Kayla Jade: Australia's Most Renowned Sex Worker and Her Predominantly Female Fanbase Explained

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Kayla Jade says she never anticipated becoming so recognised on social media.

With over three million followers across her TikTok and Instagram accounts, she has recently become one of the most famous — if not the most famous — sex workers in Australia.

Kayla, who is originally from New Zealand and now lives on the Gold Coast, started posting on TikTok around a year ago with the intention of “venting” about experiences with clients and her work.

“I was like: ‘I’m just going to throw this out there for anyone who wants to listen’, and then it just blew up,” she told The Feed.

Her videos, which include a mixture of intimate discussions of sex work, as well as more traditional social media influencer content such as beauty recommendations, regularly draw over a million views each on TikTok.

Audiences have been drawn in by Kayla’s candidness in speaking about her life as a sex worker: she shares details of her feelings towards clients, experiences of bookings, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the day-to-day routines of sex work.

While she says she has lost some clients recently due to her social media fame and the way she shares stories online, there is still a notable degree of separation between her online audience and her in-person clients.

“Ninety per cent of my following is female, so it’s mostly going to my female audiences, whereas they’re not usually my clientele,” she says.

“So a lot of the time I’ll still get messages from guys and they’ll just know me through like either porn sites or things like that, like OnlyFans stuff — but then they would just have no idea that I’m on this TikTok.”

Sex workers on social media

A young woman with blonde hair, sitting on a bench.

Kayla Jade is among a community of sex workers who have become famous on social media platforms. Source: SBS

Kayla Jade isn’t the only sex worker who has become famous on social media in recent years.

Other sex workers who work across content subscription service OnlyFans and other areas of the sex work industry have gained large followings on platforms such as TikTok.

Seattle-based Ari Kytsya is a sex worker who boasts a following of over four million users on TikTok and shares details of her work as well as lifestyle and dance videos.

One group of OnlyFans content creators who live together and produce videos under the user name Bop House has a shared following of over 41 million users across their individual accounts.

While TikTok prohibits any nudity, pornography, sexually explicit content or any content related to sexual activity or services, these creators commonly use slang terms and self-censorship to avoid being banned on the platform.

Kayla believes the popularity of some of these sex worker accounts has led to some destigmatisation of sex work and more mainstream acceptance of sex workers.

She has found she is becoming increasingly accepted as an influencer — a space where brands align themselves with online personalities to advertise their products.

“I’m fortunate enough to get brand deals now, which is unheard of in the sex industry. Brands don’t usually work with sex workers because it’s a risky thing for them,” she says.

“I’m glad that I’m sort of breaking down those walls a little bit — very slowly but surely.”

Stigma and discrimination against sex workers are widespread in Australia.

One 2022 survey from the Centre for Social Research in Health at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) found 95 per cent of sex workers who participated had experienced stigma or discrimination in relation to their sex work within the previous 12 months.

Another UNSW study from 2021 found stigma around sex work has a significant impact on the mental health of sex workers, and sex workers fear anticipated stigma and negative judgements from most people if they disclosed their work.

Mish Pony, the chief executive officer of Scarlet Alliance, the peak national body for Australian sex workers, told The Feed that stigma around sex work means some workers are denied housing, employment and adequate healthcare.

Pony agrees that sex workers with public social media profiles are helping to decrease stigma around the work, but they also say it’s a privileged few who are able to reveal their lives in this way.

“They are informing the public about the realities of being a sex worker, but obviously, there’s always concerns around who is able to be out and who is able to get such a high profile.

“Generally, it is more privileged workers, so there’s still a lot of work that we need to do to ensure that all sex workers have the same opportunities.”

Pony also notes that social media can provide a unique space for sex workers to create private communities to support one another.

The realities of sex work

However, Kayla acknowledges some ethical complications with speaking about sex work on a platform that can be accessed easily by young audiences.

Some of the first videos she gained attention for showed her counting piles of cash following bookings. She has since stopped producing those videos and says she has become more conscious of being a better “role model” for young viewers.

“I was worried that, say, a young person would see those videos and be like: ‘Oh my God, she makes so much money doing sex work’. But they don’t really fully understand what I had to do to get that money,” she says.

A young woman with blonde hair in a beige jumper

Kayla Jade says some social media users have been cruel to her and crossed her personal boundaries. Source: SBS

Research shows sex workers in Australia are exposed to a range of challenges, including risk of health issues and exposure to trauma and violence, with street-based sex workers more likely to have experienced work-based violence compared to other sex workers.

Kayla is open with her audience about the concerns associated with doing sex work.

“I always say I wouldn’t recommend sex work because it’s still such a dangerous industry. I try to talk about the downsides of the industry so people know it’s not just this amazing, glamorous thing that’s going to be all fairies and rainbows, because it really isn’t that,” she says.

Pony says content like Kayla’s can fail to capture the mundanity of a lot of sex work as well.

“It’s always important to remember that sex work is work and work isn’t generally glamorous for anyone,” they say.

“Generally, audiences aren’t attracted to mundane content, so it really is the content that is more exciting that is going to be more visible.”

Pony says sex workers continue to face complex legal issues in Australia, and sex work is not decriminalised across all states and territories. For example, sex work is effectively illegal in South Australia.

“Sex workers should be able to choose how and where we work, whether that be independently as part of a small collective, as part of a large brothel. [Sex workers] have our own preferences and should be able to choose whatever venue or option we think is best or right for us,” they say.

The pressure of being social media famous

Kayla Jade says she doesn’t intend to stay in the sex work industry for the rest of her working life, and says the emotional toll of being a sex worker as well as a social media personality can be great.

She says some social media users can be cruel, and they have crossed personal boundaries.

In April, she was forced to address rumours that revealed she had two young children after groups of users began sharing this information without her permission on social media.

She says she had intended to keep her family life private for their safety and privacy, and has since only revealed brief details about her children.

“We put so much out there online. At the end of the day, we’re human,” she says.

“We shouldn’t have to constantly expose everything.”

While Kayla is expanding as a social media personality, including launching her own podcast, she says she still receives a lot of vitriol from users online and wishes preconceptions of sex workers could be broken down further.

“A lot of people would have in their heads what a sex worker is like or how they act,” she says.

“Never judge a book by its cover.”