The strangest thing happened to me this week, as I read the news with my morning bowl of Weetabix.
There I was, absent-mindedly flicking between the papers and my breakfast, when I realised that I was a teeny, tiny bit envious of Lily Phillips.
Yes, that Lily Phillips.
The porn star one, who has repeatedly hit the headlines for her increasingly extreme OnlyFans stunts.
Phillips had given an interview about her career, and it was this that made me feel jealous of the 23-year-old porn star (not a sentence I ever thought I would write as a menopausal 44-year-old mum with a love of M&S frocks).
Because reading between all the descriptions of her rather tawdry accomplishments, it became clear to me that Phillips is a woman who point-blank refuses to feel ashamed about sex.
The interviewer had a good go at getting her to say she was an exploited young woman who had fallen prey to the forces of misogyny, but the OnlyFans millionaire was having absolutely none of it.
Phillips explained she had started out as a common or garden content creator, doing make-up videos on Instagram and TikTok, but moved to OnlyFans because she was already having ‘a lot of casual sex, small gang bangs, three-ways…’
Sex worker Lily Phillips, 23, had sex with 50 men in 24 hours
The OnlyFans star said: ‘I personally don’t see sex as a scary, intimate thing to share. It was just something I basically thought was like art that I wanted to share with people’
She told The Times: ‘I just thought why not also share this aspect of my life… I had just got to that point where I felt so comfortable with sex and with my body that I thought, why not? I personally don’t see sex as a scary, intimate thing to share. It was just something I basically thought was like art that I wanted to share with people.’
It’s this lack of embarrassment around sex that I envy, rather than the gang bangs (just to be clear). Because while Phillips’s work may be extreme, I don’t think it’s all that surprising from someone who belongs to a generation for whom sex positivity is as normal as brushing your teeth. Polyamory! Vibrators on sale in Boots! Don’t tell me you’re not a teeny-tiny bit jealous, too.
When I was coming of age in the Nineties and early Noughties, sex was very much monogamous, straight, missionary. If you wanted anything outside of that, you were considered a freak or a pervert. The only place to go was a dungeon, or inwards, to the deep, dark and endless well of shame that exists for so many women of my generation.
I remember, in my early 20s, realising that I really liked sex, in a variety of different ways that extended beyond the purely vanilla… and then also realising that this fact made me feel wildly ashamed of myself. I felt like there was something wrong with me, because I had fantasies that sometimes involved sex outside, with members of both genders (there were only two back then).
The Madonna-Whore Complex was alive and well, and it taught me that if I had desires, I better keep them to myself, unless I wanted to be branded a slut.
The sum total of my sex education had been a lesson about how to put a condom on a banana. I learned that my job, when it came to sex, was not to get pregnant.
Outside of that, I consumed an almost constant diet of women’s magazines that promised to teach me how to please my man. That was how I derived pleasure from sex, for many years: by seeing the pleasure I could deliver to the bloke I was having it with.
I could only vocalise my desires if I was drunk. The idea that my enjoyment might matter only really came into play when I met my husband, in my 30s, and even then it took me a long time to get used to the idea of asking for what I wanted.
I know that I am not alone in this, because of the hushed conversations I’ve had with friends who have similar regrets about their 20s. Sex was something we were all having, but also somehow missing out on, because the notion of female pleasure was so utterly alien we never learned we had the right to experience it, let alone ask for it.
Now, I’m not for a moment saying Phillips’s OnlyFans is liberating for women, or that having sex with scores of faceless men is a fearless feminist move that I happen to secretly fantasise about. But so what if I did? Would that make me a terrible person?
It’s clear that Phillips enjoys sex, and that she’s pretty cock-a-hoop to be making a serious living out of it. I find it curious that this is still something that gets our collective knickers in a twist in the year 2025, in a way that it simply wouldn’t if the genders were reversed and we were listening to a 23-year-old bloke called Liam Phillips talk about how much he enjoys casual sex.
Indeed, it feels quite patronising, this notion that she couldn’t possibly be doing any of this willingly, that she’s somehow being exploited, even when, as she says in the interview, ‘at the end of the day, I’m an adult’.
Of course, the easy availability of online porn is problematic, and we mustn’t normalise the hundreds of blokes who have lined up to have sex with the likes of Phillips and Bonnie Blue, the controversial porn star who had sex with 1,057 men in 24 hours.
But our obsessive need to get these women to apologise for what they are doing – to become real-life versions of Cersei Lannister from Game Of Thrones, made to parade naked through the streets as punishment for adultery – doesn’t help anyone. It just entrenches the Madonna-Whore complex ever deeper, for a new generation trying to make their sex positive way.
Yes, it is entirely possible that Phillips will one day regret her career. But like all adults, she has a right to make mistakes. And when it comes to our desperate need for her to express shame about her unabashed use of her sexuality… Well, I’m afraid that says way more about us than it does about her.
A Spice Girls reunion? I don’t give a Zig-a-Zig-ah!
According to reports, there is going to be another Spice Girls reunion, just six years after the last one. Much like that tour, Posh won’t be joining in, because she clearly doesn’t need the money.
Then there’s Oasis, also ‘reuniting’ for the cash – sorry, the fans – this summer. I prefer the way the Rolling Stones do it: simply performing concerts every few years, without feeling the need to bore us with any claims that they’re splitting up or embroiled in a feud!
According to reports, there is going to be another Spice Girls reunion, just six years after the last one
The marathon is now another catwalk
Running the London Marathon on Sunday, I was stunned not by the fancy dress costumes, but by the number of people taking part in full faces of make-up. In an interview with CNN, elite British marathon runner Anya Culling chatted through her pre-race beauty routine – an all-over body moisturiser and hair mask.
And out on the 26.2 mile course, I ran alongside women who looked like they belonged on a catwalk, with incredible lashes and not a hair out of place. In my mind, they deserve an extra medal, given that the only toiletry I could be bothered to apply was vats of chafing cream to my wobbly thighs.
Bryony running the London Marathon on Sunday
Don’t take on Wrighty!
Former Chelsea player Eni Aluko has pulled out of hosting an end of season awards ceremony after the controversy over her Woman’s Hour comments this week about Ian Wright ‘blocking opportunities for women’. Wright often commentates on the Lionesses’ matches.
What was she thinking? There’s enough sexist dinosaurs out there in football to lay into without singling out one of the nicest, most loved blokes in the sport. As my mum always told me: pick your battles!
How to train your husband
Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts has said that men need to be embarrassed into doing their share of the housework. I quite agree. I trained my husband by berating him daily about his inability to pick up a hoover or do the dishes. Now he’s so good at cleaning up as he goes that my friends call him ‘hospital corners Harry’, owing to his incredible bed-making skills. I’d feel lucky, if I weren’t too busy feeling ashamed about the fact he’s now far tidier than me.
Bedtime stories? Not for Gen Z
Sad news. Research shows that Gen Z parents are the least likely to read their children a bedtime story. A teacher once told me that one of the most valuable things you can do for your child is continue to read with them, even as they go to secondary school.
As a result, I have ‘girls’ book club’ every night with my 12-year-old. It may now involve The Hunger Games rather than The Gruffalo, but it’s vital time with my daughter that I refuse to give up.
