How female sex work­ers are reclaim­ing their on-screen image

JF Lawton’s screen­play ​‘3,000’, about the plight of a young cocaine-addict­ed sex work­er in a finan­cial­ly wiped-out Amer­i­ca, was the ker­nel that became Pret­ty Woman. While the clas­sic rom-com is a steep depar­ture from Lawton’s orig­i­nal vision, both ver­sions typ­i­fy rep­re­sen­ta­tions of sex work­ers on screen: either glam­ourised or moralised.

Sex work­ers have long attract­ed spec­u­la­tion in film and tele­vi­sion. Dur­ing the so-called Gold­en Age of Pornog­ra­phy in the 1970s, a num­ber of films scru­ti­nised the indus­try, from Hard­core, Paul Schrader’s neo-noir about a father search­ing for his daugh­ter in Los Ange­les, to the far­ci­cal The Hap­py Hook­er, based on Xaviera Hollander’s mem­oir of her life as a New York City madame.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, on-screen depic­tions of sex work­ers have alter­nat­ed between har­row­ing dra­ma – with drug abuse a recur­ring theme – and male-ori­ent­ed com­e­dy, while female sex work­ers have served as back­ground dec­o­ra­tion in shows like Dead­wood and Game of Thrones, lead­ing to the term ​“sex­po­si­tion”. They have rarely been giv­en agency on-screen.

Now, how­ev­er, film- and TV mak­ers are increas­ing­ly cen­ter­ing female sex work­ers, and putting women at the helm behind the cam­era too. Lucy Kirk­wood and Anna Goodridge recruit­ed adult film star Rebec­ca More for their five-time BAF­TA-nom­i­nat­ed dra­ma Adult Mate­r­i­al. ​“A lot of adult per­form­ers will not talk to any­one main­stream because we’re so wor­ried about how we’re por­trayed,” More explains. ​“I said I would talk to them because I want­ed to make sure they would get it right.”

More went on to not only advise on the script but also train the actors on char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and how real-life sex scenes are made, even act­ing in sev­er­al scenes her­self. ​“When I got the script, it wasn’t about me, it was about, ​‘Could this hap­pen’. They got lit­tle details from me, like, the lunch­es on set are always rub­bish.” In one instance, More inter­vened to cut a par­tic­u­lar scene: ​“It was so seedy; I took it per­son­al­ly. They took it out and I said thank you.”

More is one of many adult film stars piv­ot­ing to nar­ra­tive dra­ma. The cast of Nin­ja Thyberg’s Plea­sure is almost entire­ly com­prised of porno­graph­ic actors, includ­ing Dana DeAr­mond, Eve­lyn Claire and Kendra Spade, while Steven Soderbergh’s The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence starred for­mer porn actor Sasha Grey in the lead role.

Hya­p­a­tia Lee, for­mer adult film star and author, con­sid­ers the choice to have porn indus­try advis­ers on set, ​“A big step in the right direc­tion. I fear, how­ev­er, that they will inter­view one or two peo­ple and assume all per­form­ers are sim­i­lar. Just as in any group of peo­ple, there are many dif­fer­ences.” Many new releas­es are tak­ing this into account.

For P‑Valley, which cen­tres around a Mis­sis­sip­pi strip club, showrun­ner Katori Hall inter­viewed over 40 female sex work­ers. Accord­ing to More, Kirk­wood took, ​“Dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences from dif­fer­ent per­form­ers and the dif­fer­ent lev­els of suc­cess and fail­ure that you can have in the indus­try,” to avoid glamourisation.

While The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence leaned toward real­ism, the third sea­son of the spin-off anthol­o­gy dra­ma has upgrad­ed to a more futur­is­tic plane. Com­bin­ing neu­ro­science and sex work, its pro­tag­o­nist uses her clients to explore behav­iour and desire. ​“I was real­ly inter­est­ed in hear­ing about people’s per­son­al moti­va­tions,” says cre­ator Anja Mar­quardt on her research into the sex indus­try. ​“Their per­cep­tion of how the pow­er dynam­ic would play out as they enter the room. My inter­est is always in human behav­iour and point of view.”

