“With OnlyFans, I feel more powerful.” It took just three weeks for Char Borley to reach the top 1% on content subscription service OnlyFans. A former Playboy model who exudes as much power and beauty in reality as she does in her carefully constructed Instagram posts, Borley is totally in command of every aspect of her life. Her roles vary between OnlyFans dominatrix, wife, mother and carer. She immediately strikes me as a calm woman in control. Naturally, she’s kitted head-to-toe in Balenciaga as she speaks to me.
“I found OnlyFans many years ago when it first started,” she explains. “I did nothing with it. I just left it there. It wasn’t until the first lockdown – March 2020 – when I started putting all my effort into it.”
She says almost every element of her platform is organic, except her demanding persona.
“Nothing is staged. Some creators might do professional photoshoots, I don’t. I like to make my content feel authentic. I might just do a cooking video in lingerie and say good morning,” she tells me. “I play the dominant role on my OnlyFans. I like being a bit of a mistress! My members range from paypigs to adult babies, and I really enjoy the power. But it isn’t like my sex life with my husband. He prefers to be the dominant one.”
We chat for a while about her husband, a man she’s lived in marital bliss with for over 5 years. She giggles and gushes while speaking about him – Mr Borley is an ex-bodybuilder who she attended competitions with before they started dating. It isn’t hard to see she’s a woman in love.
I ask her how she manages to juggle family life with her – often – mentally and physically demanding job. Especially during lockdown, while the elusive work/life balance may be non-existent.
“My husband is my best friend. We keep OnlyFans very separate from our real lives. We don’t create content together, and we never will. We don’t want our relationship to be a spectacle for my members… I think it’d take the fun out of my career as well as my marriage.” Borley continues, “In terms of lockdown, we’re spending a lot of time together… we obviously can’t go out for dinner or go on holiday like we used to. But we have a lot in common. We talk, and that’s the biggest thing, really.”
I question whether open communication has helped the relationship thrive over the last year. She confirms, “Without a doubt. We’re very honest with each other, we’ve got that intimacy. We’re very comfortable with each other and we think communication is so important. I’ll always try to understand him and vice versa.”
I can’t help but reflect on the security of Borley’s relationship in a world where sex work is so stigmatised, particularly when it comes to people’s partners working in the industry. Her relationship isn’t simply stable, but seems to be blossoming with every passing day. Still, not everything in Borley’s life is as picture perfect as it may seem on social media.
“During lockdown, I felt awful. My weight fluctuated and my body image issues had come to a head. I felt awful. I was depressed. My mental state wasn’t good before I joined OnlyFans. I was just low, all the time.” But Borley tells me that playing the role of ‘mistress’ on OnlyFans gave her the escapism she needed – and helped her to feel better about herself in the process. “I feel powerful, I feel confident. I feel a lot better in my own body. I wouldn’t listen to my husband when he told me I looked sexy… sometimes it needs to come from within you.”
Despite the joy of re-discovering herself, Char tells me the platform has a dark side. She wants to expel any myths about “easy money”. OnlyFans is a pressure-cooker environment for the content creators who rule it. It’s a demanding full-time job within a highly diluted – and misunderstood – industry.
“Some people are just on there to get what they want, and forget there’s a real person behind it,” she confides in me. “I used to get so frustrated when I’d receive hateful messages. I’ve had comments about the way I look, the way I talk… someone even made comments about my grown-up daughter. One of my friends used to be a content creator on the platform, and she recently had to come off. She just couldn’t handle it anymore.”
But how do you get over trolls and hurtful comments? Borley advises that you have to take it as “water off a duck’s back. It has to be. I just need to remember that I’m playing a role, and separate myself from the OnlyFans dominatrix. You need to set yourself working hours and then come off it as soon as they’re over. It is a job, at the end of the day. You’ve got to be disciplined.” She adds, “In the moment, you should always block and report those comments for abuse. Because that’s what they are.”
For anyone thinking of starting on the site, Borley recommends only doing so if you can separate the fantasy from reality. “Some things are real about OnlyFans. My enjoyment is real. I enjoy making money from it!” She advises, “But the attention is different. It’s different to being at home with my husband, waking up and telling him I love him. I’m a mistress on there and a wife at home.”
