Feminism refers to the advocacy of women’s rights based on equality of the sexes. In the 21st century, the true definition of feminism is getting manipulated by figures such as Bonnie Blue. Such figures post revealing or explicit content online under the guise of body positivity. These figures violate everything that feminism stands for by promoting the same ideologies that feminists have spent decades combating.
Tia Emma Billinger, professionally or more commonly known as Bonnie Blue, has recently been under fire due to her controversial presence online. She has gained a lot of attention from the media due to her outspokenness regarding her desire to sleep with as many men as possible. She is mainly known for her infamous video, in which she claimed to have slept with 1,057 men in 12 hours. In an interview with This Morning, Blue claimed that by organising these lineups, she is educating youngsters about consent, which is ironic because, earlier in the same interview, Blue admitted that she had gotten into the industry for just the money and stayed because she enjoyed being pleasured. As a result of her behaviour and public persona, Blue has reportedly been expelled from Fiji and had her visa revoked by Australian authorities.
Sites such as OnlyFans allow men to release their vile and depraved thoughts without the fear of being judged. Julia Filippo, a 23-year-old OnlyFans model, adopts a childlike appearance, often seen wearing pigtails in her videos. Julia Filippo roleplays as a naïve, innocent little girl who is not aware of anything sexual or otherwise. Her exaggerated expressions and reactions in her collaboration with Blue received backlash, as they were indirectly encouraging paedophilia. However, other viewers enjoy the ‘character’ Filippo acts as. Content like this encourages paedophiliacs to act on their urges and puts children in danger – and this is not even all of it.
Blue has made it abundantly clear in her content that she enjoys sleeping with male students who are “barely legal”, in her own words. She has gone from touring colleges and universities to directly approaching them at popular hangout spots during spring break in Miami, USA, asking them if they want to sleep with her. In an interview with This Morning, Blue was seen in a heated discussion with Ashley James, a fellow British host, who claimed that targeting barely legal young men for profit is nothing short of immoral and dehumanising, to which Blue countered that if they were old enough to serve in the army, they’re old enough to line up in a queue to sleep with her.
Apart from barely legal men, Blue also sleeps with men who are in relationships, engaged or even married, going as far as making a public statement saying that she does not care about their partners because if they weren’t too ‘lazy’ to pleasure these men, then they wouldn’t be coming to her. It is important to mention here that she fails to recognise the fact that women are not the sexual property of men and are not made for their pleasure. Blue encourages the patriarchal ideology that women are objects of desire. Whenever the topic of women is brought up in a conversation with her in the many interviews she has done, her response always stays the same: “I don’t care about them; it’s their husbands and sons who I want.
Similarly, other creators such as Camila Araujo, Lily Phillips, and Sophie Rain all encourage similar behaviour. Due to these figures, toxic masculinity is alive and spreading like wildfire. These manosphere creators assert the idea that men’s empowerment comes at the cost of women’s disempowerment. These ideologies are then normalised and widespread through mainstreaming platforms such as OnlyFans to the point where men expect the same behaviour from their partners that is shown by the creators. This behaviour promotes sexual assault and even rape due to men thinking that it is their right to use women however and whenever they may please. As reported by VAEWnet, approximately 1 in 3 women report having unwanted sex with their partner; additionally, 10-14% of women are raped by their husbands in the United States alone.
Blue has two accounts on OnlyFans: a free account that entails a total of 45K subscribers and a paid page with 26K subscribers, which costs $8.99. On these accounts, Blue regularly posts explicit videos, including the ones where she organises line-ups for barely legal freshers. Her acts reinforce the lad culture, which is a highly misogynistic culture where young men hold sexist views and beliefs about women and internalise toxic masculine behaviours such as bedding as many women as possible whilst shaming a woman who has a body count above 2. In a podcast with fellow OnlyFans creator Camila Araujo, Blue revealed that she makes 2.1 million a month through OnlyFans. Due to this statement, many females felt encouraged to start their OnlyFans accounts. This has gone as far as Blue being offered $50,000 for a jar full of her trumps, later explaining that she meant farts in a recent episode on the Stiff Sock’s podcast. Is this the new female empowerment? To sexualise oneself, which other feminists are fighting hard to prevent. Where over half the female population are demanding to put a stop to objectification, creators like Blue are profiting off of it and encouraging it by promoting and normalising sexual objectification, contributing to a culture that stereotypes women based on their bodies, such as in a Melbourne private school, where a group of boys had created a spreadsheet in which their female classmates were ranked as ‘wifeys’, ‘cuties’, ‘mid’, ‘object’, ‘get out’ and ‘unrapable’, as revealed by the Guardian.
Such figures are ruining the whole image of feminism. Feminism refers to choice: to choose what they want to do and have men not have a say in it. It relates to choosing how much education one wants, if one wants to work, or if one would rather be a stay-at-home wife. It under no circumstances supports the idea of using your body to gain male attention and to use that as a source of making money. OnlyFans is popularising the idea of women being submissive doormats available for a man’s every need while their rights do not matter. These patriarchal expectations go on to relate to abuse and even rape if a woman tries to stand up for themselves. This new aesthetic of feminism is incredibly damaging and entails serious repercussions. The idea that bodies can be bought for barely even 10 dollars is not only inhuman but a wicked ideology that is being spread by yet another man, Tim Stockley, the creator of OnlyFans.
If you thought this ended with OnlyFans, you were wrong. Well-known actress Sydney Sweeney, who gained her popularity by appearing in the Amazon Prime series Euphoria, has collaborated with Dr. Squatch to release a limited-edition soap, which is made of her actual bathwater. No, you read that right; Sydney Sweeney is allowing her fans to buy and cleanse themselves with her bathwater. If this is not the last straw, then I don’t know what is. In a recent commercial where she is seen promoting the product, Sweeney is seen referring to the audience as “dirty boys”; alongside this, the whole commercial was borderline nauseating. Sweeney has received criticism for this act specifically from her female fans, who have used the phrase “Sydney Sweeney single-handedly sent feminism back 100 years”, and I couldn’t agree more.
Users online often use labels such as ‘marketing genius’ to refer to such creators. What these users fail to recognise is that these depraved acts set feminism back over a decade; rather than moving forward, we have started moving backwards. This new aesthetic of feminism should not be linked with feminism in any circumstances whatsoever because all it is doing is giving feminism a bad name and going against all that feminists have fought hard and long for. Our ancestors did not fight for our rights so that creators such as Blue could abuse their rights and do such humiliating acts as a way to make easy and quick money. They fought so we had a right to seek education and decide our future for ourselves; they fought for our right to vote and for us to be involved in important decisions. Women should not be lusted over, but rather they should seem intimidating when they are in the same position as a man. Women deserve to be respected and loved, not to be used as toys. Figures such as Blue are rotting the minds of the new generation, teaching them values that are not only horrifying but also vile.
Due to these obvious reasons, figures like Bonnie Blue and their content need to be blocked before they reach a wider audience and spread this virus of an ideology.
