The Squalid Truth About Call Girl Lit
The Daily Mail 20 April 2007
When Aneta was offered a job across the border from her Czech village, she jumped at the chance. The pretty 17-year-old was to be a nanny for a rich family.
Petr, the handsome man who recruited her, promised she would travel with them to London, America even. “You’ll get to practise your English,” he joked.
The next day Aneta, along with ten other local girls, met Petr on the edge of their village, handed over their passports and climbed into a waiting people carrier. It was to be the longest journey of their lives.
Hours later when the van came to a juddering halt, instead of a family, a group of rough-looking men were waiting.
They had guns and dogs, which they used to bundle the girls, some as young as 14, out of the van and into a dank cellar where they ordered them to strip naked and stand in line.
The men moved along the line grabbing the women roughly, inspecting their teeth, their breasts and between their legs. The girls were crying.
“We were just horseflesh,” Aneta recalls. Each was dragged from the room at gunpoint and gang raped. Within days they were smuggled across Europe to work in brothels.
Aneta ended up in a British brothel, from which she later escaped. “I got to practise my English all right,” she says bitterly.
Aneta’s story could be told by hundreds of other women who have been trafficked across Europe to be swallowed up by the British sex trade.
The head of the Metropolitan Police Clubs and Vice Unit estimates that at least 75 per cent of prostitutes working in London are foreign – and that as many as 14,000 women from across the world are working in the sex trade in Britain.
Now we switch to a smart drawing room where the latest bestseller is being discussed by keen readers in their trendy book club.
A stream of so-called Happy Hooker memoirs are spewing out of Grub Street and you won’t find a trafficked woman in one of them.
What you will find are salacious confessionals by middle-class hooker hacks motivated as much by celebrity as acclaim among the literati.
We’ve had a clever girl slumming it with Belle de Jour, who led the way with her blog-turned-book The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl, in which she chatted about her punters, lingerie and writing ambitions.
We’ve had desperate housewives, such as Dawn Annandale, who revealed in Call Me Elizabeth that she would rather sleep with men to pay the school fees than send her kids to the local comprehensive.
These have been joined by professional dominatrices whipping up interest in suburbia, and a procession of pseudo-memoirs by call girls plying their trade from London to New York.
Of course, Aneta’s is not a story you will find in the raft of prostitutes’ memoirs being pumped out by publishers hellbent on peddling the myth that the Oldest Profession is a path to glamour and eroticism for a certain type of woman.
As the bodies of the brutally murdered prostitutes were being found around Ipswich last December, nubile Brazilian Bruna Surfistinha published Scorpion’s Sweet Venom: Diary of A Brazilian Call Girl in the UK.
At 17, Bruna is only two years younger than Tania Nicol, the Ipswich Strangler’s youngest victim, but how different are their lives.
Poor little rich girl Bruna decided the best way to upset Mum and Dad wasn’t to dye her hair green but go on the game, though she calculated: “If I am going to be a prostitute, I don’t want to be a run-of-the-mill one.” Bully for her: at least she had a choice.
As Aneta and the Ipswich Five demonstrate, what Surfistinha contemptuously regards as “run-of-the-mill prostitutes” are women who live horrible, degraded lives, and whose freedom of choice is stolen with their passports and the descent into addiction the first time they are given crack cocaine by their pimps.
Not that stark reality penetrates publishers’ minds.
This summer another author, the seductively named Miss S, joins Bruna and Belle in bookshops with Kinky Confessions Of A Working Girl.
Her editor Katy Follain, of that august publishing house Penguin, proudly proclaims Miss S is “one of London’s top five escorts”.
How she knows this is a mystery. Is there a FTSE for hookers? The Floosie 100, perhaps?
In an astonishing letter to promote Kinky Confessions, Follain writes that the book is an ‘intimate diary’ of Miss S’s first year in a brothel, aged 21.
She took the job after a vacancy opened in her local massage parlour. Miss S likes the work so much she now runs her own business – whether it employs trafficked women, Follain omits to mention.
She does reveal: “This is her chosen career – she does it because she loves it, and her attitude to sex is empowering, fun and refreshing.”
The book, Follain gushes, “will undoubtedly appeal to both curious teenage girls as well as bored housewives”.
Teenage girls? What on earth is she thinking?
