This article contains spoilers for Anora, including its ending.
Dressed in a white Prada gown and clutching her newly won bronze BAFTA, on Sunday (February 16), Mikey Madison stood onstage at London’s Royal Festival Hall and addressed a crowd of Hollywood’s most glamorous—and influential—and the millions watching at home.
At the end of her acceptance speech for Leading Actress, the enigmatic lead in Sean Baker’s sex worker anti-love story Anora said she wanted to take a moment to recognize the community at the heart of her film. “I just want to say that I see you,” she said, addressing sex workers. “You deserve respect and human decency. I will always be a friend and an ally, and I implore others to do the same.”
It was a major moment on the world stage: a BAFTA-winning actor not only acknowledging sex workers (who both inspired and directly contributed to the film) but also actively calling for their rights. It got people online talking, too. News outlets reported on the “powerful tribute” and “heartfelt moment,” while sex workers and allies applauded her shout-out on social media.
ICYMI, in cinemas—and are down with spoilers—Anora follows the doomed marriage of stripper and sex worker Anora ‘Ani’ Mikheeva (played by Mikey) and Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the bratty son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. After meeting in Ani’s strip club, Vanya hires Ani as a full-service, live-in sex worker for a week, before he proposes and they elope to Las Vegas. When his family finds out about the marriage, chaos ensues.
Although some sex workers haven’t been enthralled by the film (more on that later), many have praised Anora’s depiction of the sex industry, which they say humanizes sex workers and approaches their work with nuance—something mainstream portrayals don’t typically do.
This homage stretches beyond the screen, too. Mikey’s speech isn’t the first time Anora’s cast and crew have included and acknowledged sex workers in the movie’s success. In fact, Baker’s choice to consult and cast sex workers (strippers Luna Sofía Miranda, Lindsey Normington, and Sophia Carnabuci all have supporting roles) in order to authentically portray their work and lives is likely a big part of why Anora has been so successful. Mikey even hosted an early screening of the film exclusively for dancers and sex workers. And, like Mikey, Baker addressed sex workers in his Palme d’Or acceptance speech, dedicating his win to “all sex workers, past, present, and future”.
But Mikey’s direct-address felt particularly powerful. “To see a young woman in her big moment do a call to action like that was huge,” says Buffy, a former stripper and the co-host of the podcast, Strippers in the Attic. “She could have said something more Miss Universe and noncommittal, but she was very forthright in her support of the community.”
“When people do creative stories about marginalized communities, they tend to just take and not really remember the communities the stories came from,” she continues. “For [Mikey] to give a name-check to our community, saying that we matter and that what we do is important and special will make a lot of people [feel seen and] feel good.”
Lisa*, an Edinburgh-based dancer, echoes this. “Too often, the portrayal of all kinds of sex workers has been very 2D, either a character with predictable sob story or a glamorised boss girlie version,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. “Both lack nuance and insight into the complexities of the work and the workers.”
What Anora got right (and wrong) about sex work
Anora has been lauded by civilians for its representation of sex work. But there’s been mixed reactions among the community it represents, particularly in relation to Ani’s interiority and motivations (which many say are lacking), as well as the question of whether the film really moves past stereotypes and fetishisation.
For LA-based sex worker and writer Marla Cruz, it doesn’t. “Anora is predicated on regressive stereotypes about sex workers: in this telling, we’re crass, impulsive, and pathologically sexual,” she writes for Angel Food.
The main culprit, in her view? That ending, in which, after Ani’s forced annulment from Vanya, former thug-turned-good-guy Igor (Yuri Borisov) drives her home. As they pull up to her house, Igor—who’d previously called on Vanya to apologize to Ani—reveals that he managed to get away with her engagement ring. In response, Ani climbs on top of him and they start to have sex—but when Igor looks into Ani’s eyes and tries to kiss her, she breaks down in tears.
Cruz calls out this moment’s “baffling implication that it must be emotionally groundbreaking when a man shows a modicum of care towards a sex worker because sex workers have little experience being loved and cared for. What kind of love story could we expect for the broken down, unloved sex worker?”
UK-based stripper Jane* feels similarly about the ending, which she says lazily “rehashes the ‘traumatized, vulnerable sex worker’ trope, which we’ve seen a thousand times before.”
There’s also been criticisms of a scene that’s supposed to be comedic, in which Ani has to fight off two tough guys (including Igor) who’ve come to kidnap her and take her to get divorced. But some say the moment trivializes the very real violence that sex workers face—and, rather than being funny, is actually a pretty uncomfortable watch.
