Nepo Baby of the Week: Chill Out About Sami Sheen’s Mother-Daughter OnlyFans

I’m always shocked to find out that people still have very strong, typically angry feelings about the subscription-based platform OnlyFans. It’s not that I’m naive to the rampant sexism that has given the site its seemingly permanent stigma. I’ve watched Larsa Pippen be forced to defend selling feet pics over the past two seasons of Real Housewives of Miami. However, the conversation around it just feels archaic at this point, like most things that blew up at the start of the pandemic. Sorry, people can make more money showing their boobs than most of us make working in an office for several months—get over it!

Nevertheless, the internet is clutching its pearls over a certain nepo baby (but mostly her famous mom) for not only having an OnlyFans, but also making it a family affair.

Over the past week, Denise Richards teased another OnlyFans collab with her very cool 19-year-old daughter, Sami Sheen, who identifies as a sex worker and is active on the site. From the looks of the post, this joint venture will probably entail a sultry photoshoot between the two, the sort of stuff that the Kardashians sisters post on their Instagrams literally every day. However, Redditors immediately began criticizing the mother and daughter’s latest hustle, labeling their team-up “weird” and “incestuous.” One user left a particularly snarky comment: “The collaboration better be with a family therapist.”

Denise Richards Returns to a Lisa Rinna-Less ‘RHOBH’ After Dramatic Exit

First of all, back off of Undercover Brother star Denise Richards! Second of all, I think we should celebrate mothers who support their daughters doing sex work and are bold enough to join in on the fun. Whenever we hear about the children of famous people entering the sex industry, like Laurence Fishburne’s or Steven Spielberg’s respective daughters, it’s framed as some sort of failure on their parents’ part or a stain on their legacies.

That said, Richards did not make Jaws nor has her name ever really beem associated with prestige. (I didn’t even know the woman had an OnlyFans until the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 13 trailer dropped, which shows how inconsequential this career pivot is.) However, any mother supporting their adult daughter in posting sexy photos and making bank for it is pretty rad, in my opinion. As long as you’re not hitting me up for money, take on whatever harmless occupation you want!

This isn’t the first time Richards and Sheen have experienced backlash for being hot and getting paid for it. In 2022, the former Baywatch actress joined the site just a few days after her daughter, who was 18 at the time, started using it. Sami’s father, Charlie Sheen, was initially less than supportive, despite his highly publicized era of debauchery. (He eventually walked back his comments.)

Richards, however, has always seemed extremely open-minded to the platform. (This is a woman whose husband runs a woo-woo healing center in Malibu and believes that Big Medicine is following them at all times, so I’m not surprised.) She especially seems to understand the value of owning and profiting off of your image before anyone else can. If you’re a famous enough figure, why post bikini pics on Instagram simply for likes—while helping these social-media apps drive up their engagement—when you can earn money on a separate platform? (It should be said that OnlyFans takes a cut from users’ profits.)

“My daughter got a lot of backlash for opening the account,” Richards told KTLA at the time. “I had heard of OnlyFans, but I wasn’t educated on what OnlyFans was and once I started to learn about it. I really think that the creators of the site really took the best of every platform of social media and put it into one site. You own your content. The other sites, they can sell your content.”

Brandi Glanville, Denise Richards, and the Real Housewives’ Gay-Panic Problem

Richards also pointed out that she came up in Hollywood as a sex symbol, starring in the erotic thriller Wild Things and playing a Bond girl. “I've done sexy shoots before promoting movies and stuff like that,” she said on Jeff Lewis Live last year. “And sometimes people say negative things [...] and a lot of times they don’t.”

All in all, it seems like all of this hullabaloo mostly stems from the negative connotation associated with OnlyFans. I’m 99.9-percent sure if Richards and Sheen got paid to do a photoshoot for SKIMS in their bras and panties, it would be considered tasteful and savvy. Even if they posted a sexy poolside photo in bikinis for free on Instagram, I doubt anyone (besides obvious trolls) would bat an eyelash. Plus, the fact that Richards is back on RHOBH after the other women terrorized and bi-shamed her clearly signals some financial trouble. Let Richards and her daughter make their coins in peace!

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