“Kinky Confessions stands out from the other sex memoirs,” she burbles, “because everything in it is absolutely authentic, and will have huge credibility.”
Not with me. If you want authenticity, consider that, according to the police, women in brothels are forced to service between 20 and 30 clients a day.
This is the reality of the vice trade, not books like Handy Hints for Hookers, Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl or Concertina: The Life and Loves of a Dominatrix. It is far from the image promoted by the publishers of those literary offerings.
While Belle, Bruna and Miss S emphasise their freedom of choice, most sex workers are no more than slaves and there is nothing glamorous about the world they inhabit.
By peddling the myth of the middle-class call girl, these books perpetuate the insidious idea that inside every young girl and suburban housewife is a woman who regards sex as a commodity to sell.
What these memoirs also fail to acknowledge is the uncomfortable relationship between prostitution and paedophilia.
Belle and Co may be legal, but according to the Home Office as many as 75 per cent of all prostitutes begin their involvement in the trade well before their 18th birthday.
Many start as young as 12 after falling in with bad crowds – the average age of girls being pimped by young hustlers is 14 to 17.
Of the 84 trafficked women rescued from brothels in Operation Pentameter last year, 12 were under 17, some only 14.
Child prostitution is getting worse. From Gatwick to Glasgow, charities report a sharp rise in child abductions from care homes. Once snatched, the children are either trafficked abroad or forced to work in brothels here.
Up to 5,000 children are working as sex slaves in the UK, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation claims. As well as child exploitation, a disproportionate number of sex workers suffered appalling violence and sexual abuse as children, which was a significant factor in leading them into the vice trade.
The Home Office reports as many as 85 per cent of prostitutes suffered physical abuse as children, while 45 per cent were victims of sex abuse.
One woman, Severine, who works as an erotic masseuse, contacted me when I was researching this subject to say: “I did have a childhood that most people would consider emotionally abusive. I don’t know if that’s why I became a sex worker or not. It was probably part of it.”
Severine’s acknowledgement is borne out by other prostitutes and ex-sex workers I have met. A few years ago, a room mate of mine was a bright, sassy girl, who admitted to me she’d been a prostitute. She had also suffered horrific abuse.
Aged seven, she was raped on her way home from school. When she was 13 she was gang raped. Her parents were going through a nasty divorce, so rather than turn to them for help, she ran away.
On the streets prostitution was not her ‘choice’, it was her means of survival and memories of what she went through at the hands of punters haunted her into adulthood.
As a volunteer on the streets, I helped out with a welfare charity and discovered my friend’s story was all too familiar.
None of the prostitutes I met had enjoyed happy, secure childhoods free from fear or abuse.
For girls not forced to sell sex by traffickers, heroin has proved the slave driver, as the victims of the Ipswich Strangler exemplify. The Home Office reports that 87 per cent of women involved in street-based prostitution use the drug.
Not a picture you find in the pages of Miss S and her bookish sisters.
Nor is the violence meted out to prostitutes reflected in these vice memoirs – Dawn Annandale alludes to one nasty incident, but it is nothing compared to the beatings meted out by pimps and punters most street girls experience.
Instead of the grim reality, we are peddled the tales of Bruna, Belle, Miss S et al, ready to spill their socalled secrets in return for a fat advance from publishers too busy reading their blogs to bother finding out what really happens in the vice trade.
Publishers who sell this nonsense claim it ‘empowers’ us girls, showing women sex workers in control of their sexuality and enjoying the work. If it’s such a good job, why don’t these publishers recommend their daughters take it up?
And if it is such great work then why do brothels use trafficked women to fill vacancies?
Because vice is not nice, which is why women do not choose it as a career.
The image of prostitution these writers promote is utter rubbish, a lie propagated about a profession that relies on coercion, rape, violence and drug addiction to recruit its workers.
For the sake of Aneta, my friend and the victims of the Ipswich Strangler, as well as the 5,000 child sex slaves working in Britain, it is about time publishers dug a little deeper when dealing with the Oldest Profession and stopped trying to sell us this pernicious nonsense.
Comments
Posted by Anne Brooke on 20 April 2007
Yes, yes and yes. I can only agree with you. I’m constantly shocked by the way publishers want to sell us something glossy when the reality is so bleak and deadly and dehumanising. It’s utterly horrific and cheapens us all.
