Jess Davies, now 27, looks back at a stormy course that’s taken her from a regular old 15-year-old schoolgirl to where she stands today. As a teen, her Nokia phone constantly vibrated to life with new messages. This was just the start of her complex relationship with digital media and self-perception. Nowadays, she writes about her experiences in the glamour model business. At the same time, she shares painful realities of online exploitation that have dramatically impacted her life.
As soon as she turned 18, Jess leapt into the competitive world of glamour modelling for lads’ mags. During this entire period, she was a full-time student at university. As a model, she had firsthand experience with the beauty and the danger involved in being outspoken. It wasn’t until she turned 27 that the real implications of her past choices started to play out. In just one week, seven different men reached out to her. Each one alleged that they had been defrauded or catfished by fraudulent accounts that used her photos without her knowledge.
The roots of Jess’s fight lie in a traumatic experience when she was a teenager living in Aberystwyth, Wales. She expressed her feelings to a boy she felt she could trust, sending him a picture of herself in her underwear. In one split-second slip of judgment, everything went terribly wrong. That image quickly circulated through her school and soon across all of their tiny hometown. Within a month, her picture was on the cover of the summer edition of Nuts magazine. It objectified her body and turned her into a global sex symbol within one night.
“I remember the racing thoughts, the instant nausea, the hairs prickling up on my legs, the sweaty palms after the incident,” Jess recalls. The experience left her with deep psychological wounds. This left her as the first person in her community to endure such a brutal violation of privacy. With no role model to help her navigate this experience, Jess was lonely and embarrassed.
Her experience is a sad and clear example of how Jess has had to deal with the consequences of her modeling career, the exploitation that followed. “Every time I was taken advantage of, I kind of accepted it,” she admits. She often found herself thinking, “Oh well, you’ve opened yourself up to this. What did you expect?” This perspective led to an extended ordeal with internalized shame that I’d spend years working to reverse.
The modeling agency she signed up with insisted on frequent selfies, leading her to have an even more twisted relationship with self-image and consent. Jess has already made some pretty significant strides in redirecting the blame onto the agency. She admits that the lasting repercussions continue to affect every aspect of her daily life.
Jess points to major advancements for the industry after decades of gross mistreatment. Investigations uncovered how platforms, including Pornhub, were promoting child abuse images. In response, large banking corporations such as Mastercard and Visa terminated their agreements with the site, forcing it to remove 80% of its content. This change reflects a deeper understanding of the need for accountability in digital spaces.
Reflecting on the current climate of online exploitation, Jess cautions against the multitude of forums that promote this kind of behavior. “These are very sophisticated forums with millions of participants on sites that are very common and popular and mainstream like Reddit, like Discord, like 4chan,” she describes. She points out that one man even risked sharing inappropriate images of his friend’s wife and daughter on such platforms.
Even after all she has gone through, Jess wants to bring awareness to all of this. “I wanted to show the reality of what men are doing,” she says. She doesn’t want you to think all men do this. She’s adamant that this impacts more than just a handful of weirdos hanging out on the dark web.
The emotional toll of these experiences has carried over into her life outside of academia as well. “I don’t date, like, at all,” Jess says, bluntly. She said, “It’s a running joke to my friends but it’s done it for me.” The betrayal and exploitation she experienced has made it difficult for her to even think about trusting another person.
• “I think part of me thought that this is just the way things are,” she confesses. That belief led her to be gun shy in future relationships. She questions how you’re supposed to rebuild trust once people have had their trust so terribly betrayed.
Though Jess can’t catch a break, her spirit remains strong. Through her art, she passionately advocates for a culture change about consent and accountability in sharing images. She rightly argues that the burden should fall on the party that has taken advantage of others.
I’ve worked my ass off campaigning through TV, podcasts, and social media, Jess claims. Even with that good faith effort, no one has contacted me to formally apologize for using my likeness without my permission. Not the man who took my naked picture without my permission while I was asleep in bed. Nobody from that adult football squad at the age of 15. Not the people who hosted my website or spread my image or created the fake profiles. I’m not saying: ‘Lock them up and throw away the key,’ but there should be some accountability.
Jess Davies’ story serves as a poignant reminder of the ongoing struggles individuals face in an age where digital exploitation can occur with alarming ease. As she continues down her path, she wants help bring other women along with her and inspire them. Most of all, she wants people to learn the importance of consent and accountability in our new digital universe.