On the reasons why Virginia Woolf would be a cam girl if she was alive – Part I

But, you may say, we asked you to write about porn and art — what, has that got to do with Virginia Woolf becoming a camgirl?  I will try to explain…

They are everywhere, broadcasting themselves from their living rooms, dancing in front of the camera, quoting Nietzsche and declaring undying love for Modigliani while stripping and simulating masturbatory acts to a ghost audience that slips them tokens for the chance to observe.  A self-presentation that requires nothing but a webcam and time: protected by the boundaries of cyber world, they simulate a space in which their performer’s identity can be easily dissolved. When it takes only a click of the mouse for the show to end, it is easy to surround yourself with mystery and fans.

Camgirls are placed in what Arlie Hochschild dubbed “emotional labor” (1984) because their work revolves around inducing an audience into specific emotional states. However, to a camgirl, such emotional states are not restricted exclusively to the sexual realm. Often these women interact with their audience in non-sexual ways. It is an audience that might be as loyal as any other: the performers seem to know some of the viewers, and to a very large extent, witnessing their “daily routine” on camera makes viewers believe they share some sort of connection to the model that goes beyond the virtual world. In the end, the social product a camgirl delivers acts in two distinct levels: at the same time that it implies a trade mode transaction – 200 tokens for topless, 2500 for full anal – it masquerades such exchange by forging a connection between the performer and the audience who follows them in daily shows and, sometimes, seem to partake on the performer’s routine in true fashion. Working under the two different modes of acting also proposed by Hochschild, camgirls are able to “surface act” – acting as a character without necessarily identifying with the role – and “deep act” – by identifying with the feelings they need to project into the audience. This ‘commoditization of feelings’ makes camgirls a new mode of economic trade: no longer is the audience buying her image, but also her self as merchandise. All this in cyber world. And, in a technological post-Bauhaus era, when we can commercialize ourselves as copies through the use of digital technologies, this seems to be opposite to McLuhan’s proposal that “the medium is the message”.  For camgirls, the message is the medium.

The structure in which it all happens, however, oozes reality: often camgirls broadcast from their homes, their personal objects in the background attesting to their individuality, their musical selection coming from their Ipods: it is all decided by the model, with no influence that might alter her identity when posing to the camera but that of the audience she wants to reach.  While some camgirls might chose to present themselves free from specifics, others might create an entire environment and persona that aims at a specific audience: fetish, role playing, fantasies. And this is a key concept in camming: to be able to promote yourself as unique not based on what you do, but on who you are, on who you present yourself as.  Therefore, it is exactly the idiosyncrasies that separate one performer from another that translates into “success” or “failure”: in an environment where everybody is doing the selling the same way, it is what you sell that guarantees your buyers.

And camgirls have noticed long before their audience that what gather fans are not their bodies or moves, but what they offer to the audience in those interstitial spaces between a topless request and stripping. If the way is to make yourself interesting without resorting to visual appeals, they have nailed it: be it through open discussion on historic periods, high art, or the legalization of marijuana, these women have been able to promote themselves as entities independent from their bodies. That is to say a camgirl can easily become famous more for their interaction with the public than for her physical attributes – a paradigm shift from what we conventionally recognize as the exchange between strippers and audience.  No longer are they stripping, but exposing their own identity – even if forged –to the eyes of those willing to observe their bodies, but also interested in their minds.  What the audience is buying, therefore, is not nudity, but intellect. Thoughts.  Ideas these women alone present as part of themselves, be it wrapped on some sort of fetish or not, but nonetheless by their own volition and, most importantly, by subjects of their own story. Even if sometimes they chose to mimic what is conventionally expected from women, even if they chose to spice their bedrooms up to cater for a more fetishist audience, even if they fictionalize their own identity in order to expose themselves to the camera. It is all their choice.

But where does Virginia Woolf enter in this story? Well, wasn’t she who said that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”? Are there still any doubts camgirls have found a way to have both?

PS: A couple of weeks ago, I was mesmerized by the performance of one camgirl – AriDee. Her profile will be part II of this series.