Sex Worker – Bitch Flicks

The Women of ‘Deadpool’

The newly released Marvel “superhero” movie ‘Deadpool’ is more of a self-aware, raunchy antihero flick that solidly earns its R rating with graphic violence, lots of dick jokes, and a sex scene montage. Basically, it’s a good time. While ‘Deadpool’ is entertaining, self-referential, self-effacing, and full of pop culture references, how does it measure up with its depiction of its female characters?

Written by Amanda Rodriguez | Spoilers ahead

The newly released Marvel “superhero” movie Deadpool is more of a self-aware, raunchy antihero flick that solidly earns its R rating with graphic violence, lots of dick jokes, and a sex scene montage. It mocks the conventions of the genre while still giving us its warped version of a superhero origin story, a tragic love story, and a revenge story. Basically, it’s a good time. While Deadpool is entertaining, self-referential, self-effacing, and full of pop culture references, how does it measure up with its depiction of its female characters? The movie sadly does not pass the Bechdel Test. However, there are four prominent female characters worth further investigation.

Vanessa Carlyle (Morena Baccarin) is Wade’s/Deadpool’s (Ryan Reynolds) love interest or as she’s billed in the intro credits “The Hot Chick.” She’s a salty sex worker with a dark sense of humor that matches Wade’s. They quickly fall in love, and Vanessa is unfailingly loyal to him. While it’s good to see a sex worker in the role of love interest in a way that doesn’t shame or belittle her for her profession, Baccarin once again fulfills the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope. (Her role as the Companion Inara in Firefly also fits that bill.) Vanessa is the quintessential damsel in distress, as she is, unsurprisingly, the bait during the final showdown that Ajax (the big baddie) uses against Deadpool. While her self-confidence, her no-bullshit attitude, and her nerdiness are all admirable qualities AND it’s refreshing to have a woman of color as a leading lady, Vanessa is, unfortunately, a variation of the standard action movie love interest without much agency or identity outside of her relationship.

A la the opening credits, we also have “The Moody Teen” a young, surly, gum-chewing X-Men known as Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). Negasonic has very few lines and exists to fulfill the role of angsty teen. Her mutant powers, however, were interestingly changed from the telepathy and precognition of her comic book iteration to “localized atomic detonation.” Though I’m usually a purist, this change created a female character who played an active role in the film’s climax in a way that successfully embodied her angst and was pretty badass.

A twisted version of the buddy trope plays out with Deadpool and his roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), an elderly Black woman who inexplicably associates with our antihero. From the comics, we know that the two have a dark relationship with a much darker version of Deadpool than the film depicts. Al seems to exist in this movie only to give the rough, sarcastic, morally flawed Wade more depth of feeling.

Lastly, we have Angel Dust performed by my ever-beloved Gina Carano. Angel is a mutant with superhuman strength who acts as Ajax’s muscle, right-arm woman, and bedfellow. She’s the strong, silent, torturing type who gives X-Men’s Colossus a sound beating before he’s able to turn the fight around and claim victory. There is no depth to her character. She is your garden variety sociopathic killer henchman.

While Deadpool‘s blunt humor and self-awareness are a refreshing addition to the superhero genre, the intro credits set the tone for all the other characters (male and female) who fall into traditionally prescribed archetypes. While I recognize the meta-humor in this, it’s disappointing to see a film work so hard to expose and subvert genre conventions in a hilarious way and then just turn around and fail to do that same work with its female characters. Fingers crossed that the inevitable sequel will ingeniously develop a female character to match Deadpool’s one-of-a-kind personality.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. Her short story “The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Mermaid” was published in Germ Magazine. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: ‘Ginger Snaps’

This guest post by Kelly Piercy appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Turn on any TV at primetime and you’ll likely see a sex worker dead in a dumpster. Or you’ll see a sex worker telling a cop all about that other sex worker who ended up dead in a dumpster. Because being aware and/or in control of your sexual identity can often be the most dangerous thing a woman in pop culture can be. Slasher films are overpopulated with hot young ripe things just ready to be plucked by a cartoonish serial killer. There will be jeering. There will be mutilation. Of this we can be sure. These things are sold to us on a regular basis.

