Glamorizing Sex Work Isn't Empowerment

Sex work has been sitting on an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, sex workers are historically demonized and treated as ‘less than’ interpersonally and institutionally. Yet, on the other hand we have a hyper-romanticization of the industries aesthetic that relies on seeing sex work as a costume while prepetuating the idealistic notion of sex work.

These opposing understandings may have been apparent at the start of the pandemic when platforms like OnlyFans gained massive popularity with user numbers going from 20 million to more than 120 million, but this binary has been existing way before that. Second wave and third wave feminist movements contested on both ideologies for years on whether sex work should be abolished or seen as a sex-positive form of expression, but as writer Jessica Berson puts it in her book, The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business—

“Both groups are right. Both groups are wrong—the binary is false.”

The nature of sex work as of late is heavily based on the latter where sex work is perceived as a symbol of woman empowerment and sex positivity. While it sounds very well-intended and optimistic at first glance, the idea is employed as a tool of appropriation. It manifests when the skillful art of exotic dancing and strip culture becomes a backdrop for mainstream entertainers or reduced to pole-dancing classes. It manifests when TV shows like Euphoria discuss cam-girl professions through a character who sees cam-work with older men as a reclamation of power even though she’s underage and in high school. It manifests when sex work is seen as a lucrative venture that hands out quick cash even though the few platforms where sex work is safe to conduct enforces tip limits and massive pay cuts.

Essentially, pretending and playing the part of a sex worker is more acceptable than actually being a sex worker.

But how did we get to this point?

Before we even get into it, we need to talk about language and be somewhat versed in sex work terminology. Language matters when we’re discussing the complexities of sex work because without proper usage, sex work can be conflated with sex trafficking and thus, be further stigmatized and criminalized even though both terms hold stark definitions. Sex work refers to a transaction of sex, sexual acts, or sexual services between consenting adults and encompass a wide range of specialities. Sex trafficking is the forced sexual exploitation and nonconsensual act of kidnapping or entrapment of children and adults. Oftentimes, sex work gets dismissed when the topic of sex trafficking comes up because while it’s definitely a real issue that needs attention, it’s where criminalization lives for consensual sex work.

And where criminalization lives is frequently overshrouded by the inaccurate representations of sex workers in mass media.

Other terms

• Johns/Clients: patrons of sex workers. Johns is a histroically pejorative term meaning a homogenous, faceless group of men or man that can be used to describe the invisible relationship between sex workers and their consumers. Clients have a similar defintion but it holds more meaning in the labor context.
• Predators/Perpetrators: an individual or individuals who inflict harm and/or target sex workers.
• Aggressors: an individual or individuals who relate to the sex worker as a client but inflict violence.

History of Simultaneous Glamorization and Criminalization

It’s important to acknowledge that the stereotypes and tropes characterizing marginalized identities don't exist in a vacuum. Historically, sex workers have been subject to Puritan ideologies during the late 18th century that viewed them as a nesscessary evil that protected virtuous white women from the animalistic sex drives of men.

Even though the Progressive Era used sex work to bring more economic prosperity in populous cities like New York City or San Francisco, the societal perception considered sex work as immoral in the same breath. The glamorization of sex work was still prevalent as it identified sex work as an erotic, taboo topic to be shown through pamphelts, memoirs, plays, and erotic fiction.

At its core, advertising and captializing off of the aesthetics of sex work brought about immense financial gain for these formative cities in the early 19th century. Most of those earnings were reserved for the states, not for the actual sex workers who were responsible for creating businesses, supporting low-income neighborhoods, and even sending girls to college. Radical mutual aid efforts and organizing is historically embedded in the sex worker community and the reasons then versus now has remained the same: Sex work is only palatable when it produces profit, but detested when sex workers demand human rights.

Women at this point in the early 19th century definitely had little to no rights, but this seminal space that sex workers existed in perpetuated the idea that sex workers were the “othered” body with no agency or face. This was meant to create distance between the “normal” woman and the “deviant” sex worker that only generated disturbing justifications for the violence sex workers regularly face. Societally, women were characterized as either being a good girl/bad girl and depending on what side you landed on, it dictated that gendered violence only occurs in the extraordinary circumstance that you become a “bad girl,” or a sex worker. Men could exist as both a “normal” man and a client without any stigma, but for women, identifying themselves based on this binary added the stigma that sex workers were “killable” and far removed from being human.

