As well as winning five Oscars and catapulting its lead actor, Mikey Madison, into true stardom, the film Anora has been mooted as a signifier of society taking another step towards sex work being normalised as an occupation.

The film is a dark love story about a stripper who marries the feckless son of a Russian oligarch and slowly watches her vision of a fairytale ending disappear before her eyes. But real-life sex workers have said the film portrays an optimistic view of the industry.

“If this had been made by a sex worker, not just consulted on, if it had actually been made by a sex worker, or had a sex worker starring in the lead role, I don’t think it would have done so well,” said Maddie, from the East London Strippers Collective.

“I was looking forward to seeing it,” Maddie said. However, she added that she had gone in with “a slight scepticism” and had anticipated a sanitised view of sex work.

She said: “We didn’t see any of, like, who she is really as a person. We only saw her in a work context.

“Some more information about her sister, I think it was, that she was living with, would have been interesting. Or who her friends are, what her hobbies and dreams are. I think it’s really important that we have representation of sex workers as a whole person, and not just as their job.”

Sam, also from the East London Strippers Collective, said that the film represented only a “really small sliver of sex work”.

“For a young, white, privileged sex worker who speaks English and probably has an American passport, [so has] many levels of privilege, it’s possibly very accurate,” she said.

She also said that, partly for economic reasons, with more people entering sex work, “we are already in a culture where I think we are quite destigmatised, in the sense where culturally, we have Cardi B, OnlyFans is a household name, Julia Fox made a whole career off of the compelling intrigue of being a dominatrix at 16. These things are mainstream now.”

However, she added: “I don’t care for a culture that is really happy to continue to make the stories and make the movies, and win the Oscars about sex work, if it doesn’t also relate to policy-level reform.”

Both added that while societal attitudes had shifted, particularly in the past five years, policy change had been much slower.

“I think that in general, the industry is much more accepted than it was even five years ago, and I think Covid and OnlyFans had a big part to play in that,” said Maddie. “I think it’s much more overexposed, and it’s almost cool to be a sex worker now.”

In her acceptance speech for the best actress Oscar, Madison thanked the sex worker community, saying: “I just want to say that I see you. You deserve respect and human decency. I will always be a friend and an ally, and I implore others to do the same.”

But sex workers said they felt that Madison and the film’s director, Sean Baker, had both missed an opportunity to advocate for real change.

“Yes, having celebrities back [sex workers] on a huge platform is amazing; that’s a great step in the right direction,” Maddie said. “But if they had gone just a little bit further and said: ‘We need full decriminalisation now,’ that could have actually had a much bigger impact.”

Stacey Clare, author of The Ethical Stripper, said: “Celebrities naming sex workers in their awards acceptance speeches is a nice step in the right direction, helping to humanise and destigmatise us in the public imagination.

“But real progress is when sex workers can live without fear of criminalisation, having their children removed by social services, having their income confiscated by police or banking services, being disallowed from accessing future social support, housing, or employment opportunities because being a sex worker is not something we can put on a CV.”

While sex work has become more accepted in society, she said that existing laws meant the most vulnerable and marginalised sex workers were not benefiting.

Sam said: “It means that the people who are most vulnerable, who are most affected by these laws – we’re talking not people you see in Anora, we’re talking people who are drug-using, homeless … who do survival sex work on the streets – will continue to suffer worse and worse working conditions.”