Many people’s first experience of seeing sex work represented on screen is the 1990 film, Pretty Woman. Many people encounter it long before they have the language or understanding to critically engage with what they are watching. The film presents a fairy-tale version of redemption through romance. Vivian, the main character, is granted access to a “normal” and respectable life only when it is provided to her by a wealthy man. Her love interest, Edward, learns empathy and kindness, but not enough to imagine Vivian’s liberation outside of a heterosexual relationship that ultimately ‘rescues’ her from sex work.
For those growing up in the early 2000s, it was not particularly difficult to access media intended for older audiences, and many young people of that era eventually encountered Grand Theft Auto (GTA). In the game, women labelled as “prostitutes” are entirely disposable. Players are encouraged to use them for sex, violence, or both. Sex workers exist not as people, but as background objects designed to reinforce misogyny, spectacle, and brutality. 
Even now, comparing these two portrayals feels difficult to reconcile. One presents the sex worker as redeemable only through escape and domesticity; the other presents her as disposable and deserving of violence. Yet despite their differences, both are deeply removed from the realities they claim to represent.
For decades, sex workers in mainstream media have been trapped within a narrow set of tropes. They are portrayed as tragic victims, dangerous seductresses, comic relief, or cautionary tales. Rarely are they depicted as workers navigating labour, survival, autonomy, exploitation, community, or economic reality in the same way other forms of work are explored on screen. As writer and former sex worker Audrey Moore put it in her 2016 op-ed, “sex workers are treated one of two ways: as punching bags or punchlines.”
Representation alone is not responsible for stigma against sex workers, but it undeniably contributes to how sex workers are discussed, legislated against, and understood publicly. Media shapes the boundaries of empathy. When sex workers are repeatedly framed as disposable, irresponsible, immoral, or inherently exploited, it becomes easier for audiences and policymakers to dismiss their voices entirely.
These questions resurfaced for many people with the release of season three of Euphoria, a show celebrated for its “raw” portrayals of addiction, mental health, violence, and youth culture. In the show’s newest season, several female characters engage in forms of sex work. Jules continues relationships with older men in exchange for money, Cassie launches an OnlyFans account, and earlier seasons saw Kat engaging in online camming. Criticism quickly followed, particularly from sex workers themselves. Celina Reboyras, founder and editor-in-chief of Doxy Magazine, criticised the repetitive framing of sex work within the show: “It’s bizarre that Sam Levinson [Euphoria’s director] decided to have every main character in season 3 of Euphoria either become a sex worker or have a job that’s sex work adjacent. I went to high school 20 minutes outside of a major metropolitan city in the US, and I’m the only person among my peers who became a sex worker.”
The criticism is not necessarily that sex work appears on screen, but how and when. Contemporary portrayals continue to associate sex work with instability, humiliation, dysfunction, or personal failure. Emily Mai, an OnlyFans creator, argued that Euphoria frames sex work as degrading: “There are a lot of smart women who do OnlyFans or sex work because they love this line of work. They’ve portrayed the other characters as smart and successful, but Cassie, the character who cries and makes mistakes throughout the show, is the one who turns to OnlyFans. The show is making a mockery out of sex work.”
Other critics have pointed out that these portrayals frequently erase the realities of online labour and platform censorship. Reed Amber, a sex worker, educator, and podcaster, noted that Euphoria presents online sex work as far easier and more glamorous than it is, “for so many sex workers out there, we are constantly being deleted when we try to exist online. We lose our accounts much more than other celebrities or creators.” Amber’s comments point toward a wider contradiction, where mainstream entertainment increasingly profits from the aesthetic and narratives of sex work, while real sex workers continue to face growing censorship, criminalisation, and financial instability online.
In the UK, debates around the Online Safety Act and age-verification systems have intensified concerns around surveillance and censorship for online sex workers. Similar patterns have emerged internationally. In the United States, the introduction of FOSTA/SESTA legislation in 2018 was publicly framed as an anti-trafficking measure, yet research by Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf found that the removal of online platforms pushed many sex workers into increasingly unsafe working conditions rather than protecting them.
The differences between media representation and lived reality matter because portrayals do not exist in isolation from policy. Diana Rotten, digital strategist for Scotland for Decrim, argued that reductive portrayals of sex work help justify punitive legislation: “Portrayals of sex work in mainstream media rely on reductive and harmful stereotypes, which often shape public perception of sex workers in ways that justify harmful policy.”
At the same time, many sex workers and researchers argue that the media frequently collapses the distinction between consensual sex work and trafficking altogether. Trafficking involves force, fraud, or coercion, but sex work itself is not trafficking. Treating the two as interchangeable further marginalises workers and obscures the realities of exploitation.
Acknowledging that exploitation exists within parts of the sex industry is not incompatible with listening to sex workers who advocate for labour rights, decriminalisation, and autonomy. Yet mainstream portrayals often struggle to bring these realities together. Instead, sex workers remain flattened into symbols through which broader anxieties about morality, sexuality, and gender are projected.
There are signs that representation is slowly becoming more nuanced. Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a show based on the novel by Rufi Thorpe, follows a young mother who starts an OnlyFans account to support herself and her child. Importantly, Thorpe reportedly paid OnlyFans creators to consult on the story during production. That decision alone reflects something often absent from mainstream portrayals: the involvement of sex workers in telling their own stories.
Because ultimately, this is not simply about “good” or “bad” representation. It is about who gets to speak, who gets believed, and who profits. For decades, film, television, gaming, and online media have used sex workers as symbols of danger, desire, exploitation, humour, tragedy, or moral decline. Meanwhile, sex workers themselves are too often excluded from the conversations that shape those depictions.
As Audrey Moore aptly writes, “our stories are more interesting than you can imagine, we just need a place to tell them.”
What can you do?
Changing how sex workers are portrayed in the media means changing how sex workers are treated in society. One of the strongest things that you can do to be an ally to sex workers is to email your MP. Whether you support the right of people selling sex to work together for safety, to access safe and stable housing, to access appropriate and non-stigmatising healthcare, to achieve greater autonomy and independence at work, or to have stronger abilities to access legal remedies when their rights are not met or they experience harm at work – share with your MP why decriminalisations matters to you and how it will make your community safer.
We also recommend following the work of sex-worker-led organisations across the UK and beyond to find out about other opportunities you can support and what true representation looks like. Follow Decrim Now, the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs and other local collectives across the country. Keep up to date with their campaigns and find out about how you can continue to show your support for sex workers’ rights.