Dare to Dream
Jade Greene interviews Shae Wednesday
Do you have days where you struggle to get up and go to work? Steam your shirt, iron your pants, and drive into the office, or even just roll over to your home office? Some days just feel grueling. But what if you could go into work and know that you make the rules, you decide who speaks to you, and you get paid for their minute-by-minute attention- would you have an easier time?
Shae Wednesday gave me gothic-manic-pixie-bimbo energy when she popped up on my screen for our interview. She had a kind grin on her colorfully made-up face, complete with stiletto-sharp cat-eye, with her bright mermaid hair done up in punky pigtail space buns delicately decorated with plastic butterfly clips. She gave me an enthusiastic wave and I couldn’t help but grin and wave back. I could see immediately why customers can’t possibly resist her charm! As I was gently falling in love with her colorful aesthetic, I asked her softly what her métier is, her current sharp skill at work. A grin split her face and she bluntly announced, “I’m a nasty slut and I have a really foul potty mouth and I just do really nasty stuff,” with a joyous giggle.
At the time of writing this in August of 2024, Shae has nearly 100 5-star reviews from exceptionally satisfied customers spanning back to when she started with TreasureCams in February 2022.
“When I first started with TreasureCams, I was just camming on the weekends, when I wasn't working my first job. And the whole time I'm sitting at my desk in the call center. I'm getting paid 17 bucks an hour to be verbally abused by boomers all day long. Whereas I could be making triple this in half the amount of time on cam. And I'm like, ‘what am I doing here?’ And then there's this stupid hierarchy of an office environment, like having to put on airs in an office environment kind of thing, and it wears on you so hard and, honestly, the whole time I was thinking, ‘I wish I was just camming full-time’. I finally took the plunge and did and I've never been happier. I should have done this years ago.”
It was October 2023 when Shae “took the plunge” and moved from what some people call a full-time “vanilla” job and balancing sex work part-time, to doing sex work full-time. Almost two years after joining TreasureCams, she was all in. So what happened in those 20 months that let her know she could make the transition? Shae cites TreasureCams as the biggest assist in helping her believe in herself. She had followed Bella Vendetta on social media for years, especially for her deliciously legendary #StripperSnacks updates, and came across a post about a cam studio one day. Shae croons that “[Bella] would make food for her coworkers and stuff and it was always super fancy looking and I’m like, ’this chick’s awesome’ and then she posted about TreasureCams one day and then I’m like, ‘fuck it I’ll apply but it probably won’t get anywhere’ and then, here I am, two years later”. To amuse myself, after our interview, I went snooping around on Instagram and, lo and behold, I found a #strippersnacks post by @BellaVendetta circa 2015 and it was indeed liked by Shae! (Honestly, it looked delicious. I would’ve been drawn in too.)
I asked about the process of joining TreasureCams. Did Shae feel nervous reaching out? Was it easy to acclimate to the group? She said she did feel nervous, especially because she was comparing herself to big earners (like Theda Foxxx, who is still a top model, two years later) and she felt like such a small fish in a huge pond, just getting excited about her $40 per shift. Shae saw absolutely no way that she could possibly be a full-time worker or even fathom taking home her full week’s goal in one or two shifts like these practically famous colleagues. While she felt somewhat intimidated, she also felt grateful that there were sign-up forms to go through and online forums to go to. She mentioned how sometimes she checks up on Google and Reddit searches for information from other users, other cam performers outside of her immediate community and she often finds contradicting information to what she knows to be true so she feels lucky to have her guidance, steering her wisely.
“I’m honestly just happy to be surrounded by other women that I can bounce ideas off of and, like, having that support because like I kinda feel like I’m alone in this ‘cause I can’t talk to some of my friends about this kinda stuff ‘cause like…” Shae trails off before adding, “Those meetings we [at TreasureCams] have are so important and so informative and I just think about all those girls who are doing this solo and they don't have those resources behind them and the fact that we have access to almost, like, a sisterhood where we can go to when we need anything, that is so awesome to me and I’m so grateful to have that and I want to give back to that too and I know I’m still kinda like just a baby.” I can’t help but smile to myself. She says she’s a baby. While February 2022 - August 2024 when I’m writing this now isn’t the longest of cam careers, it’s certainly not the shortest I’ve witnessed in my (notably shorter) cam career.
So how does one go from newbie to successful cam star? What’s the trajectory? “It's definitely taken a lot of experimentation over the last two years since I've started doing it seriously. I've tried a bunch of different things. I've tried Domming; I'm way too subby to Dom so there's no way I can possibly do that. I've tried just bimbo stuff. I've tried but what I've been doing lately has been like… Well, I couldn't even fathom that I could make this much money,” she proudly states. I asked her about how she found she had the freedom to experiment and go through these different iterations and changes in an industry that very much dislikes change. She had a ‘do what you want’ attitude as she answered. Shae talked about presenting herself as the object that she is using to get to her goal and utilizing her social media to that end at times. Currently, she’s in her Buttslut Era and her fans are absolutely loving that fantasy experience!
