THEO PANAYIDES meets the only Cypriot woman openly selling her wares on OnlyFans, posting videos and other adult content. A competitive woman of many parts
It shouldn’t have to be this way. Georgia Yiokka won’t talk about her family at all – except to say that she grew up in the village of Mammari, the third of seven kids in a “religious family” – due to pushback they’ve received after previous interviews. Nor will she talk about her partner, despite his obviously central role in the story she’s telling – though, to be fair, his identity is also protected in the homemade videos they film together. Georgia, a former English teacher, has a not-so-secret identity as Gigi_fire_girl, an “adult content creator” on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and – since March – also on OnlyFans, an adults-only website where she stars in (and sells) the aforementioned sexually explicit videos.
It shouldn’t have to be this way; there shouldn’t be so much guilt and secrecy around what she’s doing. That said, it’s inescapable, this public intimacy, seeming to hover in the air as she sits sipping a raspberry smoothie in a café near her home in Strovolos. Public speakers are always being told to relieve their nervousness by imagining their audience naked – and, in the same way, it’s a weird experience talking to Georgia even while knowing that I (or any other stranger) could easily view her in her most intimate moments via a couple of clicks and a credit card number. (Subscription to her page is free – people pay for the content – but you need a card in order to register.) Isn’t it a bit immoral, what she’s doing? Making money off her body, like a hooker?
“Am I giving them my body, though? This is what I try to explain. My material is for sale – but my body isn’t for sale. No-one’s going to touch me, I’m not a prostitute. Even though, needless to say, I’ve had guys coming every day through the platform [i.e. OnlyFans] wanting to buy me. And I have to explain, very politely, that I don’t do meetings, I don’t sell my body.” She has nearly 6,000 ‘fans’, most of them (around 80 per cent) from Cyprus and Greece – but also from as far afield as the US, Italy and Austria. Her list of “services provided” includes sexting and “dressing or undressing videos”; other options are more graphic – though “nothing extreme,” she says firmly. She’ll also do requests, thus for instance she’s had men asking to “make me a solo video where you’re saying my name” (those go directly to the customer, not on the main page) or wear a particular item of clothing, like high heels. It’s all quite professional.
Alas, that hasn’t stopped the offended brigade from becoming offended. She’s not too surprised at the reactions, observes Georgia mildly, “especially in Cyprus where sex is such a big taboo, and porn too”, but she is a bit surprised by how quickly it happened. She and her partner only decided to launch the OnlyFans account in mid-March – it made sense, since they were already filming videos as part of their sex life, and Gigi_fire_girl was already active on other platforms doing milder adult content like lingerie shots and risqué ‘reels’ – but news, as they say, travels fast. Georgia was working as a PE teacher in various kindergartens at the time (before that she’d taught English at a school she ran with her sisters, which closed down during Covid); parents complained, saying they didn’t want that woman near their kids, and she lost her job. Others – she doesn’t know who – reported her to Welfare Services. A rumour began to circulate that children’s voices could be heard in the background of one of their sex videos. “Needless to say, if such a video existed we’d obviously have been arrested. But it doesn’t exist – it’s a total lie.”
Welfare paid a visit, which she says is only right; “If I call and say that Theo the journalist is breeding unicorns on his rooftop” they have to come and check for unicorns, it’s their job. They interviewed her kids, and found nothing amiss. Georgia has three children with her ex-husband, a 14-year-old daughter and seven-year-old boy-and-girl twins – and some may find it significant that she had her daughter at only 18 (she turned 33 a few days ago), just as some might point to the early sexual trauma of having been abused – inappropriately touched – as a 10-year-old. (She talks about it, though without giving details: it was in the village and the abuser was a stranger, not a family member.) There’s no reason why any of this should be relevant – but Georgia, by her own account, is the only Cypriot woman openly selling her wares on OnlyFans (a few others are expats based in Cyprus), and it’s inevitable that her early experiences should be trawled for clues. Is there any reason – something in her past, perhaps – why this particular girl should be more open, more confident, more willing to expose her private life to the world?
Going in, I’d ungenerously assumed it was exhibitionism, the same narcissistic impulse you find in contestants on reality shows – but it’s not that, or at least it’s more than that. An exhibitionist craves an audience – but Georgia’s commitment is self-contained, driven by zeal and personal ambition. If you had to pin her down, you could say she’s one of Nature’s athletes. She’s competitive, and a woman of many parts.
Yes, she had a child at 18 – but she then went off to study in the UK, English Literature at the University of Bradford (her ex was studying there too). She made a deal with the university, allowing her to come back to Cyprus – where her baby was – for two weeks each month; the deal was dependent on Georgia’s grades being excellent, so she duly earned a First in every year of the course. She’s always loved books, from the day she discovered Jane Eyre in primary school – yet she also makes reading sound like a competitive sport: she had to read and review a 500-page book every week at Bradford, she tells me, “sometimes I was reading three or four books at a time, and making notes on all four”. It’s a bit like her account of waking up early every morning to go running: “It’s really exhilarating to know that, while I’m training – I’m up, I’m training, I’m running down the street – everyone else is still asleep. My day’s already started, and it’s way ahead of yours!”.