Mar­quardt also stress­es the need for respon­si­ble sto­ry­telling. ​“We need to look at peo­ple as 360° human beings – it’s a dead-end to look at sex work as a reduc­tive trope, the sort of tit­il­la­tion that serves to objec­ti­fy the sex work­er. While there might be a mar­ket for that kind of sto­ry­line, it’s not in the height­ened dra­ma space… that gets us talk­ing round the water cool­er.” Equal­ly, the screen­writer admits that her sea­son of the show is very much ​“a work of fiction”.

Key to cre­at­ing more authen­tic por­tray­als of female sex work­ers is the sub­ver­sion of the male gaze. Moira Buffi­ni and Ali­son New­man, the co-cre­ators of Har­lots, state that the sex indus­try has, ​“Always been at the coal­face of gen­der pol­i­tics, and that’s where we want­ed to put our female gaze.” Hall, mean­while, films from per­form­ers’ per­spec­tives and care­ful­ly avoids gra­tu­itous nudity.

“The indus­try has been dom­i­nat­ed by men at the top,” adds More, ​“there’s always been this his­to­ry of: Are women real­ly in con­trol? Are they doing this against their will? And I feel that with a sto­ry of this nature – and it’s quite sen­si­tive, let’s be hon­est – involv­ing female sex work­ers, it’s impor­tant to have women behind the scenes.”

As a result, we’re now see­ing more nuanced por­tray­als of the sex indus­try, with film­mak­ers and series cre­ators embrac­ing its pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives. ​“Peo­ple have real­ly turned to sex work in the pan­dem­ic and enjoyed it,” More says. ​“Some peo­ple are like, ​‘What was I doing in my office job?’ But also, we can’t deny the fact that there’s this ele­ment of why peo­ple don’t like sex work, because there’s a dark side to every light side.”

She con­tin­ues, ​“It’s very impor­tant to have the pos­i­tive side because we have to walk down the street, we have to go pick up our kids. Peo­ple find out that we’re in the sex indus­try and they only see the bad side of it. They pre­sume that because you do this job there’s some­thing wrong with you, or you’ve had a bad child­hood expe­ri­ence. It’s very high­ly stigmatised.”

In the past, por­tray­als of sex work­ers have fre­quent­ly hinged on trau­ma to explain why a woman might enter the indus­try. ​“I think what needs to be empha­sised more is that those suf­fer­ing the effects of past trau­ma, who have got­ten involved in the sex indus­try, can get out and move on with their lives in a pos­i­tive way,” says Lee. ​“I think it’s impor­tant to note that such a career can be an empow­er­ing expe­ri­ence for survivors.”

Though more care is being tak­en to pro­tect actors on set, scan­dals such as James Franco’s involve­ment in The Deuce prove that progress is slow. Alle­ga­tions that Fran­co had pres­surised women into nudi­ty and removed plas­tic vagi­na guards while film­ing sex scenes did not pre­vent him from con­tin­u­ing on fur­ther sea­sons of the show before it con­clud­ed in 2019 – iron­ic, giv­en that The Deuce touch­es on male manip­u­la­tion in the cre­ation of adult films.

With the sex indus­try con­stant­ly chang­ing and the recent rise of adult sub­scrip­tion ser­vices like Only­Fans, many recent dra­mas are already out of date. How­ev­er, Marquardt’s The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence looks ahead to the ways in which tech­nol­o­gy is invad­ing the most inti­mate spaces. Speak­ing about Only­Fans, Mar­quardt sug­gests that, ​“Maybe soon we’ll see a real­ly cool sto­ry about that space and that world. I’m sure it will find its way into the zeit­geist of big- and small-screen storytelling.”