Anora's star turned down an intimacy coordinator on set and everyone has an opinion on it.

Mickey Madison's decision to not work with an intimacy coordinator opens more questions about female agency than it answers.

Isn’t the whole point of women empowerment is the ability to choose what decisions feel right for your body?

I read an interesting piece in Variety about Mickey Madison during the filming of Anora and how she decided to not work with an intimacy coordinator on set, which she revealed during an interview with Pamela Anderson.

““It was a choice that I made,” She said, and went on to explain that Baker and his wife, producer Samantha Quan, offered her the chance to work with an intimacy coordinator, but she and Eidelstein “decided that it would be best just to keep it small. We were able to streamline it, shoot it super quickly.”

The rise of intimacy coordinators has been in keeping with the #metoo movement that was spawned in direct response to the toxic culture of sexual violence and entitlement in America. It’s an acknowledgement of the decades of women in film and theater who were forced to meet big shot producers alone in hotel suites late at night, or forced last-minute to act out a brutal sex scene without warning or preparation in what amounts to sexual assault, it’s a great move in being more aware of how complicated consent can be in the workplace, and how women are expected to be more sexual and nude than men on screen. Overall, it’s a good thing that there are people whose job it is to make sure everyone is comfortable, and that consent is mandatory, on the set.

But what happens if a woman decides to employ her agency and say no?