Sex work, advertorial news media and conditional acceptance

Abstract

Media depictions of sex work and workers are a key site where perceptions of the sex industry are established and contested, particularly for audiences who may have little to no direct interaction with it otherwise. The presence of an advertorial framing or function of news media coverage of the sex industry has been identified in previous work. This article analyses news media coverage in New Zealand post-decriminalisation to consider how advertorial frames are used to construct indoor low-volume sex work as acceptable, and identify the conditions which are attached to this acceptability. The advertorial frames often emphasise the respectability and/or desirability of the clientele, potentially indicating to male readers that they may be a client-type man. Simultaneously, this construction of clients as desirable is used to underpin a discourse of authentic pleasure on the part of the workers. These narratives obscure the sexual and emotional labour involved in low-volume sex work, stripping it of its status as work, and positioning work-sex as akin to non-transactional sexual contact. Such renderings often draw meaning and legitimacy by shifting existing stereotypes about the sex industry as dangerous or damaging to other workers: typically those who charge less for their services or who are perceived to see more clients. This article concludes that the establishment of one kind of sex work as more acceptable at the expense of other sectors of the industry may serve to further entrench existing inequalities among people who work in the sex industry.