Margo’s Got Money Troubles‘ theme of sex work to make ends meet might read like a tale as old as time on paper, but we guarantee it’s handled in a way that’ll have you believing you’re only just watching something about it for the first time.
Based on Rufi Thorpe’s novel of the same name and landing on Apple TV on April 15, viewers meet Margo (Elle Fanning) – a bright, hopeful writer in her first year at college.
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The daughter of an ex-Hooters waitress (Michelle Pfeiffer) and former pro wrestler (Nick Offerman,) Margo’s mother is devastated at her daughter making the same mistake she did.
People around her are the expected mixture of frustrated and horrified when sex work is the only way Margo can make a fast buck after getting stuck on the hamster wheel of not being able to get a job because she can’t afford childcare, and not having the right qualifications to get a job that pays for childcare anyway.
So far so normal for generations of women: Mother is left holding the baby and takes the only way available to her to make money, repeating the same mistakes as her mother before her – sex work and motherhood are the two things women are most harshly judged over in this world, and here they are presented for our judgment.
But it’s the way these themes collide and are handled that’s just so incredible – and you will question everything you think you know and feel about them. Margo doesn’t become a victim for her choice, nor is her newfound job sensationalised in any way.
By cosplaying and world building for the subscribers of her OnlyFans account, her sex work is explored as any other job might be. Within it, she finds an outlet to be creative both with the personas she constructs, and how she gets to use her gift for writing when crafting messages to fans.
(Image credit: Apple TV)
Viewers are left questioning why there’s such harsh judgment towards women who might be equally creatively fulfilled by a job that’s often viewed with such disdain.
And this is exactly what author of the original novel, Rufi Thorpe, hoped for. She’s discussed the inspiration behind the story, and how her aim was for readers to see women who are confident with their sexuality differently – see them as normal.
It has to be said, the inspiration for the novel came from a fairly wild place, during a trip to the cinema to see Wonder Woman.
“I was seeing the movie Wonder Woman with my mom, we really liked it, but we both agreed we were much more interested in the island of the Amazons than we were in Wonder Woman herself. We didn’t like Wonder Woman,” Rufi tells Elena Bowes.
“She was cold and virginal,” the author explains, adding, “Why can’t there ever be a female superhero who f***s? And who’s comfortable with sex? Why can’t there be a female superhero who is comfortable with her sexuality?”
“And then I got this weird idea of taking the two ways that our culture’s messed up about women, the Madonna-whore complex, and what if I made a character who was both a Madonna and a whore? Good at both and there being no conflict.”
This shouldn’t be an idea that’s totally out there, but in the misogynist world we live in, it really is.
(Image credit: Apple TV)
Weighing in on how we “castigate women for nothing,” Rufi wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to write such a character.
“There’s all this cultural stigma against sex work and there’s this tendency to put mothers on such a pedestal and judge them so harshly,” she says.
And that’s how Margo was born. Margo is our superhero, confident in her sexuality who has arrived on our TV to makes us all give our heads a wobble and realise women can be sex workers and mother and be fulfilled by both.
As well as thinking hard about the choices women, you’ll also laugh, feel disarmed, and be thoroughly entertained by the many layers Margo’s Got Money Troubles has to offer.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles airs from April 15 on Apple TV.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.womanandhome.com ’
