“I am a streetwalker, but, no, I am not a prostitute.”
By Beth Connors-Manke
To state what I hope is obvious to most, there are lots of things wrong with the movie Pretty Woman. Richard Gere isn’t really acting in it. Julia Roberts is completely unbelievable as a prostitute. There is also the anti-feminist theme of rich-man-saving-destitute-sex-worker-from-a-life-she-didn’t-deserve. The biggest problem, though, isn’t these three things. It’s that prostitution is so much more mundane than Pretty Woman—even the parts of Pretty Woman the audience doesn’t see: the backstory of Vivian’s nights on the boulevard in cheap but sassy knee-high boots and tight dresses.
So how would I know about the banal aspects of the sex-trade? COPS, the TV show. One weekend my brothers made me (by virtue of the fact that they would do nothing else) watch a COPS marathon. I dislike the show, but after three episodes I started learning things, including the fact that women willing to trade sex for cash money generally don’t look good. Even more, many of them don’t do it as a career path, as the Julia Roberts character did. Often, prostitution is serendipitous and opportunistic. If you’re waking down the street in your dirty, cut-off jeans and drugstore flip-flops looking for a friend to hang out with because you’re bored, and a John in a broken down old truck with his work tools in the back stops beside you, well, why not? Who doesn’t need more cash?
This was an important insight that came back to me when I moved to the North Side last winter and started making a daily trek from Loudon down North Limestone to get to work. I chose Lime as my route because I like to walk along busy streets (which are generally safer for women); it also takes me through parts of downtown that I like.
So, it was January, and if you remember, it was cold and snowy this winter, meaning Beth was always swaddled in three to four layers when she tromped down Lime in her snow boots. On my third day of pedestrian commuting, the solicitations began—and they continued throughout the season. They came from black guys in cars, Latino guys on bikes, and, my favorite, a bald white dude in a business suit driving a ridiculously large SUV. Bald John was my favorite because he made his proposal (“You wanna ride?”) as he was turning left in the intersection of Loudon and Lime. I just slowly nodded my head “no,” wondering when he was going to crash into another car. When you need some strange love, I guess you really need it. Even if you’re in the middle of a left-hand turn.
To be honest, I was pretty pissed off about the situation for a time. I don’t like being hollered at, honked at, or being scared by mumbling men in sunglasses who stop their cars beside me—men who seem like they already have a woman chopped up in the trunk. But eventually the anger and fear became a heavy burden, too. So one day I just stopped paying attention. Actually, it was more like I softened my reaction to N. Lime. Then, strangely, I had fewer Johns trying to get my attention.
More than likely, there were several reasons for this. Those guys hard up for love during the winter 2010 snows finally found their somethin’-somethin’ with someone else. Maybe it got warmer so they didn’t need another warm body next to them. Perhaps it was because I stopped looking around.
One of the things girls are (or should be) taught when they’re young is that you have to be wary, to look out for yourself because you are prey to some predators. It isn’t right that women have to be socialized this way, but it is pragmatic. My early walks down Lime were informed by this, and this lesson was reinforced by the frightening, mumbling serial killer John that I met early on. Yet, contrary to my conditioning, I stopped putting up the appearance of wariness, which taught me another lesson about prostitution. Evidently, prostitutes are women who look around. “Ah-ha!” I thought, “Now I have the key to a pleasant N. Lime stroll: just don’t look around.”
Well, no sooner had I grown comfortable in my sex-trade knowledge, than a friend told me a story about a mutual friend, whom we’ll call Jane. Jane was pregnant and out walking in our neighborhood. A guy drove by and yelled, “Hey baby, let me make you pregnant twice.” What? Really? What have the abstinence-only people done to sex education in the schools?
All-in-all, I’m grateful to COPS and N. Lime for disabusing me of the romantic notions of prostitution that Pretty Woman had encouraged in me. Thankfully, I no longer believe that if I trade sex for money a rich guy will fall in love with me and save me from my bad decisions. I now understand that any and all women are targeted as prostitutes, especially when we’re covered from head to toe, with only our faces showing (as I was during the winter and as women are in some conservative religious cultures). I also now know that prostitutes are women who pay attention to their surroundings. Finally, I’ve learned that some men are habitually, indiscriminately, and/or desperately horny.
With the summer heat bearing down on us, I’m sure I’ll learn still more about how the currents of desire run down N. Lime.
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