Hung Up on Girl 6

Spike Lee has historically been ahead of the game in his directorial career, oftentimes presenting crowds with social commentary and gristly themes most of us could only hope to fully grasp in retrospect. Yet, absolutely no one was saying this upon the release of his 1996 freaky feminine feature penned by Suzan-Lori Parks, Girl 6. In fact, this was so poorly received at the time, it remains essentially disavowed by both Parks and Lee. However, as messy and labyrinthine as it is, I think it is perhaps one of his most prognosticating films to date. Taking place long before the rise of OnlyFans, it tackles the commodification of sex and women’s bodies as it details the sexploits of Judy, a young Black aspiring New York actress, who takes up the role of phone sex operator as a way to make ends meet during a lull of paid acting gigs. While maybe ahead of the curve in ‘96, I think over the last 27 years, it’s become more relevant than most could have predicted and is an important piece to reflect on when thinking of the impact selling sex has on women, the industry, and its clientele.

As the movie begins, we see sleazy hotshot director Quentin Tarantino cut off Judy amidst her auditioning monologue to lecture that they’re looking for young, hot, sexy women for the role, and–oh yeah–she’ll have to show tits to land this one. Hesitantly, she complies and begins to unbutton her blouse, but quickly becomes humiliated and storms out. Shortly after, she’s cut by her agents for not “respecting her art.” In order to make cash fast, Judy interviews to become a phone sex operator at a swanky corporate office where female empowerment seems to be the overwhelming atmosphere. So Judy (Girl 6) quickly—and quite impressively—puts her acting skills to work as she embodies the ideal Girl Next Door, Lovely. Lovely is a white girl with dark hair, dark eyes, perky tits with silver dollar nipples, a 25 inch waist and 35 inch hips and she’s whatever you want her to be! 

Playing Girl 6 is initially an empowering position for Judy. After a series of failures in her acting career, we can tell this is a role she feels totally in control over and as she brings her clients to climax call after call, it becomes clear she is nailing this performance. But Judy begins to blur the lines between client and friend when she meets Peter Berg’s character Bob Regular. Her coworker (Debi Mazar) warns Judy this is treading dangerous waters, but she just can’t help herself. And who could blame Girl 6 for this? Bob Regular doesn’t want to climax, Bob Regular wants to talk. Judy becomes a confidant, a friend, and she and Bob can be vulnerable when it’s just the two of them on the line. After all, in an environment where she is valued only for what her looks (or imagined looks) can afford her–in the film industry, in her phone operator career, on the street or in the gas station–of course she gravitates towards the one person who keeps returning to hear what it is she has to say, not how sexy she can say it. But after a meetup with Bob falls through, Judy begins to spiral, realizing that what she thought was genuine connection turns out to be, well, another paid service; counterfeit intimacy. What had started as a validating and even somewhat endearing position rapidly devolves into a draining, lackluster, demeaning day to day for Judy. After the dazzle and draw of adoration wanes, darkness inches in when Judy receives an unnerving phone call from Michael Imperioli’s character detailing his rather disturbing murder fantasy. Shortly after this, she hangs up on her short-lived career as Girl 6 and moves West for a chance to reclaim her actress identity.

During the pandemic, in the midst of financial uncertainty, many turned to sex work and sites like OnlyFans became a sort of beacon of security. With more bodies looking to sell their labor and fewer jobs able to buy their labor, the next resort for a lot of folks was simple–to sell the body itself. Just like sex work has operated traditionally, this burden mainly fell to women, and most specifically, women of color. It is true that everything has a price, and on OnlyFans that price is a minimum of $4.99 a month for personal intimacy. To commodify intimacy is to commodify the body and online hubs like OnlyFans make it easier to put a number to what a woman’s body is worth. And when we have to apply a numerical value to the body, that means certain bodies are worth more. Racism has existed in America’s sex industry since its conception, but even in the digital age, the sex industry can’t escape racial bias. In Girl 6, the girls are told they are to embody a white character and that only their “side characters” can be other races/identities. Even when the body is composed of nothing but wires, sound waves, and electrical energy, it must fit their standard. And, of course, our girls comply because this is simply the territory that comes with being a woman; sacrificing boundaries, innocence, identity, morality–consensual or not–in order to get by. This is true in nearly all dimensions of a woman’s life, but especially when it comes to her body.

