Sex Work in Popular Culture

by Lauren Kirshner

Overview

Sex Work in Popular Culture delves into provocative movies, TV shows, and documentaries about sex work produced in the last fifteen years – a period of debate and change around the meaning of sex work in North American society. From Oscar-winning films to viral YouTube videos, and from indie documentaries to hit series – many of which are made by women – the book reveals how sex work is being recognized as real work and an issue of human rights. Lauren Kirshner shares how popular culture has responded by producing the dynamic new figure of a sex worker who challenges tropes and promotes understanding of the key issues shaping sex work.

The book draws on labour and feminist theory, film history, current news, and popular culture, all within the context of neoliberal capitalism and the rise of transactional intimate labour. Kirshner takes us from erotic dance clubs to porn sets, illuminating the professional lives of erotic dancers, massage parlour workers, webcam models, call girls, sex surrogates, and porn performers. Probing how progressive popular culture challenges stereotypes, Sex Work in Popular Culture tells the story of sex work as labour and how the screen can show us the world’s oldest profession in a new light.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487548636
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	07/25/2024
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lauren Kirshner is an assistant professor of English at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: A New Sex Worker in Popular Culture

1. Working It

2. Dancing to an American Dream

3. Massage Parlour Mothers on Prime Time

4. Twenty-First Century Peepshow

5. Sex and Self-Commodification in the City

6. Sexual Healers

7. “It’s All About Money, Money, Money”

Curtains: From Victimhood and Vice to Sex Worker Rights

Notes

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

“Provocative and compelling, this timely book offers a vital new lens for understanding sex work in the twenty—first century. Interviews with sex workers and their representation in a host of popular films and television series form the spine of Kirshner’s incisive feminist analysis. Kirshner’s luminous prose disentangles the sex worker from the quagmire of ‘whorephobia,’ constructing sex work as legitimate labour, demanding rights and safe conditions, and representing the sex worker as a proud professional.”—Gail Vanstone, Associate Professor of Humanities, York University
“This beautifully written book treads new ground. Lauren Kirshner has crafted a seamless narrative that puts the structural in conversation with shifting pop culture presentations. Throughout, a nuanced critical eye is cast and concepts are deftly deployed to shed light on representational nuance at the same time as socially entrenched stigmatic assumptions about who sex workers are and what they do are put to rest; the result is a book that is exceptionally accessible, enlightening, and profoundly thought—provoking. A must—read for anyone interested in sex work or popular culture.”—Chris Bruckert, Professor of Criminology, University of Ottawa
“Lauren Kirshner heralds the arrival of a new protagonist in pop culture: the sex worker whose working conditions and labour dynamics are core to the story. Meticulously researched and theorized through a feminist labour lens, Kirshner’s incisive analysis traces a decisive shift in representations of sex work on the screen: from victim to worker navigating the capitalist grind in a time of economic crisis, job precarity, and growing labour solidarity.”—Nicole S. Cohen, Associate Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT), University of Toronto

From the Publisher