Weekly Transmission: February 24-March 2

We made it to March, friends: the busiest astrological month of 2025.

Last night, with stationary Venus retrograde in Aries hanging in the sky, Mikey Madison unexpectedly took home Best Actress at the Oscars for her portrayal of Ani in Anora, and I cried. A lot. Which was also unexpected, but many things about this film have been unexpected for me.

When I first watched Anora back in December, I was caught off-guard entirely. Stories about sex workers being told by anyone other than actual sex workers always raise some skepticism in me. There's always too much glamour, not enough danger, too much violence, not enough grit. They always miss the mark--because fucking for money is simultaneously dangerous and violent and glamourous and gritty, but the retellings always get the levels wrong.

Anora all takes place while Ani, the main character, has the same set of nails. This detail really caught my attention, because if you don't know, a gel manicure lasts about 3-5 weeks before a new set is needed. The speed of this story is perhaps the most accurate part of Anora. This film doesn't necessarily tell a realistic story about sex work, or even a commonly shared experience amongst sex workers, but what it does nail is the essence of that particular Cinderella story many of us whores have fantasized about. What Anora does is continue the story, showing us the "after" in that happily ever after, and with an unflinching gaze, illustrates the hollowness of that dream.

I didn't need to hear Ani's backstory, because I already know it. Anora does a really great job of showing, not telling, the kind of life Ani was desperate to escape, and why. As the viewer, you are told next to nothing about Ani's life of origin, but you get the sense that she likely entered the realm of sex work to escape it, as many do. Now, it could very well be the case that Ani has a loving family home somewhere, but as the viewer, you never see any evidence of its existence. Sex work often isolates you from the people who knew you before, because there's so much stigma placed on sex work as a career choice and it's still very much a red letter you wear, even years after you stop doing it.

Ani is canonically 23, a 12th house year, doubling down on the themes of isolation and self-undoing in this film. As a 23-year-old sex worker, I was also deeply separated from my family and many friends from my youth as I pursued the same things Ani craves: freedom, power, escape, cocaine. There's a weightlessness to being so untethered, it makes something like marrying a person you just met make a lot of sense, because what's an identity, anyway? Just a collection of things people think they know about you? When is there a more opportune time to assume an entirely new identity–a new life, especially one that comes with so many trinkets? This bolstered the delivery of Mikey Madison's performance, in my opinion, because I truly believed that Ani believed she deserved this one-way ticket out of her current situation--not that she was just lucky to have stumbled upon it.

This story is endlessly fun at first, and you're supposed to feel swept up in it the same way Ani is swept up in her brief marriage to a Russian oligarch's son, but I could not fight away the knot in my stomach that was forming as Ani and Vanya hatched their plan. I wanted Ani to become the Russian princess she already was, in my eyes, but an unpleasant truth is exposed as everything unravels and Ani is brought back down to earth: whores don't get rescued by the rich prince, they get hired by him. Therein lies the hollowness of this fantasy.

A decade ago, when I was running around Los Angeles fucking for money, I dreamt of marrying some rich bastard (which LA has in abundance), signing that silent agreement to be a helpful decoration in his life. And I was okay with that because my life of origin offered me nothing of substance with which to build my new life upon, and I had grown up witnessing the ways money draws invisible lines in our world. I was determined to place myself on the 'correct' sides of those lines. Ani seemed to understand this as well, though she was definitely coming from a much different context.

So, there were many parts of Anora that did not surprise me, because I understood this character the second we meet her, and I understand the flimsy structural supports holding up her whirlwind "romance". But what brought me to unanticipated tears was the way the second half of this film unfolds, sneaking up on the viewer by not letting us know what kind of story this was until literally the very last scene: a love story.

Not the Cinderella story you think it is at first, but an actual, gritty, unglamorous, dangerous and at times violent, love story. It's very hard to tell these kinds of stories when it comes to sex work, because you veer incredibly easily into Captain Save-A-Hoe territory. One of the funnier Letterboxd reviews I read about Anora said something to the effect of, "Does Sean Baker want a cookie for seeing sex workers as people?" But truly, witnessing a love story that didn't revolve around someone falling in love with a sex worker in spite of her profession, or in a way that attempts to remove her from it, but simply loving a feral woman because of the things that make her feral--that is what brought me to tears.

