Earlier this week, YouTuber Josh Pieters dropped a 47-minute documentary that adopted 23-year-old OnlyFans star Lily Phillips as she deliberate for and accomplished her aim of getting intercourse with 100 males in 24 hours as a stunt for her OnlyFans web page.
While she is definitely not the primary lady to clear these numbers (in 2004 Lisa Sparks broke the world file by sleeping with 919 in someday), it’s however a grueling feat that took months of planning and a group of assistants to perform. Any intercourse employee can inform you that merely getting 100 males to add their identification for screening is a job in itself.
Since she introduced the venture earlier this fall, Phillips has obtained on-line harassment and blowback from each civilians and different OnlyFans performers alike, who’ve accused her of being every thing from morally bankrupt to attention-seeking and unsafe. The program itself, which follows her journey from naive pleasure about her fantasy venture, to the tearful exhaustion at its completion, has sparked on-line discourse concerning the porn trade and its impression on the lives of younger girls.
As a long-time intercourse employee in varied sectors of the trade, I do know from expertise that we’re inclined to carry our playing cards near our chests, afraid that sharing something about our work lives that’s not uniformly optimistic will probably be used in opposition to us by these desperate to see our trade abolished — an ordinary employees in different industries aren’t anticipated to satisfy. Her tears, on this regard, are political and controversial. But ought to they be?
One of the strengths of the documentary is the eye Pieters offers to the work that goes on behind the scenes of any sexual transaction, and the respect proven to Phillips as a profitable businesswoman. We are given a tour of her toy closet; we’re advised about her complicated revenue/loss spreadsheets; we observe her as she outlets for the large day (noting that her lingerie purchases are tax deductible); and we watch as her telephone shows an awesome variety of notifications from males making use of to be a part of the expertise. (The movie is totally SFW, it ought to be famous, going so far as to blur out photographs of intercourse toys and bleep any phrase that signifies intercourse — the video of the act itself is just out there behind a paywall on Phillips’ OnlyFans web site.)
While she self-deprecatingly calls herself a slut all through the documentary, she additionally makes it clear that what she is doing is figure. “I do [porn] as a result of I get pleasure from it,” she says. “I’ve solely ever felt empowered by the truth that I’m creating wealth off one thing that every one guys are going to do anyway; all guys are going to sexualize me anyway.” While Pieters sweetly, and maybe naively, responds, “Not all guys…,” Phillips stays steadfast within the chorus I’ve heard from many intercourse employees (and that I’ve additionally, at occasions, mentioned myself): The sexual objectification of our our bodies is one thing that we will money in on provided that we’re prepared to dwell underneath the general public scrutiny that selection provokes.
Certainly, Phillips is conscious that dwelling underneath stigma is the value she pays for the astronomical sum of money she earns (a quantity so excessive that each Phillips and Pieters are embarrassed to say it aloud) and the “empowerment” she feels. “Everyone is praying on your downfall,” she says, in a single notably sincere second. She talks frankly about having her bodily look and life decisions picked aside by an viewers of on-line trolls, saying, “No one likes what you do and everybody simply thinks much less of you.”
Despite this, Phillips nonetheless goes into the expertise bright-eyed. “I don’t assume folks notice how blissful this makes me,” she says. Several occasions she alludes to the truth that having intercourse with 100 males in a single day is a fantasy of hers, although she doesn’t say precisely what the fantasy is: the precise intercourse, the problem, the cash, the eye? It appears believable that it could possibly be all or any of these items or one thing else totally. This is, in any case, a stunt that falls right into a broader context of each the historical past of pornography and the tradition of on-line content material creation. (Would MrBeast be price half a billion {dollars} if he wasn’t consistently upping the ante?) Pulling off a stunt of this magnitude and bringing an viewers alongside for the journey is definitely a technique of standing above the competitors on OnlyFans.
