Sydney Sweeney has found herself at the center of controversy once again, thanks to her role on HBO’s hit show Euphoria.
Sweeney was the focal point of an online firestorm last summer after an American Eagle advertisement she featured in was criticized for being “Nazi propaganda.”
Far-right commentators were quick to seize the opportunity to claim Sweeney as one of their own, celebrating the end of “woke advertising” and praising Sweeney and her all-American looks for standing tall against the supposed threat posed by DEI initiatives.
With Euphoria back on the air for its third season, Sweeney is once again facing backlash online, this time for actions her fictional counterpart has undertaken.
The show’s third season sees Sweeney’s Cassie Howard join OnlyFans in order to afford her wedding to Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs.
Several other characters in the show also work in roles adjacent to the sex industry: Zendaya’s Rue Bennett is an assistant manager at a strip club, while Hunter Schaefer’s Jules Vaughn is a sugar baby to a plastic surgeon. Alexa Demie’s Maddy Perez even joins Cassie’s operation as her manager.
Celina Reboyras, a sex worker and founder of Doxy magazine, found this creative choice to be an odd one, telling Dazed, “It’s very f---ing bizarre that Sam Levinson decided to have every main character in season 3 of Euphoria either become a sex worker or have a job that’s sex work-adjacent. Like, I went to high school 20 minutes outside of a major metropolitan city in the US and I’m the only person among my peers who became a sex worker.”
Cassie’s storyline has sparked the loudest response online, as it has seen her make content for the site while dressed up as a dog and a baby, something that stood out to actual OnlyFans creators as incredibly unrealistic.
“There’s just a lot that’s ridiculous and cartoonish about it,” OnlyFans creator Sydney Leathers told Variety, noting that many of the things Cassie is shown doing would be in violation of the site’s terms and conditions.
“The age-play stuff where she’s dressed as a baby in a diaper, for example,” Leathers said. “Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time.”
Leathers also explained the backlash, telling Variety, “Sex workers in general, myself included, tend to be hyper-sensitive about the way Hollywood portrays us because it’s almost never nice.”
“It’s always absurd or depressing and rarely ever on point. When you’re part of a marginalized community, it’s easy to get upset about certain portrayals of it.”
Maitland Ward, an OnlyFans creator who starred in Boy Meets World and White Chicks, found the baby scene “beyond troubling.”
“In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” Ward told Variety.
“And there’s always this untrue stigma that somehow sex work is synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse. And they just said, let’s make a joke of it. That is so funny. I’m not laughing.”
OnlyFans performer Megan Prescott told Mashable that the show is a fantasy of a type of sex work, expressing concern that “in doing that, the general public will be like, ‘Oh my god. On OnlyFans, you can dress up as a baby. That’s disgusting,’ which is just not accurate.”
According to the site’s acceptable use policy, content that features “illegal activity including actual, claimed, or role-played: exploitation, abuse, or harm of individuals under the age of 18” is prohibited.
Megyn Kelly also took aim at Sweeney after a teaser for the episode was released, accusing the show of “sexualizing infancy.”
“The truth is, this is sexualizing infancy,” Kelly said. “She’s dressed as a baby. She’s in a baby’s outfit. She’s sucking on a binky pacifier, and her legs are completely spread.”
“I think this is another example, guys, of Hollywood not understanding at all where the line is and how most normal people are going to recoil, even Sydney Sweeney fans, in response to what’s essentially the sexualization of a child, of a baby,” she added.
Referring to Sweeney, Kelly said, “I can’t believe she agreed to this,” while laying much of the blame at the feet of the show’s creator, Sam Levinson.
Levinson has defended the storyline as a creative choice, arguing, “What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion—the gag is to jump out, to break the wall.”
Several sex workers have questioned whether Levinson consults with actual sex workers during production. While that is unclear, Chloe Cherry, who acted in porn before joining the cast of Euphoria as Faye, has spoken frankly about the proliferation of OnlyFans reflected in the show.
“OnlyFans and sex work have become more normalized, but it’s literally only because of capitalism and the economy getting worse,” Cherry told Refinery29. “It has nothing to do with empowerment or power or anything. What it actually 100% has to do with is just the fact that we live under capitalism and the economy is horrible. That’s why people are turning to it.”
On Cassie’s decision to join OnlyFans, Cherry said, “It’s really hard to say if it would give her any power.”
“Obviously, Cassie is extremely attractive, so it probably would lead to her making a lot of money,” she continued. “But it just feels crazy as f--- to see somebody living like Cassie turn to sex work. It’s like, ‘holy s--t, that’s where we’re at in society?’“
“I really think that OnlyFans is a crazy, weird phenomenon of the 2020s that we will look back on and be very confused by.”