Ani has the characteristics I would expect of someone within her particular context and circumstances--rude, harsh, demanding, and downright cruel at times, particularly when someone expresses genuine care or softness towards her. This only happens a few times in the movie, and mostly with Igor, the bodyguard and eventual subject of this dark horse love story, but it's something I clocked immediately. It's very much like a feral cat who hisses when you try to feed them, even though they're starving.

Igor witnesses Ani go through the greatest downfall of her young life, presumably her at her very worst, and accepts the reality of Ani. That's fucking terrifying when your entire livelihood is built upon embodying a persona, and even more so when the dream promised by that persona has just been smashed to smithereens. Ani is starved, both for tenderness and for the chance to stop being Ani and be Anora again.

When Igor takes her to her house in the final scene, he performs one final act of kindness for her--giving her the expensive engagement ring she thought was taken from her--and Ani sits in the car, unable to move. Opening that door and going up those steps means admitting defeat; returning to her old life, her old roommate, and her old job, which she left in a blaze of glory. It means that fucking bitch Diamond was right. It means accepting that there may not ever be another chance at a new life and a new identity.

I don't know if it's Ani's acceptance of her stuckness in this identity that leads her to turn to Igor when he gets back in the car, realizing that he's been seeing Anora this entire time, or something else entirely, but you can tell Ani is trying to buy time in the car before he leaves, as she sorts out her emotions. The explosion which follows seems like equal parts hypersexuality as a conditioned response to big feelings, and a final release of everything Anora has been holding in this entire time in order to be Ani: all the violence and all the sadness of that deep separation of self, and also the supreme disappointment at Ani's failure to take Anora out of her circumstances for good.

This is another hollow promise of sex work: that being someone other than yourself is a ticket to freedom, to a permanent release from the shackles of your circumstances. It's not to say that promise never comes true for anyone, but it often lacks substance. It's not guaranteed that Igor is some white knight who's come along to love her correctly and sweep Anora off her feet for real this time, but rather that he may be the first person who has ever seen her with this much uncomfortable clarity.

I found it notable that the last words spoken in the film are in Russian, even if it is Igor telling her to stop punching him. This whole story began with Ani being the only stripper who spoke Russian at the club the night her future ex-husband walked in, and you could tell she was uncomfortable with discussing her ancestry with a client–this is a dangerous blending of Ani and Anora, and also points to the universal truth that no matter how hard you try to become something entirely other than yourself, your point of origin never changes, and thus will always be a place of reference for the selves you create. You are always either moving toward or away from your roots; they cannot be moved.

Ani is someone who was constructed to keep Anora safe, similar to Romy in Babygirl, and this type of psychic armor is often necessary for sex workers, but it is a division of the self at the very same time. The persona I crafted in order to be successful at fucking for money was like a work uniform I put on and took off, but the level of involvement for my physical vessel eventually led to deep inner confusion; my own failed attempt at Severance. Igor witnessing Ani fall apart and become Anora again, against her will, without belittling her or sexualizing her or reducing her to "just a stripper," makes him at once dangerous and a place of safety; hence the flurry of fists she rains down upon him after briefly fucking him in the front seat of his grandmother's car, before collapsing into his arms, subdued and sobbing.

It's probably my own personal relationship to sex work that made this film so emotional for me; I've seen a lot of "I don't get the hype" reviews about Anora, and honestly... good. Maybe that means we are finally moving toward making films that speak to real lived experiences, instead of more palatable versions of those stories. I don't know if Sean Baker wants a cookie for viewing sex workers as people, but he certainly does have some cookies in the form of golden statues now to show for it, and I can't say it was insignificant to me to hear sex workers so explicitly supported multiple times on such a large platform like the Oscars stage.

Plus, I fucking called it. I knew Mikey Madison was going to be a star when I first saw her in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, so you can't tell me shit.

It's a new month, which means a new monthly playlist! Here's what I was listening to the most in February.

Venus retrograde in Aries is upon us, with Mercury retrograde following quickly behind, and soon we will be firmly in the first eclipse season of 2025. Take lots of notes about what's happening right now and who you are right now, because it's almost guaranteed to look completely different on the other side of March and April. Buckle up.