A Study on the Working Conditions and Safety Threats Experienced by Female Actors in Performing Sexual Representation and Body Exposure

Yang Hyun-kyung, Independent Researcher and Actor

Gonggam Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Research Grant Competition on Labor Safety and Health 

Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health

This study conducted in-depth interviews with eight actors who had appeared in theater, film, and television, six crew members who had participated in film and television production, and one specialized counselor for sexual violence in the arts and culture sector. Its aim was to examine perceptions surrounding female actors’ performance of sexual representation and body exposure, as well as the safety threats experienced during such performance and the factors that foster them. 

High-intensity sexual representation and body exposure, such as depictions of sexual acts, were perceived in two ways. On the one hand, they were seen as a choice driven by the “desperation” to secure casting opportunities and as a means of “appealing” to distinguish oneself in a competitive field. On the other hand, they were seen as a risk that one’s bodily image would be “consumed” in an “expendable” manner that emphasizes its sexual dimension. 

Production companies and production teams share an awareness that depictions of sexual acts and body-exposure scenes serve to capture the audience’s attention while also constituting a potential “problem”: should sexual violence occur on set, the capital-invested production may fail to reach its audience, resulting in financial losses.

However, when this awareness focuses on the concern that a “problem” may arise rather than on the “details” of building conditions in which female actors can safely immerse themselves in their performance, such vigilance often fails to translate into practices that pursue improvement. 

In performing sexual representation and body exposure, the study participants experienced threats to their safety in several forms. Under a distorted norm holding that an actor must be willing to do anything for the sake of the performance, they were pressured into “real” physical contact without any protective measures. They were unexpectedly directed to wear costumes intended to carry sexual meaning or to expose the body. They were also subjected to unplanned “attempts” and to repetition beyond what was necessary. Such experiences were found to provoke sexual shame and discomfort and to disrupt immersion in the character. 

When participants experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence during a performance or shoot and were unable to raise the issue, they sometimes felt so diminished that they avoided appearing in that genre altogether. The actor participants pointed to two factors that fostered threats to their safety: an industry structure marked by routine employment insecurity and rigid hierarchy, and a norm that reduces the actor to an instrument for the work by insisting that an actor must be willing to do anything for the sake of the performance.

Moreover, the safety-consideration guidelines for female actors were confined to direct depictions of sexual acts and body exposure above a certain threshold, and the labor of upholding them was borne exclusively by a small number of female crew members. It became clear that the work of securing female actors’ safety in performing sexual representation and body exposure was being left to female actors and female crew members without any recognition of expertise or provision of resources. Although the study participants had directly experienced or were aware of the risks that performing sexual representation and body exposure could pose to female actors, their means of preventing these risks amounted, for the most part, to individual efforts to make the fullest possible use of their own knowledge and experience within the bounds of their job. This appears to be because no resources, whether procedures, personnel, or the like, are being invested to secure the safety required for female actors’ performance of sexual representation and body exposure.

Based on these findings, the study offers the following recommendations. 

First, institutional intervention is needed for the safe performance of sexual representation and body exposure by female actors. Guidelines are needed at every stage, from drafting contracts through rehearsal, performance, and filming. These should be developed and disseminated, and specialists such as intimacy coordinators, who can oversee and supervise these processes, should be trained and provided to productions. Practical guidelines should not be limited to particular types of scenes such as kissing, bed, or bathing scenes. They should instead encompass a range of situations, including scenes in which sexual intimacy is conveyed, such as bodies being in close proximity, costumes that emphasize a sexualized image, and filming from angles that accentuate specific parts of the body. They should also be developed so as to be applicable to the practical work of each occupational group, including planning, directing, management, cinematography, costume, and sound. The development of field-level practical guidelines on sexual representation and body exposure, together with the introduction of professional coordinators, can provide a foundation for pursuing female actors’ safety on the basis of professional knowledge and precise guidelines, rather than simply delegating it to female crew members. 

Second, there should be an expansion of discursive spaces in which feminist knowledge on the sexual representation of women interacts with the creative field of the cultural industry. This can encourage female actors to intervene in the production of their own bodily images within the creative field, provided that two things happen. Women working in the cultural industry should become producers of female imagery and female narratives, as well as producers of discourse about them, thereby enriching the language of the field. At the same time, feminist cultural studies should increasingly turn their attention to the experiences of “real” women working in the cultural industry, including actors.

Finally, active intervention policies are needed to address the sexual harassment and sexual violence experienced by entertainers, including female actors, in the field of the cultural industry, as well as digital sexual violence such as illicit filming, deepfake synthesis, and distribution that occurs under the guise of production and consumption in the cultural industry. 

The acting profession has distinctive characteristics: those in it work under their publicly known identity, with their bodily image and private information becoming objects of public interest. Given these characteristics and the misogynistic culture of the popular arts industry, there is an urgent need for counseling services that combine expertise in victim protection with a feminist perspective. In an environment where most workers are freelancers, research that devises measures for protecting victims in reported cases, sanctioning perpetrators, and improving conditions, as well as policymaking to implement such measures, must likewise follow. 

This study did not sufficiently address the differences between theater, in which the audience watches the actor’s performance in real time on stage, and the production processes of film and television, which are mediated through recorded images. Nor did it adequately provide a theoretical and systematic approach to the production practices and industry conditions of each genre. It should be noted that the information on the production processes of theater, film, and television needed to understand participants’ statements relied substantially on the researcher’s own experience.

In addition, because the vulnerability of female actors in sexual representation and body exposure was examined chiefly through their experiences of participating in productions, the study has the limitation of not addressing the risks that arise as an actor’s performance interacts with the industry and the public. It is hoped that this study’s analysis of female actors’ perceptions of sexual representation and body exposure, of the types of risk they experience in the course of performance, and of some of the factors that foster those risks may contribute, however modestly, to building institutions that make female actors’ creative environments safer. Furthermore, it looks toward the possibility of a gender-equal society in which sexual representation is not a risk in female actors’ work but is naturally integrated as part of their professional pride and competence.