Doxy Magazine: "It feels really important to me to give sex workers a voice"

Welcome to SHAGGERS, a ~semi-regular~ interview series speaking to creative practitioners expanding sexual culture.

I first came across Doxy Magazine in MagCulture: Clerkenwell’s beacon of print magazines and ephemera. Alongside the splashy fashion titles and spunky independent publications, there is a corner dedicated to all things sex positivity. Next to copies of The Erotic Review and AFM, names I was already familiar with, was the second edition of Doxy Magazine.

On the cover was none other than Stella Barey — an OF creator whose confessional TikTok style has made her a Gen Z darling — and inside were features with The Stroll director Kristen Lovell (who features on an alternative cover for the issue) and Diney of Stripper News. Bold, opinionated, and centred entirely on the experiences and perspectives of sex workers, I knew I had to buy a copy. After taking it home, I poured over the words and visuals, cover to cover.

Naturally, I knew I had to speak to the team behind Doxy Magazine: creative director/editor Celina Reboyras and designer Maxine Cahill. Some Googling and I discovered they both hailed from South Florida, that the duo met in 2022 through mutual friends in NYC, and that they have since sparked up a collaborative, creative partnership across two issues, with a third in the pipeline.

So, earlier this month, I called up Celina and Maxine to discuss the community which has sprung up around their work and their frustration with mainstream sex worker representation. I was struck by the care and love that goes into the magazine, which I consider to be one of the most exciting independent projects publishing today.

Celina: It’s literally just me and Maxine. I do, all the interviews and writing. She’s the brains behind all the design and lays out the whole mag. Sometimes when I’m stumped for ideas, when I’m like, ‘I don’t know how to design this merch thing’, her big brain comes to the rescue.

Maxine: I would say Celina is the Creative Director and, in some ways, I sit in that role too. It’s very collaborative. It’s always a conversation between me and Celina.

“There’s so much dialogue about sex workers from people who aren’t sex workers” - Maxine Cahill

Celina: I just really wanted a community, for this part of my world. 2026 makes it a decade that I’ve been a sex worker now. All of my best friends are great people, but they aren’t sex workers, so they don’t know what it’s like. If you have a tough day at work and you want to vent about it to your friend, she won’t understand the dynamics of a Miami strip club that is open until 8am if she works behind a desk. I’ve also always been really big on wanting to advocate for sex workers, having faced a large degree of stigma, from when I was like 20. I’ve always wanted to make art around sex work.

Maxine: When I first met Celina, and she was explaining this idea, something that really stood out to me, and that I wanted to be a part of, was the fact that there’s so much dialogue about sex workers from people who aren’t sex workers. We’re all hearing the outside perspective, what people think is going on, their opinions on something they have no experience in. Celina wanted to involve the voices of actual people who have lived experience in the industry, which is so much more valuable.

Celina: Having started stripping in 2016, I feel like the narrative around sex work in the last decade has changed so much. Some of it has been positive but there’s been a lot of pushback as well. In 2016, sex work was not cool. I feel like the stigma was a lot more prevalent and a lot harsher. I had an ex boyfriend who was constantly shaming me. My friends, as supportive as they wanted to be, were very confused. Cardi B wasn’t Cardi B yet, you know?

Celina: It’s changed a lot. Some of it’s for the better, some of it not so much. When it comes to OnlyFans, it almost feels like it’s selling younger people this like fantasy of sex work, where you can just become a sex worker tomorrow and become a millionaire. It kind of also dumbs us down, it’s like, ‘Do you really think it’s just that easy?’ I’ve worked in every avenue of sex work, and I think the hardest one was OnlyFans. It took so much energy being a dancer, I used to climb to the top of a two-storey pole. But I would rather exert energy in a physical way than feel like I need to constantly be on a laptop or a phone, worried about marketing and running a business.

Now, we’re seeing sex work become a bit more normalised, but [the mainstream media] is making a mockery of it. Especially when these stories are being told by a cis, straight, white man who’s never been a sex worker.

“Every woman I’ve met along the way, making Doxy, has been incredible” - Celina Reboyras

Celina: It actually came about in a funny way. When I wanted to start this magazine, I initially wanted to name it Screw Magazine, and I wanted the ‘S’ to be a $ sign. Then, I was talking to my friend Ambrose who runs a hardcore punk fanzine out of DC. I was talking to him, and I was like, ‘Dude, I just found out that Screw Magazine has already existed in the past, and apparently it was run by some creep’. I didn’t want my magazine to be conflated with that, so I needed a new name.

Ambrose and I were on FaceTime, trying to come up with something. We were looking up slang terms from other countries that had to do with sex work. We both, at the same time, came across ‘doxy’ on our search. It’s a really cool-sounding word, and it apparently means escort, and was primarily used in the UK in the 80s. I would have loved the UK in the 80s, it sounded really sick, I wish I was alive for that. But a lot of people think we called the magazine Doxy, short for doxycycline.

