Ethan Colbert
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(TNS)
Jun. 10—ST. CLAIR — Former St. Clair High School teacher and cheerleading coach Megan Gaither says she “wouldn’t recommend” teachers follow her lead and pursue a career on the adult website OnlyFans.
The money is good — she makes about five times as much as she did as a teacher. But she says criticism of her pornography work has been relentless, and she’s become a “total outcast” in her hometown of St. Clair. Most of all, she misses teaching.
“A lot of people tell me that I should be happy, but I wouldn’t wish this past year on anybody,” Gaither told the Post-Dispatch in a recent interview, days after cleaning out her classroom. “I studied 12 years to become a teacher, and now that’s gone. Looking back, I wouldn’t recommend this. If I could go back, I would tell myself not to do it.”
Gaither, 32, was put on leave last fall after the school district discovered she was making content on OnlyFans, a website that features direct-to-consumer content and is best known for pornography.
She was the second English teacher suspended at St. Clair High, about 55 miles southwest of St. Louis, in a span of a month. The first, Brianna Coppage, made international news when she admitted in an interview with the Post-Dispatch that she had been put on leave because of pornography on her OnlyFans account, which noted she was a teacher.
Gaither did the same about a month later, setting off another firestorm in the district. Gaither was first put on leave and barred from her classroom when rumors began to swirl that she had appeared — with her face hidden — in one of Coppage’s videos. She eventually admitted that she also had an account but that she had deactivated it after Coppage’s was discovered.
Gaither reactivated her account after she was put on leave, and she continues making content today. She said she doesn’t resent the school district or her coworkers, but she remains frustrated that someone turned her in after she appeared in Coppage’s video.
“My husband and I talked about this before I started OnlyFans, that there would be consequences if I was caught,” Gaither said. “I know I made choices. But whoever turned me in, I have to ask: Was that necessary? And what did I do to them to deserve this kind of treatment?”
Gaither and Coppage are two of about 3 million people worldwide who work as content creators on OnlyFans. That number includes a growing number of professionals looking to supplement their incomes.
Gaither said she makes about $22,000 a month from her 1,500-plus subscribers. In all, OnlyFans boasts more than 210 million paid subscribers worldwide. Creators charge between $3 and $75 for a monthly subscription, and users pay more for custom or pay-per-view content.
Making content for the site has come with highs and lows for Gaither.
In addition to costing her a teaching career, Gaither has been ostracized by some friends and family members. And she’s experienced a near-daily barrage of people online criticizing her body, her work as a teacher and her role as a parent to two young children.
“It is unreal how quickly people seem to forget that I am a human being,” she said. “I would never, ever call someone out based on how they look or how their body is shaped, but these people do.”
Gaither said she’s in therapy to cope with the events that have unfolded over the past eight months. She and her husband are moving their two elementary school-aged children out of the school district.
Coppage has had a similar experience. She’s made a lot of money — about $2 million since October, she said — and she and her husband recently purchased about 20 acres of land near St. Clair, where they intend to grow a garden and tend to chickens. She says she’s paid off her student loans and credit card debts.
“Our lives are forever changed because of OnlyFans,” Coppage said.
She has come to terms with likely never teaching again, and she said her former career feels “like a lifetime ago.”
But she, too, has faced criticism online. Most of it is targeted toward the morality of working on OnlyFans — something she chalks up to people’s “differing moral compasses.”
She has also experienced a flood of questions from aspiring OnlyFans content creators.
“My direct messages are full of people constantly asking for help because they are struggling financially,” Coppage said.
But while Coppage is fielding requests for help, Gaither urges aspiring OnlyFans creators to consider the repercussions.
Gaither plans to use the money she made on the site to pursue a doctoral degree in hopes of teaching at the college level. She recognizes that her options may be limited there, too.
“My advice is to really think about the consequences of this decision and to consider those consequences as your reality because it will happen to you just like it happened to me,” Gaither said. “Are you OK with never working professionally again?”
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