Parenting is never easy, particularly these days in the digital age; where the boundaries between “providing for your family” and “traumatizing your child” are blurrier than a Zoom call on bad Wi-Fi.
The latest internet drama comes courtesy of a mother who took to the press, claiming her son was being mercilessly teased because his friends discovered her OnlyFans content and were sharing her pixs.
According to her, the bullying was so severe that her son became suicidal. And yet, in a move that feels like it was plucked from the “How to Make This Worse” handbook, she decided to go public about it. Now, call me cynical (guilty quite often), but if my child were in that situation, I might opt for therapy, family support, or, I don’t know, maybe a little privacy? I would not be naming either myself or my child in a national newspaper.
Instead, she has essentially guaranteed that her son’s humiliation is now internationally archived. Because nothing soothes a bullied teenager like knowing their mother’s career choices (risqué in most readers’ opinions) are now Google-able forever.
Of course, this isn’t about shaming a woman for how she makes her money. Times are tough, and the internet has given rise to all sorts of creative revenue streams. But the thing about parenting is that it’s supposed to involve some level of self-sacrifice. You don’t get to say, “I’m doing this for my child,” while simultaneously feeding the media machine that thrives on his pain. That’s like saying you’re fighting childhood obesity by opening a donut shop next to the school cafeteria.
A mother’s first instinct should always be to shield her child, not expose them to further scrutiny, so I really don’t get this at all. Whether it’s protecting them from online predators, school bullies, or public humiliation, the priority should be their well-being—not a headline. Making personal struggles into media spectacles doesn’t resolve the issue; it amplifies it. And in this case, the person suffering the most doesn’t seem to be the one doing the talking.
Maybe she genuinely wanted to shed light on cyberbullying, or maybe she wanted to redirect the focus from “Why are kids so mean?” to “Why are people judging me ?” She might even be loking for more subscribers. Either way, the result is the same: a son who now has to deal with a tsunami of secondhand embarrassment on top of everything else.
If nothing else, maybe we should use this as a cautionary tale: before taking a personal family crisis to the tabloids, ask yourself one simple question: will this actually help, or am I just making sure my kid needs therapy well into his 40s? Based solely on the comments I saw on social media earlier today, the majority were more concerned about needing to check out her pixs than any concern for the wellbeing of her son…. 🙁
Photo by Roman Kraft
