Farrah Abraham on ‘Male Toxicity’ at Teen Mom, How Much She Makes on OnlyFans

The reality TV alum, who has since forayed into a highly successful alternative career on OnlyFans while pursuing higher education and raising her daughter Sophia, who fans first met on 16 & Pregnant, as a single mother.

The OG cast member dropped by Teen Mom 2 star Kailyn Lowry’s Barely Famous podcast to dish on their shared reality past on MTV, how Farrah was treated in relation to her adult entertainment career, and how she looks back on it now.

She also offered fans an update on just how lucrative OnlyFans has been for her — and maybe not entirely in the way fans might expect — as well as the strict boundaries she’s established with her family and why she thinks that’s proved beneficial for all of them.

For her part, Farrah’s 16-year-old daughter Sophia said she doesn’t really talk to the family at all, and has remained a steadfast supporter of her mom, who inspires and motivates her own individuality.

Farrah also made it clear that when she previously talked about how she’s been using ketamine as part of her mental health treatment regiment, headlines that she was processing “rage” toward her parents were not at all the fact.

“I did not ever do ketamine for anything with my parents,” she explained. “There is no parental rage. I have bigger things going on than old stuff that I’ve already done therapy on.”

But it was through that therapy process and “12 steps” as she worked on herself that Farrah learned what a healthy boundary for her is when it comes to her parents and her family.

“I don’t really have a communication with them,” she said. “I break trauma bonds.”

She went on to explain, “So if there’s trauma, I’m not really sitting in that anymore. So I’m cordial with them, I’m cordial with my parents.”

That’s not to say that the family is incommunicado. She said that her parents have supported her more recent foray into standup comedy, even though “they were not invited” to see her perform. At the same turn, she is supportive of them.

But, she believes, this separation is a key to that. “They just text me. I really don’t take calls with my family anymore,” Farrah explained. “I really have my own boundaries that are healthy.”

The way she explained it was that this is an expression of love. As she put it, “When you care about someone so much and you actually love them and you want what’s best for someone, breaking a trauma bond within your family that is so deep is a healing most beneficial thing that you can ever do for anyone in your life.”

That’s why she believes this decision has been beneficial for both her and her parents, with Teen Mom fans more than familiar with the years of friction she’s had with them as much of it spilled onto the camera.

She described her current relationship with them as more healthy because it’s not “codependent.” She said, “I am so proud of my half sister, I am so proud of my cousins, I’m so proud of my dad, I’m so proud of my mom.”

“People, as we saw on Teen Mom, are like, oh you can’t just X everybody out of your life and be on your own,” said Farrah. “It’s not really about hating or disliking people or anything else, it’s seeing what is healthier and better for everyone and I’m so grateful that I did that because now everyone is really doing better, flourishing in their own way, and that’s just a testament to stop trauma bonds.”

Even though it wasn’t necessarily her choice to exit the franchise that made her famous, Farrah said she’s also had to do a lot of healing over her time on Teen Mom, including the three times she was fired — with the last after she’d decided to return to adult entertainment.

Farrah began as one of the featured teens on 16 & Pregnant in 2009. She was then selected as one of those young moms to spin off into the Teen Mom series, which ran in its original iteration for four seasons.

When talk of reviving that series started, there were some concerns about Farrah after her foray into pornographic film with a fake “leaked” video, and its more straightforward sequel. Nevertheless, she was part of the cast until midway through the seventh season when she and the franchise separated for good.

“I should never have tolerated the firing and like the mental abuse from that shaming,” said Farrah of being let go over her adult entertainment career.

Speaking of being sex-shamed, she added, “I think again it just goes back to, like, you’re a Teen Mom and shamed, judged, and getting blamed and I just gotta say, like, if we look outside of this disgusting world that is just not correct and it’s sinking, it’s teens were never included in equality and inclusion of proper contraception.”

Rather than acknowledge sexuality as a part of teen life — or even a Teen Mom who is now an adult’s life — the powers that be still wanted to shove it all in a closet. Farrah blames “a lot of male toxicity” when it came to dealing with executives during her time on the show.

She recalled when she first wanted to publish her book My Teenage Dream Ended, shortly after the first cancellation of the series in 2012. She said she tried to pitch it to MTV, but there was no interest or support.

