Megan Barton-Hanson

Megan Barton-Hanson
File:Megan Barton Hanson on Mae Muller.jpg Barton-Hanson interviewed in 2020
Born	(1994-03-06) 6 March 1994 Southend-on-Sea, England
Occupation	Television personality Sex worker

Megan Barton-Hanson (born 6 March 1994) is an English television personality and sex worker. She is best known for appearing on the fourth series of Love Island and on Love Island Games, though also operates an OnlyFans account, which in 2020 was the ninth highest earning account on the platform.

Life and career

Early life

Barton-Hanson was born on 6 March 1994 in Southend-on-Sea, and has a brother, Kurtis. Her father is an insurance broker. In secondary school, she suffered from bullying for her appearance, and underwent otoplasty in an attempt to stem the abuse, only for her to be bullied for that instead. She also suffered from slut-shaming from the age of sixteen. Around this time, she underwent six sessions of therapy on the National Health Service.

After leaving school, she trained as a personal assistant, before working for a fashion designer and as a social media manager. Aged nineteen, she underwent rhinoplasty, followed by breast augmentation and lip and cheek fillers, and later had veneers installed. She also spent periods as a stripper and a webcam model, and had an OnlyFans account around this time. In January 2018, having suffered depression since she was thirteen and adopted an internet persona and used retail therapy to make herself feel better, she began suffering from suicidal ideation, and asked her mother for permission to end her life. She later underwent therapy, and has credited it with teaching her coping mechanisms that worked.

Love Island

"Straight after the show, every question I was asked was: "Are you embarrassed about having sex on TV?" Why should I be embarrassed? The boys never got asked that question. I know that for a fact because I was always next to Wes. He wasn't asked that once."

Barton-Hanson in January 2023

On 10 June 2018, she appeared on the fourth series of Love Island, having applied unsuccessfully for the third; she appeared with Eyal Booker, Wes Nelson, Alex Miller, Dean Overson, and 33 other contestants. She applied for the show thinking it would make her famous and that the money she would earn on the program would make her happy. Over the 50 days she was on the programme, she entered into relationships with Booker and Nelson, slept with both, coupled up with Miller, slept in his bed, kissed Overson, and coupled back up with Nelson, with whom she came joint fourth.

The speed at which she coupled up with Nelson after dumping Booker, and the fact that Nelson was coupled up with Laura Anderson at the time, earned her the sobriquet "Muggy Megan", after the previous series' Muggy Mike, who would commit suicide in March 2019; the online store Getting Personal responded by selling "Muggy Megan" mugs. Additionally, whilst on the programme, pre-surgery pictures of her from when she was a teenager resurfaced, causing her to experience abuse. In a March 2019 interview with I, she noted that the abuse had predominantly come from women, who she criticised "for picking apart the appearance of a teenager". The negative coverage of her in the press prompted an ITV press officer to take her into a room after she left to describe every negative story that had come out about her.

Post-Love Island

Barton-Hanson and Nelson remained together after the series ended, with Barton-Hanson moving into Nelson's flat, and the pair later moving into a flat in Camden. In January 2019, shortly after Nelson's first live show on that year's series of Dancing on Ice, the pair announced that they had broken up and would be coparenting their hamster, citing differences in priorities; a flare-up of depression caused by the pressures of Love Island fame, a burglary, and her break-up with Nelson prompted her to later undergo cognitive behavioral therapy.

In May 2019, she stripped naked for The All New Monty: Who Bares Wins, and the following month, she came out as bisexual, having delayed doing so due to having worked in the sex industry, and to avoid feeding into the LGBT stereotype of bisexual promiscuity. In July 2019, she appeared on Joel Dommett's ITV2 game show Hey Tracey!; while on the programme, she was asked out by Stephen Bear, who she declined. She then appeared on that year's series of Celebs Go Dating, later dating that series' Demi Sims, the sister of fellow The Only Way Is Essex co-star Chloe Sims. The pair later appeared on Eating With My Ex, a BBC Three show where ex-partners debrief their relationships, and were described in December 2020 by Vice as two of the "very few openly bisexual women in mainstream reality TV", alongside Chloe Ferry and the cast of The Bi Life. Barton-Hanson then appeared in the music video for "Time to Talk" by Chelcee Grimes, who she later also dated.

OnlyFans

"I enjoy getting glammed up, my hair and makeup gets done. I get to create the concept myself. It's not this seedy, ropey world that the sex industry used to be. Even Love Island, we had to parade around in bikinis the whole time, no-one has an issue with that. As soon as I take the power into my own hands and set a fee to do that: 'Oh my God, she's such a slut.' Not really, I'm smart because I'm doing what everyone else is doing except I'm getting paid on top."

Megan on Kathy Burke: Money Talks

In March 2020, after experiencing boredom during lockdown, she revived her OnlyFans account; charging $24.99 per month, she uses her account to upload intimate photographs and collaborations with photographers and makeup artists, and for a tip, replies to subscribers. By November 2020, she had made No. 9 on the OnlyFans Rich List, a ranking of highest-rating earners on the platform; she was later able to buy a three-bedroom house in London and furnish it using the proceeds. Explaining herself on Kathy Burke: Money Talks in July 2021, she stated that she made between £20,000 and £70,000 each month, and that she had between two and three thousand followers on the platform.

Later ventures

In mid-November 2020, she launched a podcast, You Come First, where she discussed aspects of her life, such as stripping, bisexuality, and OnlyFans. She later dated James Lock, with whom she later broke up, appeared on the second series of Celebrity Ex on the Beach with in 2022, and broke up with again. In May 2023, she appeared on The Big Celebrity Detox, but left after one episode, and in September 2023, she used an Instagram story to note that she was suffering symptoms of pelvic inflammatory disease.

In November 2023, she and Eyal Booker appeared on Love Island Games, a derivative of Love Island, with Barton-Hanson joining on day two. While on the programme, she coupled up with Kyra Green of Love Island USA 1, in doing so becoming the franchise's second same-sex pairing since the format launched in 2005, after Katie Salmon and Sophie Gradon, the latter of whom had committed suicide in June 2018. On 12 November, the show's narrator Iain Stirling announced that Barton-Hanson had left the programme on medical grounds.

Social media

Barton-Hanson maintains an Instagram account, which as of December 2020 had 1,700,000 followers, most of which were women. She uses her account to dispense advice on sexual stimulation, worthwhile sex toy purchases, coming out, how to approach women, and repairing troubled relationships. In December 2020, Emma Garland of Vice wrote that she had "carve[d] out her own lane somewhere between an influencer, a celebrity and a Cock Destroyer". A spike of abuse while she was on Love Island season 4 led her delegate to disable comments due to the death threats and slut-shaming she was receiving. In October 2022, her account was suspended for sixteen hours for violating the site's terms of service.