Isa Mazzei recounts her experience as a sex worker for the cam industry. She is from Colorado, and that’s where she worked from. Her family was a reasonably well off since her parents had professional jobs. Family life was not particularly happy, with her parents hardly communicating with each other, and her mother having issues with alcohol. Mazzei had sex with a lot of boys in high school and was openly sexual — she had a reputation for taking off her clothes at parties. She dated plenty in college too, at UC Berkeley, but none of it was particularly serious. 

After college, Mazzei returned to Boulder. In her early twenties, she was drinking too much and still not establishing any long term relationships. She was becoming less comfortable with sex was also self-harming. She started spending time at strip clubs and getting interested in sugar-daddy services. She set herself up with one, and began a relationship with a middle aged man, Alex. He set her up in an apartment he paid for, and he gave her money. She had sex with him, and found that she was able to do that with no problem. It was no worse than having sex with her dates, and she enjoyed his company. It is Alex who introduces Mazzei to the world of sex cams. 

Mazzei became fascinated by cam girls she found online and spent many hours watching them and their interaction with their viewers. She also would sometimes pay to chat with them herself. She set up her own account and kitted her place out so it was ready to use, and started her first sessions, which didn’t go so well. But she learned how to promote herself and soon gained followers. Some followers helped teach her how to become popular and make money. Her shows got increasingly more dramatic and she gained many devoted followers. Her ranking on the cam site went up and she made a lot of money. 

Once the book gets to Mazzei’s camming life, a lot of it consists in the online message conversations on her page. She worries when videos of her appear on a porn site, and she has some creepy followers who she does not feel comfortable about. She allows one of her fans to visit her, which she immediately regrets. She does a show with another cam girl, which goes OK but is a strange interaction. She goes to a cam site industry convention, and that feels bizarre. But she is also thrilled by the success of her site and is driven to more extreme activities to gain attention. 

The narrative heads towards crisis as Mazzei’s inner conflict grows. She finds what she is doing ever more disturbing and the enjoyment she got out of it at first starts to disappear. She also tries to have relationships with men but finds sex unpleasant. But she also describes her sex work as a kind of therapy for her, helping her work through her feelings. She stops eventually. We don’t hear much about her life now, but the implication is that she is doing better than she was back then. She co-wrote a screenplay for a 2018 movie, Cam, which actually got made, which indicates her persistence. And she also wrote this memoir. 

Cam Girl does not have any great insights into sexuality and the modern sex industry, but it is one person’s experience. Given how cams play a role in the life of many young people these days, it could be a useful perspective. She narrates the audiobook herself, which makes the listening experience more personal. 

Christian Perring is editor of Metapsychology. He lives in Suffolk County of Long Island, NY. He is Full Adjunct Professor at St John’s University, Vice President of AAPP and is an APPA Certified Philosophical Counselor.

Categories: Memoirs, Sexuality

Keywords: camming, sex industry, memoir