This dehumanization only elevated when the Mann Act of 1910 arose. The Mann Act criminalized the act of transporting white women for “prostitution or debauchuery, or for any immoral purpose.” This was in response to the influx of Chinese communities forming in the U.S. which created a hysteria that “virtuous white women'' were subject to being enslaved and trafficked by Chinese men or other people of color. The Mann Act of 1910 was one of the first waves of criminalization sex workers faced as the policy closed down brothels and drove sex work underground. The law made no effort to distinguish consensual sex work from coercive sex work or trafficking in order to uphold an anti-prostitution movement that would be used to dismantle the white slavery panic.

This anti-prostitution movement mainly targeted women of color and Black women who were generally seen as the faces of sex work. Race and its interesection with sex work cultivated even more dangers when their experiences are criminalized and policed on the basis of their race and occupation. Laws like the Mann Act of 1910 weren’t solely made to protect white middle-class women. Rather, they were weaponized to target and criminalize people of color and Black people. This inherent tie that sex workers of color have to criminality is amplified by oppressive structures like white supremancy or patriarchy.

Historically, sex workers face more abuse and harrassment from police than even Johns and clients because of the associations that sex work has to the criminal justice system. It’s what led to the massive police raid of 1971 when NYC Mayor John Lindsay ordered a task force to arrest and detain thousands of sex workers from Times Square who were mainly Black and Latinx Trans women. Or how the move-along policies that get employed under guise of public safety are instead used to further marginalize sex workers and trans people through negative police interactions or inevitably, police brutality. Or even more prevalently today, how SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act)/ FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) was passed in 2017 with vague language of what is considered consensual sex work, domme work, cam work, and the like while the violence online sex workers faced after the act was passed only decreased 2.2% according to a community report done by Hacking//Hustling and Whose Corner Is It Anyway.

With shame comes stigma, and with stigma comes violence. And unfortunately this cycle that sex workers get stuck in culturally and institutionally is never-ending. As told by author, sex worker, and media personality Elexus Jionde:

“Because full-service sex workers often can’t rely on adequate policing, organizing, or go online to advertise and screen clients—they may have to rely on pimps and the like and face more abuse and dangerous occurrences.”

The Media’s Obssession with Making Sex Work Palatable

Sex workers in popular media are a direct reflection of the attitudes that society has, and according to Hollywood—it’s anything but acceptable.

In the romance genre, sex workers fall under the “Hookers with a Heart of Gold” trope that need to be “saved” by a benevolent gentleman which is the entire premise of Pretty Woman. In the crime and mystery genre, sex workers are limited to the “Jane Doe” trope that is obsessed with victimizing and silencing sex workers by killing them off with often little to no dialogue which is frequent plotline in Law and Order: SVU. In the comedy genre, it’s “Disposable Hooker” trope where the butt of the joke is that the sex worker wasn’t a person to begin so it’s acceptable to joke about their death which is seen frequently in shows like Family Guy, Archer, and 30 Rock. In teen or coming of age dramas, sex work is depicted through the “Happy Hooker” trope that originated from a neoliberalist lens that suggests sex work is symbol of sexual liberation and financial empowerment. While this sounds very progressive, it neglects to acknowledge the oppressive structures of white supremacy, captialism, and patriarchy that actively disempowers sex workers by painting an ilidistic image of the profession itself. This trope is largely used in shows and movies like Euphoria, Memoirs of A Geisha, or Riverdale.

The media’s obsession with removing all of the organic nuances and complexities of a character simply because they’re a sex worker is a result of the estranged relationship between fictional storytelling and sensationalism. Oftentimes, tropes are born out of the dominant cultures perceptions of a particular group that creators want to represent. It’s limited glimpse into the realities of these groups like sex workers generate themes and archetypes that serve as merely plot devices in a lot of media pieces. If the theme or characterization trends in popular culture and media, and other creators adopt it into their own work, the trope, or tropes, survive and persist.

In the case of sex workers, the realities don’t have to be present in popular media in order to be recognized. The idealized extremes of either being a victim of circumstance that needs to be rescured by a man or a cop to being a middle-class sex worker that profits off of their sexual objectification as a political statement to overturn the status quo is all in all, poor representation. It’s either one or the other, and as we’ve established earlier: the binary is not one we should follow.

The only time we see advancement in portraying sex workers outside of these tropes or have them be is when their art or work expertise is commodified.

Stripping and sensual dancing is a huge example of this commodification through sensationalism. The movies Hustlers and Burlesque depicted sex work as a ritzy, glamourous lifestyle that suggests looking aesthetically sexy and harnessing your sexual prowess is all you need in order to earn quick cash. While it did show camaraderie of sex workers within these fields and effects of economic collapse, the films raised the topic of exotic or sensual dancing as a symbol of empowerment and reliance on being identified as a “palatable sex worker.”

