The third (and last?) season of “Euphoria,” HBO’s crushingly bleak portrait of wayward youths in Southern California, sees its coterie of high school friends navigate the seventh circle of hell — which, in the eyes of its creator, Sam Levinson, means entering the world of sex work.
Rue (Zendaya) goes “Maria Full of Grace,” smuggling fentanyl from Mexico to America in her body and working as an assistant manager at a seedy strip club to work off her substantial debt to Laurie; Jules (Hunter Schafer) is raking in big bucks as a high-end sugar baby to a plastic surgeon who enjoys mummifying her in Saran wrap; Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) starts an OnlyFans to pay for the $50,000 in wedding flowers she apparently needs to marry Nate (Jacob Elordi); and Maddy (Alexa Demie) reluctantly becomes her ex-friend Cassie’s manager, intent on transforming her into the next Sophie Rain.
Cassie’s OnlyFans journey begins with her making content posing as a dog, replete with dog ears, collar, leash, wrist cuffs, tail, and a satin corset from Sweeney’s lingerie line SYRN, bending over and lapping up water from a bowl on the ground. She further dresses up as a baby, spread eagle on the couch in a sheer pink shirt, her hair in pigtails and a rattle in her mouth. Cassie and Nate’s housekeeper, Juana (played by Minerva Garcia), has been tasked with snapping photos of Cassie in these revealing costumes for her OnlyFans (she deserves a serious raise).
The show’s depiction of OnlyFans models via Cassie has, however, rankled real-life OnlyFans creators, who already find themselves subject to enough mockery and scorn due to their line of work.
Posted by Adamoneeeee
5 Comments
Like everything in Euphoria, this depiction of a woman doing sex work comes from such an obviously male perspective that’s out to titillate.
>“Sex workers in general, myself included, tend to be hyper-sensitive about the way Hollywood portrays us because it’s almost never nice,” says Leathers. “It’s always absurd or depressing and rarely ever on point. When you’re part of a marginalized community, it’s easy to get upset about certain portrayals of it.”
It upsets me that we almost only ever depict sex work with either mocking disdain or as cautionary tragedy. Misogynistic and puritanical bullshit that keeps sex workers vulnerable.
I am yet to see a good AND realistic depiction of sex work in media. But Euphoria has always been rough. The fact the first season had an underaged sex worker was bad enough.
My mate and I are always saying that no one wants to see a realistic portrayal of sex work because half of our job is just emails and weeding out time wasters 😂
I just started watching Euphoria and that show has a very weird look on sexuality and how teenagers talk about it already (i am on ep6). I lnow that it is the theme of the show in a way but it lacks nuance.
Funnily enough me and me girlfriend just finished Heated Rivalery(the reason we git hbo for a month and are now watching Euphoria) and that one has obviously much more sex in it but felt healthier(nit healthy) in it’s depiction of sex and sexualisation.
Euphoria baffles me so far. In a weird way it feels similar to Ginny&Georgia but bc they cast attractive young actresses and actors and just show a lot more sex. I sort of get the hype for it but don’t know if I like that it got that much hype.
While I haven’t seen the portrayal in question yet out of a couple snippets, but from my understanding is that Sweeny dresses up like a dog and crawls on all fours with her tongue out. Which I’m sure you can find adult performers/sex workers doing on a quick search….
The truth of the matter is that it all comes down to the individual performer/worker themselves. Degrading/degradation pornography as a fetish dates back to at least the 1950’s in magazines, …and likely *long* before that. It’s hard to be sanctimonious over ‘Hollywood’s portrayal’ when degradation has been embedded with the work & acts itself at times as a ‘sub-genre’ of sorts for so long. Did we not forget that prior to Euphoria that the whole ‘Daddy’ & ‘Little’ thing was quite popular with the tumblr and early Only Fans crowd?
I don’t think a mere television show portrayal hurts sex workers as much as a worsening economy, oversaturation of market, and overselling themselves (posting where it’s frowned upon, begging, frequent constant attention seeking posts, etc)