On “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” and “Euphoria,” the body is the hustle

It’s been a minute since most of the public heard from Shannon Elizabeth. Remember her? Elizabeth was an early aughts sex symbol, launched to fame by breakout roles in “American Pie,” “Scary Movie” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” She’s appeared in Maxim and cleaned up in poker tournaments when that was a thing. Aside from a string of small roles over the last decade, Elizabeth hasn’t given people much to talk about — until last month, when she cleared $1.2 million during her first week on OnlyFans.

Her debut on the adult content streaming platform was carefully promoted and justified in a People magazine exclusive published one day before her page went live on April 16. “I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career,” she told the magazine, later adding, “I really do think this is the future.”

Maybe the future is now. Elizabeth has jumped into a pool where “Wild Things” star Denise Richards and Carmen Electra have been swimming for some time. Besides, there are few better indicators that the previously taboo has gone mainstream than when TV picks up the strap. OnlyFans plays a central role in the events of Apple TV’s “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” based on Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel, and is a key subplot in the latest season of HBO’s “Euphoria,” revealing that most of its core players have cash flow problems.

Both cast debt as a bogeyman turning capitalism into an extraction device that, left unchecked or unwisely channeled, can take everything from any of us.

“Euphoria” resumes five years after the events of the second season with Rue (Zendaya), this Inferno’s Virgil, deep in hock to a pitiless narcotics dealer, Laurie (Martha Kelly). Rue will never pay off her debt, but becoming a drug mule gives Laurie a reason not to kill her. The season opens with her struggling through a scorched desert as she shuttles drugs from Mexico to California. Yet that’s far preferable to her other drug ferrying method, which requires her to choke down a large bowl of egg-sized drug packets and pass them in a feces-slicked pile once she’s back in the U.S.

Next to that, Rue’s dopey schoolmate Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney) foray into internet smut looks dreamy. She and Nate (Jacob Elordi) live in a mansion saturated in sherbet colors, and he promises her that she doesn’t need to work. But she transforms her birdcage into a fantasy version of Poundtown anyway, crawling around in a pooch costume to Patti Page’s “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window” as their housekeeper films her.

Somewhere between Rue and Cassie on the desperation scale sits Elle Fanning’s Margo Millet, an eager community college student whose money troubles start when she falls for one of the oldest tricks in the book. She believes her professor, Mark (Michael Angarano), when he compliments her writing. He invites her to coffee, allegedly to discuss her potential, and it’s not long before they’re furiously humping. Soon after that, Margo projectile vomits during a waitressing shift and claims not to know why. But we do.

Once Margo tells Mark she’s pregnant and wants to keep her baby, he finds her a lot less fascinating. From there, her life swiftly cracks apart. She gives birth, starts missing work and gets fired from her job. Then two of her roommates move out. All she has left are her sympathetic, cosplaying friend Susie (Thaddea Graham), a much bigger rent payment and loads of diaper receipts.

So Margo turns to the one place where a person’s education and prior work experience don’t matter, and her physical assets might command a high price. Plus, she can set her own work schedule. Describing OnlyFans in those terms makes it seem downright attractive, doesn’t it? The downside is that everyone associates it with pornography.

OnlyFans’ risqué model masks the lucrative role it has in the creator economy. For those operating on the PG side of its border, the odds of making a living as an influencer get slimmer by the day. But if you are selling anything – a product, a service, your expertise – participation is mandatory.

Millions with so-called straight jobs shudder at their steady devaluation in the face of artificial intelligence. Reels, stories and stitches all emphasize our humanity. We’re told that sharing our thoughts and passions increases our career survival odds. After all, if a college degree is no longer a sure path to a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, high school diplomas are worth even less. All that any of us can offer in exchange, then, is ourselves – our identities, yes, but also our muscle and our flesh.

Margo assumes a handle, Hungry Ghost, co-opted from a poem Mark wrote for her. At first, she trades oddball penis reviews for tips. When that earns her enough to pay for groceries, she’s emboldened to go topless for a higher fee. When that takes off, she uses her writing talent to create a complex backstory for Hungry Ghost. Nudie pics are everywhere, but a full-frontal view with a plot? That’s brand building.

Margo’s father, Jinx (Nick Offerman), gets it. He’s a retired wrestler who comes back into her life after his other family kicks him to the curb, and reasons that they’re both entertainers plying their craft to make ends meet. Margo’s mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), is less charitable. When she finds out what Margo’s doing, her internalized shame at having worked at Hooters once upon a time resurfaces. She warns her child that she’s giving people everything they need to write her off as a piece of trash.

