the South and has the accent to prove it. The quintessential blonde may photograph like a sex bomb, but her gregarious chatter and friendly ease are totally relatable and disarming. The impact the amalgamation of sweet and sexy has on others is obvious, as Snow steadily climbs the ranks at Flirt4Free.
Enjoy some chatter with your new best girlfriend as Mandi Snow shares a little bit about her life with YNOT Cam.
For years before camming, you worked in the service industry. Through pure serendipity, bartending led you to cam. Did any of the “people skills” you honed while bartending translate over into cam?
I decided to try out camming after hearing about it from one of my bar patrons. She was a server at a bar down the street and wanted to find a way to bring in some extra cash. When she mentioned it, I didn’t think she was serious — but that was just me not knowing how simple it is to apply, if you know where to look. I’ve always been pretty open sexually, so as skeptical as I was, I quickly saw this as a possibility for my own way out of the bartending scene. After doing some online research, Major League Cams was the most popular and legitimate company I came across. I felt pretty unprepared, but you have to start somewhere, so I went out and bought a laptop and a cute bra set from Marshall’s, and hoped for the best.
Bartending helped me prepare a bit as far as greeting people and being sociable — but some people just want a damn drink and that’s it. You’re there to perform a service, get them what they need, and make sure they’re happy until they leave. Some of that carries on to cam, but it’s also a bit more tricky.
How so?
You’re not face-to-face with [people on cam]. You can’t read their expressions to gauge their mood, have no idea what they like and dislike, and how you’re supposed to act on that. Some people will react and be friendly, and then you have the random person who is there just to be a jerk and shake up your day. That’s the beauty of [camming] for me, honestly. If someone is being disruptive and ruining the good vibe in the room, you can remove them from the chat with the click of a button. There were countless times I wished it was that easy with unruly customers at the bar.
My boss and mentor at Major League Cams has definitely been a big help in learning how to handle rude customers, so now my method is to clear the screen when someone causes trouble, completely ignore their comments, and hit the alert button if I need a chat monitor to step in. In most cases, the fellas in the room will just embarrass the troll, and they’ll leave on their own.
People who meet you in person get a concentrated dose of your unique charming, dorky-charisma. How do you balance all the elements of your personality on cam?
I think part of how you adjust when you start camming is finding that balance between being your dorky self and being that sexy escape that the customer is looking for. I didn’t want to come across as fake. It’s not appealing and, honestly, it’s a lot of effort for me to try and play a “character.”
I’d spent most of my life overweight, self conscious, and flat chested. Not exactly what most people deem sexy. Personally, I was unhappy with how I looked and felt and decided to change that. I lost weight, tried to learn to like my body, and two years ago I had breast augmentation surgery. It’s not for everyone, but it was something I had saved for and wanted for years. Luckily, I had a lot of supportive people around me who wanted me to do what made me happy. Seems silly, but for me getting implants made me feel more balanced physically and helped me feel more complete as a woman. Everyone has something that makes them feel sexy and attractive, and breast implants did that for me. I had them for a year before I started camming and was still riding that kind of “high” when you feel more confident and just really happy overall.
What tips do you have for models who have features they may perceive as “flaws” or less-than-conventionally sexy?
With or without the implants, I still have a sense of humor that some people may find odd, but that’s okay! I didn’t want to change who I was when I got on cam. You just have to be confident with who you are. Own whatever “flaws” you may think you have. It’s cheesy, but if you feel sexy and act as such, no one notices the things you’re wary about.
There are so many beautiful and sexy models on cam, all for different reasons and in different ways. So, even if you’re shy and feel like you have no idea how to “be sexy,” there are five thousand guys who find that so attractive and would bend over backwards to find a girl like you — the one who’s so pretty and doesn’t know it. They’d rather have someone who doesn’t feel completely perfect but owns it and is happy, rather than someone who’s so stuck on themselves that they don’t give anyone the time of day — insert some poor guy’s high school nightmare here. It’s also not always about how you look. It’s about just coming across as a normal person. I mean, isn’t that who we are? Just normal people trying to pay our bills and, for some, support their families. We just have a different way of doing it, as opposed to a 9-to-5 job.
Do your thing! Enjoy the chance to do your makeup a bit sexier than you’d be able to do in an ordinary setting. Paint your nails in purple glitter if you want. Wear those huge rhinestone earrings that look like they’re for a prom. Anything that makes you feel sexy and get that attention that you may have missed out on at some point in your life, do it and embrace it!
How has camming impacted your life overall?
As far as balancing work and home life, camming is as close to freedom as I have ever had, and I’m insanely grateful for it. I spent most of my late teen years working crazy hours at a country club to help my parents pay bills. They weren’t able to find work that the time, and it was up to me to make sure I brought home enough money. Even recently, when I was bar tending in 2011, it was stressful not knowing how much money I’d make that day. If I needed $150 that shift and didn’t make it, I was pretty much out of luck, which just feels horrible.
Having to stop before you check out to buy groceries and double check your cash, or being short on a bill is just plain embarrassing. Not to mention all the stress had triggered guttate psoriasis, which I had no clue ran in my family. I’d come home from work just covered from head to toe in itchy, painful, dry spots. Hundreds. There was nothing I could do to help it due to lack of insurance and money for a doctor visit. Anyone with this condition will tell you, some of the steroid ointments can cost anywhere from $300 up to $1,000 if you don’t have health insurance. Just too much.
Working on cam truly saved me. It helped me quit smoking, decreased my stress tremendously, and helped my breakouts almost disappear.
What about on a more personal level? The South doesn’t seem to take too kindly to sex work…
It was weird trying to think of what to tell my parents and family what I was doing in terms of making money and working from home. Not that they would disown me over it, but let’s face it: Coming from the South and having a mostly conservative family, getting nude for hundreds of people daily isn’t something they’d quickly approve of — which is understandable. It’s not an easy thing to get used to for most people. I think it’s mainly because they can’t wrap their mind around the huge trade off it gives you. I made enough money in the first few months of camming to pay my bills and have plenty saved to buy my parents a new TV for Christmas, something I’d never been able to do before. It made me proud.
It can be kind of a downer, not being able to share what you do with some people. Not that you want to tell every detail, but to the outside world I do “data input and fill out applications/emails for an insurance company.” Sounds pretty bland compared to my real day-to-day. It’s the trade-off that helps me not feel like I’m coming up short. If I manage my time correctly, I can drop everything I’m doing to go spend time with family, and that means everything to me.
The fact that I bring in enough money to pay for bills and still have enough to treat myself now and then is a liberating feeling — one I haven’t felt in a long time, if at all. So despite the taboo, for me, camming has opened up so many doors: financial stability, having time for family, or just having a lazy day of doing nothing if you just manage your time and budget a bit.
You spend your days absorbed in in others’ fantasies. What’s a fantasy of yours?
A dream of mine is to downsize to a tiny house on wheels. It would be so awesome to travel from place to place and have everything you need right there with you. Go to the beach for a couple of months. When that gets boring, head to Montana and see the mountains, Yellowstone, anything! Not to mention the freedom and money you could save while doing that. I think that’s a huge option that camming has given me. You can do it anywhere you have signal and a little space to perform.
Mandi Snow cams on Flirt4Free via Major League Cams.
