I don’t know how to categorize this. Perhaps the issue is how popular culture and show business make attention junkies out of people, making them do what former “Baywatch” (and “E.T.” !) actress Erika Eleniak is doing: making an exhibition of herself for sickos and fetishists, exchanging any shred of dignity for money.
I confess to always haveing a warm place in my heart for Erika. I first saw her as the girl Elliot kisses like John Wayne kissed Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man” because he was psychically linked to E.T. who was watching the movie on TV. Next time I saw Erika she popped out of a cake naked in “Under Siege,” and then it was on to playing Ellie May Clampett in the movie version of “The Beverley Hillbillies,” then to “Baywatch.” Next came middle age and the fast slide to Hallmark films, then reality shows. Erika had some star power, but she wasn’t exactly Meryl Streep.
Now TMZ brings the depressing report that at 56, Elliot’s true love joined OnlyFans to let foot fetishists pay to see her apparently still-comely feet. Soon she was enticed into more daring peep shows. Erika is earning $10,000 a week, with 1,100 ill people who are eager to pay to gawk at an over-the-hill actress as she debases herself.
I wrote about this phenomenon in April in one of the “Confronting My Biases” posts. But then the OnlyFans sellout was Shannon Elizabeth, whose career, if you can call it that, makes Erika seem like Katherine Hepburn by comparison.
Today Erika has arms covered with tattoos, which, as I wrote recently, is often a symptom of someone coping with deep emotional pain. I can’t find anything exactly unethical in this scenario, except to think that if there weren’t an OnlyFans, someone like Erika would have to find a more promising, nurturing, productive way to find fulfillment in her post-celebrity existance. Now she’s at a dead end, a lucrative one, perhaps, but still perilously close to a life nadir.
In “Nightmare Alley,” Tyrone Power ends up as a carnival geek, biting the heads off of live chickens. That’s worse, certainly, but then his character only starts out as carnival barker who once said of the geek, “I can’t understand how anybody could get so low.”
I wonder what Erika Eleniak, when she was young and gorgeous with what seemed like a vibrant career ahead of her, would have said about women who expose themselves to creepy men, alone, through a video camera in their bedroom.
I’m really sorry, Erika.
So is Elliot.
Ethics Alarms 
“I can’t find anything exactly unethical in this scenario, except to think that if there weren’t an OnlyFans, someone like Erika would have to find a more promising, nurturing, productive way to find fulfillment in her post-celebrity existance. Now she’s at a dead end, a lucrative one, perhaps, but still perilously close to a life nadir.”
Would she, though? Plenty of people who grew up acting in the business failed to find something productive to do out of the limelight. She’s even done the reality shows. What was left for her? If only someone had come along and told Erika that she isn’t required to entertain people for the rest of her life and that she has value outside of her body.
This culture of “You have to be famous forever or you’re a nobody” feeds the belief that people who acted while children are has-beens if they don’t keep acting. It prevents them from finishing their educations and going into other professions. The addiction of the bright lights, big paychecks and adoration of strangers is hard to overcome.
At some point, we have to hold people accountable for the decisions they make as adults, even if their childhoods were spent working in Hollywood. It’s hard not to feel pity for them, though.
Well, I guess she could still become a hooker. Or a geek like Tyrone power. Nothing in her background (or interviews) suggests that she’s very bright: she has a high school diploma and has apparently been living off of her physical attributes most of her life, as a model, an actress, someone famous for being famous, and now OnlyFans. What else could she do? Gee, I don’t know, get a real job like everyone else? She supposedly has a net worth of over a million buck and as much as 4. What’s sad is that the culture creates these life skill cripples. And that nowhere does the culture ensure any self respect—what were her parents doing when she was in her “formative years”? what they formed was a woman whose sole perception of life is being attractive to men.
“What’s sad is that the culture creates these life skill cripples.”
That’s right and that’s my point. I don’t argue that Erika has no agency to change her life, only that her upbringing and early fame have shaped her worldview to the degree that she sees no other option.
If she is a millionaire, with her net worth maybe as much as four million dollars she has options, such as enjoying retirement.
My guess is she is not doing it for the money but for the attention. I saw a movie not too long ago, Sunset Boulevard, about an aging actress from the silent era, still trying to hold on to her fame, living in an illusion. Elena Eleniak’s case may be somewhat similar.
It is interesting that we don’t admire people who move on (or try to) from show business. If you look at Robert Van Winkle, it appears his main business is real estate, but if you look at his Wikipedia page, it is almost exclusively about his music career to the current day. The music career looks like a side-gig to his $20 million+ real estate business.
When Gary Coleman became a security guard, why didn’t he get more respect for that? Instead, he was mostly mocked. Maybe his life would have turned out better if there was some societal encouragement for such behavior. Again, if you look at his Wikipedia page, it doesn’t appear to be mentioned.
Gary Coleman was a security guard?
His appearance on The Simpson’s make much more sense now.
-Jut
Yep, after he was taken advantage of by his parents, he had little money left so he ended up working as a security guard for a time and then made little appearances here and there. It’s very sad.
I was around 11 when I read one of those mass-produced paperbacks sold at K-Mart about the lives of “Today’s” stars. I remember the line in the chapter on Gary Coleman explaining in a parenthetical statement about how his mother quit her job to become his manager. Even at 11, I thought that was weird.
Ooo, you made the Dan Quayle mistake! (It happens with The Simpsons frequently, for some reason.)
A while ago we had a discussion about prostitution on Ethics Alarms, with the majority including the host, calling this practice so unethical that it needs to stay criminalized in the USA. I adopted a more libertine approach to this, favoring Australia’s approach.
If prostitution is so unethical that criminalization is in place, how do we view other types of sex work from an ethical perspective? Porn? Strip clubs? Only Fans?
This post implies that Only Fans work catering to foot fetishists is not unethical, just ick. My understanding is that OF work is just as much sex work as porn, stripping, and escorting. On which criteria do we call all sex work, or some sex work unethical?
I think the delineation is pretty clear. Watching a woman’s foot isn’t adultery. Neither is watching an aging actress on video. OF objects aren’t abused and exploited by pimps, and there are no safety or health issues.
Actually Jack, some of them are, as reported here for example https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c932gpk2l1do
Thanks. And I should have seen that coming…OF pimps!
There is another way we can approach this, inspired by Aristotle’s views on ethics. Shout out here to a recent EA post by James Rogers.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2026/08/30/an-ancient-viewpoint-on-modern-ethics-and-our-current-ethics-train-wreck-environment/
Aristotle recognized three motives for human action, namely pleasure, honor, and virtue. It is ethical to strive for virtue, and to avoid vice. Chastity is a moral virtue that guides a person’s sexual desires and conduct. Virtue belongs to the broader virtue of temperance or self-control. Temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues in classical philosophy, together with prudence, justice, and fortitude.
From this perspective Only Fans work may be regarded as unethical due to its lack of chastity, as it is catering to the vices of the Only Fans consumers.
I will stop here, as virtue ethics is a broad topic than cannot be discussed fully in one post. But hopefully this is the start of a beautiful discussion about a rich philosophical approach to ethics. I just want to note that sexual morals as preached by the Church often relies on classical virtue ethics. E.g. the Heidelberg Catechism in The Lord’s Day 41 (explaining the 7th Commandment against adultery) requires us to hate all unchastity and live pure chaste lives.