The platform economy has normalised, mainstreamed and embedded the sex industry in new ways. The porn/prostitution enterprise has become infused on platforms, selling potential new recruits the idea that becoming an OF ‘content creator’ is an act of female entrepreneurship destined to result in wealth, fame and popularity.
TikTok has close to 10 million users – around 200,000 in the early teen cohort. While many parents think their daughter is merely having fun with lip syncing and dancing, her body, and the bodies of thousands of girls, are being mined for the sex trade.
The industry has undergone a spectacular rebrand, with porn ‘content creators’ calling themselves Bops and Mattress Actresses. Through the OF content creation ‘Bop House’, whose young sex industry ‘influencers’ have a combined following of close to 40 million, girls are offered a life selling sexual labour as aspirational and desirable.
Tik Tok prohibits sexual solicitation at the same time as facilitating the digital sexual advance.
Broken in early to their own objectification, girls learn cultural validation through public sexual performativity.
Melinda will unpack her research into the TT to OF pipeline and explore what can be done to address it.
Melinda is an author, speaker, media commentator, and advocate for young people. She is best known for her work addressing sexualisation, objectification, harms of pornography, sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence against women.
