Much of the discourse on sex work today is dominated by headlines about women loving sex. Famous Only-Fans stars like Bonnie Blue or Lily Phillips insist that their sex work is liberating, empowering, and, most shockingly, enjoyable.
Elis Pear claims no such thing. A Brazilian immigrant who came to the UK to do her PhD just as covid began, Pear quickly felt as though she ran out of options. Facing the costs of living in London and the difficulty of finding work speaking little to no English in the middle of the pandemic, Pear turned to being a sugar baby and eventually a sex worker. She did not enjoy it. She was bitter.
After a year of sex work she quit, having finally received an academic job offer. Yet when she started her academic career, she began receiving threatening messages to expose her history of sex work, making her feel just as trapped as she was before.
Elis Pear’s story is an important one – but she wasn’t the one meant to tell it. Before the show begins, Pear admits that the actress Kaileigh-Paige Rees meant to star in the show dropped out the day before the Fringe started, leaving Pear, the writer, to act it herself.
In Pear’s script she jokes about not being able to act, but the joke isn’t very funny when Pear is performing it because… she’s right. Pear lacks the stage presence and charisma to engage the audience and do her story justice. With the background noise of the Le Monde restaurant underneath us, it’s hard for the audience to concentrate on the narrative, especially when the expected climax of the show, the blackmail, only happens ten minutes before the show is over.
She explains that rather than let the blackmail control her, she decided to create this show to take back control of the narrative. But we never find out who the blackmailer was, or what effect it did end up having when she shared her story with the world.
Bitter Baby has potential, and Pear’s voice is undoubtedly an important one in the current online clamour over sex work. Unfortunately, this time around, the execution of this show did not deliver.
Bitter Baby runs until 24 August at Dirty Martini at Le Monde.
Tickets available here.
Image provided to The Student by Bitter Baby as press material.