Scan barcode
fcty's review
4.0
i liked how brutally honest and straightforward she is. i also like how she blended memoir with theory, contemporary art critique and various feminist texts, though this book could’ve easily been 100 pages longer because i wish some ideas were expanded upon more. i don’t know much about the sex industry and have also previously felt unsure when witnessing feminist discourse on sex work, so i learnt a lot from this book and find most of sophia’s points pretty convincing, though again i do wish some of her arguments were more elaborated on. then again she admits to not knowing all the answers herself, which leads me back to my first point on her honesty, and also that she’s presenting her own experiences and opinions and letting us be the judge. her voice is confident and non-defensive, which i admire in a writer.
atlantae's review
4.0
I agreed with a lot of the points and felt that the book was a great introduction to the nature of sex work and how the needs of sex workers are often misrepresented or ignored. However I don’t think the author is as progressive as she thinks she is. She doesn’t seem to want to do anything other than faff around all day.
sophiem_ng's review
4.0
I picked this up when I was in New York because it was a beautiful object of a book and I liked the title -- so a gamble of sorts. I really liked it, especially the final essay which was an incredible reflection on work and life and getting a life, multiple lives away from work - brought up my fave Muñoz and Cruising Utopia it was great. I also just really liked her deft, incredibly self assured tone, it was nice to read at a time when I feel a bit unsure of everything lol
matthewkeating's review
5.0
Well worth the read for the writing alone. Working Girl is artist, sex worker, and writer Sophia Giovannitti’s written debut. It’s an excellent series of essays reflecting on the author’s life as an conceptual artist and sex worker, and the way those professions overlap and fit together— a survey of the differences and similarities between them. The comparison between art-making and prostitution has been around for a long time, and it’s one of the things that ignites the essays from the center. The book is filled with sharp, self-aware writing; Giovannitti is very brilliant. One of the things the book ends up being about is the way working at all is degrading, which becomes clearer towards the end; Giovannitti’s open and flagrant defiance of capitalism, and her focus on community as a source of respite and strength, make this book pair well with Jenny Odell’s work (the excellent How to Do Nothing and this year’s Saving Time).
bibliocyclist's review
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Is the work of art to make things new? Is art “incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer”? What is the “beholder’s share,” and how important is it? More pressingly, “how should we talk about consent when there is rent to pay?” If you’ve made love and sold art, vice versa, or both, if the terms of the free market and the tension of whether to pursue an authentic life or actually make money have left you at a loss, check out Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex, a work of memoir and social commentary by conceptual artist Sophia Giovannitti. Is winning “like surviving, only better”? What is your original language, and can you speak it if you’re gagged? When do you lay it all out, why do you bury it, and what would compel you to dig it back up? Even those who come to Working Girl for the sex will stay for deeply “legible expression” from those who have been silenced, for scalpel-edged critique, and for the “chaos safely removed from sight,” skillfully repositioned beneath the microscope’s eye. As the New York Times’ Roberta Smith remarked of Lynda Benglis’ 1974 ArtForum self-portrait, Giovannitti is “laugh-out-loud thrilling, and the phallus is the least of it.”