Model Misty Snow cams with her fiancé James Caldwell on Chaturbate — and recently, Snow herself wrote a piece about their experiences for Newsweek. It’s titled “My Fiancé and I Started Camming — People Pay to Watch Us Have Sex” and was published under the site’s My Turn feature category on October 25, 2020. Snow is listed as the author.
In the piece, Snow covers variety of topics…
Their backgrounds
Snow describes living in a camper van with her fiancé, traveling the US, since 2016. According to Snow, she and Caldwell “both grew up in California in very traditional households where attitudes towards sex were old-fashioned, and sexual openness and expression were generally repressed.” As such, when they got together as a couple seven years ago, they were excited about the possibility for sexual exploration. They have only been camming, however, for a few months.
Interesting note: A peek at Snow’s Twitter feed looks like the couple may actually have set up camp in a house or apartment.
Got our new place! Can't wait to #chaturbate this week 😀 pic.twitter.com/Z8PG1YWKnW
— MistySnow_xo (@Mistysnow_xo) October 28, 2020
How they got into camming
Snow and Caldwell were in the midst of their travels when they got interested in camming. They had watched a few models performing online and read articles detailing the industry.
Snow wrote that, “The ability to earn money directly while performing intimate acts was like nothing we’d ever seen before, and after a while we decided that we wanted to give it a try. James and I are both rock climbers so we’re very aware of the power of fear… We try to welcome it and find excitement in venturing outside of our comfort zones. So we started, got hooked and have never looked back.”
Their routine
Snow next proceeds to describe the couple’s cam routine — from set-up to rates and tipping. This passage is clearly meant for people who are not familiar with how camming and earning money on various sites work. She then wrote about what I feel is the most civilian question/issue of all civilian questions and issues regarding online sex work: fidelity and jealousy.
“Even though we are sharing our sex life with others who may be coming to watch just one of us, we rarely get jealous,” Snow wrote (emphasis mine). “And if we ever do feel small amounts of jealousy, we make time to talk about it and give each other reassurance. Communication is key. However, camming, like any job, can lead to stress and cause disagreements. We experience friction like any other couple who work together. What’s important to us is addressing any emotional swings with curiosity and trying to remain open minded.”
I don’t know why conventional notions of “cheating” (both direct and ancillary) are so beguiling to mainstreamers — but clearly they are because the issue is always raised in contexts similar to this.
Sum up
Snow rounded out her piece discussing some key talking points: the benefits and challenges of working in a professional context with one’s intimate partner, the fact that just because camming (and online sex work in general) isn’t for everyone doesn’t make it bad, the stereotypes that often mis/inform civilian understandings of the work and the job overall and the couple’s future plans — which were unsurprisingly impacted by the pandemic.
Also, not to deviate too far from mainstream sensationalizing, image captioning states that Snow and Caldwell “have already made $5,000.”
I don’t know why the “have already made $5,000” — and any mainstream reference to online sex work monies — always gets me, but it does! Actually, I do know why: Because it’s always done without context.
There is no mention of how long those earnings took in terms of weeks or months. There is no mention of how many hours the couple was online to earn that money. And — most significantly — there was no mention of how variable those earnings might be.
Civilians read these pieces and think Fuck yeah, RV and $5k NBD — I’m in! Though this piece (hopefully) reflects Snow’s lived experience, without context and a wider understanding, this piece itself in the context of Newsweek may serve to perpetuate myths about the labor and current state of online sex work. Those myths, in turn, may have negative impacts on civilian hopeful sorts, as well as on models already working in the business.
$3 Subscriptions all Month Long! https://t.co/us9z7yG557 pic.twitter.com/AWryIOA7lK
— MistySnow_xo (@Mistysnow_xo) October 16, 2020
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Erika is a sex positive people watcher (and writer). Email her at erika@ynotcam.com.
Screengrab via YNOT.
