Culture

Everyone Loves This Sex Worker Who Raised Almost $1,000,000 For Bushfire Relief By Selling Nudes

"Not all heroes wear clothes."

by Michelle Rennex  7 January 2020
Nude Photo Sex Worker Bushfire Relief Million

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In just 48 hours, a sex worker has managed to raise over $700,000 USD for bushfire relief.

On Saturday, Kaylen Ward, a 20-year-old sex worker from Los Angeles, tweeted out her plan to help raise funds for Australia’s growing bushfire crisis. Calling herself The Naked Philanthropist, Kaylen explained to her followers that for every verified $10 donation to a bushfire relief organisation, she would send them a nude photo.

To Kaylen’s surprise, her tweet took off even though she had only expected to raise $1000. The tweet gained so much attention that Kaylen had to close her direct messages to be able to start verifying donations and sending out the promised images. With over 20,000 messages, Kaylen has hired four people to help sort through her messages.

As the verification process continues, The Naked Philanthropist has been providing constant updates to her interested followers. The donation figure continued to rise hour by hour, and after two hours Kaylen had hit $5000. The next day the estimated total was at $60,000. Yesterday, after 48 hours, Kaylen shared that the new estimate was $700,000 USD or $1,000,000 AUD after conversion.

Along with her original call to action, Kaylen tweeted a long list of the varied organisations providing relief across Australia. By providing links to fire services, disaster relief organisations and animal funds, Kaylen was able to ensure that donations were spread across the board.

Despite her well-intentioned fundraising campaign, Kaylen shared that not everything is going well. After her campaign went viral, Instagram deactivated Kaylen’s account because it violated the app policies. “Offering nude images is not allowed on Instagram,” a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

But for The Naked Philanthropist, Instagram deactivating her account and her family disapproving of what she does is all worth it. “Fuck it, save the koalas,” she proudly shared at the end of her update.

People Love To See It

Kaylen’s donations for nudes campaign was met with praise online, with people sharing their equal amazement and disappointment that one woman has done more than most for bushfire relief. In particular, people highlighted that the super rich  and those in important political positions have failed to do anything like The Naked Philanthropist has done.

Surprisingly, the feedback to Kaylen’s campaign was mainly positive, with people highlighting that sex work is the same, if not better, than any other vocation. Sex work often carries a negative stigma and people in the field are often shamed for their choices. But Kaylen’s fundraising efforts, and ability to capitalise on horniness to help those in need, proves that sex work is not only an economically viable career choice but also one that can be leveraged for real positive change.

People have continued to call the donations for nudes campaign “inspiring” and “the greatest body-positivity move in the history of mankind.” Even the jokes made about Kaylen’s efforts were positive and called The Naked Philanthropist a “hero”.

As Kaylen and her team continue to sort through donations, there’s no telling what figure the donations will eventually total to. But if you’d like to stay updated on The Naked Philanthropist’s fundraising efforts or if you’d like to partake in her campaign, you can follow her on Twitter at @lilearthangelk.