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Sex Work Karma - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Feb 07 2025

Sex work is often viewed in a negative light by some individuals and societies, even in places where it isn't illegal. Said people and societies usually portray said work as inherently degrading towards those who do so, whether said work is by choice or due to circumstances. In fiction, this sort of view can sometimes manifest by having a character receive bad karma by being forced to resort to sex work. Common sufferers of this form of karma include adulterers who end up being sued and resort to this work to pay off the debt, Gold Diggers who either lost their rich partners or are unable to find a rich person to leech off, and formerly rich villains who are reduced to this type of work to survive.

The victims of this trope are usually attractive female characters, due to societal views about sex and gender. Since sex work is typically done by women, fiction often portrays most sex workers as women. In addition, because of double standards about gender and sex, female sex workers are treated more negatively than their male counterparts. Male sex workers are seen as respected even if they are forced into it. The exceptions are if the men have to sleep with ugly women or other men.

Sub-Trope of Sexual Karma and Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job. Overlaps with Karmic Rape if a character is forced into prostitution against their will. May result in a Karmic STD. Related to Defiled Forever, in which a person (usually a woman) is considered "tainted" because of their sexual history, and Disposable Sex Worker, in which the deaths of sex workers aren't taken seriously. Can go with Psychosexual Horror when played for horror. This trope can result in Unfortunate Implications by implying that being a sex worker is inherently terrible. Some audiences may feel that this trope is a form of Karmic Overkill depending on the severity of the crime as well as the age of the one being inflicted with it.

Contrast Hooker with a Heart of Gold and Unproblematic Prostitution for more positive portrayals of sex workers. Contrast Defeat Means Menial Labor.

Because this trope often happens at the end of a story, spoilers will be unmarked.

Because this trope involves both sex and morality, No Real Life Examples, Please!

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?: Reina Himekawa is a vicious bully who is even more likely than the other members of the Gang of Bullies to get physical with her abuse. The Distant Finale heavily implies she became a streetwalker after she was exposed and shamed.
  • Magical Girl Site: Sadistic bully Melissa is implied to have become a sex worker following the public humiliation she and her cronies endured after it was believed they were responsible for driving Kayo and Sakaki to suicide. They weren't; the girls faked their deaths to go into hiding. But given Melissa's little gang went as far as to hire someone to rape Kayo's best friend, there's no sympathy to be had for them.

Comic Books 

  • V for Vendetta: Helen Heyer aims to become the de facto Leader of Britain's fascist Norsefire regime. She does so by arranging for her husband Conrad to become head of the regime's video surveillance division and by paying Alistair Harper, an ex-gangster now working for the secret police, to assassinate his boss so she can have Harper installed as secret police head and Conrad as nominal Leader. Meanwhile, she keeps Conrad in line with verbal and physical abuse as well as withholding sex. However, V sabotages her plot by anonymously tipping Conrad off that Harper is sleeping with his wife, resulting in the two men fighting each other to the death. As the Norsefire regime completely collapses, the now-resourceless Helen attempts to flee London with all her belongings but a mob carjacks her. The comic's final scene shows her reduced to bartering with homeless men for food and protection in exchange for sex.

Fan Works 

  • Aftermath - Ten Years Later: After being exposed for helping Lila destroy Marinette's life, Alya's reputation was wrecked to the point where she can't get a good enough legitimate job to make ends meet even after ten years have passed. She thus winds up prostituting herself to survive. The story deconstructs the idea of this being "karmic", however, by exposing the people who drove her to this pointnote  as an irrational court of public opinion obsessed with Disproportionate Retribution even ten years later.
  • Helluva Witch: After Belos' attempt to hire I.M.P. to kill Luz ends with him temporarily dead, Blitzø has him dropped off at a strip club (specifically 'one of the kinky ones'). It's later mentioned that he had to start working there to make ends meet.
  • Illicit Love Consequences: Lee Mi-Sook was a CEO who cheated on her husband, with her lover, Jungwoo Lee, who was both a Serial Homewrecker and a Serial Rapist who Mi-Sook covered for by using her power to cover up the rapes and create forged documents claiming that his babies belonged to the boyfriends and husbands Jungwoo cucked. In addition, she also abused one of her workers, Sihoo Park, for ending their affair by having Jungwoo rape and seduce Park Aram, Sihoo's lover. After her misdeeds are exposed, Mi-Sook is divorced, loses her job, and no other company will hire her, so she resorts to prostitution; sadly for her, that doesn't last because she's almost fifty and few men want to sleep with her.
  • Ranma Consequences: Due to her part in sabotaging Ranma and Akane's wedding, Shampoo has her ki sealed and her knowledge of martial arts erased from her mind before being banished from her clan on penalty of death. Daisuke and Hiroshi later discover that Shampoo had become a porn star going under the name "Dawn Chow".
  • Synépeies - A Collection Of NTR Consequences: Discussed in Virtuous Hope; after the main character divorces and sues his wife Mitsuko for cheating on him for years, he thinks to himself that since Mitsuko was just a housewife with little job experience, she will probably have to become a prostitute or a pornstar to survive.
  • Town of a Bleeding Heart: Paulina only attended Danny Fenton's funeral for the sake of improving her popularity, even crying Crocodile Tears to make herself look good. After she discovers that Danny was her superhero crush Danny Phantom, she degrades him for choosing death over her. Four years later, Paulina has lost her popularity and resorted to selling herself as a prostitute.

