19 Hours With StripTok's Kayla Ann

Kayla Ann decided at 15 years old that she wanted to be a stripper. “I was always the flirty girl in high school, and I liked big heels and it just made sense,” she recalls. She started pole-dancing classes at 16, then got her dancing license in California the day after her 18th birthday. “I just loved it,” she says now, years later. “I couldn’t go back to a normal 9-to-5 after that.”

Since then, she has parlayed her love for performing into a lucrative social media career, including a large following on TikTok and a thriving business on OnlyFans. Kayla Ann (who goes by her first and middle name online for safety reasons) started her first TikTok account, @kayla_ann_xoxo, during the spring of 2020, after her income as a dancer was cut off due to pandemic lockdowns. She quickly learned that talking about stripping was a reliable way to build a following. (The #striptok hashtag, where many dancers share glimpses into their daily lives, has collected over 2 billion views on the app.) She built up that account to 350,000 followers, but it was taken down in March 2022 for “community guideline violations” — something that’s happened to her several times. Since then, she’s been working off her other account, @kayla.ann.xoxo, where she has brought her following from 7,000 to over 40,000 in a matter of weeks.

Kayla Ann, who now lives in South Carolina, describes her two niches on TikTok as “being gay and stripping” — some of her most-watched videos include cheeky jokes about dancing for men even though she’s only attracted to women. She’s been dating her girlfriend, Andi (who makes regular appearances in her videos), since November, and now they both do social media full-time. “She does a lot of my filming for me and a lot of the marketing work,” Kayla Ann says. She uses TikTok for visibility, hoping to direct people to subscribe to her OnlyFans, where she makes an average of $7,000 per week, depending on how well her daily pay-per-view videos sell. “When I saw how much I could make [on OnlyFans], I said, ‘I’m never losing this,’” she says.

Though Kayla Ann has cut back on stripping since her social media career took off, she still goes into the club around twice a week and shares anecdotes with her followers. Below, she walks us through a busy day of content creation followed by a night at the club.

Saturday, March 5

8 a.m. I was supposed to get up at 7 a.m. because of my busy schedule today, but Andi and I went on a date to see the musical Guys and Dolls last night and ended up seeing some of my friends at a bar afterward. Somehow, us planning to be home and in bed by 10 p.m. turned into us being the last people at the bar at 2 a.m. We didn’t set any alarms, so I’m glad I still woke up pretty early. I’m super hungover, so I pop four Tylenol.

8:15 a.m. Every single morning I go on TikTok for about 30 minutes and respond to comments and interact with people. I check the trending audios and hashtags for the day. I check that everything I scheduled to post on OnlyFans is posted, and I check to see how much money I made on OnlyFans when I was sleeping. I start planning some videos in my head and save similar videos to my favorites if I want to make them later. Finally, I get up and shower.

9 a.m. My girlfriend and I go to Starbucks every morning — it’s an issue. I get two chocolate croissants and a peppermint hot cocoa, then I go home and start getting ready for the day. I go live on my TikTok and do my makeup, and Andi is there, too. We talk about our night out last night and our upcoming travels.

10 a.m. We go to the gym and do back, biceps, and 30 minutes of cardio. Then we go to the tanning salon because it is not sunny enough in South Carolina yet to get a California tan.

11:30 a.m. Andi takes me on a lunch date to get hibachi. It’s a gorgeous day outside, so we bring our calendar and schedule YouTube and OnlyFans content for the month of April. We usually do one huge filming day for OnlyFans every two weeks, then save one day a week to film special request videos. For TikTok, I come up with videos on the fly to take advantage of what’s trending. We also make sure to schedule time for us. It’s hard, when you’re recording everything, to find those moments that are just yours.

12 p.m. I post a TikTok video about my type, which my girlfriend is in. I used to post four TikTok videos a day, but now I’m trying to do five. I usually post at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m., and 7 p.m., then I’ve been adding the last one at 9 p.m. When my main TikTok account gets banned for “multiple community guideline violations,” I usually appeal it and get it reinstated. Sometimes when you have a big following, people who don’t like you will mass report you, then it takes a few days for me to get the ban reviewed and get my account back up. During that time, I work off my other account, @kayla.ann.xoxo.

1 p.m. I go to my floor work dance class at a local studio with my favorite instructor. Floor work is basically the off-the-pole, sexy, slow dancing style. I have a membership there so I can go to unlimited classes, and I try to go as often as I can. I won’t even want to go dance at the club if I haven’t learned a new trick in a while because I feel like I won’t have anything new and shiny to show.

2 p.m. I come home and start the bulk of my social media work for the day. The first thing I do is check OnlyFans messages to see if people requested anything off my menu. I respond to the people who just want to tell me “hi” every single day and those who are like, “I want to worship you and your girlfriend,” or “I want you and your girlfriend to worship me.” Then I go to film special requests.