That’s her style: she’s an athlete, she pushes herself. Both she and her partner are serious about marathon running – and both wake up early, at 4am, sleeping just five hours a night; they’ll train till six then come home, have a shower and wake up the kids. “Don’t be lazy!” is her motto. “It doesn’t matter how tired I am – because there are nights when the kids might wake up, they might be sick and not let me sleep at night – you just get up and say ‘No excuses’. Get up, go outside! Is it raining? Get a raincoat. Is it snowing? Put your thermals on.” She believes in keeping energy levels high, and has no patience with people who plead exhaustion. She believes in the good things in life (“Wine tasting, amazing hotels, great food” goes the list of hobbies on her Instagram). Intellectually, too, she’s “restless”, she says; she reads books, and listens to podcasts by the likes of Jordan Peterson – who also preaches taking charge of one’s life – and Jay Shetty.
She’s ambitious when it comes to OnlyFans, too. There’s the paying fans, there’s the prudes trying to ruin her life – but there’s also a third category, the many women who write in asking for advice on how to please their own men. The plan is to launch a podcast soon, maybe a YouTube channel answering such questions, “like a consultation… And then I could also have guests where we can discuss sex openly, and the subject of sex education”. As a former teacher – though of course it doesn’t take a teacher – she knows that the kids aren’t alright in Cyprus; even beyond child abuse (which she claims is rampant), she recalls hearing stories of girls having sex with boys at 11 or 12, “even before their first period”. And of course the adults have their own problems.
Why so many taboos? “I believe it’s because of self-confidence. When you know who you are, and you’re confident, you don’t get jealous if your partner is watching porn, for instance.” She’s stunned to hear young women her own age accusing their husbands of being unfaithful after catching them on a site like OnlyFans. “We’re making men delete their online history because they’re afraid of their wives finding out,” says Georgia, shaking her head. “Sex isn’t something bad. Masturbation isn’t bad, either, it’s a – how do you say, a release of tension.” Meanwhile, she and her partner enjoy each other’s bodies with no hint of shame or self-consciousness: “I’m promoting healthy sexual relationships”.
Nothing much has changed in her sex life (only a small part of which gets shared online, in any case); I’d assumed her long, bright-pink nails might be a recent addition to please the fans, but not at all. Her hair was always fire-red, her body toned – though she’s bought some new outfits, and had three new piercings in a place only the camera can see. Her day-to-day life, on the other hand, has been transformed, indeed the decision to become an OnlyFans girl three months ago has turned out to be life-changing. Georgia’s seven-year-old is autistic and she’s only now, after years of trying, succeeded in toilet-training him – purely because she now has time to sit with him and coax him. When she left the teaching job, “they did me a favour,” she muses; she only works in the mornings now, when the kids are away – not just filming videos (which is only about twice a week anyway) but editing, taking photos, and maintaining her various social-media outlets – and the money isn’t bad either. Suffice to say that she now makes in about three days what it took a whole month to earn as a teacher.
Georgia Yiokka’s story is a sign of the times, a new way of working: online, independent, sex-positive, free of taboos. Could others do it too, in today’s wintry economic climate? Maybe, she replies – but her competitive streak kicks in too: “You’ve got to have it, to do something like this”. It’s not just sex, “I’m an entertainer”; you need presence, you need a persona – not to mention a thick skin. “It’s a lot of work. When girls ask me ‘Can I do it too?’, I’m like ‘Darling, do it – but do you have the stomach for it?’. Do you have the stomach to read all those comments every day? All those haters writing god-knows-what, and me having to delete them.” She’s starting to get recognised now – but most men post a comment to say they’ve seen her; they’re too embarrassed to actually greet her. (One exception was the recent driver who spotted her while she was out jogging, leaned on his horn and yelled: “Gigi, I love you!”) She’ll never be invited to cut ribbons, or open Christmas fairs.
Does she care? Not really – not when she can finally send her autistic boy to private school, and arrange for speech therapy, and book vacations and long weekends. “We’ve booked to go to Crete for eight days, how could we ever have done that before? We’ve never been on a trip with the kids before.” She’s paying for piano lessons, and saving money for her daughter’s university. “And then I hear people saying what I’m doing is wrong – but who are you to tell me it’s wrong? And people saying ‘Oh, think of the kids’ – but did you think of my kids five months ago, when I was counting every Euro?… I’m just doing what’s best for my family.”
Her online persona is natural, “the girl next door” – and that’s true in many ways, despite her ambition and competitive streak. She is just “an ordinary person,” says Georgia, “with anxieties, with bills to pay, with kids, with a home” – then again she’s also an athlete and a reader and an entrepreneur, and a social-media star with a not-so-secret identity. “I’m a mum, I’m a friend, I’m a lover… But I’m also Gigi, which is totally different!” The girl’s on fire.
