Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips Aren't Here to Be Your Role Models ‘We’re not influencers’
In the ever-expanding galaxy of viral fame, Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips have gone supernova — and not everyone is clapping. These two OnlyFans creators have sent the internet into a meltdown with their headline-grabbing sex stunts, like Lily's "I Slept With 100 Men in One Day" documentary and Bonnie's jaw-dropping claim of "1,000 men in a day." Cue the pearl-clutching and endless Twitter debates.
But are Bonnie and Lily truly the villains the media wants them to be — or just women playing the attention economy better than most?
In a recent Cosmopolitan article, Bonnie and Lily opened up about the backlash, their motivations, and why they believe the outrage is misdirected.
"We’ve got no problem sending 18-year-olds to war."
At the heart of the controversy is their use of uni students — "barely legal" 18- and 19-year-olds recruited to participate in these filmed challenges. Critics have questioned whether these young men fully grasp the permanence of online sex content. Bonnie isn't here for that argument: “We’ve got no problem sending 18-year-olds to war.”
Consent is top priority, they insist: ID checks, signed forms, and the option to walk away at any point. Still, the optics of hundreds of masked men lining up — and one particularly viral moment where a mother tries to drag her naked son from Bonnie's event — left the internet shook. Bonnie's cold-blooded take? "I’d already taken his virginity."
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"If I had a child, I’d be sending them to one of these events."
Doubling down, Bonnie frames her stunts as "education" for young men, insisting her events offer a "safe, judgment-free environment." She even said, "If I had a child, I’d be sending them to one of these events."
That statement hit like a nuclear bomb online. But it highlights a deeper, uncomfortable truth: society expects sex workers to sanitize or moralize their work to be accepted. Bonnie refuses to play that game.
"Other people have hobbies — they want to hike or do marathons."
Their critics — tabloids, podcasters, pearl-clutchers — want to frame Bonnie and Lily as either victims or villains. But what if they're just… workers?
"Other people have hobbies — they want to hike or do marathons — for me, I wanted to give and receive pleasure for 24 hours," Bonnie shrugged about her 1,000-man stunt.
Meanwhile, Lily caught heat after breaking down during her 100-man challenge, admitting, "It was hard. I don’t know if I’d recommend it," and "With a few of them, I felt like I had to keep going when their time limit was up." Critics seized on those tears as proof she was being exploited. But sex workers themselves pushed back — complex feelings about a brutal workday don't erase agency.
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"They expect me to be damaged."
If there's one thing both Bonnie and Lily have made clear, it's that they are not your cautionary tales. Bonnie said it best: "People look at me and go, 'Why are you a sex worker? You could do so many other things.' They expect me to be damaged."
Her defiance pokes a hole in society's favorite narratives about sex workers: that they're only there because of desperation, trauma, or coercion. Bonnie? She just "enjoys sex."
"If you’re not pleasuring him, he’ll go to a sex worker."
Of course, Bonnie hasn’t helped herself by dropping some seriously eyebrow-raising takes about relationships, saying, "If you’re not pleasuring him, he’ll go to a sex worker." It's a sentiment that tiptoes into manosphere territory — the very place many feminists are fighting against
Whether it's a savvy play for rage engagement or her real belief, it's clear Bonnie is willing to be hated if it means staying viral. Love it or loathe it, she's working the system — and the outrage economy — better than most.
Where should the outrage really go?
If anything, the obsession with Bonnie and Lily proves how uncomfortable society still is with sex work. Yet the real issues — deepfake porn, revenge porn, zero porn literacy among young people — barely get a whisper compared to the hysteria over two women doing what porn stars have done for decades, just on TikTok and BBC Newsnight instead of VHS.
“I’m not an influencer or a public figure. I’m a porn star. I’m making porn,” Lily says plainly.
Maybe it's time everyone else caught up.
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