“The scene where Anora gets beat up really brought up the truth that many sex workers face, which is the high rate of violence against them,” former escort Mia told Slate in October. “That danger, that threat, is so real for sex workers. To see it be part of the comedic elements of the film was pretty haunting, if I’m being honest.”
Other sex workers feel more positively about the portrayal. “I thought it was really wonderful,” Buffy tells Cosmopolitan UK. “The opening scene is amazing; you can see that they took the time to have people who’ve worked in the industry as consultants.”
She calls out Mikey’s performance, in particular. “I thought Mikey was fantastic—she really took the time to learn everything properly. Ani had a strength to her that was mixed with vulnerability. She was a human being. And most of the time when sex workers are shown on film, they’re not shown as human beings. So I thought that was a lovely thing to behold.”
Despite her reservations about the ending, Jane enjoyed the rare comedic portrayal of her work. “There were moments of comedy and even farce which felt familiar,” she says, “and it was nice seeing those displayed neutrally or even affectionately, as we’re so used to our work being represented as inherently sleazy and negative.”
“It’s also the first time I’ve ever seen a major film mention the working rights of strippers, with regards to the references to freelance status and not having insurance or 401ks,” Jane continues.
“They could have gone even further with this, as it’s widely known that strip clubs in particular are terrible at trying to exploit the workers’ rights of dancers and it takes a group effort to fight back against that.”
Beyond the BAFTAs
In a press conference after her win, Mikey continued to champion strippers and sex workers.
“I’ve gotten to know some really incredible people from that community,” she told reporters. “That’s been one of the most incredible parts of playing Ani… getting to know so many amazing women. These are people who I really admire and who deserve respect. And just because of society and because of what they do, [they] are really mistreated, and I think it’s really unfair.”
Although sex work is less taboo than it once was (largely thanks to the rise of OnlyFans), sex workers still face a huge amount of stigma — not only from the general public, but also through censorship online, financial discrimination, and, in the case of full-service sex workers, criminalization.
While strippers’ work is technically legal in both the UK and US, where Anora is set, there are restrictions. In the UK, for example, it’s up to local councils to grant yearly licenses to sexual entertainment venues (SEVs); if denied, strip clubs could effectively be banned in that particular area — something that’s been threatened more and more in recent years.
Plus, although strippers are entitled to the same rights as other workers—national minimum wage, holiday and sick pay, protection from discrimination, maternity leave—employers often misclassify dancers as self-employed contractors in order to avoid giving them these rights.
So, Mikey Madison is right: Sex workers are really mistreated.
“The public in general doesn’t understand how complicated it can be for dancers to navigate the labyrinth of club rules and workers’ rights,” says Jane. “I’ve spoken to large audiences about this before and there’s always an audible gasp when I mention that dancers have to pay house fees to work.”
What’s more, adds Lisa, “while [Mikey’s] acknowledgement of [sex workers] is a nice change, the harsh reality is that many politicians here in the UK, as well as in the US, are still pushing to criminalize workers and/or their customers, which threatens worker safety as well as rights, when really, poverty and the cost of living crisis are what push more women and marginalized folks into the work—and nothing is being done to address these issues.”
And although they’re the ones directly affected by these legislation and living conditions, sex workers are rarely consulted—neither in parliament nor in the media.
“Oftentimes, we’re brought up in mainstream conversations to cause debates or because what we do is ‘taboo’ and people are intrigued by our work,” says pole dancer and instructor Destiny. “But we’re never actually platformed to speak on our own experiences.”
“We deserve to be at the forefront of conversations about us, as who better to be educated from but the source themselves?” she adds. “People are so caught up on their own ideas on sex work and falling for rage bait which shows us in a bad light that they fail to remember that when we leave work, we are just people the same as anyone else.”
From awareness to action
While there’s a long way to go, if Anora can get people talking about sex work in a non-sensationalized way, then that’s a positive step forward.
And if it gets award-winning Hollywood movie stars advocating for sex workers’ rights, then—for all the film’s criticisms—that’s certainly worth celebrating. But action needs to follow.
Of Mikey’s support of her community, Lisa* says: “I hope it helps to uplift sex workers and [encourage] the public to be more vocal in support of us. Both in daily life, when you hear someone making a joke at our expense, and in contacting their MP regarding legislation.” (You can do the latter via this helpful email tool.)
Indeed. And, as sex worker and writer Laura LeMoon put it: “Being an ally is where the rubber meets the road.”
If you want to find out more about how you can support sex workers’ rights in the UK, visit sex worker-led organisations, including SWARM, English Collective of Prostitutes, SCOT-PEP, National Ugly Mugs, Decrim Now, and East London Strippers Collective.
*Names have been changed
