OnlyFans, Sugar Babies and the Boyfriend Sleeping Next to Sephora

Is OnlyFans a real job? Is influencing a career? Is a sugar baby a girlfriend or an employee? And when every young woman on your feed looks like a filter, what is it costing her to keep it up?Party's Over is back at the TCL Chinese Theater, a place built on ambition, image and people trying to make it, which made it the perfect room for this conversation. Attention has become a business model. People are making money from content, visibility, access and sometimes intimacy. Sandra Lena Silverman and Veida Horn ask what counts as work now, and why some ways of making money still make people so uncomfortable.They start with OnlyFans. Sandra points out that some women on the platform are only showing their feet or their hands. Veida agrees it is work, and says plainly that she does not agree with it. Go wait a table, she says. Go clean a toilet. Sandra gives her a harder case: a woman with two small kids, no childcare and no degree, who has to work from home. Isn't showing her feet better than the stripper pole, or a webcam? Veida says of course it is the lesser evil, but asking which is better is like asking whether you would rather do crack or heroin. She calls it the lazy way out and says her mind is not going to change. She also says she understands what drives somebody there and is not minimizing it.On influencing, they are on the same page. Veida calls it a full time job and a legitimate profession that is much harder than people realize, and says influencers take a lot of flak for putting themselves out there. Her worry is the audience. Influencers are the new Saturday morning commercials, and people buy something because they think the person loves it without understanding the person is being paid. Sandra reminds listeners that paid posts are supposed to say paid advertisement. Veida points out that on the smaller deals, sometimes they do not.Then sugar babies, who Veida calls workers disguised as non-workers. Sandra explains how it works, with girls advertising on Instagram, men sliding into their DMs and dedicated websites, and dinners that can pay around $1,000 whether or not anything else happens. Veida raises the part nobody talks about. When 20 year olds are dating 50 year old men, who are single women over 50 supposed to date? Sandra says that is exactly what is happening in her age group. Veida wants to know if the men are sending 1099s.Sandra shares a story from a friend in Miami who just rented an apartment to a 23 year old. The boyfriend paid the full year upfront, wired from a private LLC you could not find if you tried. No paper trail. A lot of these men are married, and they will go to the ends of the earth to hide it.Veida's theory is about access. Growing up, wealth was Cribs, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and a Vogue that came once a month. Now it is in every girl's face 24 hours a day, and young women from places where a $300 pair of jeans is a big deal start to believe ten Birkins is normal. The conversation goes to what some of these girls are partying to get through, how expertly they make these men feel like kings, and what really happens in the rooms upstairs at some Miami clubs. Veida remembers when a college girl becoming an escort was shocking enough to get its own Lifetime movie. Now it is not even taboo.Veida wants a reporter to follow these women for 20 years. Sandra already knows one ending. A woman she knows of from her nail salon, once the best in the business, married a younger man, retired and had a child. The smart ones settle down, Sandra says. The rest stay too long, and eventually everyone ages out, even at 40 with an 80 year old.Veida asks the next question. What are these girls doing to look like this? Sandra runs the list: extensions, microneedling, lashes, brows, lips, filler, Botox, BBLs, body sculpting and implants, starting far too young. Sandra got her first Botox in her 30s and Veida got hers at 32. Now girls are bringing AI photos to their surgeons as the reference. Veida mentions a trend back toward natural, and says it breaks her heart to watch fresh faced college girls turn into a filter a year later. Sandra does not think any doctor should touch anyone under 30 with filler or Botox. Veida agrees, with exceptions for things like a dent, and says doctors should be held accountable. A good doctor tells you when to stop. Hers has refused her before, and Veida is grateful, because this is a medical treatment, not a bad day and a pair of bangs.Then Sandra's new obsession: the Cosmelan peel. She has fought pigmentation for years, with peels and lasers that never got rid of it, and this finally did. The peel goes on in the office and stays on for hours until you wash it off the next morning. Then come 14 days of aftercare morning and night, no regular skincare, no retinols, and three to four da