Anne B
Posted by James on 21 April 2007
Hello Danuta – I’ve been reading your site for a while but this is the first time I’ve commented.
I work in publishing and while I haven’t published any titles like those mentioned I’m ashamed to say I have read and enjoyed several – and wouldn’t have previously ruled one out if it crossed my desk. I am likely to now.
Great article, and thanks for maintaining the blog, as I would be unlikely to have come across it otherwise.
James
Posted by Danuta Kean on 21 April 2007
I don’t think we should be blame publishers for pandering to a market – at least no more than the rest of the media making money out of stuff like this – but there is a huge amount of naivety about what this trade involves, which is why I wrote about it so strongly.
The facts show what a repellent business vice is. It does not do the publishing industry – or readers – any service publishing books by so called High Class Hookers that imply the vice industry is anything less than vile in its exploitation of vulnerable people.
I can’t believe that there would be the same market for Happy Hooker books if they were written by working rent boys, so I have to conclude that behind these books and the industry that supports them is a very insidious sexism.
I have had a few emails about the article from Mail readers, including a couple of heart-breaking ones from former prostitutes – including an ex-call girl – and they were supportive of it, which just confirms me in my opinion.
Posted by Clive Human on 23 April 2007
This article gives a really good insight into a business which is thriving on everyone’s doorstep. We can choose to ignore the plight of these victims or we can take a stand and have a say with this knowledge and more, to educate the public about what goes on in this sordid world of trafficking. The abuse of women and children in all sectors of the sex industry is at almost epidemic proportions. The demand for increased acts of violence and degradation against women and children is an extremely worrying factor even to the porn makers who have been quoted in AVN saying ‘where to from here?’ The mind boggles! It is said that a demand creates a market so i believe authorities should also go after the men who request and pay for the services of these women and children who are only seen as objects with two hands and a few orifices to be used and discarded. Well done for this excellent hard hitting article. May it ‘educate’ many. Clive Human – Cape Town, RSA.
Posted by Danuta Kean on 23 April 2007
Hi Clive
Thank you for your feedback. I agree about the way that users of this stuff should be treated.
Dx
Posted by John on 23 April 2007
I tend not to agree with everything you have written in this article. It did seem a little one-sided and going through the internet found another article giving in my opinion a far more balanced view.
http://niadarkandlovely.blogspot.com/
Posted by James on 27 April 2007
The blogosphere is a wonderful thing, that I can read a prostitute’s response to the original article alongside all the other comments.
The permalink to the article John references above is: http://niadarkandlovely.blogspot.com/2007/04/happy-hooker-memoirs.html
Posted by Cecile on 28 April 2007
Oh dear. Another generalising, uninformed article.
What saddens me regarding some of my fellow journalists is that they simply don’t WANT to know all the facts. If they actually did their research and spoke to some people involved in the industry they would realise that, while we recognise the fact that trafficking goes on,(and that, in fact, many of us work with organisations that battle it, providing insider knowledge) many have chosen to work, for one reason or another, and derive great enjoyment and benefits from many aspects of their self employment.
Furthermore, knowing some of the recent ‘callgirl’ authors myself, much of the literature you are so ready to dismiss IS authentic, and by no means glamorises the industry. Miss S, for example, describes the very harsh realities of her work, and a young lady from Japan was recently very frank in her description of work in saunas.
Nothing is ever black and white. There are good and bad areas in everything. Do your research for goodness sake. Journalists should represent balance and truth, not their own biased agenda.
Posted by Danuta Kean on 30 April 2007
I did speak to people who work in the industry – as the article clearly states. I also spoke to NGOs and the police. The article clearly states that the view of much of Call Girl Lit – which I have read – is biased in favour of showing one side of this industry, which is far from reprsentative – 75% of women working in it are trafficked, accoding to the most conservative estimates. Hey?!!!!! I don’t doubt that there are women who enjoy this profession, but to imply they are a majority when the statistics speak for themselves, is wrongheaded. They are not an authentic vioce for the industry. I could add the emails I have received from women who work/have worked in the industry who feel exactly as I do, but they have emailed me privately, so I do not feel I have a right to add their emails. The research speaks for itself.
