Page 72 - AVN June 2025

“Going back to sex work made
sense to me.”
Before her meteoric rise as one of 2014’s most exciting new porn starlets, Yhivi was selling
underwear—not for Victoria’s Secret, but very much on the down low, to men in Starbucks parking
lots eager to pay for freshly worn panties. She was 19, a bagger at a grocery store, fronting a punk
rock band, and following sex workers on a once-unfiltered Tumblr. When the opportunity to sell
her unmentionables on Craigslist arose, she shamelessly seized the moment.
“I had been following people on Tumblr who were doing sex work for a while, and it made it
more familiar to me,” Yhivi said. “Also, being in the subculture that I was in, radical punk, gave me
this reference point that was more open-minded to sex work and the idea of being sexually open
as a woman. Being not just okay with sex, but having it be something you can be proud of, not
something to be ashamed of. So, I had a way of viewing and navigating through the world that
made sex work an option to me.”
Selling her used panties on Craigslist proved to be a lucrative venture for Yhivi. “I was selling
panties that I bought for $2 for like $75 to $150—or more if I took them off in front of them,” she
recalled. “I would meet them in a public place, usually outside of a Starbucks or something, wearing
a skirt or dress, and I would quickly pull them down and just hand them over.”
But when the panty lovers gave way to the creepy van guys, it was time for Yhivi to move on.
“I would get people asking how much more for this and how much more for that? And for, like,
fucking me in their van. It was too much to filter through.”
With the parking lots in the rearview, Yhivi headed to cyberspace, where she started camming
on MyFreeCams and creating content on Clips4Sale. She even joined a site in 2012 she feels may
have been a precursor to OnlyFans.
“I was on this website called MyGirlFund—it was like OnlyFans before its time. You had a profile,
and people could tip you through messages. You didn’t do anything you didn’t want to; you could
monetize however you wanted. I don’t think the world was ready for that.”
Having slowly built a community of support on Tumblr, Yhivi was soon networking with sex
workers, models, and adult performers. “Eventually, I reached out to someone I had followed who
was in the industry, and asked her, ‘Hey, how did you do this? I’m curious about it.”
Yhivi made her debut with BDSM giant Kink, and her penchant for hardcore quickly became a
calling card. “I’ve had a lot of rough sex and played with power dynamics, but it was mostly within
the context of work—which I liked because it gave me a framework to stick to so I wouldn’t go
off the rails.”
Yhivi added. “That’s what I’ve always appreciated about working in the industry—it gives me
a container to explore my curiosities. Not just with BDSM but also my femininity, my sexuality,
and my desires outside of that. I was pretty much a new adult when I started, and the industry
prompted me to explore my femininity and the way I express my sexuality because that’s part of
the job…or should be.”
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