This is Lilly Moon, an artist, OnlyFans creator, dancer, and sex worker with an affinity for pizza, as evidenced by the pepperoni slice tattooed on her shoulder.
Before taking the stage, the 32-year-old handed her phone to a friend who recorded her routine – nearly four minutes of Lilly eating pizza while casually leaning back against the pole and watching singles rain. Near the end of her slice, a customer approached the stage and asked her if the pizza was good. Cheekily, she handed him the crust to finish and danced for the remainder of her song. It's no surprise that the resulting video blew up over night, reaching over 8.8 million viewers.
"I think everyone can relate to just kind of being like, 'Whatever, I'm over it,' especially at a job," Lilly shared when considering why her routine received such high praise. "I definitely did it for fun and love my job, but I find a lot of people react to [the video] like, 'That's a total mood.'"
Scrolling through the comment section, it's clear that her video is not only labeled as a "mood," but also an aspirational dream.
And while there is no shame in wanting to pursue dancing – which is, undoubtedly, work – many comments under the video seemingly suggest that perhaps, after seeing Lilly's video, they were left with the impression that it's is as simple as taking a bite of pizza.
"I think it's silly," Lilly said after reading the comments. "A lot of people tend to think dancing is an easy gig and that it's easy money, and that's really not the case. We bust our ass and pretty much defy gravity for a living. It's a lot of work."
"We tend to do fun things at our bar, so this just happened to be one of those times," Lilly continued. "[But] it's cool to see so many positive reactions from [the performance], because there is a stigma attached to dancing – [which] I consider to be sex work – and sex work in general."
Lilly knows the effects of these stigma firsthand. The video of her eating pizza, which has taken over TikTok's For You Page in the last week and resulted in stitches by other popular creators, was shared by an Australian strip club who tagged Lilly in their post. Within the day, her account was deleted.
"A lot of sex workers get their social media accounts deleted constantly for just trying to work. It's pretty ridiculous," she said. "I posted a video on my new TikTok calling myself a dancer, and the video got taken down for sexual acts. I was fully clothed. Not even cleavage showing. I re-did the video and said, 'What I do for a living,' and it stayed up. It's very frustrating to have these companies try to constantly silence us."
"Sex work is the oldest profession in the world and has never been really accepted, but we still thrive and find ways around the bullshit, so no one's going to get rid of us," Lilly concluded.
