Frothy Paradise

But Melissa’s book brings up another issue that I like to call the “Good Sex Worker.” White, educated women who do or did sex work, and then write about it. This has a strong feminist history—Gloria Steinem went “undercover” as a Playboy Bunny, Diablo Cody, Lily Burana, etc.—but I also find it a little troubling. We are expected to cheer The Good Sex Workers on because they are subverting paradigms and confounding out expectations of what a stripper is. But while the media loves this story, it marginalizes all of the women who aren’t doing sex work to put themselves through college, or to pay for art supplies. The women of color and trans women and men who are forced into prostitution or who “choose” it because of a lack of other options. I feel like the more I read and hear about privileged women who really did chose to become sex workers, the more invisible those who didn’t have such a clear choice become.