Despite our initial enthusiasm, we have yet to watch “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” (sorry, folks, but boinkology is a demanding field), so we can’t really weigh in on the merits of the show itself, or its accuracy in portraying the lives of sex workers. That said, there was something fundamentally off-putting about this review from Jezebel:
It’s easier to swallow this bunk as fiction, because as pro-sex worker as I am, I actually know real hookers in real life—from Craigslist call girls to porn actresses who need extra cash to occasional snow bunnies—and they really aren’t anything like Billie Piper’s portrayal of Belle. However, since the show is kind of a really nice, glamorized version of a really shitty job, Call Girl is to hooking what Sex and the City is to single women: A fantasy that will have a bunch of whores saying they relate.
Allow us to make a few points:
- Sex workers are not a monolith, and no matter how many you know, there are doubtless many with vastly different experiences than those of your sex worker friends.
- In fact, it seems that some sex workers do consider this to be a somewhat realistic, if tired and cliched, portrayal of life as a call girl.
- Using words like “hookers,” “hooking,” and “whores” doesn’t really strengthen your case that you’re “pro-sex work.”
For a more nuanced, insightful review of the show, we suggest this post by Debauchette.
[Photo by mirosim]
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jezebel uses words like that to sound tough. they want to seem edgy, even if ‘edgy’ means ‘the same thoughts conservative people have been sharing for the past 50 years, now with cursing!’
isn’t the show based on a real person?
bartending can be a shitty job too, but i don’t think people were invoking their magical ‘bartender friends’ and criticizing Cheers.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:50 pm[...] a great write up from the blog Boinkology which links to a great piece written by Debauchette. There’s also these thoughts from $pread [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 3:22 am“isn’t the show based on a real person?”
It’s based on a book based on a blog by Belle du Jour. Because she’s anonymous, some people have assumed she must be fake, but as far as I know she’s a real person.
“bartending can be a shitty job too, but i don’t think people were invoking their magical ‘bartender friends’ and criticizing Cheers.”
EXACTLY.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:55 amI’m pretty sure that $pread magazine uses said terms, but in more of an upbeat manner.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:54 amConrad:
I think it’s different when you actually are a sex worker, frankly.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:54 amI should add: a sex worker writing for sex workers, rather than a non-sex worker who has sex worker friends writing for a largely non-sex worker audience (one that seems to include many anti-sex work voices).
June 19th, 2008 at 9:55 amever since collegecallgirl stopped making appearances at jezebel, the writers have been a tad too judgmental of sex workers.
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 pmLeave a reply :