“I feel like there was a lot of women’s oppression, I’m just being honest, when it comes to Teen Mom,” she said of the environment behind the series. “There is a lot of male toxicity and influence.”

Farrah did ultimately get her book published, along with her debut studio album of the same name. The book wound up on The New York Times bestseller list, while the album didn’t fare quite so well. Nevertheless, Farrah felt empowered that she stood her ground and was proven right with the book’s success.

“You take your insanity and try to have some sanity with it and say, like, this is what we’re gonna do,” she insisted. “you take your insanity and try to have some sanity with it and say, like, this is what we’re gonna do,”

“And I think that’s kind of like where me and Teen Mom fall out, straight up,” she added.

In fact, she doesn’t think she’d ever be allowed to rejoin the franchise because of the work she’s done on herself over the years.

Talking about living through trauma — as she described both her relationship with her parents and her time on the show, Farrah explained, “If you’re broke or if you’re rich, what is the common denominator that helps you that we weren’t given in public school: it’s recovery skills.

“If you have recovery skills, you’re a powerhouse. And that was taken away from me for, what, over a decade, longer,” she told Kailyn. “You know, you can’t heal where you get sick, and they just wanted to keep you sick.”

“So yeah, once I got that, I’m pretty much no longer allowed to be brought back because I’m intelligent now. I know, like, I can do my own stuff,” she continued. “But I also don’t believe in abuse and manipulation, so when I do create now, it’s not in that way.”

And even though her first foray into the world of adult entertainment may not have come from the healthiest place, she’s so proud of where she’s landed.

“Was I a hot mess that’s what adult entertainment really kind of is, yeah, that was in my alignment at the time,” Farrah admitted of when she first put out a fake “leaked” sex tape, for which she reportedly made a million dollars.

At this same time, Farrah said she was undergoing sex trauma therapy. “I was trying to figure out what all this is because people are sex shaming me, which isn’t okay, either,” she said. “I never was doing anything wrong.”

From getting kicked off of Teen Mom and getting skewered in the tabloids, though, Farrah has taken more than her share of kicks for her involvement in adult content. And it’s the fact that she’s now walking into it fully sure of herself that she feels so empowered by it.

“I really don’t regret anything. I think if anything I need to push harder on inclusion and equity for teens who are turning into adulting,” she said, thinking of her younger self on 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom trying to figure everything out on her own.

“When I look back right now, I feel like I’m almost really doing the best at adulting out of my cast straight up, financially, education-wise, looking back at it, living it, full-circling it,” she said. “I am so grateful for never being like, oh I need to go like crawl in a corner and not be in my divine femininity because men are telling me they’re gonna fire me.”

“Yeah, well, what if you just don’t even need the show?” she realized. “And then I blossomed.”

As Kailyn asked her about OnlyFans in particular, admitting she knows very little about the platform, she was surprised when Farrah told her about OFTV, a video streaming platform that features a whole array of content that isn’t particularly adult at all.

Among them are podcasts, with Farrah loving how empowered and in control women are of their own careers on the platform. She shared that just for appearing on a friend’s podcast, she makes $30,000. When pushed for how much she’s making altogether on OnlyFans, Farrah hesitated before admitting, “It’s Millions.”

“Millions of dollars a year,” she clarified, which was enough to drop Kailyn’s jaw.

But OnlyFans isn’t the only place Farrah is flexing her abilities. As has been widely publicized, the single mom has stepped into the world of standup comedy, where she said she’s finding tremendous success and has even had some familiar faces in the crowds like Dr. Drew Pinksy and some of those same executives she says weren’t initially supportive of her ambitions.\

When asked if she gets along with Dr. Drew, Farrah laughed and then explained, “I laugh because literally, I think people do not understand how far removed, and much I’ve moved on from Teen Mom.”

You can find out everything she had to say about her work toward becoming an “amazing comedian,” while dealing with some “jealousy and rips here in the back end” because of how easy it was for her, in the full podcast interview above.

She also talks about why she got involved in the relationship drama between Jersey Shore’s Angelina Pivarnick and Vinny “2.0” Tortorella, her own dating requirements, plastic surgery, traveling the world with her daughter, why Sophia being 16 is hard for her, and a whole lot more.