In a response to the movie Hustlers, Stacey Claire weighed in on how the movie made her feel conflicted as an actual stripper herself, especially since many critics claimed it to be a film where “women flip the script.”

“The cutaways of Cardi B’s jewel-encrusted tits and J-Lo’s breathtaking body will get bums on seats in cinemas, but the storyline does nothing to destigmatize the sex industry. In fact, it reinforces age-old societal beliefs that sex workers are bad women. Using sex work as a plot device isn’t new, but the attempts made in this film at humanizing us have backfired badly.” (Stacey Claire, Slutever.com)

And even when sex work is commodified, it once again doesn’t go back to the sex workers but to outsiders who already hold immense financial privilege.

We see this especially in music where erotic dancers and strip culture are appropriated by artists like JLo in her 2020 Superbowl Halftime performance or Brittany Spears in her 2016 Billboard Music Awards Performance. The inherent harm came into light when Halsey was accused of appropriating the aesthetic of sex workers throughout her “Nightmare” tour after a dancer, Honey Lestrange, on TikTok claimed that Halsey hired over 40 dancers for a small, celebrity event in 2019 that majority of the dancers did not initially want to go to because events like these underpay strippers. When it was time for the dancers to collect their earnings from patrons in the event, Halsey interrupted with her performance and neglected to give a majority of the dancers the space, time or equitable earnings for their work at the event.

When Beyonce shouted out OnlyFans in her “Savage” remix with Megan The Stallion, sites like OnlyFans saw massive increases of 15 percent. Yet, OnlyFans founder Tim Stokley then announced that the influx of accounts from influencers and celebrities would initiate a plan to ban media that “shows, promotes, advertises, or refers to real or simulated sex.” While the company has since retracted its statement after backlash from sex workers, labor and activist organizations, the uncertainty of job security still remains.

Sex workers in both fiction and reality are defined by their occupation. There is no middle-ground or outward nuanced narrative that critically challenges the ways society has disempowered sex workers nor humanize them outside of the job. Instead, popular media has a tendency to nullify sex workers, treating them as a neutral zones for other characters to base their development on or advance their own plotlines.

When media is consistently reusing the same themes and tropes in fiction, it can antagonize the lexicon and epistemology of sex workers which reduces them to being just characters, and not actual people. Both in fiction and reality.

Where do we go from here

“Empowerment” in the context of sex work is bittersweet. On the one hand, third wave, or intersectional feminism, movements values the idea of choice as it’s fundamental to agency. But on the other hand, empowerment acts as a smokescreen. The livelihoods of sex workers are contested and thrown into think-pieces operating on the idea of empowerment; Articles like “I Thought Sex Work Would Be Empowering and Feminist. I Was Dead Wrong,” “Is Sex Work Empowering or Enslaving? 12 Experts Weigh In,” and “My Turn: Sex work is not ‘work’ – it’s enslavement,” become stomping grounds that are rooted in either questioning morality and ethics from a traditionalist perspective, or glossing over the injustices of the industry and the ways it can disempower sex workers from a progressive perspective.

While there’s value in talking about the individual experiences from sex workers themselves, the dominant response from outsiders shouldn’t be a discourse on the individual choice. Rather, we need to make room for the ways oppression exists such as white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, etc. that criminalizes sex workers.

When we examine what is considered the “empowering” factor for sex workers institutionally, it’s the power of financial stability. Yet, sites like OnlyFans take up 20 to 60 percent of creator’s income and since they’re considered independent contractors, many sex workers have to put away 20 percent away for taxes. And that’s just for sex workers online. Full-service, or in-person sex workers, cannot claim any service like STI-testing or traveling on their taxes unless they register their occupation as a “professional model” to pass the legalities that don’t consider full service sex work a legal profession.

Every other factor whether it’s culturally, societally, or politically falls by the wayside for sex workers. So even by that financial standard, sex work wouldn’t be empowering.

It’s because similar to other professions, sex work is work but unlike other professions, sex work is explicitly measured by the outcome of adversity and how it can benefit the institution. It is not measured by how we can dismantle adversity perpetuated by the insititution that benefits the person.

There is “no one size fits all” solution in opening the conversation about the nature of sex work. However, in Juno Mac and Molly Smith’s Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight For Sex Worker’s Right’s, the conversation can begin by listening.

“Sex workers have been made to listen; now it is our turn to speak…“The threat of being ‘treated like a whore’ compels women to keep their distance from us; but the way a whore fights the power is of value to everyone.” Excerpt From Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Worker’s Right’s Juno Mac & Molly Smith.