Shae talks about the way that she intentionally cultivates fantasy experiences while her customers are visiting her cam room. She used to do things like play the type of metal music she liked and it brought people who wanted to act like it was a dating site and not a cam site. So to be respected at her job, she tweaked her environment carefully over her career and now builds a booty slut-tastic fantasy for the customers to easily plug into via a private or exclusive room.
You might wonder what types of fantasies she cultivates. I certainly did. On top of her gothic bimbocore, her customers are getting her into homewrecking. I loved hearing about her take on it because it’s completely different from how I do it! “Your dumb bitch girlfriend doesn’t take it up the ass!” she exclaimed as an example which had me giggling in surprise.
I had to be honest, those types of private shows sounded like a lot of work! I asked her what her favorite type of show is and her eyes lit up. Some of her favorite shows are ones that have extra long moments where she can show off her body and have these extended, squirting O’s. She told me about some regulars who come to her for that specifically and a grin creeped onto her lips when she started describing it with words like “raunchy, steamy, private, secret, sexy, tryst kinda deal”.
A naughty grin broke out across my face as well, and I blushed. I could get on board with that! So with all that in mind then, what would be the very best day of Shae Wednesday? “Come in and have a private with 3 customers, doing anal, to start. That would be sick. And then a little bit of a break, little bit of time to scroll the twitter feed, and then have a regular come through with a block session and hang out with them for 30 minutes... and then repeat the first half of my day for the rest of my shift. Right up to 3 hours and 51 minutes. Just milk that shit all the way to the end.”
No wonder she loves her job so much! She sounds like she is having so much fun each day! So I finally asked, what does it truly take to be a goth bimbo slut? “Just a willingness to be slutty and open. Willingness to talk about things. I hate to use the terminology word salad but I do a lot of that but with sex words. You kinda have to ramble, I guess. Just like Dumb & Slutty. Dumb & Slutty is how I would put it,” Shae chuckled, the sage slut. I scribbled Dumb & Slutty on a notepad and underlined it thrice.
Shae regularly posts on sites like OnlyFans as well but it’s clear her absolute favorite part of the day is getting down and dirty in front of that camera on Streamate. She’s live on cam for 16-20 hours a week! And then she will do additional admin hours off camera for filming and uploading, organizing files, brainstorming new ideas, etc. She has to manage her social media, do web design, update profiles, write her erotica, and more, all on top of her regular camming. And for all this, she does adequate research! Some of which can be safety research about anal play or body safe lubricants, while other research might be about industry-specific trends and niche news.
Writing, social media management, editing and uploading, filming, file organization… Most, if not all, of these are their own departments that Shae could have or has in the past gotten paid for, and verbally abused for, by boomer bosses in the past. Now she makes her own hours, her own content, decides the ethics and morals she presents, and can actually take a day off when she needs to go to the doctor. “Before I started doing this I was in project management roles. I was in software roles. I was in relatively high paying roles in tech before this. But every day I’d drive to work and I’d think to myself ‘if I got in a car accident right now, I wouldn't have to fuckin go to work’ and that's how bad I didn't want to be there. People can say as much as they say about what we do and how degrading it is and how awful it must be for our self-esteem and our psyches and whatnot, and how only broken people go into this business. But at the end of the day, I'm happier doing what I do now than I was sitting behind a desk doing three people's jobs for them, slaving away 40 hours a week with no work-life balance. It's really a no-brainer. I really wish I did it a long time ago.”
Camming brought autonomy and freedom to Shae Wednesday and gave her the ability to dare to dream bigger than she’s ever been, and now she’s a high earner in TreasureCams studio, loving her job!
Find Shae Wednesday:
https://x.com/ShaeWednesday
Definitions:
Bimbo: an attractive but presumably unintelligent or frivolous young woman.
Bimbocore: the aesthetic of young, presumably unintelligent or carefree and frivolous women
Block session: a customer can purchase a “block” of time instead of minute by minute.
Buttslut: a sexually loose woman who likes anal sex
-core(suffix): popularized by “cottagecore” in the 2020s, “core” on the end of words describes an aesthetic of the preceding word. Cottagecore means the aesthetic of those who live in outdoorsy cottages. Slutcore means the aesthetic of those who are sexually free.
Dom: dominant in a kink scene
Homewrecking: a kinky scenario in which one party is tempted out of/to break their commitment
subby: submissive in a kink scene