Confronting My Biases #28: Shannon Elizabeth

In the old days there were fictional movies and true tales of one-time celebrities ending up in peek-shows and in carnival acts as their desperation hit rock bottom. A 52-year-old ex-Maxim cover girl doing Only Fans peek-shows is the modern equivalent, but we’re not supposed to judge this or regard it as shameful. We’re supposed to celebrate a woman’s self-expression, comfort in her own skin, and boldness. I get it. She’s not hurting anyone. If that’s what she wants to do with her life, fine.

I still see women turning themselves into internet versions of Playboy centerfolds as the nadir of human aspiration.

24 thoughts on “Confronting My Biases #28: Shannon Elizabeth

  1. Did she slide because she was a B rate celebrity or did she slide because she portrayed herself in a soft raunch role?

    I’ve noticed a lot of 90s and 00s starlets whose careers vanished or nose dived because of or shortly after their raunch role. I do not recall many starlets who survived such a role. Do you?

    Or is it that they were always B actresses and the raunch role was their attempt at being seen for greater roles?

  2. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was not a forgettable flop.
    it was the necessary bridge between Dogma and Clerks II

    -Jut

        • I don’t know why Dogma is so highly regarded (unless it is the fun of poking at Catholics, who allegedly opened a loophole that would destroy the entire universe). However, I’ll defer to a speaker who came to the University of Wyoming back in 2001, who said he went to a protest against Dogma carrying a sign that read “Dogma is Dogshit!”

          I think that speaker’s name was Kevin Smith, if I recall correctly…

        • The same reason “The Life of Brian” is regarded as a classic: it was a gutsy but good natured satire on a subject that is rich fodder for comedy but seldom accessed. The Chris Rock character and his story of being cut out of the Bible is clever, and the plot anticipated “The DaVinci Code” without taking itself seriously. The hip Jesus promotion brought me back to horrible hippie church services of my youth.

          My father-in-law, a Methodist minister and theologian, nearly laughed himself sick when I had him watch “Dogma.”

  3. I think you’re being too hard on salmon.

    I don’t know who she is. Looking at her credits, the only one I’ve seen is “Love Actually” and she only had a small part in that.

  4. The medium income for an OnlyFans creator is about $150-180 per month. Top earners may rake millions, the vast majority of creators earn very little, with roughly 33% of all revenue going to the top 1% of creators. Income is heavily skewed toward a few high earners, often referred to as “whales” in the adult industry. These “whales” are often people who build on their success in the porn industry or social media, and have very good marketing and business skills.

    This means that for most women choosing OnlyFans as a side hustle is not worth the effort and cost; hereby I include reputational costs, impact on relations, and moral issues. Seeing starlets who had big dreams about Hollywood or Broadway end up as OnlyFans creator, camgirl or stripper is just sad.

  5. This falls squarely into Kaufman territory for me.

    By the way, I truly detest the page break feature. Makes it harder to read your posts, and – if you didn’t know – comments from the FIRST page don’t carry over to the second.

    • I didn’t know because I don’t get comments that way: they come to me in order of posting with the post listed next to each. What would be your suggested max length for a post without breaks? I have been trying to break ant over 500 words.

      And of course it’s a Kaufman, but that’s not what the post is about. It’s about my tendency to look at anyone stooping to OnlyFans as a sign of bad character.

      • Arthur is completely right and I have the actual solution, Jack: Confounded migrate to a different blog platform entirely!!!

        I daresay there’s an ethical value here: RESOURCEFULNESS. I think of this almost every time I see another one of those customer service sob stories you post here. Yes there are problems in this field now, but why is there never a thought of doing something differently?

        Jack, this WordPress “1 2” business is absolutely ridiculous, and if some NEW reader – imagine that! – came here they couldn’t possibly know what to do, or even see it. Besides, the comment format is, er, suboptimal on its face and totally unreadable the moment one of those sealioning incidents as you guys call it occur. Don’t you realize this, man?

        Yes, you might have to pay someone to migrate safely including all of your archives, and/or take down the blog for a couple of days, but so what, that’s happened before. Send me an email, I’ll send you a couple of resources, pick one, and get it done. Come on!

    • I had no idea about the comments being that way — I typically don’t look at comments until after I read page 2.

      But, looking at this post, there were 22 comments after page 1, but when you switch to page 2 there are only 10.

  6. Porn and OnlyFans and all the rest are a great temptation for many. Charlie Kirk was open about his struggles.

    This all just makes me really sad. Human beings are better than this. We all are.

    • I don’t think we are. And that’s the reason that this stuff is so pervasive.

      I can look back now and say I was an awful human being the last ten years of my previous marriage, especially the last two. I was hurtful for hurtful’s sake. And only to one person, but, I’m sure being hurtful to everyone was next. Or becoming physically violent, given a bit more time.

      The heart is wicked above all else, who can know it? Given enough time in the right (or, wrong) circumstance, you’ll know it, and what’s frightening is you won’t recognize it right away. There’ll be lots of damage done before you do.

      In this case, she’s obviously looking for something she needs, and not having found it thus far, figures she’ll give in to what she’s likely disapproved of in the past. When you’re at wits end, and/or desperate, you’re susceptible doing things you know (or would normally know) are wrong.

      And there will be plenty of people who I profit from it, use it for their own ends, etc.

      We’re actually a pretty rotten group, all things considered.

      • I don’t disagree with you. I generally take the long view of people since it’s very easy for someone to lose their way. You don’t always know if someone is remorseful just by the outside.

        What I mean by better is not giving into the wolf inside of us, no matter how long the fight rages.

        • Josh: If someone knows they are killing someone and says so at the time, is regretting it later after they have derived the benefit of the murder good enough for you to give them a pass as having “lost their way”? I don’t think it is “very easy” to lose one’s way so that you kill your child. We’re not talking about adultery or shoplifting here.

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