What we can’t be so sure of however, is what fresh hell each teenage girl experiences with their hormones on an individual basis. Or what really happens when you get bitten by a werewolf. There will be blood in both instances, yes. But there will be a whole host of weird surprises. In Ginger Snaps, those two things just so happen to combine in one film, and you’ll soon become endlessly irritated that you didn’t think of it yourself. It is one of body horror’s great allegories. And there is so much room for snark. With Ginger Snaps, we have one of the most interesting examinations of violence in this bleak world that is representation in film. Certainly the only one where the teenage girl does the mutilating. And truth be told, it’s hard not to feel completely exhilarated by it. Even when you’re heaving.

Describing Ginger Snaps in a sentence might sound something like “an excellent example of subversion of genre norms coupled with language that belongs in the pop culture hall of fame.” Something that would also work is “two teenage girls being fucking awesome.” Because in Ginger Snaps, teenage girls are smarmy and moody – of course they are – but also passionate and resourceful. The dialogue is funny and brimming with wicked imagery as opposed to sleeping through clunky exposition and gender conformity. Horror films have a history of violent transformation or destructive host and the repercussions of these changes in public spaces, but not many examine the female body specifically and it’s place in society, the specific “monstrous feminine.” The genre path of teenage sexual behaviour leading to monstrosity strangely never stopped to think about periods. Ginger Snaps takes a long hard look at “the curse” and plays with both its stereotypes and its biological facts incredibly honestly.

Ginger, despite morphing into a werewolf, becomes our protagonist killer in a very human way, and the complexity of her journey is a cinematic rarity. A large part of its appeal is the addictive excitement-and-relief cocktail that comes with seeing your experiences reflected on screen–to see menstruation from a menstruating perspective. Who wouldn’t see want to see the violence of their PMS daydreams being played out? Ginger Snaps gives its characters a small town and a big world, and the result for its viewers reflects as both deeply personal and pure escapism. Also known as the ingredients for the perfect horror. Get ready to fall in love with the Fitzgerald sisters.

How early does the violence start in Ginger Snaps? A more appropriate question might be “How many films can you recall opening with the massacred corpse of a family dog?” Marley and Me, this isn’t. There’s a wild animal killing the canine population of the sleepy town of Bailey Downs, and nobody really seems too concerned. But we don’t have time to dwell because soon we’re met with the sight of 15-year-old Brigitte, both slouchy and creepy, emerging from her garage, hooked up with tools. Like Dick Van Dyke with all his instruments in Mary Poppins, but a teenage girl with wires and shit. I’m not going to get into Emily Perkins’ physicality in this film because the level of scowl perfection alone is truly inspiring, and it deserves an article in its own right. Suffice to say, this is when I knew I was with Ginger Snaps for the long haul.

As well as Brigitte, we also get the privilege of Ginger, who is the older, edgier, decidedly more daring sibling partner in crime. Ginger and Brigitte muse on suburban mundanity in their shared basement bedroom, while Ginger traces her arm with a knife: “Wrists are for girls, I’m slitting my throat,” she scoffs. We move to Ginger impaled on their garden fence, ruptured at the abdomen, limbs splayed, blood everywhere. Then Brigitte leans in and takes a photograph. Yes. These little shits are staging various death poses for a school project! It is so glorious I smile immediately, wickedly even. I feel pure joy radiate out. This is my comfort zone. And so our titles roll and with them comes dozens of DIY photos of Brigitte and Ginger, meeting variously creative gruesome ends. They’re showing this as a slideshow to their classmates, for a school project. It drips with bad taste. Their teacher can’t believe it. I told you you’d love the Fitzgerald sisters.

It’s not long before the fake blood is replaced with real blood. Sixteen-year-old Ginger’s first period and her transition into a werewolf happen simultaneously. What a day, huh? Society punishes women for being women, this is another one of those things we can be sure of. In this particular instance, Ginger is punished for becoming a woman by being violently savaged by a wild beast, which doesn’t sound too different from the online comments section. In a lot of ways Ginger Snaps seems even more relatable in today’s climate than in 2000, the year of its release.

