Victoria's not-so-little secret
A Bedford woman strikes it rich
giving Internet voyeurs a thrill
By BRENDAN ELLIOTT -- The Daily
News
As she taps away on her keyboard, Victoria sits in front of her
home computer wearing nothing but a slinky red bra and matching panties.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are watching.
This is how she makes her living - and a lucrative one at that.
Living in a tastefully furnished, spacious Bedford condominium,
Victoria, 21, opens the virtual drapes on a nightly basis via a $400 WebCam Internet
camera.
The viewer base is worldwide.
To peek in on this perky, petite, blond from New Ross, Lunenburg
Co., voyeurs shell out $15 US per month (about $23 Cdn).
"I'm one Canadian cheering for the decline of the loonie,"
grins Victoria, the stage name by which she's known to thousands of computer users.
As a condition of the interviewed, she insisted her address and real name be kept
secret to prevent unwanted attention.
By midweek, 800 Internet junkies had relinquished their credit-card
numbers to the local graphic-arts student for an August membership to BabeTV (www.babetv.co.uk).
That's a cool $18,000 before expenses. Last month - her first
full month in operation - Victoria's take-home pay was $10,000.
And what exactly does she do for these men, to earn an estimated
six-figure annual income?
"It's not porn, I'll tell you that straight up," she
says.
Even though she prances around her living room in the most revealing
lingerie available from La Senza and Victoria's Secret, the vivacious, self-proclaimed
country girl rarely strips down to her bare essentials. And she claims to have never
shown her fans anything more than her breasts.
Nor is money her sole motivation: "I've always wanted to
be the centre of attention ... and this gives me that opportunity."
Men with such creative handles as ScubaDvr from California are
online. Victoria first became aware of BabeTV in late May, while watching a segment
of the American tabloid television show, Entertainment Tonight.
"After the show, I clicked to the Web site, and saw the
woman in England who originated the idea. She was looking for more girls, so I sent
some photos of myself. She liked what she saw, and, as they say, the rest is history."
During the daily, four-hour, evening-viewing sessions, members
see a new photo of Victoria every 30 seconds. Unregistered guests to her Web site
- which she shares with Karen, the 25-year-old British founder - get a new view
every five minutes.
The big advantage to being a member, Victoria says, is her site
is interactive. Between poses, she opens the communication lines between herself
and her fans through a personal chat program.
"If someone watching me on the WebCam wants to see my toes,
he just types in the request and I get it instantly," she said, adding that
no reasonable request is refused.
This personal touch is what makes her marketing strategy unique.
She credits the extra step she takes to get to know her members as the reason for
her wildly successful business.
"People don't sign up to see me have sex or do anything
pornographic. My members are people who enjoy looking at a friendly face, sometimes
a little more, but basically want someone to talk to," she says.
Victoria receives approximately 300 e-mail messages a day, and
she responds to each one. "I have to keep my fans happy."
The Brazilian edition of Playboy has a feature on BabeTV this
month, and membership requests are flooding in.
She readily admits sexual innuendo hovers all around her concept,
but doesn't think she's doing anything illegal.
"The way I look at it, women in Ontario can walk around
topless and it's legal, so I'm not doing anything different."
Halifax Regional Police computer specialist Sgt. Bill Cowper
cautiously agrees. "She's using a good analogy, but what if the camera accidently
slips, and other things are revealed," he says.
"All of the sudden she finds out from her viewers that instead
of $15 per month, she can get $50 a month if she shows a little more," and
it becomes a different story, both ethically and legally, he says.
Victoria's quite content earning $10,000 per month for simply
showing her breasts, and can't see fielding more explicit requests for more money.
"I would have a hard time explaining anything more than
what I'm doing now, to my parents."
Her dad, a successful biochemist and avid computer nut, knows
what his daughter does for a living, and she says he's fine with it.
"One day I sent him an e-mail and said, `Oh, Dad, here's
a site you might want to check out,' and after he went to it he was initially shocked,
but since there's nothing perverted about it, he was fine."
Cowper isn't surprised to hear the dollar figures being bandied
about.
"I would not doubt it for a second," he says of the
$10,000-per-month profit. "The world is her oyster, quite literally."
The officer says police will only investigate Victoria's operation
if they receive a public complaint. "It would have to be determined that what
she is doing is obscene," Cowper says. "I've told the vice squad this
kind of site's arrival in Halifax was inevitable."
He said this is the first he's heard of such an operation in
metro. Determining if the Website is obscene depends on community norms. "And
then you have to figure out what the definition of a community is on the Internet,"
Cowper says.
If one of Victoria's members is in Amsterdam, the standard of
acceptance would be different than that in Halifax, he said.
After perusing the site, Cowper is satisfied Victoria is doing
nothing wrong.
"You've piqued my interest ... but there's nothing here
that would make me rush out and charge her. It's pretty much like an electronic
version of the SUNshine Girl (The Toronto Sun's daily page 3 pin-up girl),"
the officer said.
Victoria has no intention of giving up the money-making venture.
In fact, she's invested nearly $10,000 of her hard-earned cash into a laptop computer
and high-tech video camera, so she can take her show on the road.
"I absolutely love the attention. Who wouldn't want millions
of men fantasizing about you?"