Jade, an anonymous blonde model from L.A., is pouring flour into a baking bowl. She is naked, standing in a clean, plant-filled kitchen, with her face cropped out of the shot. In the background, soft jazz plays. “Today, we’re making chocolate espresso cookies,” says an off-camera narrator, with a light Valley Girl accent.
Jade adds some cocoa powder to her flour and begins to stir. The camera wanders casually past her nipples, vulva and immaculate white acrylics before zooming into her mixing bowl. “These cookies are so tasty,” the narrator adds. “I bet you won’t be able to eat just one.”
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This seven-minute clip is one of hundreds that are now available to view on the Naked Bakers website, as well as on YouTube and OnlyFans. As the name implies, the company specializes in creating cookery videos, all which are hosted exclusively by naked women. The recipes on offer are diverse, straightforward and indulgent; currently, there are clips about BBQ chicken thighs, garlic mashed potatoes, pad thai and mac and cheese, among others. For sweet-toothed fans, there are videos on strawberry shortcakes, THC chocolate bars and peanut butter-cup cheesecake (as well as plenty of cookie options).
In addition to classic on-demand video content, there’s also a weekly live-streaming event on the Naked Bakers site, which sees a group of models (there are currently around 25 on staff, some of whom also show their faces) try out a new recipe on camera. And while it’s possible to follow along, the chefs get distracted easily — recent behind-the-scenes footage shows them slapping each other’s boobs with kitchen utensils, deep-throating cucumbers and making nude human pyramids to the soundtrack of Sean Paul. Of course, it’s not all fun and games: On YouTube, the Naked Bakers output is tamer, more practical, with easy-to-follow — and suitable for work — clips about the best ways to line a cake tin.
But despite its prolific output, Naked Bakers isn’t powered by an amply-funded production house. Instead, there’s just one woman at the helm — an enigmatic 32-year-old known only as “NB.” The L.A.-based producer founded Naked Bakers back in 2017, after being laid off from an assistant job in television. A lover of cookery shows, she decided to start filming her own — entirely naked, with her face out of shot — on her iPhone camera.
“I always had a dream of having my own cookery show, and I’ve always been passionate about cooking,” NB tells me over Zoom audio. Her professionalism is audible in the way she speaks: Her voice is calm and flat, her phrasing concise and to-the-point. “For me, adding nudity to cooking just seemed normal. And honestly, you know, sex sells. I like cooking, and I like being naked. Plus, there was no other naked cooking show out there. I thought, ‘If I don’t start this now, I’m going to look back and wonder what could have been.’”
Channels like these are part of a wider trend in online sex work that has emerged in recent years, which sees creators employing increasingly unusual gimmicks in order to stand out on mobbed sites like OnlyFans, which has seen a 75 percent increase in model sign-ups since the pandemic began in March. The plus side of this has been an increasing normalization of both nudity and sex work, but as the stigma slowly shifts, so too does the way we do business. If you can use your body to boost your brand — even if it’s completely unrelated to what you’re selling — why wouldn’t you?
At the start, though, money was tight. NB was relying on unemployment checks and was forced to crowdfund everything — utensils, media equipment, even the basic ingredients — on Patreon. Fortunately, the support was ready and waiting for her: Within weeks, she’d carved out a community of eager viewers who were happy to fund her dream in any way necessary. Fast-forward three years and Naked Bakers now has close to 1,800 Patreon subscribers (who pay between $10 and $50 a month), as well as over half a million YouTube followers. Earlier this year, she also launched an extremely popular OnlyFans account, which shares mostly free content to increase the company’s online presence.
NB tells me that her fanbase is mostly straight men, who are drawn in — at least initially — by the nudity. A scroll through her social media confirms this, with hundreds of affirming comments coming from all over the world, in a variety of different languages. Sometimes they’re just a bunch of fawning emojis (flame, rose, heart eyes), but mostly, they’re words of adulation. “This is exactly the channel I was looking for all my life,” writes one YouTube viewer. “We all know we ain’t here for the baking,” writes another.
But according to NB, the recipes are as popular as the nudity. “I always take my recipes seriously,” she says. “I always test them multiple times. I never want to put a recipe out there that I wouldn’t enjoy myself.” Although she admits that she never learned to cook professionally — “I feel like I probably learned how to cook from watching the Food Network” — she assures me that nudity isn’t the only reason people are tuning in. Some really are just trying the food. “In the beginning, people are like, ‘Oh my god, boobs, this is amazing!’” she says. “But once they start watching, they think, ‘Oh wow, this is a really great recipe. I want to make this.’”
NB also ensures that all dishes featured are nude-proof, should you want to go bare at home: “I had to think about recipes that you could make naked, because certain things — like sauteed vegetables — wouldn’t be great to do naked at all. Anything that splatters isn’t good.”
Even so, NB has far bigger ambitions than cookery. Her long-term plan is to encompass lifestyle content in a broader way, and on the Naked Bakers site there are plenty of videos that have nothing to do with cooking or baking. Over the last year, there’s been knitting, yoga, live playthroughs of Animal Crossing, toenail painting, window cleaning, kayaking and even a video of a model “getting settled” into an Airbnb. All of it, naturally, involves little to no clothing. “Naked Bakers has always been about casual nudity,” NB explains. “It’s about authentic nudity, and doing the normal stuff that everyone does, naked.”
And while the majority — though certainly not all — of the Naked Bakers models are slim, white and youthful, NB makes clear that she wants as much diversity as possible, both now and in the future. For her, the only real requirement for a Naked Bakers host is that they’re “passionate,” “authentic” and “enjoy cooking.” “There’s sort of an open-door policy, where we’re happy for people to come hang out and make content,” NB says. “I’ve always wanted to turn Naked Bakers into a brand like Playboy. I want to keep working with other people, and let other content creators make content for the brand, so it’s not just me anymore.”
The only way to do that, she says, is to keep her supporters happy. In fact, when our call ends, she emails me with a note to stress her gratitude to them as loudly and clearly as possible. Her Patreon fans are the reason Naked Bakers exists, and why it has so far managed to survive without yet having any ad revenue or sponsors. NB hopes that they will continue to support the brand as it expands — especially as it makes its more ambitious pivot to lifestyle content writ large. It’s a lofty goal, but one she’s keeping a steady focus on. “[I want the Naked Bakers to be] so much bigger than me,” she says, calmly. “I just want to keep growing it as much as I can.”
Dominique Sisley
Dominique Sisley is a London-based journalist who writes a lot about sex, relationships, and how strange humans are. She requires regular watering and withers in direct sun.