Ginger’s own metamorphosis masquerades as regular, as mundane. Adult women assure her of her normality. But one transformation is obscuring the other, as highlighted by the excellent scene with the school nurse that hits every parallel beat with precision. Menstruation is the birth of Ginger as a threat. Hurtling toward womanhood, she is now decidedly different than a male, she is now the monster that lies within the feminine, and more accurately the feminine that intimidates the masculine. The unattainable, confusing and unfathomable, the unknown onto which the fear is projected. Oh, and she’s also physically becoming a gnarling brute that really wants to rip human flesh to shreds. So there’s that.

But at first Ginger doesn’t recognise her yearning for splattered organs, she just thinks she needs to get laid. Pre-menstrual, Ginger is vaguely disinterested in boys at best. When the schools resident Bro Boy first makes a move she is almost puzzled, and a simple “Er, no…” will suffice as she continues walking, a fly swatted. Later, when he tells her about his sisters and insists that when it comes to cramps “nothing takes the edge off like a toke,” she replies simply again, “Maybe I like my edge, thanks.” The way that Katherine Alexander’s delivery complements the dialogue is unmistakeable in many of Ginger’s best lines. Her attitude could be reactionary, bratty, and dramatic, but instead it is deliciously restrained. This brings with it an awareness of the shouty, quick tempered, usually improv-based insult scenes prevalent in films currently–the “say the grossest thing you can as loud as you can” approach. Getting increasingly shouty in a very short space of time seems to be the default in a lot of comedies (looking at you, America) and Ginger Snaps felt like a reminder. Shouty is funny when it’s the rarity. And a lot of comedies could benefit from Ginger Snaps’ example of less is more. They could also benefit from Mimi Rogers’ more is more, perfectly cast as the girls’ excessively perky mother. The implication being that Ginger Snaps is not only a superior horror film, but a superior comedy as well.

But back to Ginger. Her sexual ambivalence is marked by a classic slow motion strut-slash-glide through the school hallway. She is now Sexually Awakened™ and interested in Bro Boy. After getting rough with him in the back of his car, Brigitte finds her in their bathroom. “I get this ache,” Ginger says, head in the toilet, hair silver and covered in blood, “I thought it was for sex, but it’s to tear everything to fucking pieces.” She just lost her virginity, and it could have essentially been soundtracked by Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf.” So she killed a dog after.

Ginger’s acts of violence are now accelerating, with her temper becoming increasingly explosive. Both the hockey field and the neighbour’s garden offer chances for instant relief, but it’s not enough. Ginger’s hunger is all-consuming. Hormones multiplied by a taste for blood equals death and infection. Brigitte’s got a real problem on her hands trying to fix this. As she panics, racing to find a cure to save her sister, Ginger remains devilishly nonchalant. She justifies her actions simply: “No one ever thinks chicks do shit like this. A girl can only be a slut, a bitch, a tease, or the virgin next door. We’ll just coast on how the world works.” You can’t fault her insight. But Brigitte is in a dangerous situation now, facing off with GingerWolf, so it sounds like it’s about time for a knight in shining armour to draw a sword and fight the Big Bad, doesn’t it? Nope, Ginger Snaps still doesn’t let you down, because when Brigitte’s drug dealer sidekick Sam (think Canadian Jason Dean) suggests taking the cure and fleeing the monster, Brigitte shouts “HOW ABOUT NO!” in his face. The sisters have a pact, “out by 16 or dead on the scene, but together forever.” In the end, we know that Brigitte has to figure this out alone.

Throughout their lives, the Fitzgerald sisters operated exclusively as a unit. Ginger can be bolder, domineering and baiting, and Brigitte grounds her, more prone to analysing and logistics. There is a repetition of the mantra “this is so us” coursing through – if Ginger leaves the dinner table, Brigitte follows, if Ginger offers up a judgement, Brigitte extends it. They have matching bone pens. They are functioning as one, in spite of an obviously unbalanced power dynamic and personality difference, and they are both aware of this, becoming increasingly vocal about it as the film progresses. When Ginger’s acts of violence become more heinous, the distinctions between the two of them mobilise and the separation gains speed. As Ginger becomes a killer, Brigitte becomes an individual. Brigitte forces her own journey to Werewolfdom by actively sharing blood with Ginger, and she proceeds with complete self-awareness, in control of her body and the changes she knows are coming. She goes into the fight equipped not only with the experience of witnessing Ginger’s destruction, but with the necessities to survive womanhood: a strong sense of self, the courage to call out bullshit, and a fierce possessiveness of your own body.

