WORDS by MILA LAPENTE
Sophia Giovannitti opens her debut memoir, Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex, with a quote on subversion from Brain Holmes: “On the left, the economy had traditionally been seen as the opposite of art, just as the act of selling is the opposite of the spontaneous gift. But the aesthetic strategies of the ‘counterculture’... could be exalted and set to work. The margins become the center; the art of transgression becomes the commodity.” From Verso publishing, Working Girl sets out to be an anti-capitalist critique of art, sex, and work. Yet, Giovannitti’s confessional conceptualizations of sex work as artistic study left me questioning whether this book truly represents the interests of the sex working community. Do platformed voices have a responsibility to the communities they speak on—particularly if they are oppressed? If so, did Giovannitti uphold her end of the bargain?
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