This is echoed again in our introductory scene with Tarantino. Here we have the physical manifestation of Hollywood and his only interest is inspecting Judy’s body. Actresses are apparently a dime a dozen and talent is irrelevant as long as what we see on camera invokes a sexual response. So when Judy declines, we see her walk out into a sea of beautiful women who look just like her, who probably have the same circumstances as she does, who are all on standby, waiting to do what she couldn’t; more than happy to bare all and undergo inspection if it means they get the part. Getting the part means a role in a (none other than) Tarantino film, which, of course, comes with notoriety as well as a pretty paycheck. Judy is sat dead center in an industry that thrives on selling sex appeal. I mean, as she drifts off into fantasies of being a big-time star, she can only even dream of herself as Pam Grier as Foxy Brown or Dorothy Dandridge as Carmen Jones, both iconic black roles that still manage to fall victim to a hypersexualized representation of the feminine body. Judy, like all women, has been subconsciously force-fed the idea that her body is her biggest provider. When all else fails, she can still sell herself. 

She may not be engaging in camming or video work or selling her body explicitly, but she is selling the idea of her body and men pay to feel connected to it, even if only in the mind–after all, desire lives in the depths of our imagination. She agrees to the role of phone sex operator because she believes this is different from being physically nude, but over time we watch Judy lose the initial strength she derived from embodying Lovely and see her slip down the rabbit hole as she is stripped down to her most bare self by the type of men she refused to strip for in the first 5 minutes of the film. We see the gradual decline from liberating reclamation of the feminine body into meek sexual object. The women phone operators develop a sort of numbness to sexuality and its inherent performative nature in their line of work, whereas the male callers develop a boldness to them. They can speak to the voice however they want, call it what they want, threaten it how they want—the voice is just that: a voice—there is no person on the other end of the line. Phone sex operators and cam girls exist in this disembodied space together, detached from their identities. Playing characters with different names, hiding behind online usernames and aliases, sharing content that lives only in a digital space–we cannot demean or degrade a spectral identity, a body that we cannot touch or feel, right? 

That’s not to say sex work isn’t work or that it’s inherently demeaning–it is and it isn’t. However, it walks a very fine line between exploitation and empowerment. Girl 6 is often criticized for it’s fear of commitment and failure to blossom into neatly packaged conclusions on the topics it tackles, but I don’t think Parks’ intent was to condone or condemn sex work as a whole or to even take stance on these topics at all. I think she does the most important job of spotlighting the full spectrum of what sex work can look like for it’s laborers and it’s clients: the good, the bad, the ugly. It’s not one-size-fits-all and it’s not black and white. It’s lucrative, it’s accessible, it’s empowering, it’s vulnerable, it’s emotionally taxing, and sometimes, it can be scary, even if only telephonic. But it remains important, especially as the world of digital sex scales up, to consider the ramifications it has on not only the producers of its content, but its consumers as well. 

Lee and Parks combine talents to produce a truly seductive, vertiginous, and enthralling commentary on the industry it exists in, and somehow, industries that hadn’t quite come to fruition yet. But despite the underlying heavy themes, Girl 6 is a very fun film, oozing with feminine excellence and power. Drenched in neon and pops of heavenly color, it drips with sex appeal from the cast down to the hot and sultry Prince soundtrack. Even if the storyline isn’t one that meshes well with individual tastes, one could surely find solace in the stunning 90’s fashion, hypnotic camera movements, and laugh-out-loud worthy bits of dialogue.