3 p.m. Today, I have a 10-minute point-of-view blow job that I film as a special request. I also have a girl who wants me to make her a birthday video in red lingerie, masturbating inside the tub with lots of bubbles. Then I start on my solo videos, which I offer on my OnlyFans menu: masturbating, using different toys, shower videos, and role-play.

3:30 p.m. I post a TikTok about my ex cheating. Everyone is loving that I’m talking about my ex on TikTok, and it seems like everyone has an opinion about it. Just let me post my stuff!

4 p.m. I start filming some makeout videos with my girlfriend for OnlyFans. We’re doing simple joint content today because we already filmed our sex tapes and bigger videos earlier in the week. I post content on my OnlyFans main feed every day, and then add videos with a range from $10 to $200 that people can buy. We need some less expensive video options in the mix, so we make some of those.

5 p.m. I’m filming new content for TikTok. I scroll through my “For You” page to find ideas, and my girlfriend jumps in with me for some of them.

6 p.m. I edit and schedule content. With TikTok, I edit as I go, but with OnlyFans, I film all my content for the day and then go back and edit it. Uploading videos and sending them out to people takes forever, especially when you’re dealing with 20- or 30-minute videos. That’s always a nightmare.

7 p.m. I post another TikTok before Andi and I go live on OnlyFans for an hour-and-a-half. We cook steak and potatoes for dinner, and when people tip us, we take each other’s clothes off. Usually if we hit $500 on tips on our OnlyFans Live, we’ll do a sex scene for everyone watching. Tonight we made $640, so we did a short sex tape for viewers.

8 p.m. I post a thirst trap video to TikTok, then my girlfriend takes me to the club.

9 p.m. I get to the club and pay my $30 house fee. Since it’s a Saturday night and 9 p.m. is the latest dancers can show up, it’s really busy in the back by this time. I spend about an hour getting ready and talking to the girls there. One of my best friends, Willow, is there, so we hang out a bit and fill each other in on all the tea in our lives.

10 p.m. I finally get on the floor and go into a private room with a couple in their mid-50s for 30 minutes. They’re in town from Boston for a wedding. I show her some moves to do on her husband, and then dance for them. They pay me $500 for the 30-minute room. Immediately after I leave, a guy comes up to me and says he wants to dance. I have a two-dance minimum for $60, so that’s what we do.

11 p.m. I dance on stage and get $128 in tips. There are definitely nights when I’m exhausted and tired and don’t want to go on stage, and then I have busy nights where there’s a really lively crowd, or people are throwing money, or I went to dance class beforehand (like today) and it’s really fun. At this club, we don’t get to pick our songs — we give the DJ artists and genres we like, so I usually dance pop and R&B to artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, and Ciara. Then I do three dances with one guy for $100, and five dances with another for $160.

12 a.m. Next, I do a skybox with a regular for an hour for $800. The skybox is a special upstairs room that overlooks the rest of the club and has champagne service. This guy usually comes in twice a week and will spend $400 to $1,000 at a time. Tonight he has me dance for the first 30 minutes, then we just talk and cuddle for the rest of the hour. A lot of regulars are like that — they want to give you gifts, talk to you, and build a relationship with you. It’s the guys who just want to come in for one dance that are sometimes super rude. They’ll come into the club asking to take you home, touching you, and being pushy. As a dancer, you don’t want to say no until you’ve made as much money as you can — if you say no, the guy might get upset and not want to spend money because he knows he won’t get whatever he wants. It’s hard to put up a boundary, and sometimes guys will keep trying even after you say no. It’s a balance you have to navigate.

1 a.m. I dance on stage again and get $70. Then my girlfriend comes into the club, and since I’ve already made a decent amount of money, I take her to the back for free lap dances for the rest of the night.

2 a.m. I count my money, change clothes, and tip out the DJ and security, giving them $100 each. I make $1,618 from dancing tonight, after those tips. Add $640 from the OnlyFans Live earlier, and $1,000 from OnlyFans subscriptions and videos, and my total profit for the day is $3,258. That’s typical for a Saturday night at the club, but I don’t always pack my social media work and dancing into the same day like this. Seeing this total almost makes me want to start doing these long days more!

3 a.m. I get home, take off my makeup, shower, and immediately go to bed. I have to shower to get the smoke off from the club, but on nights like this, I can barely make it through the shower because I’m just exhausted. With content creation, the work never stops — I post videos seven days a week. Once I’m done with work for the day, I never want to scroll through Instagram or be on my phone for fun because I’ve been scrolling all day. I also have to sleep and have my own life at some point.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.