‘Not all heroes wear clothes,’ said one Twitter user when she learnt about a 20-year-old model who found an innovative (and sexual) way to raise money for an Australian bushfire relief fund. Kaylen Ward, who is now calling herself The Naked Philanthropist on social media, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause by offering nude photos in exchange for donations. She would send these images in donor’s DMs.
A woman @lilearthangelk raised $100k in a day for charity by sending nudes to people who had proof of donating to the Aussie wildfires and all I gotta say is not all heroes wear clothes.
— WitchyTwitchy Ⓥ (@witchytwitchytv) 5 January 2020
Ward, who is reportedly an influencer and online sex worker in Los Angeles, said she was looking at coverage of the fires in Australia and wondered what can she do to help. ‘I was seeing all the posts on Twitter about the Australian fires and I was really concerned there wasn't a lot of media coverage and not a lot of people donating,’ BuzzFeed News quoted Ward as saying. What’s noteworthy is that Ward already sells nude photos online, and this, she thought, was an opportunity to raise money for a good cause.
On January 3, she tweeted that any person who donates at least $10 to a list of Australian charities and send her proof of the donation, would get a nude photo in his/her DM. According to the report, her tweet had more than 40,000 retweets, and her inbox was flooded. ‘I was expecting to raise maybe $1,000 but the tweet blew up,’ she was quoted as saying. Ward now has a team of four people to help her in this cause. By midday Sunday, she has raised over $500,000 from her campaign.
My IG got deactivated, my family disowned me, and the guy I like won’t talk to me all because of that tweet. But fuck it, save the koalas.
— THE NAKED PHILANTHROPIST (@lilearthangelk) 5 January 2020
But Instagram came as spoilsport. Although she was running the campaign on Twitter, she became famous on Instagram, where she had 50,000 followers. On Saturday, Instagram shut down her account claiming that she had violated their guidelines. Her popularity can be measured by the fact that now there are several fake accounts that are trying money mongering by using her name.
