Cambridge Girls? Meet the Sex Industry. . . .

Last night I wrote of my initial foray into the world of "exotic dancing" (a euphemism I always found rather silly. I stripped. I didn't "dance exotically." I bumped, ground, and did suggestive things with a pole; I don't consider these things exotic). Well, hot after posting that entry, I discovered a month old (10/10/07) article from the UK's Daily Telegraph about some of Cambridge University's young women:

Some female students are working as call girls and lapdancers, while several
hundred students or former students are said to be signed up to a single
escort agency.

One student is reported to have been a £50-an-hour prostitute in the city who slept with between 40 and 50 men in a two month period during her first year at the prestigous university.

She told a university newspaper she had met other students doing the same.

There's something telling about the cost of a university education when even young women who attend one of the world's most prestigious, hallowed insitutions turn to the sex trade in order to make ends meet. When I began, however, I was the only college student on the circuit who also danced. At the time, I felt like a walking urban legend: we all hear about the girl who strips her way through college, but how many of us know her? Anyways, just a news item to share.

Bob Herbert on Las Vegas's Brothel Dreams

I'm enjoying some Australian red wine tonight. My problem with red wine is that I drink it like Kool-Aid. Seriously. I can drink two bottles in no time at all. I love the flavour--but I'm at the point where I go from no buzz to totally pissed. Kind of like Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof--there's no middle ground (mind you, I don't think I'm like this with any other alcoholic beverages). Anyways. . .whoring.

I am ambivalent about prostitution. I have been a whore; I respect the woman who finds herself exchanging the use of her body for cash or drugs--she often might feel her body is a source or power or control over her situation. But is it a true empowerment? And for all this description of prostitution as "a woman embracing her sexuality," is it? Yes, you embrace yourself as a sexual object, but is that the same as embracing your sexuality? I'm just wondering. And Bob Herbert recently published an Op-Ed column that only complicated my ambivalence. I can only reprint his opening words, which are:

"The first thing to understand about prostitution, including legal prostitution, is that the element of coercion is almost always present."

And he's right. As I can't reprint the article in its entirety, I don't feel comfortable arguing for or against Herbert's position (as I can't cite Herbert directly). Instead, Ill let you read the piece yourself at the New York Times. Caveat: you must be a Times Select subscriber to read the entire column.

Update: The exceptional blog, Behind the Times (subscription wall) has Herbert's piece in full. For free.