Secret Diary of a Call Girl

[LilBB]

Apologies if this has been done before but after being bombarded with ads for the new series of this show and wondered what people opinions of it are.

Prior to finding this forum I was naive about prostitution probably no thanks to things like this stupid show. I had seen a couple of episodes and just thought of it as not far off porn. Now I know more about prostitution this show sickens me. I don't know why anyone would watch a show glamourising prostitution. I know it was based on a true story of a phd student turned call girl but it just doesn't sit well with me. Can the real Belle really say that she is truly happy with her experiences? Even if she didn't have the experience of many prostitutes forced to do so surely it can't have been all fun like the show makes out (from what I have seen anyway although I doubt there was a 'beaten up by a client' episode).

[sethstarkaddersmackerel]

I watched part of an episode and it was nauseating.... male fantasy disguised as the woman's POV, basically, and ultimately dishonest.

[vesuvia]

I was in my local library the other day looking for books on feminism. I found a few but they were in amongst about ten autobiographies by "happy hookers". I looked at one of these accounts of prostitution which explained that the woman concerned had become a prostitute to pay for the essentials in life - private school fees for her children.

[AliceWorld]

They were on the radio discussing this the other day, I guess it was due to the film and the defence was that of course it didn't portray the reality of prostitution but that it as removed from reality and people knew that Oh really. Sickens me that people would make money off the back of something so important in the knowledge they are not portraying reality and justify it to themselves that 'everyone knows that'.

[slug]

If you read the book on wihich it is based, the author comes across as pretty fucked up. She was outed a while ago and it turns out her Father was a heavy user of prostitutes. You don't need a psychology degree to see a little girl desperately trying to get Daddy's attention. Not that you see that on the TV show though.

[SmellsLikeTeenStrop]

The problem with Belle de Jour and other famous call girls is that they put this nice 'glamorous' face on to prostitution and this is what the public internalise.

I've been in discussion and have pointed out that prostitution is a horribly exploitative way of life and that the women involved in it are often very desperate and have many issues. In response I got ''but its not all like that, look at Belle de Jour, she enjoyed it''. As if somehow the tiny minority of prostitutes who are 'happy' with what they do/did cancels out the hundreds of thousands of women who were coerced in to prostitution or turned to it out of desperation and would leave in a heart beat if they could.

[Unrulysun]

I remember having a discussion about prostitution with dh once in which he pointed out thatthe three things people always use to justify it are money, beauty ('if a girl's got the looks...') and choice which are ironically three things most women in the sex industry really don't have. :(

[sakura]

yes, that was it slug. As a little girl, her father used to get her to chat to the prostitutes he used in order for her to see their "human side". As if prostitutes possibly might not have a human side or something
So her father taught her that this was the way women got his attention.