Notorious bad girl of the internet, Lily Phillips thinks that young people need better protection from seeing adult content.

Lily Phillips may be one of the UK’s most scandalous porn stars—so notorious that she’s recently gone on record as saying that she hopes she dies mid-coitus—but even she thinks that it’s a real problem that it’s so easy for kids to access adult content. Phillips is someone who was made famous by a mass sex stunt in which she had sexual interactions with 101 men in a day, so while it’s understandable that it’s confusing to hear such a message coming from her, that contradiction deserves immediate attention.

Many women—Phillips included—find sex work empowering. Lily is an outspoken advocate for her work and isn’t at all shy about the fact that she has no intention of stopping. She intends to continue being a sex worker into her golden years and takes great pride in her career. She’s financially independent, making multi-millions annually doing what she loves. She’s unapologetically sexual, and her actions have frequently been a necessary catalyst for debates around the importance of consent, agency, and the fame that comes with being in adult entertainment. She’s not at all ashamed of her choices—she’s proud of them.

Despite having a successful career in adult entertainment, Phillips believes that a firmer line needs to be drawn when it comes to youth exposure to pornographic content. In a recent interview, Phillips revealed that she first saw porn at the tender age of 11—something she has since come to recognize as highly problematic. She doesn’t blame porn itself, but believes very firmly that adult content needs to be kept in adult spaces. Phillips has stressed that young people are too often lured in by glamorized earnings reports from adult entertainment stars and sexualized content that young minds are not at all emotionally equipped to process. Phillips says that she’s particularly wary of creators who brag about their massive earnings publicly, saying that—unintentionally or not—they’re encouraging teens to set off down the same path before they’re mature enough to make a career move that may limit their future opportunities.

Lily Phillips is intimately familiar with the emotional toll that can accompany the creation of adults-only content. In the fall of 2024, she put on a mass sex stunt in which she had sexual contact with 101 men in a day, and experienced a heavy emotional fallout she hadn’t anticipated. Phillips stated that not all participants respected her during the event, and that even though she voluntarily put on the event, it left her drained. Since that stunt, she’s spoken on BBC Newsnight and numerous podcasts, regularly warning viewers that the life of an adults-only entertainer isn’t the glamorous journey that social media makes it seem. Even with the kind of money she makes—again, Phillips brings in no less than six figures a month from her work—the industry takes a toll on the creators who keep it going, and she doesn’t want minors being reeled in by a filtered version of the truth.

Lily Phillips may say that she wants to go out not only with a bang, but while banging. Still, she firmly believes that young people need to be shielded from the content that has made her a cultural icon. It isn’t censorship she’s calling for – it’s boundaries.