The Teacher Who Lost Her Job When Students Found Her OnlyFans Says She Was Driven to it by Crushing Student Loan Debt
Hello, this is Brianna Coppage. You may remember her from such careers as St. Clair, Missouri high school English teacher and such blogs as …
Well Ms. Coppage is only just now beginning to tell her story. And it's as contemporary as the latest headlines, and as American as apple pie:
Source - It was a case of don't quit your side hustle for Missouri teacher Brianna Coppage — for reasons that may well resonate with over 40 million Americans.
Student loan debt combined with other mounting bills drove the high school English teacher to make a "financially driven" decision to quit the classroom and keep her off-hours OnlyFans gig after school administrators discovered her sex work job, Coppage told The Messenger.
"As a teacher, I don't know if I ever would have been able to pay them off," she said of loans she received to pay for bachelor's and master's degrees as well as a specialist degree she was working on. …
Coppage earned about $42,000 last year teaching — and another $8,000 each month thanks to her OnlyFans subscribers, she said. …
Missouri ranks 47th in the nation for average teacher salaries and is dead last for average teacher starting salary … Nearly 17% of teachers in the U.S. work second jobs outside their school system to supplement their income, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. …
She began posting adult content on the platform over the summer to boost her income, but never expected anyone from her day job to discover the page because her content can only be accessed if you’re a paying subscriber, she said. …
"I just thought, 'Hey, this might end up helping with some bills or with getting extra money,'" she said.
Coppage said her husband has been "really supportive" of her decision to start an OnlyFans account.
You know what this story is? It's not a scandal. There is no victim, except for Brianna Coppage, her husband, and those student she was so dedicated to. There's been no crime committed here. Except for the wrong that's been done to them by taking her livelihood away.
What this is, is a story of our times. Of a system that is broken. It's a modern day Grapes of Wrath. In the same way that the Joad family did everything they were supposed to do to achieve the American dream, but were done wrong by forces beyond their control. The same is true of Brianna. Just that instead of having to leave the Dustbowl for California to work someone else's land for starvation wages, she had to set up a webcam and perform sex acts for her subscribers. Why? Because it's profitable? And presumably fun and enjoyable? No. Well, maybe it is. But it's also because of the inequalities inherent in American capitalism.
Student loan debt is one of the great issues of our time. Now, I can't sit here and claim I have all the solutions. And there are good arguments to be made on both sides. Yes, it's ridiculous to graduate with literally in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt you will never be able to pay off and aren't allowed to get out of through bankruptcy or any other means. What big Tom Joad fan Bruce Springsteen would call "debts no honest man can pay."
On the other hand, if you just forgive those loans, what about other kinds of debts do you forgive? Mortgages? Cars? Credit cards? And what about the people who went to college on the GI Bill? What do we say to those who sacrificed so much to serve their country? Do we give the same break to someone who spent four years in a door room doing bong hits as we do to someone who risked their lives and well being?
And what about the colleges and universities? Some of them are sitting on endowments in the billions of dollars. Why are they allowed to hang onto that money while tuition rates spiral out of control?
Like I said, it's a complex issue, and I am uniquely unqualified to solve it. All I know is that when a dedicated teacher like Brianna Coppage has to pleasure herself on the internet in an honest attempt to pay of her debt to society, we should support her. We need to respect her decision to work hard at a second job for the good of her family and the community. And by all means, get her back in the classroom where she belongs. Or, for more people to subscribe to her OnlyFans, which I imagine is exactly what's happening her. Brianna Coppage's husband respects what she does. And so should we all.