
It’s always striking to see a film that holds up so well in terms of content and yet is so tied to its time period in terms of aesthetics. I’m hesitant to use the word “dated”, because I think a film like Working Girls is aiming to portray an authentic version of its own reality, even if that reality feels unmistakably born of the 1980s. But the guiding philosophy of Working Girls seems to be that “sex work is work”, a phrase I only remember popping up in the public consciousness in the last decade or so. So to see a film that portrays sex work in terms of labor and workplace politics feels pretty remarkable, even if the hair, make-up, and name brands used in the film feel like relics of the Reagan years.