Posted by Katie Edwards on 27 May 2007
After writing a PhD thesis on the sexualisation of women in popular culture, which included years of research and interviews with sex workers it seems to me that Danuta’s blog entry was neither uninformed or generalised. There may be some ‘high-class’ call girls who enjoy their job but it’s also important to remember that the women who are publishing their adventures and exploits in prostitution have to cater to a mass market and their stories simply do not offer experiences that are representative of the vast majority of sex workers.
Posted by Cecile on 29 May 2007
What I object to the most is the assumption that all ‘Callgirl Lit’ is fictitious or ‘rubbish’. I know some of the authors of these books, and can assure you that the draft they submit (before the copy editors and their like get their hands on it and ‘edit’ it) takes as much hard work and years of committing memories and thoughts to paper/keyboard. Is an account of their life any less worthy or authentic than any other? Many of them are surprised when they are accused of glamorising the industry and encouraging women to become interested in it, when in fact, their experiences are often distinctly un-glamorous. No ‘escort-author’ has ever claimed, to my knowledge, that their book is the definitive truth, the only experience, the only lifestyle. None have ever said that. None have set out with that as an aim. It is a personal account, a biography. Of course, not all Callgirl Lit is authentic or well meant, some is not even written by actual sex workers – and the industry frequently discusses this, but don’t write it all off as the same thing.
Human trafficking is vile and terrible. It makes me sick with frustration that it has not already been stamped out. But it would be an issue whether these books were published or they weren’t. Some of these women just want to tell their story.
Posted by Think Girl » The Squalid Truth About Call Girl Lit on 5 June 2007
[...] from Danuta Kean [...]
Posted by Tracy Quan on 9 June 2007
Hello, Danuta. A few thoughts, since you mentioned (in passing) my first novel. I need to be brief because I am currently on deadline. I read your commentary with an open mind, but I’ve had to conclude that this is a very superficial take on call girl lit. It’s also a misreading.
First of all, the Happy Hooker motif in your piece is misleading. Those who have read “The Happy Hooker” as adults will realize that it’s not a very “happy” story at all. It’s rather gruelling actually. I addressed this in the Encyclopedia of Prostitution (recently published by Greenwood Press) — see my entry on Xaviera Hollander, the author of that very popular memoir. Xaviera (in 1972) is young, broke and getting over a failed relationship when she decides to start working as a prostitute. She is also, like so many people today, living in a foreign country. The book ends with her in trouble with the police, facing deportation. I know Xaviera, and it’s no secret that she has had a rocky life.
Secondly, the latest generation of call girl books can only be properly understood if you think about them in their proper context. These are books, so let’s compare them to other books — not to everyday life, which is a different question.
Call girl narratives are a subset of sex worker lit, and sex worker lit is actually very diverse. It includes, for example, “Rent Girl” by Michelle Tea and “Chicken” by David Sterry. These books explore the anomie and turmoil experienced by young people on the fringes of the sex industry. You will find similar themes in stories by Evelyn Lau and Mary Gaitskill who began publishing in the ’80s and ’90s. I see these ’80s-’90s voices as an earlier version of what we now call sex worker lit. I see Rent Girl and Chicken as stories which would appeal to readers of Lau and Gaitskill.
What has happened here? Well, sex worker lit came of age. It grew up. It developed a sense of humor. It stopped slouching, outgrew its ripped t-shirts, teenage misery and general air of resentment…
While some authors still do a pretty good job of exploring those themes, others (like me) feel the urge to do something more mature, less “highbrow” and — god forbid — more accessible.
Of course, the experience of a neurotic, ambivalent urban 30-something passing for 25 does not tell every sex worker’s story. But this IS a common experience, and many readers (including sex workers) can relate.
If anybody would like to see my essay on The Happy Hooker, please feel free to email me directly.
Posted by Douglas fox on 9 June 2007
I read this article with a sense of horror not at the allegations that call girl lit glamorised a seedy profession but rather at the inaccuracy of the journalism.
As a (to be honest now retired) sex worker and the owner of an escort agency for nearly ten years I am tired at the constant negativity and scorn poured on any documentation of sex work that does not fit the anti propaganda. I use the word propaganda because this is what it is. What I find worse and what I think the public should increasingly be aware of is that the anti lobby is now very well financed and some very nice careers are being made on the back of what is now an industry.
