THE HAPPY PROSTITUTE

You don’t hear much about prostitution these days. I’m assuming it still goes on. I don't get a newsletter or anything so I'm a little out of the loop. I know a few years ago there was some big-time senator that had a high-priced call-girl on retainer and got in trouble for it. That’s all I’ve heard recently. I’m sure prostitution is still illegal. It probably would have made a big splash in the news if they had legalized it.

Sweden has a neat twist on dealing with the problem of prostitution, they arrest the john, but not the prostitute. This makes sense to me. Studies show that it has significantly reduced prostitution in Sweden, also. After all, without johns, there is no need for prostitutes.

There is a tendency, in America, to either demonize or glorify the prostitute. The john is either treated as a weak man that was enthralled by this professional succubus, or a pathetic man that can’t find women for free. Either attitude demonizes the woman and lets the man off the hook.

The glorification of the prostitute is an American societal creation that seems to support the choice of the woman in her profession, but actually serves to further argue for the innocence of the man. In the film Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts plays a prostitute that somehow manages to service only really rich clients (without a pimp, mind you) and apparently is saving money to start her own business. She doesn’t do drugs, either. In the film Milk Money, Melanie Griffith plays a prostitute that gets hired by a 10 year old boy to be his dad’s girlfriend (which she somehow agrees to do!) and eventually becomes his mom. "Hey Jimmy! What does your Mom do?" “She’s a retired prostitute.” If it couldn’t get any worse, Rebecca DeMornay plays a prostitute in Risky Business that cleverly makes lots of money pimping for her girlfriends while blackmailing Tom Cruise(though I like the blackmailing Tom Cruise part).

The fact is that society, contrary to the movies, does not respect prostitutes at all. When is the last time you were introduced to a prostitute? Prostitutes, according to studies, have likely histories of sexual abuse as children. The majority of prostitutes are on drugs. Many of them are runaways. Some are probably abductees. Many end up murdered and nobody really cares that much. Rarely do you hear news stories and public outcry for the prostitutes that are murdered most likely every day in this country.

We, as Americans, just want to hear the good stories. The fake stories, played by a girl-next-door kind of actor. We love the story of the prostitute or the stripper or the porn star that is just working their way through a business degree. We let ourselves believe that this is the majority.

Remake Pretty Woman. Have Richard Gere play the john still, but this time have the prostitute played by a 18 year old male Vietnamese actor. Sorry. No one would go see that. We only like pretty white female prostitutes here. What fantasy land for hypocrites!