Despite always wanting to be a screenwriter, I have never wanted to write horror. Now I do. This is representation in action, folks! I am living proof of it! Power to the Ontario Gothic. This is how it’s done.

Kelly Piercy is a Lit grad and comedy writer based in London. She mostly enjoys Leslie Knope, Sleater Kinney, and Cher’s twitter feed.

‘The Foxy Merkins’ and the Uncharted Territory of the Fat, Lesbian Protagonist

That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

This guest post by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

This article contains spoilers for The Foxy Merkins.

Selected for the NEXT series at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival along with films like Obvious Child and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy by and about queer women with an episodic structure and humor fueled by social awkwardness and mundane absurdism (think Louie). Simply put, it’s part fish out of water comedy, part buddy film, and all lesbian hookers. Set in contemporary New York City, the film creates a world of sex work in homage to Midnight Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, but populated by women who have sex with other women. As with its progenitors, this subculture is scandalous, but hardly clandestine. These sex workers bide their time on the sidewalk in broad daylight until approached by other women, which occurs with relative frequency.

The film charts unexpected territory by merging stereotypes about seemingly disparate subcultures. Its narrative maintains the beats of taboo sex and danger expected from a story about sex workers, but does so through the filter of lesbian culture and stereotypes. In one exchange between the two main characters, Jo (Jackie Monahan) advises Margaret (Lisa Haas) to market her services by using the hanky code. However, the film’s version isn’t quite the same one used by gay men in the 70s to signify their kinky preferences: “A yellow bandana in your left back pocket means you have more than one cat… a red bandana in your right back pocket means you like women who have been through the Change.”

Jo and Margaret at work. “A lot of the girls hang out in front of Talbots.”

The film predominantly focuses on Margaret, a newbie sex worker with a degree in Women’s Studies who happens to be fat and butch. She is a pastiche of red-blooded hunk Joe Buck (Jon Voight) from Midnight Cowboy and sulky sylph Mike (River Phoenix) from My Own Private Idaho, but her size and gender expression set her apart from their more normative representations of beauty. That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

Margaret bumbles her way through interactions with clients, but this characteristic diverts from the standard depiction of fat and/or gender non-conforming women as undeserving of sexual desire. The Foxy Merkins uses a more nuanced approach. We do see glimpses of her as a sexual being, such as a scene that begins by implying she’s just had an orgasm, even if it quickly turns its focus on her awkwardness. This trait is partially inherited from Joe Buck, who isn’t genteel enough to seduce the rich Manhattanites he targets. It’s charming in its relatability: as someone who can barely navigate small talk in a professional setting, let alone a sexual encounter, I could easily see myself in Margaret’s shoes. But these scenes are also ground for meta-humor, as film trope clashes with cultural expectations. What happens when someone who looks like Margaret assumes the role of soul-searching hustler formerly and famously occupied by normatively attractive men? The Foxy Merkins’ predecessors supply setting, story, and characters, but like a Warner Brothers cartoon character running off their background onto a blank screen, there is a dearth of precedent for a fat, butch film character to communicate sexual allure, either to fellow characters or to an audience who has been groomed to lust after thin, feminine women. The energy that Haas brings to these scenes suggests an undercurrent of resigned bewilderment.

Margaret socially functions as a sexual being by virtue of existing within a subculture of lesbian sex work, but that subculture largely retains real-world beauty standards, rendering her body simultaneously unattractive and sexually commodified. Jo explains to Margaret how she is seen by potential clients: “You’re the type of lesbian they are mortified to be seen with… they do not want to be caught with you. So they’re gonna pay you extra to sneak around with them… honestly, you should have so much more money.” Thin, femme Jo takes on the role of Margaret’s docent, as well as her foil. Carefree (and often careless), Jo opts to do sex work as a way of rebelling against her wealthy upbringing. Despite repeatedly stating that she is not sexually attracted to women, she is more experienced and successful than Margaret in their profession. In one scene, the two walk down a busy Manhattan street as Jo casually claims to have slept with every woman they pass, while Margaret seems to barely keep up with mentally processing what her friend is telling her.

Margaret’s allergies are triggered while visiting a client’s house.

