T O D A Y
Banned in Vermont
The littlest harlot
My Barbie, myself
The skinny on Barbie
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E++T A L K What is the truth about giving birth? Does it hurt like hell? Share your pain in Table Talk. - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y "Just because I'm HIV-positive, can't I bear children?
Reluctant role model
Coyote dreams
Cujo's bite is worse than his bark
Escape from parenting
Toying with us
- - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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Closer to home, some call girls have told me that they refuse to exploit the good girl/bad girl dichotomy because it is dishonest. One Toronto activist told me she would never let a client think he is "saving her" from prostitution, no matter how lucrative the deal. I believe she is part of an earnest, politically motivated minority. I have had generous (and otherwise worldly) clients who needed to believe I had never turned a trick before; prostitutes at all price levels have told this story because that's what some customers want to hear. In a society too enlightened to value clinical virginity, a prostitute simply offers the next best thing: her commercial innocence. And Barbie serves as our guide. "We Girls Can Do Anything" has more than one meaning. Barbie can do anything she wants as long as she knows how to dress and act like a respectable career gal. Or, Barbie, like many prostitutes, can embark on a career in the public sphere while getting men (or Ken) to support her in private. She can do anything, as long as she keeps her public persona separate from her covert sexual behavior. By the standards of many in the prostitutes' movement, a politically correct board game would be We Girls Can Do Anything merged with Barbie's Dream Date: the hard-working yuppie seamlessly integrated with the girl who can work a hard-on. In such a world, We Girls might include a stint as a lap dancer to finance a player's way through med school. But that kind of social realism would never work in the toy stores. And Barbie wouldn't go for it. No matter how obvious Barbie might seem, she is not a militant or brazen prostitute. She wants to get maximum bang for her bod without suffering the consequences of being labeled a whore. She enjoys her double life with its secret motives, and does not really want to tear down the barriers. That is Barbie, and that, whether you like it or not, is your average American call girl. The prostitutes' movement is uneasy with this contradiction. Preferring to blame the prostitutes' secrecy on stigmatization, we have assumed that some of the highest paid call girls in this society are simply victims of culture. But prostitutes who hide from public scrutiny are usually agents of their own fate who prefer to be in control of their lives. Some will accuse Barbie of being the ultimate female eunuch: without a pussy to call her own, Barbie has no business marketing herself as anyone's wet dream. Or has she? One might also argue that I, never having posessed a Barbie, have no business claiming her as a role model. But you did not have to own a Barbie to be touched by her, to know her as a part of your childhood landscape to emulate her. And Barbie did not have to have a pussy to benefit from the power of pussy. I once watched performance artist Penny Arcade re-enacting an exchange with a guy who had leered at her in the street: "Look!" she screamed, lifting her skirt in exasperation. "No hole! I'm just like Barbie! There's no hole!" Because she had "no hole," Barbie flaunted her sensuality without having to deal with emotional, legal or physical consequences. Long before abortion was legalized, she had the system beat. I sometimes wonder how many unplanned pregnancies and unwanted "date rapes" could be pinned on Barbie's unrealistic situation. Her idealized breasts, the otherworldly span of her waist -- these things did not make her vulnerable. An intensely desirable body can get other girls into trouble, but Barbie's plastic perfection has never been threatened by rape, conception or herpes. Barbie paid no price for her fabulous curves or her erotic power because she has no working orifices. She could be totally involved in the drama of her own image, oblivious to men's forceful desires. Barbie could stick those amazing breasts in Ken's face just for kicks without even getting a rise out of the guy -- he has no penis. For better or worse, Barbie's lesson to young women has been: "We girls can get away with anything." In real life, we get away with some things and not with others. It's clear to me that many of us believe "we girls can wear anything" without expecting men to react normally. And Barbie has persuaded a number of prostitutes that we girls can do anything. Is she to blame for the naiveté of so many middle-class prostitutes who enter the profession unprepared for their own illegality? "You can get away with anything" could pump up a girl's self-confidence while she lets down her guard in a dangerous universe. Whether dodging the law, thumbing our nose at conventional taboos, or playing with a man's sexual appetite, we are wiggling through a minefield, running a tab that can be presented to us for payment at any time. At worst, Barbie has spawned a generation of sex-positive flakes who aren't prepared for this. And yet, she has also passed down some useful lessons about her own femininity. A topless dancer who flaunts her synthetic breasts could well decide to keep her gyrating crotch covered throughout her career. And the prostitute who relies on hand jobs or blow jobs (rather than intercourse) is doing something remarkably old-fashioned: symbolically, or in fact, she is saving her vagina for the highest bidder. These women are practicing what Barbie preached: your pussy, a form of power in itself, can be more effective when you don't have to use it. This approach to power is what separates pros from amateurs, skilled sex objects from the exploited. Similar observations have been made in less erotic areas of industry. Charles Peck, a compensation specialist, observes that power can be "bracketed or taken out of play" when its existence is acknowledged. In my view, Barbie's vagina is not really missing from the equation after all. Girls who have paid attention to her teachings have figured that out for themselves. And Ken, who has nothing to hide, is no match for them. Recently, I had a tense discussion about Barbie with a NOW (National Organization for Women) member who supports the prostitutes' rights movement. When I poked fun at feminist Barbiephobia, she began to bristle. To oppose Barbie was de rigueur -- until I told her about Barbie's status as a former prostitute. I could hear her ideological wheels spinning, as Barbie's credibility grew. "Really?" she said brightly. When I argued that a hatred of Barbie might suggest prejudice against sex workers, she listened intently. But I felt somewhat guilty about exploiting a friend's political sympathies. For I have to admit that Barbie, in her previous incarnation, could never be anything as mundane as a sex worker, and she would never have joined a political movement or party unless there were wallets to be plundered. Lilli was a scheming floozy, perhaps -- a fickle slut, a child-woman seeking the protection of money, a bitch after your wallet, a shopaholic temptress. Lilli might even have been all these things at once. But she was never one of those faceless, clock-watching laborers on the erotic assembly line. If Lilli glanced at her watch, a man didn't feel like a neglected consumer in an impersonal sex mill. Instead, he felt like a patsy -- her patsy. Lilli was a holdover from a sexier, brasher era -- the era of Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel."
But Barbie lives today, in a different time and place. If Barbie could don an astronaut suit when Woman had yet to conquer space, why not a Decriminalized Barbie with her own Little Black Book, working the Sex-Positive '90s? Or a Legal-in-Nevada Barbie? Recent developments in Barbie's life suggest that it could happen, but a part of me hopes it won't. I'd like Barbie to stay slightly out of reach, two steps ahead of the sex-positive thought police. For if Barbie becomes a sex worker, she'll forget about the immense power she wielded as an ambiguous woman with a past. Lying about her name, her age and her origins, she trained a generation of hussies, and we have been surprisingly shameless, despite the fact that our teacher's power derived from her ability to keep a secret.
Tracy Quan is active in international prostitute politics and is a frequent contributor to Salon. Copyright 1997 from "Whores and Other Feminists" edited by Jill Nagle. Reproduced by permission of Routledge Incorporated.
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