On Nov. 18, 2024, Phillips exceeded her aim of getting intercourse with 100 males in someday (she bought to 101) however admitted that it was tougher than she had anticipated. The documentary wraps up with a post-coital interview of Phillips, a phase of the video that has gotten a ton of damaging consideration on social media. In it, she feedback by tears, “I don’t know if I like to recommend [having sex with 100 men in a day].” When Pieters asks her if she has had time to course of the expertise she says, “Not but, however I gained’t overlook at the present time. Jesus.”
A clip of the ultimate interview with Phillips — largely taken out of context from the remainder of the documentary — has sparked outrage on social media.
Josh Pieters/Goon Squad Productions by way of Youtube
Pieters ends the movie with an open-ended assertion: “Maybe what we witnessed that night time is simply somebody overwhelmed with feelings after finishing such a monumental problem. Or possibly we noticed the true toll this profession can have on an individual.” As somebody who has labored within the intercourse trade for 10 years, and had different careers earlier than that, I’m extra inclined towards the primary studying. And but it’s this second chance that so many of us on-line (together with within the feedback on the YouTube video itself) clung to, particularly since she introduced that she’s planning on breaking Sparks’ file subsequent spring by having intercourse with 1,000 males in 24 hours. Whorephorbia and sex-work stigma are so pervasive that it’s straightforward in charge the intercourse trade for the attainable hurt that this stunt brought on her, however she is an grownup who works independently and might make selections for herself about how she makes use of her personal physique and assuming in any other case undermines her autonomy.
OnlyFans fashions are impartial creators who, for essentially the most half, run their companies in response to their very own dictates. This story made the information exactly as a result of it’s not trade customary — particularly, a lot has been fabricated from the truth that she left STI exams as much as the people (she says within the doc that she prioritized contributors who offered medical documentation) and that she appeared stunned when Pieters advised her that HIV could possibly be transmitted by way of ejaculate within the mouth. And it’s true, she broke from trade precautions which can be typical: she didn’t have any of the contributors conduct STI exams by regardless of the U.Okay.’s model of our PASS system is, she used condoms for vaginal intercourse however not oral intercourse, she didn’t run background checks the best way escorts would when sleeping with civilians, she didn’t have contributors bathe beforehand, and he or she used an Airbnb although it might properly get her banned from the service. If something, this reveals her youth and inexperience, and what occurs when content material creators eschew the many years of trial and error that go into establishing requirements for such closely regulated industries.
The complete ordeal was put collectively in a considerably haphazard method that appeared constant together with her age and expertise. Despite having 9 folks on her group, issues didn’t run easily: Phillips and her group have been late, males dropped out on the final minute, and every thing took longer than anticipated. Yet anybody who has run a big manufacturing (a convention, an occasion, a celebration, a gang bang) can inform you that there are at all times issues you must improvise on the final minute — particularly when it’s the primary time. Most of us working within the intercourse trade discover ways to handle consumer expectations, our personal feelings, logistics, and cash by doing the job. But that is true of most jobs.
Sex employees usually discuss the truth that one of many hardest issues concerning the job is that we have now to consistently carry out happiness and success, lest we be judged harshly for our decisions. In my space of the trade (full-service, in-person work), we solely have two tropes: the down-and-out employee or the “blissful hooker.” Sex employees don’t have any house to precise ambivalence or complicated emotions about their work. When anti-porn feminists and conservative Christians are each chomping on the bit to close our trade down, we’re detest to be sincere when we have now a foul day on the job, fearing that this data will probably be used as ammunition.
Perhaps the outstanding factor that Phillips did on this movie was not have intercourse with 100 males, however slightly break the fourth wall, permitting folks outdoors the trade to see her vulnerability and her complicated emotions about her labor. She allowed us to see her be taught on the job, and work by her emotions about it, whereas nonetheless asking people to acknowledge her humanity and company concurrently. Maybe by going to the extremes, she confirmed the world simply how tough and nuanced this line of labor actually is. Perhaps extra of us ought to be this brutally sincere concerning the complexities of our jobs.