But is that still true in a society where one-time starlets use OnlyFans to profit off their reputation long after Hollywood has written them off? Elizabeth is playing the cards the industry dealt her at a table where she has better odds. Decades ago, the celebrity website Mr. Skin began collating screengrabs of sex scenes and nudity in mainstream theatrical releases to thrill horny visitors, featuring actors like her without obtaining their consent. This way, she’s in control of who sees how much of her and profits from that access.

Screen-based entertainment makes nudity a selling point, but that was never nature’s plan. David E. Kelley’s adaptation of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” emphasizes that divided logic, splitting Fanning’s frequent topless scenes between Margo’s lusty burlesque and the hard work of nursing an infant that refuses to latch. Margo’s body is a survival tool; this reminds us that everything she does with her body is to nourish and shelter her family. Disembodied customers may pay for the simulation of intimacy she’s selling, but only her son gets real skin-on-skin contact.

“Euphoria”’s relationship with sex work, much like its general attitude toward sex, is entirely unsentimental, even mercenary. In “Margo,” Shyanne takes pride in her respectable job at Bloomingdale’s, while on “Euphoria,” Jules (Hunter Schafer) starts “sugaring” in art school at the suggestion of a roommate who dangles the sugar baby lifestyle as far preferable to retail.

“Anything’s better than retail,” Jules mutters. Soon enough, she’s found a patron who keeps her in a glass and chrome condo with a skyline view and she abandons her education to live the luxe life full-time. Series creator Sam Levinson, in Rue’s voice, describes this as Jules seizing upon a window of opportunity. “Throughout the history of America, there have been windows of time where anyone could strike it rich,” Rue says. “Take the Gold Rush. Prohibition. Cryptocurrency. It’s all about timing.”

Cassie isn’t thinking that far ahead when she busts into OnlyFans; when Nate says he can’t afford a $50,000 floral budget for their special day, she devises a plan to pay for it with pics. Once one of Nate’s especially impatient investors crashes their wedding reception and, later, slices some of his loan’s unpaid interest off Nate’s body, it’s apparent that the only real assets these newlyweds have to leverage are the orbs situated a few inches under the bride’s chin.

The real money is in getting a piece of all this action, which Rue decides to work toward by hitching her wagon to a flesh peddler named Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Elsewhere, Cassie’s high school best friend, Maddy (Alexa Demie), attempts her version of madamhood by managing influencers, including an online model who ventures into the naked side of content creation. Maddy’s boss at her talent management agency forces her to fire that client, only for Maddy to watch with envy as the woman shows off her six-figure OnlyFans earnings some time later. Cassie, though, could be Maddy’s second shot at tapping into this Gold Rush. As Rue muses in a voiceover, she’s beautiful, directionless and “so desperate for attention she’s willing to humiliate herself.”

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“Margo’s Got Money Troubles” takes a kinder view of OnlyFans, especially once Margo teams up with veteran creators KC and Rose (Rico Nasty and Lindsey Normington). They’re successful because they’re unashamed of what they do and, as they eventually explain to Margo, they view all sex work as performance art worthy of compensation. But they’re also striking out at their physical peak, much like Jinx did. And what happened to him? Wrestling broke his back, leading to an opioid addiction he barely has a grasp on. To his fans, he may be a legend. The wider world only sees an addict.

Women like Cassie and Margo are part of a long tradition of pin-up girls and centerfolds who paid for the privilege of letting the public see their private parts, but that consensual exchange doesn’t prevent them from being ridiculed or losing face if they’re exposed in their communities. KC and Rose are right — sex work is a kind of physical labor, when you think about it, and society attaches a snobbery to all those types of jobs.

If the monetary returns that Elizabeth and other stars enjoy on OnlyFans tell us anything, it’s that the platform’s stigma may have lessened. Then again, these women starred in blockbuster films and TV shows before stepping onto that stage. Women like Margo and Cassie are subjected to all kinds of severe judgment and denigration aside from their subscriber-based hustle and get nothing for it but grief. That shouldn’t be our reality. But since it is, they might as well get tipped generously in the bargain, and on their terms.

New episodes of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” stream Wednesdays on Apple TV. New episodes of “Euphoria” air at 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO and stream on HBO Max.

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