Abstract
Based on interviews with indoor sex workers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this chapter examines the effects of class-based branding in brothels on fat workers. Without criminalization in Aotearoa New Zealand, workers can access rights and work without fear of arrest or prosecution. Once criminalization is removed, there is space to observe how these workplaces replicate broader inequalities in capitalism. Such exclusion amplifies preexisting disparities within a stigmatized sector in an unequal capitalist market. Fat sex workers encounter prejudice impacting their earnings and job mobility, as brothel branding favors thinness, reflecting and perpetuating societal anti-fatness. The chapter, informed by twenty-eight sex workers' testimonies, contends that the sex industry's anti-fatness is embedded in systemic class, gender, and race hierarchies, exacerbating challenges for workers. The essay closes with an emphasis on the importance of moving power to workers, raising welfare payments, and ensuring financial stability to create a space from which to demand workers’ rights and counteract marginalization of workers.