I had three thoughts upon learning that Lily Allen – singer, actor and podcaster and general emblem of the noughties – had joined OnlyFans, the online platform that is well-known for hosting sexual content. Firstly, that it must be fake. Secondly, why on earth has she done that? And thirdly, bloody good for her.
On the first point, I’ve done my due diligence and it’s not fake. She is genuinely on OnlyFans. She’s selling pictures of her feet rather than anything more intimate, but it’s a real profile and, as far as I can see, without combing the recesses of foot fetish Reddit, they are indeed her feet. A subscription will set you back £8 a month and there are (at the time of writing) seven published images for you to enjoy.
The why is rather more complicated. I’m not party to Lily’s personal finances, but I have seen her Architectural Digest house tour of the beautiful New York brownstone she lives in, so I’m comfortable saying she’s not on the breadline. Thus this move to OnlyFans is not motivated by worrying about how she’s going to put food on the table. That said, you don’t stay rich by getting complacent and, even if you’re worth millions, you’ve still got to keep an eye on where your next pay cheque is coming from.
I find it rather reassuring to see Allen cheerfully announcing her new venture without any shame or stigma, simply celebrating her own entrepreneurial spirit. There’s something delightfully anarchic about her just doing it, no gloss, no polish and, seemingly, with not much planning. An antidote to the kind of moral perfectionism and role-model status that celebrities were expected to embody during Allen’s celebrity heyday.
If you’re a woman on the internet – especially if, like me, you’re intermittently on television – people (men) will occasionally ask if you’d be willing to start an OnlyFans. It’s not as flattering as it sounds because they ask literally everyone. When I first split from my ex and was staggered by the costs of living as a single person, I very seriously considered it. It was only my discomfort with my postpartum body that stopped me. Since then, I’ve concluded that it’s probably not the best idea to put naked images of myself on the internet, despite being wholeheartedly supportive of other people doing it. But feet are an entirely different thing.
Occasionally, men will send me direct messages offering me money for pictures of my naked feet and if I’m honest, I still very much consider it. I let plenty of unpleasant men see my boobs in my 20s in exchange for a badly-worded text message or the pretense that they might fall in love with me. That’s got to be worse than letting paying customers see images of your feet?
Allen’s actual reasoning behind joining OnlyFans sounds pretty close to mine. She recently said on her podcast, Miss Me, that her pedicurist told her she had five stars on a website called WikiFeet. This is, according to Allen/her pedicurist, an unusually high rating. It sounds like she’s decided, off the back of this realisation, that it’s much more pragmatic to make her own foot content than to let fetishists enjoy her feet for free.
Flippant as it might sound, she’s been a woman in the music industry for all of her adult life. Unlike the music industry, OnlyFans has a business model that is designed to properly reward the creator. It takes 20 per cent of their earnings but the creator retains the copyright for anything they make, and can remove it from the platform at their own discretion, as well as set their own prices and decide how much content they put out.
All of which leads me to my final sentiment about Allen’s feet: good on her. She’s found a quick and easy way to put some money in the bank, while using a part of her body she’s happy to expose, a part that is already being enjoyed by fetishists on other websites.
So with a characteristic middle finger up at anyone who doesn’t approve, she’s added yet another string to her bow. Actress, model, singer, songwriter, podcaster and, now, OnlyFans star. All power to her.
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