Hair, Sex Work, and Netflix's Quietly Liberating 'Jezebel'
Numa Perrier’s film highlights the tenderness of Black sisterhood, and dares to show sex work for what it is — work.
Written By: Kristin Denise Rowe
Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has stopped the world yet again, by hopping on a remix of Megan Thee Stallion’s TikTok-assisted viral hit single, “Savage.” While the song has a lot of people talking, one bar in particular has seemed to cause quite a stir. In her now signature, Houston-bred accent, Beyoncé raps, “Hips tick tock when I dance (Dance)/On that Demon Time, she might start an OnlyFans.”
With sixteen words, Bey re-ignited a longstanding conversation around sex work, the Internet, and Black womanhood. Some have critiqued the widespread appreciation for the lyrics, suggesting that while many fans may sing along to the lyrics, they do not (monetarily or otherwise) support or amplify the voices of the majority of Black women who work for spaces like OnlyFans. This conversation reminded me of a film I saw a few months ago—the critically acclaimed drama Jezebel. In Jezebel, one young Black woman’s coming-of-age is engendered by a gig as a cam girl—as her big sister, determination, and a long wavy black wig named “Jezebel” help her advocate for herself and her own needs within a complicated industry.
The film, released on Netflix in January, tells a semi-autobiographical tale written and directed by Numa Perrier. Set in the 1990s, Tiffany (Tiffany Tenille) begins to work as a cam girl in order to financially support herself. For those who don’t know, a cam girl is a woman or femme who works as a webcam model. They often perform in front of a live audience of viewers, streaming their shows in private or in small groups. Numa Perrier adapted her own experiences doing work as a cam girl in the late 90s in order to write the film.
Read about Numa Perrier in The Manifesto Issue of our Journal
In our inaugural issue, The Manifesto, we lay the foundation for what we want this platform to be: an opportunity for Black women across the world to finally see themselves.
In the film, Tiffany’s mother has recently passed away, leaving her elder sister Sabrina to financially support their family—including their brother and Sabrina’s boyfriend. Both tender and illuminating, Jezebel tells Tiffany's story in a way that does not glamorize or vilify her work as a cam girl. Instead, it explores Tiffany's journey to find her own voice and come into her own body and sexuality. As Tonja Renée Stidhum writes, the film offers a “strikingly beautiful coming-of-age exploration serving as a love story to the free agency of a Black girl’s sexuality.”
One of the most tender aspects of the film involves Tiffany and Sabrina’s relationship. Sabrina also works as a sex worker (a phone sex operator), and she teaches Tiffany about the ins and outs of how to remain safe and make money in their line of work. Before Tiffany heads in to interview for the cam girl job, Sabrina gives her a glamorous, thick, black, wavy wig—“This is ‘Jezebel,’” she says, as she helps Tiffany install it.
As the camera peeps through the bathroom door to frame the moment between the sisters, it feels like we are poking our heads in and watching, too. Sabrina delicately adjusts the wig, shimmying it to her left in order to create a side part on Tiffany’s head.
This on-screen representation of supportive Black sisterhood within the sex work industry feels refreshing. Tiffany and Sabrina look out for each other when no one else will. In a space where they cannot depend on anyone in their family, in their home, or in society, they know that they can depend on each other for safety and support. We see a physical manifestation of their connection when Sabrina provides and installs Jezebel on Tiffany’s head. As the film progresses, whenever Tiffany is at work, she wears her wig.
The choice to name the wig “Jezebel” could be read as either cheeky, commentative, or something in between. According to Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, the “jezebel” trope has deep historical implications for Black women. She writes, “The institutionalized rape of enslaved Black women spawned the controlling image of the sexually wanton Black woman. This representation redefined Black women’s bodies as sites of wild, unrestrained sexuality that could be tamed but never completely subdued” (Collins, 2005, 56). Indeed, many Black women writers, activists, and thinkers have articulated the ways that the jezebel stereotype haunts—it lurks in the shadows as a “veil” our foremothers were coerced into bearing. In her 2018 book Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture, scholar Tamura Lomax writes about the “jezebel” trope as both a tool of institutional power, as well as a figure that Black women and girls “resist, appropriate, and play with.” In this vein, for Tiffany, “Jezebel” symbolizes something different—something more elastic, playful, movable, and imbued with agency.
In a way, Tiffany’s wig is a kind of armor, a shield that she puts on in preparation to perform a particular version of herself for the world. However, it is simultaneously playful and glamorous, signaling a transition or a shift into the cam girl parts of herself. As I’ve explored before, Black women are not new to wearing wigs at work—or in the world in general—for reasons of play, glamour, safety, or to conform to workplace standards that may hinge on normative understandings of beauty and “professionalism.”
And to be sure, Tiffany’s job as a sex worker is complex and at times fraught. At one point, during a show with two white women, one of the anonymous audience members shoots off a message in the chat reading “WHO’S THE NIGGER BITCH?” Of course, Tiffany is deeply disturbed, and she approaches her white male boss demanding something be done about these kinds of racial epithets. At first, he dismisses her, essentially maintaining that typed insults are just “part of the job” for every cam girl.
However, ultimately, Tiffany finds her voice to stand up for herself. By the end of the film (spoiler?), she has bargained with her boss for more money and less tolerance for racial slurs.
As Soraya Nadia McDonald notes for The Undefeated, perhaps this is the most quietly liberating aspect of the film. Jezebel treats sex work like a job. McDonald writes:
The most remarkable thing about Perrier’s vision of sex work is that it’s just that — work. It’s one of the few cases where the story of a Black woman engaged in sex work is shown with a frank, matter-of-fact quality without shame, titillation or unchallenged acceptance of race fetishes.
Like any job, Tiffany’s has its pros and cons. Some days are much harder than others. Some days you like your job more than others. Sometimes your boss is a total jerk, and sometimes your clients are too. However, you have bills to pay. So you get up, put on your work clothes, install your wig, and get on with it. Sometimes you are undervalued and under-appreciated in the workplace… And if that’s the case (Lord willing), you might find your voice and advocate for yourself. And maybe—just maybe—you will be heard.
So what does this all have to do with demon time and OnlyFans? While Beyonce’s lyrics may have made sex work seem cool for a night, films like Jezebel—as well as countless other sex worker activists, artists, and scholars—have already articulated their own experiences with the complexities of the industry.
Part of what makes Jezebel feel both refreshing and powerful is that it is adapted from the real life experiences of Numa Perrier. For so long, conversations around sex workers have not centered their own experiences, needs, and understandings of their work. These women have been squished into limiting boxes and labels. They’ve been marked with the ink of the name “Jezebel” and told to be quiet. To disappear. To lay down and die.
In Jezebel, getting to truly hear Tiffany is perhaps both the most important work and the greatest pleasure.
All images courtesy of Netflix.
