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

The third (and final?) season of “Euphoria,” the chillingly dark portrait of Southern California’s rebellious youth, sees its coterie of high school friends navigate the seventh circle of hell — which, in the eyes of its creator, Sam Levinson, means entering the world of sex work.

Rue (Zendaya) becomes “Maria Full of Grace,” smuggling fentanyl from Mexico to America in her body and working as an assistant manager at a seedy strip club to settle her substantial debt to Laurie; Jules (Hunter Schafer) makes big money as a high-end sugar baby to a plastic surgeon who likes to mummify her in Saran wrap; Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) launches OnlyFans to pay for the $50,000 worth of wedding flowers she apparently needs to marry Nate (Jacob Elordi); and Maddy (Alexa Demie) reluctantly becomes her ex-friend Cassie’s manager, intending to turn her into the next Sophie Rain.

Cassie’s OnlyFans journey begins with creating content pretending to be a dog, replete with dog ears, collar, leash, cuffs, tail, and a satin corset from Sweeney’s SYRN lingerie line, bending over and lapping water from a bowl on the floor. She further dresses like a baby, spreads eagle on the couch in a see-through pink shirt, her hair in pigtails and a rattle in her mouth. Cassie and Nate’s housekeeper, Juana (played by Minerva Garcia), was tasked with taking photos of Cassie in these revealing costumes for her OnlyFans (she deserves a serious raise).

The show’s depiction of OnlyFans models via Cassie has, however, worried actual OnlyFans creators, who already find themselves subjected to enough mockery and scorn because of their work.

“There are a lot of ridiculous and caricatured things about it,” says Sydney Leathers, creator of OnlyFans since 2017. Variety. “There are so many things they make him do that aren’t 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 must follow, and the rules are getting stricter and stricter.

Indeed, any age-related content involving a real or simulated minor is expressly prohibited by OnlyFans under its “Acceptable Use Policy” in its Terms of Service, and may result in “disabling of your content and/or account,” including:

Illegal activity, including actual, claimed, or role-played activity: exploitation, abuse, or harm of persons under 18; incest; bestiality; necrophilia; rape or sexual assault; and any content or behavior that promotes terrorism.

Maitland Ward, one of OnlyFans’ top creators and an adult actress who earns six figures a month on the platform — and, before her foray into sex work, starred in the sitcom “Boy Meets World” and the comedy “White Chicks” — found the baby costume particularly damaging to the already skewed perception of real workers on OnlyFans.

“In the climate we live in, the fact that they dressed her up as a baby to create pornographic content on OnlyFans was beyond disturbing and once again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and will do anything for money,” Ward says. “And there’s still this false stigma that sex work is somehow synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse. And they just said, let’s make a joke of it. It’s so funny. I’m not laughing.”

Levinson, for his part, explained Cassie’s OnlyFans arc this way:

“[Cassie] has his dog house and his little dog ears and his nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that it’s his housekeeper filming it,” Levinson told the Hollywood Reporter. “What we always wanted to find is the other layer of absurdity that we can put in there so that we’re not too inside his fantasy or his illusion – the gag is to jump, to break the wall.”

As for how they lit the OnlyFans footage, Levinson explained, “Some of these scenes we lit just with these light rings that she would use. When you’re in there, it’s a nice bright front light, but then you jump out and it’s just a puddle of light and everything around it is dark. It’s just gnarly and shocking… We wanted to capture what she’s trying to show the audience and being inside, but also stepping back wider and seeing how depressing it is.

But his comments about Cassie’s OnlyFans arc have done little to dispel the notion that it’s just a big joke that OnlyFans creators are the target of, according to Ward.

“It tells me a lot about why this OnlyFans story is being portrayed the way it is. not to be taken seriously,” Ward says. “It reminds me of when I was prancing around in lingerie on ‘Boy Meets World.’ It’s just the guys in the writers’ room coming up with their fantasies. Taking someone so traditionally blonde and beautiful with the biggest breasts and dressing her up as a dog and a baby is really weird, but at the same time so expected in Hollywood.

An almost realistic part of Cassie’s story is how she attempts to make a name for herself on social media. At Maddy’s request, Cassie goes to a raucous mansion party hosted by a popular online influencer in hopes of going viral. She dances on a platform and makes out with another hot girl, while a horde of creators livestream her to their many subscribers, then allows the aforementioned hypebeast to take cocaine from her belly button just before Maddy bursts into the room with a videographer to grab the content of the two in a compromising position.

“When Cassie goes to the influencer to get a video, coming from a marketing background myself, I was like, ‘OK, that’s fucking clever. That’s a great formula,'” offers popular OnlyFans creator and adult actress Alix Lynx. “On the other hand, it’s portrayed that if you dress up and do crazy shit you’ll instantly make money, or you just need to be sexy and have big tits and you’ll cash in instantly, and that doesn’t work like that. You really need to develop and maintain a fan base.

Indeed, to the three OnlyFans creators Variety spoke with, Cassie’s OF odyssey is reversed — in fact, they say it’s essential to amass a large following online. Before by getting started on OnlyFans, otherwise you’ll be faced with a near-impossible task of building a dedicated army of subscribers.

More than anything, though, “Euphoria”‘s portrayal of an OnlyFans creator fuels reductive stereotypes surrounding sex workers and is another example of how Hollywood shows them in an unflattering light.

“Sex workers in general, myself included, tend to be hypersensitive to the way Hollywood presents us because it’s almost never kind,” Leathers says. “It’s always absurd or depressing and rarely relevant. When you’re part of a marginalized community, it’s easy to get angry at certain depictions of it.”