Sydney Sweeney’s Euphoria OnlyFans Role Is Pissing Off Real Sex Workers

The third (and final?) season of “Euphoria,” HBO’s crushingly bleak portrait of wayward youths in Southern California, sees its coterie of highschool mates navigate the seventh circle of hell — which, within the eyes of its creator, Sam Levinsonmeans getting into the world of sex work.

Rue (Zendaya) goes “Maria Full of Grace,” smuggling fentanyl from Mexico to America in her physique and dealing as an assistant supervisor at a seedy strip membership to work off her substantial debt to Laurie; Jules (Hunter Schafer) is raking in huge bucks as a high-end sugar child to a plastic surgeon who enjoys mummifying her in Saran wrap; Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) begins an OnlyFans to pay for the $50,000 in marriage ceremony flowers she apparently must marry Nate (Jacob Elordi); and Maddy (Alexa Demie) reluctantly turns into her ex-friend Cassie’s supervisor, makes an attempt on reworking her into the subsequent Sophie Rain.

Cassie’s OnlyFans journey begins along with her making content material posing as a canine, replete with canine 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 bottom. She additional clothes up like a child, unfold eagle on the sofa in a sheer pink shirt, her hair in pigtails and a rattle in her mouth. Cassie and Nate’s housekeeper, Juana (performed by Minerva Garcia), has been tasked with snapping photographs of Cassie in these revealing costumes for her OnlyFans (she deserves a severe increase).

The present’s depiction of OnlyFans fashions through Cassie has, nevertheless, ranked real-life OnlyFans creators, who already discover themselves topic to sufficient mockery and scorn resulting from their line of labor.

“There’s just a lot that’s ridiculous and cartoonish about it,” Sydney Leathers, an OnlyFans creator since 2017, tells Variety. “There’s so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating: the age-play stuff where she’s dressed like a baby in a diaper, for example. “Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time.”

Indeed, any age-play content material involving an actual or simulated minor is expressly not permitted by the OnlyFans below its “Acceptable Use Policy” in its Terms of Service, and should end in “deactivation of your Content and/or your account,” together with:

Illegal exercise together with precise, claimed, or role-played: exploitation, abuse, or hurt of people below the age of 18; incest; bestiality; necrophilia; rape or sexual assault; and any content material or conduct that promotes terrorism.

Maitland Ward, a high OnlyFans creator and grownup actress who rakes in six figures a month on the platform — and, previous to her foray into intercourse work, starred on the sitcom “Boy Meets World” and the comedy movie “White Chicks” — discovered the newborn costume notably damaging to the already-skewed notion of real-life staff on OnlyFans.

“In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” Ward explains. “And there’s at all times this unfaithful stigma that someway intercourse work is synonymous with intercourse trafficking and abuse. And they only stated, let’s make a joke of it. That is so humorous. I’m not laughing.”

Levinson, for his half, defined Cassie’s OnlyFans arc thusly:

“[Cassie] “You have got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it,” Levinson told The Hollywood Reporter. “What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion — the gag is to jump out, to break the wall.”

When it involves how they lit the OnlyFans sequences, Levinson defined, “Some of those scenes we solely lit with these ring lights that she would use. When you are inside, it is a ravishing, glowing entrance mild, however then you definately soar out of it and it is only a pool of sunshine and every little thing surrounding it’s darkish. It’s simply gnarly and jarring… We wished to seize what she’s making an attempt to indicate the viewers and be within it, however then additionally pull again wider and see how miserable “it is.”

But his feedback about Cassie’s OnlyFans arc did little to dispel the notion that it is all an enormous ol’ joke that OnlyFans creators are the butt of, in accordance with Ward.

“That speaks volumes to me about why this OnlyFans storyline is being represented in the way that it is. It’s not being taken seriously,” says Ward. “It reminds me of when I pranced around in lingerie on ‘Boy Meets World.’ It’s just the guys in the writer’s room coming up with their fantasies. To take someone so traditionally blonde and beautiful with the biggest boobs and dress her up like a dog and baby is really bizarre, but at the same time as expected in Hollywood.”

One quasi-realistic portion of Cassie’s story is the best way she makes an attempt to make a reputation for herself on social media. At the urging of Maddy, Cassie visits a raucous mansion social gathering hosted by a well-liked on-line influencer within the hopes of going viral. She dances on a platform and makes out with one other sizzling lady, as a horde of creators livestream it to their appreciable followers, after which permits the aforementioned hypebeast to do cocaine off her navel simply earlier than Maddy bursts into the room with a videographer to snag content material of the 2 in a compromising place.

“When Cassie goes to the influencer’s house to get video, coming from a marketing background myself, I thought, ‘OK, that’s fuckin’ smart. That’s a great formula,'” gives Alix Lynx, a well-liked OnlyFans creator and grownup actress. “On the other hand, it’s portrayed that if you just dress up and do crazy shit, you’ll instantly make money, or you just have to be hot and have big boobs and you’ll instantly cash out, and it doesn’t work like that. “You have to really grow and nurture a fan base.”

Indeed, to all three OnlyFans creators Variety spoke with, Cassie’s OF odyssey is inverted — in actuality, they are saying it is important to amass a big on-line following earlier than launching on OnlyFans, in any other case you may be going through a near-impossible activity of constructing a devoted military of subscribers.

More than something, although, “Euphoria’s” portrayal of an OnlyFans creator feeds into reductive stereotypes surrounding intercourse staff, and serves as one more instance of Hollywood exhibiting them in an unflattering mild.

“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.”