Laid-Off Service Industry Pros Are Selling Nudes to Raise Cash for Their Coworkers

After being laid off due to the coronavirus crisis, a trio of former service industry employees has come up with a novel way to help other struggling hospitality workers in their community: they’re gearing up to sell nude photos.

The initiative, dubbed Nudes for Industry Babes and Dudes, is the brainchild of Katherine Doolittle, a bartender who formerly worked at Deep Ellum’s Ebb & Flow. She was inspired by Kaylen Ward, the Australian woman whose nude photos raised more than $1 million for the victims of wildfires that ravaged the country in 2019 . “We figured we could do the same thing for people who are in need,” Doolittle tells Eater.

To help raise money, Doolittle enlisted two friends who had been impacted by the closure of Dallas-area restaurants and strip clubs, along a couple of local photographers. The photos will be gathered into an album and sold via a platform like OnlyFans, which allows patrons to buy paid subscriptions to exclusive content from celebrities, adult entertainment stars, and models. Doolittle says that while she and her friends haven’t established a price for the content yet, she expects it to be around $20 for access to the full album.

The group originally planned to sell the photos through GoFundMe, but a representative for the company told them that the campaign could be at risk of being taken down because it veers into pornographic territory, which is forbidden by the crowdfunding platform’s terms of service.

Doolittle says that while the group is still figuring out how the sales proceeds will be disbursed to struggling service industry workers, 100 percent of it will be donated to servers, bartenders, cooks, and other restaurant workers. “What we’re able to do really depends on how much money we get, and there’s no way of knowing that right now,” Doolittle says. “We’re obviously going to take care of our coworkers and family members in the industry, and anyone else that we’re able to help.”

At present, Doolittle expects that Nudes for Industry Babes and Dudes will go live sometime this week. “The more that we can get this out there, the more money that we can make to help more people,” she says. “We need people to get involved. They don’t even have to pay anything, just click share.”