Season three of HBO’s Euphoria has attracted criticism from Australian sex workers and advocacy organisations, who argue that its portrayal of the sex work industry is inaccurate and potentially harmful.
The third instalment of the gritty teen drama is currently airing on Aussie screens, with multiple core characters, particularly Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie, involved in some form of sex work after the five-year time-jump between seasons two and three.
Within the first three episodes, we learn that Rue (played by Zendaya) is now employed by a pimp, while Jules (Hunter Schafer) is a sugar baby and Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Cassie are plotting a big break on OnlyFans.
It’s not only the volume of sex worker characters — in season one, Barbie Ferrera’s Kat was a camgirl — that has raised eyebrows, but the unsubtle way they are portrayed.
In two controversial scenes, Cassie poses as a baby with pigtails and a dummy and an infantilised dog for content, only to be shamed as a “prostitute” by Jacob Elordi’s Nate, while another sees Maddy label Jules a “hooker” for pursuing a career as a camgirl.
This reductive take on sex workers is a key criticism levelled against Euphoria. Creator Sam Levinson has been accused of refusing to humanise or dig deeper into the inner-lives of sex workers, and neglecting to think deeply about broader critiques or nuances of the industry.
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Instead, critics argue the provocative scenes simply reiterate, and even revel in, a one-dimensional consensus of what sex work is — a criticism further compounded by the involvement of Levinson himself.
“When you have [Levinson], a white, cishet male, writing multiple SW storylines, the characters are at an extreme risk of being portrayed as one-dimensional — objectified bodies of a white man’s fantasy,” Bambi*, a Sydney sex worker, told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“The SW work experience should never be monopolised like that, because it is far more complex than one man’s perspective,” she added.
Past reports of Levinson’s gratuitous use of nudity — mentioned by stars Sweeney, Minka Kelly and Chloe Cherry — only amplify the sentiment that his sex worker characters are used as props, ridded of the chance to be empathised with by the audience.
“Sam Levinson has a tendency to use women's plights as a cheap plot point without actually fleshing out any real analysis of how that affects them,” Belle* a Sydney sex worker, told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“He uses that as a salacious, shock factor moment. He uses female actresses as props to play out his weird f**king fantasies,” she added.
Levinson has addressed criticisms of his depiction of sex in the past, saying in 2023 that “we live in a very sexualised world” where “the influence of pornography is strong in the psyche of young people”.
But critics reiterate that Euphoria still fails to inspect those ideas beyond obvious provocation.
In season three, Cassie is degraded, but Levinson doesn’t critique that degradation, he recreates it — reinforcing a “disappointing” stigma for sex workers.
“The perception of SW comes from TV and movies that can’t escape the stigma, which is not accurate and disappointing,” Bambi said.
That unnuanced stigma has real-world consequences, a spokesperson for NSW-based advocacy group Sex Worker Outreach Project told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“Sex workers globally continue to advocate for full decriminalisation and for recognition of sex work as legitimate work,” the spokesperson said.
“Media that repeatedly depicts sex workers only as victims, or in association with crime and violence, undermines these efforts and reinforces existing misconceptions.
“Creating narratives for spectacle or public scrutiny risks placing undue focus on sex workers themselves, rather than on the structural issues affecting our communities,” the spokesperson added.
Levinson defended Cassie's storyline earlier this month, saying the costuming is supposed to have "its own humour" and that he was playing into the "absurdity" of the character's situation. But Euphoria fans say some scenes still went too far.
"This is your reminder that what Sam Levinson is doing on Euphoria is not representative of online sex workers, and should not be taken as an accurate depiction of the kind of content [or] work we do," one X user wrote, while another added that the show "misses the mark" and fails to portray sex workers "as actual people".
While the remainder of Euphoria’s third season is yet to play out, critics aren’t hopeful that Levinson’s portrayal of sex workers will go any deeper by the time the finale airs.
“This season of Euphoria does not appear to consider the broader impact of its portrayal,” SWOP said.
Season three of Euphoria is currently airing on HBO Max.
Lead images: HBO