In ten years in this business I can honestly say I have never represented anyone who was in any way forced or coerced to work. I and my partner have represented about five hundred ladies and gentlemen over the last ten years. Some have made a full time profession of the work while others have worked part time and yet others have only worked for a few weeks. It has always been their choice.
Trafficked women and boys (always the boys seem to be forgotten about) are victims of crime and the perpetrators are criminals and should be treated as such. People who “choose” are not criminals and should be free to make a choice with out fear of discrimination or persecution.
If you argue that those who do choose some how legitimises the trafficking of others then fine but please apply that same logic to other businesses and industries which are often considered honourable but have practitioners involved in illegal activities.
Stop persecuting sex workers and instead realise that sex work is as legitimate a choice of occupation as any other provided it is choice made freely by consenting adults.
Douglas fox.
Posted by Amanda Brooks on 9 June 2007
As with everything in life, there is a large spectrum of prostitution. At one end are the truly high-end girls who charge thousands per day and see few clients a month. At the other end are child sex slaves. The middle ground, which is large, contains a lot of women who see this as a way to make ends meet.
Demonizing all prostitution because a percentage of women have been harmed by it is like demonizing all parents because a (significant) percentage of them abuse their children.
Bringing prostitution into the public eye is good. Readers can start to understand that call-girls have the same life problems anyone else does. In other words, they’re human, just like anyone else. As other commenters have pointed out, just because the writers’ experience doesn’t match the “victim” model that everyone expects out of sex workers doesn’t mean their experience is not valid.
Those who traffic women and harm them should be harshly punished. But the women who choose to do this of their own free will should not be punished. They are the ones who decide whether or not prostitution harms them.
Posted by amanda craig on 11 June 2007
Danuta’s article is not demonising prostitution. It is drawing attention to the hypocrisy of the ‘Happy Hooker’ line in publishing which encourages readers to believe that women choose prosititution, and enjoy it, instead of the reality which is that the vast majority of women in the sex trade are not there as the result of free choice but have been abused, raped and trafficked. I would be interested to know how many of those who attack her brave and timely article have been put up to it by the publishers themselves. In my opinion, the editors of some of these books are little better than pimps.
Posted by Tracy Quan on 14 June 2007
Here is something which may help to put sex worker books in perspective. I got it from the Sex Worker Arts Festival website. Really worth a visit, if you want to explore these issues.
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/
“From artists’ models to muses, from hetaira to geishas, sex workers have been vital participants in arts communities through the centuries. Despite their influence on the arts and culture, polite societies rarely acknowledge the contributions of the demimonde who have also been painters and poets themselves. A growing number are working in contemporary media, film and video, and performing in solo, ensemble theater and in burlesque revues.”
The site goes on to explain: “Over the past decade sex worker art and culture festivals have sprouted up around the globe from Calcutta to Taiwan to Montreal, from Portland to Cleveland and Arizona. Sex worker film, art and performance events span the globe…” says the SW Festival website.
It’s in this context that books by sex workers exist. A growing international cultural movement. One might be for it or against it — but the movement continues to grow on its own because its time has come.
Large publishers are responding to this by producing commercial fiction (or memoirs) about sex work. They did not invent this. They are taking a bohemian, academic trend to the next level, a level that general readers can relate to. I hope this helps to clarify things.
Posted by Tracy Quan on 17 June 2007
Hi Danuta — Please visit this new link! It’s a chance for all of us here to agree on something very important!
“What Am I Doing on eBay?”
http://fifthestate.co.uk/2007/06/tracy-quan-mystery-pics-on-ebay/
Posted by Séverine Sérizy on 23 June 2007
I just read the Tracy Quan comment and had to smile when I read the following paragraph:
“Of course, the experience of a neurotic, ambivalent urban 30-something passing for 25 does not tell every sex worker’s story. But this IS a common experience, and many readers (including sex workers) can relate.”
She could have been describing me, as I am indeed a neurotic, ambivalent, urban 30-something sex worker!
The word “ambivalent” certainly describes my attitude towards sex work. I have in no way been forced into it, and am currently only doing it to pay off debt and pay my way through grad school.
