We’ve long called prostitution the world’s oldest profession, but somehow in the first part of the 21st century it’s been elevated to one of the most prestigious. At least, for the left half of the country, and that includes the celebrity class.
At the Oscars on Sunday night, yet another actress unknown to anyone above the age of 26 was catapulted to the stars when she won the best actress award for her portrayal of a hooker with a heart of gold in the movie Anora. In Hollywood, all hookers have hearts of gold, naturally. Julia Roberts glamorized selling sex for money in the immensely popular movie Pretty Woman 35 years ago. The message was that prostitutes are pretty and sweet, and one day a gorgeous Richard Gere will come along and make an honest woman out of each and every one.
In Anora, actress Mikey Madison plays a Brooklyn prostitute swept off her feet by a handsome young Russian entrepreneur. His Russian family doesn’t want him marrying a call girl (can you blame them) and predictable hijinks ensue. So there’s not much of a change in formula for the Hollywood hooker-goes-good story, except that the hookers don’t have to travel so far to get to “good” anymore.
See, they’ve been given what the kids call an image “glow-up.” When was the last time you heard a woman who sells her body called a “prostitute” or a “hooker?” My guess is that it’s been at least six or seven years. In that time, the euphemism treadmill caught up with the subject matter, and since then, they’ve been called “sex workers.” This linguistic shift was pushed by the woke left, who spent a few years going around bellowing that “sex work is work!” The Marxian idea was to see prostitutes as just another part of the good proletariat slaving away and being exploited by capital.
Everyone bought in, everywhere. Look how the movie review sites describe Anora. Here’s the blurb from Rotten Tomatoes:
“Mikey Madison (ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD) captivates as Ani, a young sex worker from Brooklyn whose life takes an unexpected turn. . .”
By contrast, Julia Robers still gets the old-school treatment on IMDB, which scandalously calls her character a “prostitute.”
Unsurprisingly, dewy-faced Mikey Madison stood at the podium to accept her award and did the simpering starlet act we’ve come to expect. Oh, how I never dreamed a girl from Los Angeles could rise to these heights, she cooed.
But that wasn’t the sick-making part. As most people who pretend to be other people for a living do, Madison veered off into praising the hooker class whom she portrayed.
“I also just want to again recognize and honor the sex worker community; I will continue to support and be an ally,” she oozed.
The sex worker community? Prostitution should be “honored?” Well, it is Hollywood in 2025.
Let’s see how X/Twitter users reacted. Spoiler: they weren’t pleased.
