MEDELLIN, Colombia — Some of the sexiest cam girls in the business are from here. But there’s no one-size-fits-all reason for the boom in camming among colombian models. Money is a big factor, but so are technology, culture, and even education.
Jerry spends most of his workday watching women masturbate online – in five separate windows on two desktop monitors. He’s a “moderator” in Colombia’s booming adult webcam industry, where he manages models and translates their private chats for viewers.
Webcam modeling is a booming interractive sex industry that allows global viewers to directly interact with the models, paying for sexually related acts. A model’s performance is streamed live and recorded, and if she wants, she can share her screen and a snippet of herself to the audience, who can then message her to ask for more. The most popular webcam sites, like LiveJasmin, boast millions of visitors a month.
In a family and religion-oriented society, many cam girls struggle to overcome the social stigma attached to their profession. Most models hide their identities and keep their work private because doing sex on camera in front of strangers comes with its fair share of danger. For instance, a model who performs for a large online audience can risk being blackmailed and harassed by anonymous users who threaten to expose their explicit images to their families or friends.
As a result, most studios require their workers to sign non-disclosure agreements and have cameras in the lobby to prevent them from being filmed outside the studio. But in a country that prides itself on its beauty, the sexy and seductive looks of colombian models have helped them rise to prominence on international platforms.
Most of the colombian models CNN spoke with work at legitimate studios that pay their workers fairly. But there are also a growing number of independent “cam houses” that employ models and offer them little in the way of regulation or benefits.
CNN visited several cam houses – some legal, some illegal – in Medellin and Cucuta. In the two legal ones we visited, models lived in rooms that were once hotels or warehouses. The owners converted the buildings into studios for a small fee and hired models to run them.
While the legal studios that CNN visited upheld health and safety regulations, the informal ones did not. Effy Salazar, a female monitor at Juan Bustos Studios, says she sees women from all backgrounds take the plunge into camming, but that men are more likely to be hired as monitors because of power dynamics between male and female models.
For Valeria, who works at the AJ Studios cam house in Cucuta, the lure of financial independence and a better quality of life is enough to convince her to continue streaming on Chaturbate for another two years, until she reaches the target amount to buy a modest home. After that, she plans to take a break from the world of online pornography and find another job.