The single mother who runs OnlyFans and insists it’s a feminist site amid Lily Phillips and Bonnie Blue controversy

Keily Blair, a single parent of two daughters who combines motherhood with a stellar career as a CEO, could be the ultimate inspiration for women.

The 42-year-old lawyer turned CEO of OnlyFans has seen her corporate career skyrocket from one success to another, advocating for women’s ‘choice’ over their money, jobs and bodies since taking on the role in July 2023.

But while the porn-friendly site is portrayed as a feminist platform for women to get rich and gain sexual agency, OnlyFans is also home to “dangerous” sex stunts that endanger vulnerable women.

OnlyFans star Lily Phillips recently shocked the world after revealing she had sex with more than 100 men in one night – and that her next goal was to bed 1,000 men in 24 hours.

Lily, who posted the explicit content on her OnlyFans page, was filmed in tears after the ordeal, which she admitted was “more intense” than she had hoped and forced her to “dissociate” from what happened.

The controversial stunt drew criticism from other OnlyFans stars, who called it a form of “self-harm” and argued that it “sends a message” to other creators that “pushing yourself to dangerous extremes is normal.”

The sex work life differs from that of Blair, who went from a London-based partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP – specializing in cyber, privacy and security – to an executive at her former client, OnlyFans.

The mother of two speaks publicly about women having “choice” over their own lives, arguing in a recent interview: “I fundamentally believe that people should be able to make choices about what they do.

“I think as a society, and especially as women, we’ve had a lot of people telling us what we can do, with our bodies, with our jobs, with our money, with our lives. I’m not interested in that.’

Born and raised in Dublin, Blair moved to Britain to study law and politics at Oxford Brookes University before qualifying as a lawyer in 2007.

As a cybersecurity and privacy expert, she worked in her early career at PwC and law firms Forsters and Allen & Overy.

Blair was even the first winner of the Spiring Women in Law Awards in 2016 – after which she opened up about the struggle of balancing motherhood with daughters Eden and Bea having high-flying careers.

“There are things that have happened to me that are probably unique because I’m a woman,” she said.

‘I remember coming back from maternity leave and I remember a project being discussed that would involve international travel. It was automatically assumed that I wouldn’t want to go.’

She added: ‘I remember going into the managing partner’s office and sitting down and saying, ‘This may be out of kindness, but do you realize that you have just excluded me from a very interesting job because I have just come back from maternity leave because you think I don’t want to spend time without my baby.’

In January 2020, Blair joined Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, a London law firm. At Orrick, she headed the firm’s cyber, privacy and data innovation practice, whose clients included OnlyFans.

She became the company’s Chief Strategy and Operations Officer before being promoted to CEO in July last year.

She succeeded Amrapali “Ami” Gan, who resigned to pursue new endeavors, OnlyFans said at the time.

In securing the position, Blair reiterated the importance of ‘choice’ for the site’s creators, saying: ‘OnlyFans only succeeds when its creators succeed. Our mission is to make OnlyFans the platform of choice for a wide range of creators and fans around the world.

“I will continue to put our creators at the heart of every business decision and provide them with an inclusive, safe and innovative platform to connect with their fans and monetize their content.”

Speaking to Fortune about her decision to leave her ‘professional background’, she said she was ready for a ‘negative reaction’, but describes the site as a ‘British tech success story’.

In October this year, she claimed that providing security to OnlyFans users was a top priority of the company.

‘Everyone assumes it’s sexy content. Some of it contains sexy content and we are very happy with that. We are an inclusive platform, and for good reason,” she said.

“We think it’s really important that adult content creators have a safe space, can generate income, and can also do that together with other content creators.”

But some high-profile OnlyFans stars have fallen victim to terrifying death threats.

Bonnie Blue, famous for bragging about sleeping with ‘barely legal 18-year-olds’, revealed she receives up to 300 death threats a day from women and would ‘end up in a box’ after her sex marathons.

The 25-year-old said she earns as much as £750,000 a month, including posting X-rated content on her OnlyFans account.

Last month she planned to fly to Australia for a free sex marathon with school leavers. In return, they had to agree to her posting the content online.

But Bonnie – who was abused by her parents – was forced to contact police after receiving cruel death threats on social media, leaving her fearing for her life.

“I must receive 200 to 300 death threats every day,” she told The Sun. ‘The one I got this morning was like, ‘When you arrive in Surfers Paradise [in Australia]you leave in a box. You have to kill yourself before we have to kill you. ”

‘Wishing someone dead and wishing him harm? That’s a bad person, not me.’

From December 2021 to June 2023, the British company saw its global user base grow to more than 220 million fans and more than 3 million creators.

OnlyFans, based in Britain, relies solely on subscriptions, pay-per-view events or tips for its online creators, with a large portion creating adult content.

The company has paid out $20 billion to its creators since its founding in 2016, it was revealed earlier this year.

Despite her success, Blair has experienced negative reactions since becoming CEO, an example of this being when a bank rejected her as a personal account customer due to her association with OnlyFans.

“I was an equity partner at a law firm, one of the few women who was an equity partner, and I had a team of people working for me,” she told the FT. ‘That attitude used to really want my company. Nothing has changed about me, nothing about my risk profile.’

Financial institutions, fearful of facilitating financial transactions for illegal sex work or crimes such as sex trafficking, often rejected transactions associated with such platforms.