Not something that I saw myself writing about. Well, because I don’t know anyone, hold it, I did actually, back in the recesses of my mind, I remember as a child living in the ghetto in Kingston, I did know a couple of girls who were dancers, strippers at a club. They did tricks on the side. They were two of the friendliest and nicest people I knew. They were always very kind to me, well, they were until one day when I wouldn’t lie for them, but that’s another story.
I am writing about this because I just finished watching a show of the same name as my Sub Title on HBO. It featured women who were prostitutes in Atlantic City. It featured their daily working life and as they were interviewed, each of them told what their life experiences in prostitution have been like.
Many of them are disillusioned, unhappy, resigned to the life they are living. Some, almost all of them were cut off from their families. Some have lost their children, taken away because of the life they live. One even sounded suicidal, although she reassured the interviewer and us, her viewing audience, that she won’t do it.
Each of the women interviewed once they begin talking about their lives, they eventually break down and cry. They cry because they feel that sense of hopelessness and sorrow for themselves, the families they’ve lost, the friends they have lost who were in the profession.
Most of them were between 35 and 45; they’ve done this for a long, long time. They warn young girls who are considering being a prostitute to not do it, to rethink and choose other options because it’s not worth it. The money is good, yes, very good, but the pain and heartache and abuse they go through, they’re just holding on, just barely.
Almost all of them have a drug problem. They sell their bodies to feed their habits. They’ve even done things just to get a ‘hit’. Things they would never do, although they did what they do for a living.
Having a pimp is one of the worse things for them too. These characters that are out there who don’t care about them, they only care about the money they make, what they can get from these women. Sometimes these pimps are the only ‘family’ they have because everyone else has gone; went away because of the life the women lead.
There were two women who stood out in this program; they were both over 30, and very intelligent women. One still hopes and has goals to get out of the profession she’s in. I give her credit for trying to hold on to something that to me seems delusional on her part. Because after this many years and she haven’t gotten out, when is she going to be able to do that? She said that she’s looking for a job, something that will get her out, but she cannot go work for 300 or 200 bucks a week, that would kill her. She has no skill, no training, and no degree, nothing that would make her a viable candidate for any job that would pay her what she makes now. And of course she’s right. And so she is stuck where she is. But she still can dream right?!
The other woman still managed to have her family in her life. She’s actually one of the lucky ones. She said she has a life insurance policy that she makes sure is paid because someone is going to remember her name when she dies and they’re going to have something from her. This way she doesn’t feel she’s wasted her life away. She cried when she thought of the friends who were in her life who left when they found out what she did for a living; she cried for the women who became her friends who died doing what she still does. Then she also had a warning for young girls who think that making the money they do being a prostitute is all that. If she could have the last 20 years of her life back she said, she would have gone Right instead of Left. Because it’s not worth it at all. But she’s where she is and there’s nothing she can do now but try to be one step ahead and survive.
The one thing that stood out to me about these women was here they are, at the age they are now and they have nothing to show for the many years they’ve spent being a prostitute. They have no medical, no family left (except that one woman) they have nothing and no one. That’s basically what many of them have said. It hurts them too, they cry with the pain of what they have lost and I feel for them. I feel sorry for them for having been caught up in the lifestyle they live now. It’s sad that they didn’t see themselves of having better for themselves than the choices they made when they were younger.
Being as old as they are now, they see younger girls coming into the prostitution ring and they feel sorry for them, and so do I.
This is the one profession that so many men, from all walks of life partake in, whatever their reasons, I’m not judging them at all. Yet these women have to hide and always put themselves in such danger and are treated worse than animals, and they will never get any respect because what they do is illegal in most states. So there will never be any legit ness for them. I know there are so many things involved and to consider in making what they do legal. Or maybe I just don’t know, and that’s probably the truth. I just can’t understand it. But if these women were protected and had health insurance and some type of legit ness about the “world’s oldest profession”, then maybe they wouldn’t feel such a sense of loss and hopelessness.
While I know that these women had choices and they obviously didn’t make the right ones, it pains me as a woman, to see other women feel the way these women do about themselves and the one wrong choice they made that changed them for the rest of their lives.
At least they had choices. There are so many women out in this world who don’t. Those women who get forced into being prostitutes and it’s the only way they stay alive.
Sometimes it’s sad to be a woman. Whoever said we have it good because we’re the fairer sex, well, sometimes we do, and a lot of times we don’t. For those who don’t have it so good, it sucks being a woman, and for them that are living the life of one, it ain’t easy being a Ho.
