Plenty of 23-year-olds dream of making £5,000 a month but for Welsh university graduate Alaw Haf it's a reality and she's proud of it.
Alaw is a top contributor on Only Fans, a subscription website where she shares glamour shots and models underwear from her bedroom at her family home where she lives with her parents and younger sister. In a new BBC Three documentary, Young, Welsh and Bossin' It, she talks about the ups and downs of being a glamour model including how it's helping her save to buy her own home, but also how she copes with upsetting messages from trolls.
At first Alaw, from Mold, was hesitant to join the subscription website thinking it was only for X-rated content, but after losing her job at a gym at the start of the pandemic she went for it. She is not the only Welsh woman making a small fortune from OnlyFans — Dannii Harwood from Neath described last year how her earnings had passed £1 million from the website.
After a suggestion from an Instagram follower to join OnlyFans she looked into it a little more, now she's in the top 2.8% of popular OnlyFans contributors globally and says she is making £5,000 a month.
"I didn't realise there were fitness pages, cooking pages on there, and you could have content you want to your level on there, I was like 'OK'," she said.
Alaw does the videos and modelling shoots from her bedroom at her parents' home and when she asked if they'd mind her following her new passion from their home, she was surprised at their response.
"I do my content from my room," said Alaw. "They are aware of what I do. I asked them first before I started underwear modelling and they said 'it's now or never,' that surprised me."
And the Liverpool University law graduate is also aware of the consequences underwear and glamour modelling has on her future, saying she weighed up the pros and cons of her current job.
"I am a grown woman now, it's not like I've done this on a whim, it will impact my future and I fully understand I'm not going to be a teacher," she added.
"Everyone hears everything about everyone," added Alaw, on the subject of being from a small town like Mold. "I'm open about it but sometimes I go out on a night out and someone says 'I've paid for that round' because they've subscribed to me on OnlyFans. It's weird when people you know subscribe but I'm over it now."
While Alaw is financially successful on OnlyFans, it doesn't stop trolls abusing her on the platform, a worldwide and now hugely popular site site which does contain highly sexualised material which people pay to watch.
"I get all sorts of nasty comments and I have learned to laugh at them. I've had 'she looks like a female Ben Mitchell'," she says.
"I've kind of grown a thicker skin and learned to brush them off. I know I'm curvy not skinny so I don't need someone else to tell me. It's about accepting it. It's accepting reality like stretch marks, I have adult acne and I do put make-up on but you can still see it. It's part of me."
Alaw also addresses the stigma around women monetising their bodies: "I don't know whether it's old-fashioned, we shouldn't be confident and putting ourselves out there, which is sad because we're in 2021. We are making our own money, it should be celebrated."
One message that Alaw reveals did upset her was one that said 'I don't understand how you haven't been raped yet.'
"It just hit me, what a disgusting thing to say," said Alaw. "I was posing in my underwear he was basically saying that's what I deserved. I couldn't handle that one. Well I'm OK now, but that was just uncalled for."
See more on Alaw on Young, Welsh and Bossin' It on BBC iPlayer.