Celina: Yeah, antibiotics. It’s also really funny that people think that. I feel like a chlamydia warrior. I’ve had it so many times. I hate doxycycline, it’s like the worst medication ever, but I was like, okay, that’s really funny.

Celina: I think it all goes back to taking back narrative control. It’s straight, cis, heterosexual men who tend to be the ones who produce these stories. They tend to always have the largest platforms. Like, Euphoria, how many millions of people are tuning into that every Sunday? This is what people are seeing about sex workers. I can tell Sam Levinson did not have a single sex worker consultant on site, you know. It just feels really important to me to give sex workers a voice.

I always tell the girls I interview that anything they don’t want me to include, I will make sure not to include. I send them the final draft of the transcribed interview so they can look over it and ask to remove anything that makes them uncomfortable. It’s their story, and I want them to feel like we’re putting it out there in the right light. That feels really important to me. Every woman I’ve met along the way, making Doxy, has been incredible.

Celina: What really bothers me is the inaccuracy of a lot of things, because it it ultimately contributes to painting sex work in a different light. For example, when it comes to Euphoria, there’s no way in Hell that Cassie could just flirt with some guy at a party, appear in his video, and then get 50,000 subscribers. That doesn’t happen.

Then, there’s the club in the show. I’ve danced in Miami, I’ve danced in Texas, I’ve danced in Vegas, New York, California. I’ve never been to a club where the girls that are getting hired are fucking the manager. I’m like, are these girls being trafficked? I was just deeply confused. I feel like it just tells everything so wrong, and it pisses me off. We’re constantly combating such a negative in our day to day lives, we don’t need [misrepresentation] adding to it. I hate the way shows like these treat sex workers as very disposable characters. Like that girl Angel, I really loved her character. But in the second episode of Euphoria, she just, what, disappears? Is she gone now? Is she dead?

Celina: I love that it’s literally just me and Maxine. At times it’s been stressful and overwhelming but I really love that it’s just us two. A lot of people think of Doxy, and think it’s so cool and professional, and are surprised when they find out it’s just two people. I think that shock factor is always really cool, I take it as a compliment.

Maxine: My favourite thing about Doxy is the POV that we always keep in mind of literally every word that goes into it is from a sex worker’s perspective. There’s no one in there, talking about sex work as an outsider. That’s the main significance, normalising this stuff and teaching people about it in a way that’s not so taboo.

Celina: When it comes to social media these days, sometimes I’m scared to even type out the word ‘fuck’ on a Story on my Close Friends, in case the AI algorithms are going to pick it up and flag my account. It feels nice to just say anything we want with Doxy. We could interview a girl who’s telling us a crazy, sexual, funny story and we can fully put it out there, every word.

Celina: Last issue, I loved talking with Luna [Sofia Miranda] who was in Anora, about her experience. I think my ultimate favourite, though, might have been Stella [Barey]’s interview. I’ve grown to connect with her so much, I adore her, and she is just so for the girls, for the sex workers.

It was so cool that we got the first interview on Hidden, which is Stella’s sex worker-run OnlyFans. The Hidden ethos, the way that me and Stella operate, and what we believe in, are so aligned. It’s so incredible and so surreal, because when I first moved to New York, Stella’s TikTok’s were always popping up on my feed. I was obsessed with this girl, she was so cool, and just so effortlessly herself, like, talking about anal.

“I hate the way mainstream shows treat sex workers as very disposable characters” - Celina Reboyras

Celina: It’s great, because it’s a large sex worker community. Sex workers are interested in and into it, and I love that. If Doxy only exists within sex worker circles, that’s fine by me. But it’s also cool to not speak to an echo chamber. With the last issue, there’s a lot of people that don’t have any relation to sex work who think Doxy is really cool and are really supportive, which has been awesome.

The community also feels very pro-women. I have so many girlfriends that are not sex workers that bought a tank top and are like, when you put out more merch, we want to get it. It’s just really cool; you’re not even a working girl, but you just love this.

Celina: The possibilities are endless. Buy a mag, buy merch. Tell your friends about Doxy. Tell the elderly. Tell whoever you know. Repost us.

Maxine: Even just reflecting on how you perceive sex work, opening that conversation with your friends and being more open-minded to the possibility of it being less of a taboo topic in everyday life.

Celina: I also want to add, I don’t want to just work with people who are already big names. A few times now, there’ve been college students who have reached out and asked for an internship. That’s been really cool. So if you’re a photographer, a writer, a designer, feel free to reach out to us if you want to support that way.

FYI: I publish a free Substack essay, feature or interview every week, generally Monday 8am UK time.

I’m Megan (they/them): a Scottish writer specialising in the erotic. I’ve been running my Substack, PULP, for around a year but I’ve been writing professionally for quite a bit longer. My bylines include British GQ, CNN, British Vogue, The Guardian, etc.

If you like my work, you can tip a one-off payment of £4 here.

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