Ever since I first heard Kate Nash’s Noughties anthem “Foundations” 17 years ago, a couple of bars have played in my head at least once a day. That’s a long time to have an earworm, my friends – and I don’t think I’m the only one. You have to hand it to her: Nash can write a good track.
Then I read that she’s started a “Butts4TourBuses” campaign on OnlyFans, and I was taken aback. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Nash isn’t selling photos of her bottom for a laugh (although she does say she thinks it’s “fun and funny”). She’s doing it to fund her current tour – and to highlight the appalling state of the music industry.
Nor is she alone in doing this – earlier this year, singer Lily Allen confessed that she had started selling feet pictures because it reportedly earned her more than Spotify streams did.
To be honest with you, I think her derrière being on display makes a good argument. Nash is, as she told her Instagram followers, “such a legend for this.” There’ll be those who’ll ask, when did showing your behind become legendary? But Kim Kardashian has answered that query comprehensively already.
We should interrogate this key question: what’s the difference between using photos of your body on promotional materials to flog music and selling those photos direct to fans? I mean, celebrities are always exposing themselves to promote their work – this is just a more direct way to generate income.
With that in mind, it could be argued that Nash’s OnlyFans account isn’t just an astute business move, it’s also an incisive cultural comment on the industry in which she works, our prurient fascination with women’s bodies and the insidious nature of “whorephobia”. You might think that’s overplaying selling bum pics for a fiver – let he who sits on the photocopier at the office Christmas party cast the first stone, et cetera – but Nash is clued up.
In an Instagram post, she said: “Don’t be ‘sad’ that I started an OnlyFans to fund my tours. It’s very empowering and selling pics of my a*** is fun and funny, sex is fun and funny. Women being in control of their bodies is vital and something we should all be standing by and fighting for.”
I mean, she’s right in some ways (except that sex isn’t always fun – or funny – for women). Many sex workers agree – and argue – that it is empowering that they have a platform offering complete control over the content they share and that they get to profit from their work, without getting ripped off. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but then women’s sexual and financial freedoms often aren’t. It can be viewed, through one lens, as progress for women who’ve been sexualised for the profit of others for years.
But the problem is multilayered and ultimately, more complex than that. First, it looks like only the Beyoncé and Taylor Swift billionaire megastars will be able to afford to tour, soon. Second, many of us – even if we don’t realise it – still stigmatise sex work, no matter how progressive we may call ourselves. Sex workers can tell us they feel “empowered” all they like, but do we really believe it? Or do we still judge women (and it is, mostly, women) for doing it?
Personally, after a lot of introspection and interrogation, I think Nash is a total legend for her Butts4TourBuses OnlyFans account. Her campaign is tongue-in-cheek, yes, but she’s making some serious and important points about women’s bodies and our collective cultural stigma – as well as the way female artists are viewed as commodities, particularly within the music industry itself.
As she says: “Would you be interviewing me or writing about me or talking about me if I had simply posted ‘going on tour, the business is sh**, help me protect my employees and integrity of my show’. Would my tour be on the front page of Reddit 2 days in a row?”
Nope. Earnest posts on Ko-fi or Patreon about the state of the music industry and the exploitation of women’s bodies for profit would likely be greeted with tumbleweed.
Selling photos of your body? Now that gets headlines. Is that Nash’s fault? No. Is it sad she has to do it to make the point in the first place? Perhaps. Or is it a clever cultural critique to profit from our prurience and prudishness by reflecting it right back in our faces? That’s something for each of us to ask ourselves.
I suspect Nash’s tour might end up being profit-making, after all...
