This is one of my female friends blogs....it was quite interesting, any thoughts?


Up until this point prostitution was always discussed as this HUGE evil that had to be eradicated immediately.... And I felt them on that... but I couldnt help but notice that the discussion was taking place in a room full of about 20 priviledged women who were attending Harvard Law School....... Plus a professor who was teaching at Harvard....And that these above mentioned women were deciding for the other millions of women in the world to completely get rid of prostitution because of how it affected them (i.e. in gender violence and the way men overall perceive women). And so I ventured off a little bit from the topic I'd been given...Or at least from the view I had been expected to give:

This was my lil "speech".:

I'll start with the basic point that overall women do not make as much money as men and so we're not yet economically equal, as is evident in the Morrison opinion (U.S. vs. Morrison). And in this country money is often equated with power. And so we still lack power.

In trying to tie everything together, I'm going to jump to my views on legalizing prostitution, which tend to be controversial, but I'm going to explain myself. I tend to lean towards legalizing prostitution because I really don't believe there is any way to get rid of prostitution UNLESS women were all financially well off. And since we cant get rid of prostitution, I'd rather regulate it. I am aware of the horrible consequences of legalizing prostitution, in that by legalizing it, we'd be legitimizing it. BUT in choosing between two evils, I think I'd take that evil rather than letting prostitutes get beaten, raped, murdered, and bullied, without legal redress.

I say I don't think we'll ever get rid of prostitution unless women are well off because sex and drugs will always sell and be in demand. As horrible as it sounds, a lot of women view their bodies as assets or as a resource they can make money off of. I know its horrible, but its my reality and the reality of A LOT of women. Many women do think this way. And last semester we did spend a lot lf time talking about how men value beauty and sex and while men have power we have beauty and its how we negotiate.

I guess my reality is a little different. I KNOW there are many women out there who've been kidnapped, trafficked, and forced into prostitution. I know this because I read about it all the time, BUT I personally don't know ANY women this has happened to. However, I know countless amounts of women (some close to me) who CHOOSE to make money off their bodies in the form of stripping, being escorts, or modeling their bodies. These tend to be normal women who are NOT forced into such a situation and many have not been sexually abused in anyway. I know a few girls who turned to stripping to make extra money in college. A guy who lived near me in college ran an escort service out his dorm and all his escorts were college women from places like UCLA and USC who were just trying to make money. Women often turn to their bodies or their looks to make money when they're desperate.

Maybe my views and perceptions are a little bit skewed because I've lived most of my life in LA. Aplace where there are lots of gorgeous women who move there to be models/actresses, find out its kinda hard to get in the entertainment industry, but they still have to pay bills, and so they end up capitalizing on their beauty/bodies, because it tends to be the easiest way to make lots of money. So that's my environment and where my views come from.

I think Professor ____ wanted me to point out how having a serious lack of money often pushes a woman to subjugate herself and how that relates to women being unequal in economics and power. Which is true, but in thinking about all this I couldn't help but focus on another interplay.

The one asset that most women have to capitalize on are their bodies, I'm not saying most women would, but its there if things ever get really bad. At least I find it kind of comforting to know that I will never go broke. I can throw on a swimsuit and make a lot more than minimum wage just to let someone take pictures of me. And I probably have a different moral structure than people here, but I do know that a lot of women share my views and thoughts. Anyhow, women always have their bodies. But if a woman chooses to capitalize on her body, she receives a very negative stigma. However, when a MALE sells her body, he does NOT receive that stigma.

We glorify the word "pimp" in our culture. The word pimp has a positive connotation. From "pimp my ride" to "I'm a pimp", to shirts, to belt buckles. U wont see the word prostitute on belt buckles. When women use their bodies to make money they're seen as trashy and low class, etc. The words prostitute and stripper do not have the positive connotation that pimp does in our culture. So women are constantly stigmatized if they choose to make money off the one asset that they always have and the asset that men tend to value. I almost believe that men value women's beauty more than they do their intelligence since they're quick to pay them lots of money in strip clubs and for modeling, etc, but pay them less than they pay men for executive jobs. And when women capitalize off this situation, they're viewed negatively.

A great example of this: I was at a shoot a few months ago and the girl I was shooting with was former Playboy playmate of the year. She was a super sweet, very intelligent girl. She was from a middle class family up North. She went to a great school and majored in Diplomacy. She is very into international human rights issues and her past time is knitting huge rugs. She works at a soup kitchen on the weekends. By these facts most would say she's a nice great girl. But because she chose to make over $100,000 by posing naked as playboy's playmate of the year, people view her very negatively. People don't take her seriously and she carries that negative stigma.

So while yes, its interesting that when women lack economic resources they are pushed into subjugating themselves. I find it even more interesting that when women choose to make money off their bodies they then carry a negative stigma. Especially when we seem to agree that beauty is one of our biggest bargaining tools as women."


Thoughts? (btw, excuse the grammatical errors. I said this outloud and didnt have to turn it in, so I wrote it in a way that flowed verbally versus in a grammatically correct way).