Content warnings: This piece contains talk of adult content and revenge porn.

I keep watching videos about Bonnie Blue.

About her. Not her actual content, obviously.

For those who are less chronically online than I (and therefore probably happier in general), Bonnie Blue is an adult content creator who makes a significant living from OnlyFans subscriptions. If that were all there was to it, then I wouldn’t care.

What’s problematic about Bonnie is that she specifically targets young men (aged 18/19) for her content. She travels the world on the hunt for ‘schoolies’ (short for school leavers) who are happy to sleep with her, for free, in exchange for starring in her content, which she then profits from.

Bonnie, who claims to be around 25, has made headlines recently for a whole host of reasons, not just her ‘love’ of barely legal men, but that’s the part I am focusing on today.

Let’s do an exercise…

I wonder if you can recall what you were like when you were 18 or 19.

Where did you live? Were you dating anyone? What do you feel when you think about those couple of years when you were, technically, an adult, but still, in some respects, a child?

I suspect, there are things you did that you regret. And some of those things you’ll never want to think about again…

But what about if what you did at 18 or 19 was immortalised on the internet… forever?

Former adult star Mia Khalifa has spoken extensively about her regret in entering the adult film industry in her early 20s. Khalifa gained fame after an adult video of her wearing a hijab went viral. She was 21 years old at the time.

While Mia did go on to make a small sum creating adult content, she missed out on significantly more— an estimated $500,000 from her videos on free streaming sites, which can still be accessed today.

After only three months working in the adult industry, Mia became one of the most famous stars in the world. She has expressed significant regret about the decisions she made in her early 20s, she tweeted:

“Please, please, please think about this if you are considering the sex industry,”

“They make it impossible to rectify your regrets should you have them in the future.”

It’s amazing to be young

You’ve probably heard that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is not fully developed until 25. This is actually a lot more complicated than people think, and some scientists even consider it a myth. All of our brains develop differently, and there is also a difference between development and maturation.

The ease with which we make decisions and assess risks is impacted by more than just our age. A person with ADHD, for example, is more likely to make impulsive decisions at any age, but it’s fair to assume they might be less likely to have developed coping mechanisms in their teens and early 20s.

I don’t think many people reading this will defend the actions of Bonnie Blue, for example. I expect the legal system will catch up with her eventually. There are already several petitions in parliament regarding the raising of the minimum age to create adult content to 25.

However, it does spark a broader discussion about how we, as a society, are caring for young people during their most vulnerable times. Writer and content creator Jess Davies was interviewed in the Guardian this week about being the victim of revenge porn at 15, then reclaiming her sexuality by becoming a glamour model at 18.

On the leak of a naked photo of her at just 15, Jess said:

“I was the one shamed.”

“I was the first person I knew of that this had happened to, so there was no blueprint to follow. I was mortified. My response was: ‘OK, this is it. I have to try to own this as it’s not going away.’”

Jess spent several years working as a glamour model before turning her back on the entire industry and becoming a campaigner for opening up conversations about consent, revenge porn and bodily autonomy.

She believes that what happened at 15 truly changed the trajectory of her life forever, hinting that she would not have entered the adult industry had her image not been stolen from her as a child:

“Every time I was taken advantage of, I kind of accepted it,”

“I thought: ‘Oh well, you’ve opened yourself up to this. What did you expect?’ Part of me believed that this is just how the world is, and this was all I was worth.”

As Jess suggests, consent is a tricky beast— especially when you are young and, potentially, already a victim. I wonder how this aligns with Bonnie Blue’s targets, especially among school leavers and university freshers who may make decisions influenced by peer pressure or other factors.

This might seem like an odd topic for me to write about, but it’s really not. I position this newsletter as being about mental health for the chronically online, and you don’t have to be as chronically online as I am to know the discussion about consent is murkier than ever.

In interviews, Bonnie regularly quotes the age of consent and basically infers that if it’s legal, then it’s okay. But legal is not synonymous with ethical.

People do change, and we should be allowed to change. The decisions we make as teenagers will likely not reflect the adults we become, but in a digital world where nothing is ever entirely deleted, escaping our past seems increasingly impossible.

RECAP: April’s newsletters

If you’re a new subscriber or just want to catch up, here are all the newsletters I sent last month:

* What do you want to be when you grow up?

* Small things like these

* ChatGPTrash

* Saving faces

* Is music finally political again?

What I’ve been reading

Here are some excellent reads from the last week or so:

I’m just back from a few nights in Barcelona— a place of mixed emotions for me. I will write about it one day, but this visit was canny despite the power cut. We even made it to the beach:

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📚Bodies by Christine Anne Foley - Loved this fast-paced novel about a young girl’s turbulent love life with a dark twist.

🎧 A Complicated Woman by Self Esteem - Rebecca’s new album is fantastic, so glad I got tickets to see her later in the year!

That’s all from me,

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

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