The film continues to grapple with the clashing expectations of Margaret’s profession and appearance through a sequence of encounters with a rich, conservative client (Susan Ziegler). During their first encounter, the client asks Margaret to take her clothes off. In opposition to the sexy tone she ought to set, she chastely removes her bra and underwear once she is under the bedsheet. (Her client coquettishly refers to this maneuver as a “magic trick.”) While another film might construct an erotic scene with gliding closeups and sensual music, this one involves a stationary shot of Margaret squirming and rocking under the sheet as her client waits patiently off to the side, amplified sounds of rustling cloth the only soundtrack. The scene self-consciously buys into the mainstream trope that “nobody wants to see” fat bodies or expressions of queer sexuality. The client obviously wants to see Margaret’s body and have sex with her, but Margaret remains in her culturally sanctioned role of chaste lesbian/unseen fat person to the point of absurdity.

Unsurprisingly, this is not a film that passes up a chance to satirize the right wing. Margaret’s aforementioned client has hired two men (Charles Rogers and Lee Eaton) to dress as cops, burst into her hotel room, and terrorize Margaret, who is unaware that the scene is staged. In the second of three scenes to this effect, Margaret is completely naked. Fat bodies in a state of undress are usually cause for a film protagonist to express disgust, with the expectation that the audience will empathize with that disgust. This time, however, the fat body belongs to our protagonist. She isn’t modestly positioned with her back to the camera or cheekily blocked by an object in the foreground. The audience sees her full frontal in the center of the screen, flanked by the two cops pointing guns at her. As with her “striptease,” the camera is unwavering. This static view heightens our sense of Margaret’s shock and embarrassment, but is also confrontational. This is a film that asks the audience to relate to a fat, lesbian protagonist: if a viewer has been trying to empathize with Margaret by downplaying her size or queerness up to this point in the movie, those characteristics have become starkly unavoidable.

The male gaze that reinforces standards of thinness and straightness and is ubiquitous in cinema, even if only present in a handful of scenes in The Foxy Merkins, is embodied in this scene by the two cops. They repeatedly tell Margaret to drop what she’s holding, despite her protests that she isn’t holding anything and attempts to placate them by making dropping motions with her empty hands. They even insist that she has “something tied around [her] waist” and is wearing “a collared shirt,” as if they have no sense of what a fat woman’s body looks like in the nude. An absurdist feedback loop is created of a command that cannot be followed and cooperation that is inherently uncooperative. This dynamic is reminiscent of the often frustrating relationship that queer and fat people have with a dominant culture that demands compliance even when attempts to do so are demonstrably futile. We still hear voices of authority telling us to “drop it” with regards to weight and desire for non-heteronormative love and sex, despite evidence that diets don’t work in the long run and sexual orientation can’t be changed at will.

But these two men have no genuine authority, they have been ordered to act as police by the client. As Jo later explains to Margaret, “It’s her fetish, it’s her kink. She likes to see people naked with the police.” The client watches these confrontations from behind the bedsheets, distancing herself from the situation by feigning shock and claiming that Margaret showed up in her room uninvited. This rich, white, thin woman who is hiding her own queerness to maintain her privilege actively seeks pleasure from seeing the oppression of marginalized people. Their third date even includes a Black woman, ostensibly the client’s maid, getting shot by the cops. Jo, who has the privileges of her appearance and wealthy upbringing, similarly benefits from the situation, as she has been paid to withhold from Margaret that the scenes aren’t real. The client’s fetish parallels the common use of schadenfreude in film to entertain at the expense of not only fat people, but people of color, sex workers, and queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people.

Of course, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy, and the scenarios it presents are not as cruel as the realities it satirizes, or even the films to which it pays homage. The pretend bust is the closest Margaret comes to experiencing violence on the job, and even that ends with the cops and their shooting victim laughing and walking offscreen together. Nevertheless, the lighthearted humor speaks to real disparities in media representation. The audience is not allowed to forget that Margaret is occupying a position that the film industry did not historically intend to include someone of her sexuality, gender expression, or size. Both as a lesbian hooker and as a film character, her existence is a struggle. She ultimately realizes that she must move on from the former role, but as the latter, she is a quiet triumph.

Tessa Racked is a Women’s Studies major who makes a living as a social worker, writes about fat representation in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape, and dispenses witticisms @tessa_racked. They live in Chicago.