You probably think of cam girls as the sexy naked faces that plague porn site pop-up ads. But peel away the sex and pixels, and you’ll find that for many women, this is a deeply emotional business.
Cam girls, who perform their shows for strangers online via webcam, usually get paid by per-minute rates based on the number of views. Those that are popular on the site can make thousands of dollars a month. Whether they’re playing a game of strip trivia or getting intimate with a regular customer, each show is carefully scripted to appeal to a certain audience and maximize profits.
Most of the women I spoke to work from home, but some girls are confined by their homes or stuck in sexy studios where they’re surrounded by other camgirls, and their success depends on a combination of charm, confidence and self-promotion. Kate, a Seattle-based model, is chatty and flirtatious, jiggles her boobs in cake frosting to impress her fans and is one of the most successful camgirls in the industry.
Then there are the girls like Anna, who moved from her backwater Romanian hometown to study psychology at university in Bucharest. She juggles her studies with a sideline as a cam girl, making money by stripping from her cramped two-room apartment for viewers she calls “dilettantism.” She’s earned minimum wage serving microwaved burgers and has an Instagram fan page dedicated to her boobs covered in cake frosting.
While the girls I spoke to are largely independent, there are studios where girls work for bosses who control their schedule and take a big cut of their earnings. The studio business is especially prevalent in the former Eastern bloc countries where models are often exploited and even trafficked.
In the studio, sexy camming is often more about manipulation and extortion than a good night of fun. The sexy girls may convince you that you and she share a special bond because they’re both lonely or abused, and then ask for your credit card details or money. If you’re ever unsure of a sexy cam girl’s intentions, check with Google’s reverse image search tool to see if her or her friends have posted photos on other sites.
If your boyfriend or partner is chatting with cam girls and/or having intimate conversions with them, it’s likely that your relationship has gone downhill. He’s either not as committed to you as he seems or has a serious problem with jealousy and insecurity. Either way, it’s best to communicate with him and come to a mutually agreeable solution.