When I was younger, it was an exciting and erotic thing to be involved in (back then I actually worked as an escort but got tired of that and switched to erotic massage) but now I find myself somewhat jaded with the whole sexual aspect of the job. Once you’ve seen one penis, you’ve really seen them all.
I have absolutely no guilt whatsoever about the sexual act I carry out for my clients, as sex is never immoral or wrong if consenting adults are involved. However, what does bother me is that I am contributing, albeit indirectly, to deception and adultery. It really does not make me feel good to think that most of my clients are married, or otherwise attached, and yet are able to go home to their partners as if nothing had ever happened. Most of men would do well to ask themselves why they are still married at all if their sex lives/emotional lives are so unfulfilling.
I also find that working as an erotic masseuse has made me very cynical about men, marriage and relationships in general and this, of course, is a sad thing. The vast majority of men who come to see me are far from being the sleazy, perverted men the public would like to think they are. Instead, they’re often highly respectable, professional and just bloody nice people. If I had met them in a bar, I would never have imagined for a minute that they would be the “type” to cheat on and lie to their partners. This makes me very paranoid about my own future relationships. I wonder if I will ever be able to trust anybody?
Posted by Sharon Maas on 1 July 2007
Just read this article. Danuta, your words go straight to my heart. There’s nothing glamorous about this profession, no matter how much a hooker earns, and it’s so cynical of publishers to make such memoirs the hot new trend.
You might like to read the interview I conducted with Dr Gilada, an AIDS doctor in Bombay’s Red Light District, on child prostitution in Bombay:
http://www.sharonmaas.co.uk/html/interview_with_dr_gilada.html
Posted by Red Queen on 16 August 2007
Ye Gods..
yes indeed there is terrible exploitation of vulnerable women in some areas of prostitution…
AND there are also large numbers of women who make a choice to work in this trade because they want to. It is work. Sex work. Generally speaking it gives them a higher return for effort expended than the alternatives open to them. Fact.
In the UK They are NOT a minority. And there are more every year as information is spread, articles and programmes are seen and women feel like having a go. It is not for the faint-hearted, but then nor is working in a hospital or care home, and no-one criticises that choice.
Do we say all food is bad because some of it mistreats chickens and pigs in factory farming? No.
Please will you guys acknowledge that Prostitution covers a wide range of people and working practises.
I am a woman from a happy middle-class background who has already experienced a varied career and then deliberately chosen prostitution over other options. I don’t have to do this, I choose to because it suits me better and is less stressful than grafting in an office 40+hrs per week and brown-nosing my way up the promotion ladder. In my time (not continuously) I have worked in a parlour, a flat, an agency and as an independent outcall escort. I met a wide variety of other working girls and heard their stories. Their reasons for working are ALL primarily economic. Sex work is just that – Work. We have lives outside of this when we go home, we are real people with families friends and partners.
The lucky few citizens have a true vocation in life, the rest of the population still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up and have to find a job that suits us well enough. I found mine.
Posted by saif on 9 March 2008
its very terible the world most of women choching there carrier for sex worker , really they making us bad. i want to kill them
Posted by MandyMuse on 22 September 2009
Just found and read your article – it’s great that you are drawing attention to trafficking, which I agree is a problem that must be stopped.
However, to say that call-girl memoirs are contributing to the problem? Puh-leeze.
There are children forced to work in factories in China, putting in long hours in unsafe conditions for not enough money. So a show like Project Runway, that glamorizes the business of making clothes, gives a totally wrong picture of the fashion industry. The Bravo network is complicit in encouraging child factory labor by showing only those clothing workers who “choose” to be there. Stores like Target, that promote the idea that fashion can be accessible to many people, that clothing should be enjoyed, are criminally contributing to the terrible child factory labor problem, Just because their clothes are made legally and by adult workers is no excuse!
I could go on, but I think you get the absurdity of your underlying premise.
Promoting a group of workers in a field who are happy with what they do (or, like many job holders in any field, are sometimes ok with their job and sometimes hate it) is not forcing other workers into slavery.
Slavery is bad. Choosing your job is good. But the one group doesn’t have very much to do with the other in any field, and you’re better off focusing your righteous indignation on the admittedly harder to hit and more nebulous target of trafficking, which is wrong whether the victims are sucking cock or sewing sneakers.
Good luck with that.