The second you see Crystal Jackson — aka Mrs. Poindexter — you can tell she’s the embodiment of a real, bona fide MILF. Petite, brunette and armed with a killer smile, the 44-year-old is as approachable as she is sexy, a down-to-earth mother of three who looks just as good in a jeans and T-shirt as she does in lingerie. That’s probably why she makes an average of $300,000 a month on OnlyFans, ranking in the top .01 percent of creators.
But this elite status wasn’t always a given for Crystal and her husband of 14 years, Chris. “We were in divorce court at one point,” she tells me, revealing that Chris’ brief struggle with addiction almost ended their marriage. At the same time, she went through early menopause, leaving her feeling decidedly unsexy and disconnected from her body. She even underwent “mommy makeover” surgery in the hopes that it would help, but despite a breast augmentation, liposuction and tummy tuck, she still lacked the confidence around sexuality she once had.
“Chris was always asking me what my fantasies were and what I enjoyed about sex,” she tells me. “And even though we had this great relationship, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ That was just something I wasn’t comfortable sharing. I was really closed off about it.”
Then, on Labor Day weekend in 2019, Chris took a simple photo of Crystal in a bikini at Lake Tahoe and asked if he could upload it to a subreddit devoted to pretty moms. She agreed and quickly developed a fan base. As the two sat together on the couch examining the huge number of upvotes her picture had received, she turned to Chris and asked, “Do you think we could get paid for this?” Curious, Chris asked other redditors for advice and found that the two could apply their shared entrepreneurial backgrounds to a (very) successful OnlyFans page.
Since then, Crystal has skyrocketed to the top of the platform with Chris by her side. And despite major obstacles like their children being kicked out of Catholic school because of her photos and having to navigate their newfound presence in the public eye, the experience has strengthened their bond in ways neither of them expected. “Our marriage was strong beforehand, but given that solid footing, OnlyFans has opened up new vistas of fun and excitement in a physical sense,” says Crystal. “I’m more open sexually and physically.” At the same time, going through all the changes OnlyFans has brought has taught them to rely on each other in new ways.
Below, they share some advice any couple can use to keep their marriage connected and spicy, world-class OnlyFans or not.
Work on a Project Together
Though Crystal’s OnlyFans features just herself and the occasional other woman, the experience of maintaining the account is a mutual project between her and Chris. He takes and edits the photos, coordinates marketing and helps curate the imagery and poses that customers will like best. Crystal writes fantasy stories to accompany the photos as captions and spends a great deal of time responding to fans (her interactivity is a big reason her page is so popular).
More than just a bonding activity, the practice has further helped Crystal understand what she finds sexy — not just about herself, but about sex in general. “It wasn’t until OnlyFans and the realization of the raw nature of my fans’ fantasy worlds that I became comfortable revealing my own fantasies to my husband,” she says.
With their outrageous success and its numerous side effects (namely, the way it’s impacted their children’s education), it would be reasonable for the venture to have become stressful. But actually, working together has brought them closer. Despite the challenges, they’re able to look at it as an exciting project, one that takes work but offers big rewards.
Stay Curious and Focus on Adventure
Speaking of stress and stressors, Chris and Crystal’s attitude toward change and new experiences allows them to view these challenges as something interesting, fun and adventurous. “Being in the public eye is a new kind of stress,” says Chris. “It’s kind of curious to us, though, too. We’re curious people.”
Work on Being Yourself, Not Being Perfect
Prior to that fateful Reddit post, Crystal didn’t own lingerie. But with the explosive popularity of her OnlyFans (she received several hundred sign-ups in just a matter of days), she felt encouraged to expand both her wardrobe and her horizons.
What Crystal quickly learned, however, is that most of her fans aren’t in it for the lingerie — to them, the hottest thing about her is her being herself. In fact, the photos where she looks more natural always perform better than the ones where her imperfections are hidden or she looks more polished (in fact, Crystal says her default mode is jeans, a flannel and some sort of hunting or trucking gear).
Maybe Don’t Start an OnlyFans?
Even though Chris and Crystal have found success on OnlyFans, they don’t credit it with their relationship success, and they don’t recommend it to everyone, either. “Often, our relationship is shorthanded like this: ‘They had marriage problems, she joined OnlyFans, their marriage problems were cured!’” says Crystal. “It’s somewhat idiotic to think that would ever work that way. I hate that that message may get out there, because in truth, OnlyFans is more likely to break or destroy a marriage than it is to fix anything. We’ve seen this happen.”
Instead, they acknowledge that becoming one of the most successful models on OnlyFans is a powerful way of transforming one’s self confidence, and that it’s easier to enjoy a project together when you’re doing well with it. But at the end of the day, Chris and Crystal’s marital success is based on more than that — it’s their shared ability to communicate and navigate through new obstacles. The role of Mrs. Poindexter just happens to be a fun and profitable way of doing so.
“We still have a lot of fun with it,” says Crystal. “That was our overall goal, just to put that spice back in our marriage. Now I can tell him, ‘Hey, these are the things I want sexually.’ The money’s nice, but if we’re not having fun doing this, we’re going to have problems. It’s not worth it.”
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
