Prositution Appropriated Into the Beauty Trap?

Via Lux Alptraum, Monica of $pread Blog takes recent sex-work glamorizers to task. (That's sex-work *glamorizers* she takes to task, not actual sex workers.)

I feel like, right now, in the media, sex work is being enthusiastically embraced by any woman who fancies herself progressive, liberated, sexually desirable, and sexually curious, but it's not the type of support real sex workers benefit from, or are, when it comes down to it, actually involved in at all. Because this trend isn't part of a larger discussion to seriously reassess legal and cultural attitudes about sex work. It's far more narcissistic than that. I think the idea of putting yourself out there as a (possible) consumable piece of merchandise is gratifying, and talking about in an article is in many ways an attempt to publicly confirm your fuckability. Susannah Breslin writes

It’s become increasingly hip to trumpet the “empowering” virtues of sex work, but the fact of the matter is that the realities of sex work are far too hardcore for most aspiring “hipster hookers” to handle.

But it seems to me that this attitude is less about empowerment and far more about impressing people: I'm so cool I have all these hooker friends, I'm so cool that I could make men pay me if I wanted, etc. It's just another way to quantify and assert one's value as a sexual being, and I don't see a lot of men joining in on it. So again, this article depresses me. It depresses me to think that sex work is treated as the last frontier of women who feel the need to prove that their looks and their sexual prowess have worth. You have worth, whether or not you're cashing in on it.

Read the quote in context here.

That last line is amazingly affirming while also totally lancing a number of myths and misconceptions about prostitutes. I particularly appreciated Monica's sly inversion of the myth that sluts/whores are really just damaged approval seekers with her point that some people see prostitution as a sort of competitive plateau of visual and cultural desirability that's easily strived for but difficult to achieve. Point being it's at least as problematic to idealize prostitution "up," glamor-wise as it is to idealize it "down" moral bankruptcy-wise.

Anyway there are a ton of equally wonderful, "duh, d'ya think" convention-busting ideas in Monica's post that you probably ought to read it no matter where you stand on the issues. For instance in a single paragraph I've reformatted as a bulleted list

• Again, what other profession would we do this with? "I was going to help with the open heart surgery for my article, but ... at the last minute I threw up and ran out of the room." "I was going to sit on the 10th floor's ceiling beams with the construction workers so I could bond with them over lunch, but my fear of heights was just too great, so I just stayed on the second floor, crying and shaking in my hard hat." Maybe there's a reason you're not already working in the profession you're writing about.

• [M]aybe this cavalier attitude about sex work needs to be called to a halt, like, right now.

• If it's such an emotional minefield, if your friends have so thoroughly explained all the potential pitfalls, why would you make an under 24 hour decision to start doing it?

• Why would you be foolish/arrogant enough to assume that sex work is so extraordinarily unskilled and accessible that you just hop right into it and do a good job?

• Anyone can make money with sex work, but it doesn't follow that everyone who performs sex work is good at it.

• Probably everyone has made themselves a sandwich before, but it doesn't mean they're qualified to open up their own restaurant.

• [I]t certainly doesn't follow that just because sex work is open to everyone (and I mean EVERYONE, regardless of gender, size, race, or sexuality) that everyone should do it.

I think *if* we're going to continue debating prostitution it would help to have a better understanding of what it is rather than what we *imagine* it is -- whether we imagine it's the most glamorous thing since "Pretty Lady" to the most debased thing since "Taxi Driver." It's not that there's no room for debate, it's just that it's probably a better idea to debate *what is* rather than what we *think* it is.