Films — Animation 

  • Batman and Harley Quinn: Downplayed with Harley, as due to her extensive criminal history, the only job she could get involved her working at a superheroine/supervillainess-themed restaurant where she dresses in a skimpy version of her supervillain outfit. She also mentions to Nightwing that she was offered a role as a porn actress but she refused.

Films — Live-Action 

  • Norbit: Rasputia's final fate after constantly tormenting Norbit and various other people, is having to work at her brother's rundown strip club in Mexico. Downplayed somewhat, as it seems Rasputia rather enjoys her new lot in life, being adored and lusted over by all of the club's patrons.

Jokes 

  • A man dies and goes to Hell, where the Devil offers him his choice of punishment: One room has people frying in boiling oil, another has them impaled by pitchforks, etc. The third room has a beautiful woman (some versions name a movie star or other Ms. Fanservice) being groped by a hideously ugly man.

    Sinner: That one! I want that one!

    Devil: Certainly, sir. Excuse me, miss? Your replacement has arrived!

Literature 

  • Villager A Wants to Save the Villainess No Matter What!: Amy, or rather the girl who reincarnated as her gets hit with this at the end of the story. When she reincarnated as the heroine of her favorite game, she only cared about obtaining the reverse harem ending, with no regard for what would happen as a result. In particular, she took sadistic pleasure in Anastasia’s fate in the original game, where she gets gang-raped by bandits and sold off to the Est Empire once they’re bored with her. She goes out of her way to make sure Anastasia still suffers that same fate even though she already has the game’s love interests wrapped around her finger by this point. Once Amy is defeated, Anastasia sells her off to a mine where she works as a prostitute for the miners as punishment for her crimes.
  • In The Xanadu Talisman, a Modesty Blaise novel, the villain is a female crime boss whose business includes kidnapping young women and trafficking them for sex work. At the end of the novel, she's forced to become a concubine in one of the harems she used to supply.

Live-Action TV 

  • Desperate Housewives: Andrew goes through a period of being an Abusive Offspring to Bree after Rex's death. After he falsely accuses her of child abuse, Bree throws him out and makes him homeless. When he returns at the beginning of Season 3, he's living on the streets and has engaged in sex work. Orson, Bree's new husband, is resoundingly horrified and works to fix Bree and Andrew's relationship. However, his time on the streets has made Andrew a much kinder and more considerate person.
  • Towards the end of the first season of Pose, Elektra steals all of the money from House Abundance in order to pay for gender-reassignment surgery. The fallout is bad, as her longtime lover (who was only interested in her because she was pre-op) immediately dumps her, her remaining children all abandon her to form a new House, and she's kicked out of her penthouse for lack of rent. She ends up back on the street and spends time trying to sell herself for money but doesn't get many takers because she is post-op. Eventually, her estranged Blanca takes her in and gets her a more dignified job at a high-class restaurant. The experience humbles her and throughout the rest of the series, she makes sure that some of her wealth now goes towards her daughters so that none of them end up as hard up as she did.

Theater 

  • The Crucible: After the Salem witch trials end, Abigail Williams, who instigated the ordeal that led to the deaths of dozens of villagers, is forced to leave the village and ends up as a prostitute, which leads her to an early death.

Web Animation 

  • Manga-Waido: Some episodes featuring a female antagonist end with her in a situation so dire she turns to the nightlife business and becomes either a hostess or an outright sex worker to pay the damages done to the protagonist.
  • Monirobo: Yahata was an office worker who goofed off at work, forcing the other employees to pick up her slack. After the office switches to remote work, Yahata hides her slacking by lying about her equipment not working. One of the members of the systems department manages to turn Yahata's camera on, revealing that Yahata was sleeping with a married coworker on the job. After Yahata's actions are exposed, she's sued for compensation by the wife of the man she was sleeping with and fired, and starts working in the nightlife industry to pay off the money as well as have any sort of income.
  • Revenge Films:
    • "My money disappeared → My wife bought a new house for her new boyfriend...": The main character's ex-wife not only cheated on him but also stole six million dollars from the MC's bank account to spend on her lover. After getting divorced and sued, she became a prostitute for two years to pay back all of the money she owed.
    • "Wife thinks I'm an ATM and dumps me after I get fired": When John's cheating, gold-digging ex-wife tries to get back with him upon learning he became successful at another company, he refuses and sues her for alimony. The epilogue then shows that while John married and had a kid with another woman, the ex-wife is last shown wearing a towel and about to get jumped by two fat men in front of a bedroom as he narrates she resorted to sex work to make ends meet.
    • "My wife was cheating on me with 25 different men": After the titular cheating wife is divorced by her husband and sued by him and her married lovers' wives, and then abandoned by her parents who couldn't pay the debt even after selling the house, she had to work at several strip clubs to keep herself afloat and pay the lawsuits.
    • I was making $4500 a month... "That’s not enough" So I started working 6 days a week...: Jill cheated on her husband Jack, wasted his money, and even tried to help her lover rob Jack. After getting divorced, Jack agrees to not sue Jill or her lover as long as she stays away. A year later, Jill breaks into his house and tries to rob him, which causes Jack to sue her as he warned. Jill initially resorted to night work, but when that wasn't paying enough, she decided to prostitute herself to pay it back faster.

Web Videos 

  • Apple Texts: This type of punishment sometimes happens with some female antagonists, usually ones who are guilty of some form of adultery. The "aftermath" portion of the stories sometimes mention that said antagonists had to work as streetwalkers or in brothels to pay off their debts.
  • Viral Texts: