An End To War pt 4: A Pretty *Woman*

apologies for the late post y’all. i’ve been in a bit of quicksand with endless deadlines. thank you for supporting me and my work.

He thought I was worried about physical violence, but it wasn’t that. I wasn’t worried about people hurting him. Juan is a formidable man. It was more about how little I wanted to facilitate a situation where people joke about “cross dressing” or “men in dresses” i.e. trans women. It’s a slippery slope, and the strip club is not a place where people have nuanced discussions about these things, most of the time.

“I just don’t want people to treat you differently here.” I said.

But there are always gender subversives, wearing wigs to cover shaved heads; working bikini clubs while expertly tucked; shaving budding beards or conversely, growing them to pass in one direction or another. It’s only dangerous if you get caught. Controversial as they are for their racial politics, I still feel seen dancing to Dorian Electra. Even when I’m exuding high femininity, I’m still a career boi. A county faer, as Hassan likes to call me. And maybe me being present to witness Juan’s gender expression was part of him feeling seen. I am a professional, and this is my work, but sometimes my customers are my friends. It’s a complicated friendship, no denying it, but still I care, especially when my customers disclose their gender or sexual explorations.

Juan continued seeing me as often as he could given his limited time. Sometimes he would arrive in the middle of me entertaining another customer. Sharing strippers is tricky. It may seem counterintuitive since the whole stripping profession is about servicing multiple customers in a night, but there is a lot of jealousy. People grow attached. They want to feel like they’re so important that you must drop everything and rush into their arms as soon as they arrive. It’s a bit like a reverse princess fantasy. Maybe it’s like the other half of the princess fantasy--an ordinary man wanting to feel like a prince, swept off his feet by a dashing princess. Fae sees him from across the room and identifies in him an entire world of possibility. Time stops, a warm spotlight flickers on and there he is: awkward and unassuming yet there’s something about him. We all want to be seen at the end of the day, and yet there is a conflict when the princesses are inherently polyamorous and must sweep five to eight men off their feet in a night to make that bottomline.

Juan never begrudges me for making him wait. He sits patiently, shooing away other dancers who try to talk him into a dance. I would have understood if he decided to dance with someone else one night, but he isn’t simply coming for any beautiful body rubbing against his. He comes for the connection and to update me as he tears voraciously through the pro-sex work reading list I began, that he has rapidly expanded upon.

“Maybe I should have known. My favorite movie has always been Pretty Woman. It all makes sense to me now. I know the movie isn’t the best or anything, but looking back on it now, it made some good points.” Juan said.

Pretty Woman is one of those iconic yet controversial sex work movies. Rich man meets a whore; rich man decides to make a “lady” out of her; accidentally falls in love and whisks her away from whoring after she teaches him how to enjoy life. It is the Captain Save-A-Hoe archetype in action.

“How do you mean?” I asked, skeptically.

Juan lists out a few scenes: one where Vivian is shunned as she attempts to shop on Rodeo Drive while looking like a stereotypically cheap whore, only to have the kindly hotel manager give her a makeover and manners lesson. She transforms from a trashy hooker into a stately woman who shows those snooty store clerks what’s what!

“And there’s that scene where Edward outs Vivian to his lawyer as a sex worker after she charmed everyone at the polo match into believing she was someone important. She says, ‘if you were gonna tell everybody I was a hooker, why didn’t you just let me wear my own clothes?’ I feel like it really showed how people dismiss you guys just because of what you do, even when you’re just like everybody else and deserve to be respected.” Juan added.

“I don’t know if that’s a lesson people need to learn. It’s dangerous to get outed, and people are disrespectful, but sex workers are everywhere.” I replied.

The finale, where Julia Roberts says the whole “and then she saves him right back,” as if to emphasize that ***it isn’t a save-a-hoe story!!!*** (even though it is exactly that).

“I can see that. I know the movie is flawed, especially now since I’ve been learning so much. And of course, I don’t know what it’s like, and I never will know. I’m just a foot soldier for the cause.” Juan said, backing down a bit to reflect.

Prior to Juan bringing it up, I hadn’t considered watching Pretty Woman. It’s more a romcom than any sort of statement about sex work, and it’s been lampooned by many sex workers already. But I was curious, and I actually am low key a sucker for a good romcom. So I decided to tuck myself in and screen it as the seasoned whore that I am.

My initial reaction, aside from that Julia Roberts isn’t a very convincing Hollywood Boulevard street based sex worker, was “wow, I have whored in the very hotel where most of the movie takes place”. I said it out loud to Evan, who was watching the movie beside me. He covered his face and snorted.

“Oh C, you’re too much.”

I thought this tidbit was hilarious. Evan meanwhile tried to shoo the image out of his mind to properly enjoy the movie. It hit me that I have escorted out of many iconic LA hotels, on the arms of many men much harder on the eyes than young Richard Gere. A lot has changed in the thirty-one years since Pretty Woman was released, but I would also say that simultaneously a lot in the world of whoring has not.

I’m not going to get into the racial politics of the movie. I’m not going to delve into how all of the people of color are either “the help” or homeless drifters. I’m not going to parse through the fact that the first two whores we see are 1. dead, and 2. on drugs. For my brief analysis, I’m going to begin with the subject of the story: Vivian. Whores aren’t all treated as equally “dirty,” “trashy,” “or cheap” particularly conventionally attractive White women. The Whorarchy places beautiful cis White people at the top and ugly trans Black people at the bottom. “Ugly” is a controversial word that few people want to own, and yet we live in a world where we know what it means and who is deemed ugly due to physical deviance from White supremacist cisnormativity. We also can observe how the world inflicts cruelty upon those who are ugly in harsher punishments from childhood ostracism or bullying to carceral adulthood. Julia Roberts, whore or not, is a gorgeous White woman who could be the most conspicuous whore and would still be treated better than a Black person working a non-sex work profession. Additionally, the concept that whores aren’t welcome on Rodeo Drive conveys this implicit conception that we aren’t shape shifters that exist everywhere, especially in luxury spaces. It assumes that we are tawdry pariahs who stand out as classless spectacles no matter what we do. We stink of whore. The movie clearly tries to reiterate that Vivian she can pass for a *woman*, that protected status denied of whores, and yet all of this is only possible with the help of a series of men willing to cosign her credentials, and with her leaving the industry. There is no love story if the whore stays a whore. Not to mention that Vivian has no back story or motivation in her life aside from rent and finding romance. It’s a little like the Magical Negro trope, but it’s a Magical Whore who teaches a White man the meaning of life while she is abused right and left by the people around him who facilitate his status. She just takes it with a kindly smile and a joke, because of course, she is a flat character who we expect will experience violence, who we accept as the subject of this violence without question. Of course a whore gets beaten up. Of course a whore faces discrimination. Of course a whore gets humiliated in public.

It’s an insidious movie that paints itself as a subversive Cinderella story, but I didn’t hate it. In fact, I wanted to like it for Juan. When I was an impressionable child, I would watch any movie that had any sex work in it, because I was curious and horny, and it looked like fun. Even when the media is clumsy, it can still influence a person in a positive direction. For me, even the flat silhouettes of sex work that these movies painted inspired me to become who I am today. For Juan, it instilled an affinity and compassion for sex workers. I don’t credit the makers of the movie for what it inspired. I credit sex workers for being captivating subjects who shine regardless of the stupidity of the studios featuring stories about us.

The beauty of being a whore writing my own story is that it doesn’t have to end with someone saving me from the industry. Mine is not a Cinderella story. It’s not a monogamous romcom either. If there is a love story, it’s how I love myself even as I share my nurturing energy with many people.