25 Years

I usually only notice anniversaries that I would like to celebrate or remember for personal reason.

I use my Facebook page as a playground for noting birthdays, death days, events in history and other ways to note high and low culture.

I note the anniversaries of film stars, architecture, visual arts, TV programmes and actors, times of revolution and wars, great events in abolitionist history, pop and classical music and so much more.

I enjoy having a magpie attitude to culture, to history, to social events. I hate for my taste to be too predictable.

Anniversaries should fun trivial.

But this year, is an anniversary I cannot be light-heartened about, I cannot celebrate – just wait till the noise dies down.

This year it is 25 since the film of “Pretty Woman” was made.

I enjoy Cinderella, I am a sucker for a fairy tale.

I am not that keen on rom-coms, unless they mainly comedies, especially the older films with their fast-talking banter.

I see as film-buff that “Pretty Woman” is attempting to be a rom-com Cinderella story, that it is pure fantasy.

But as an exited woman, who did mostly escorting and girlfriend experience – I hate the film, and cannot forgive those who made.

The fantasy of “Pretty Woman” is on too many lies and stereotypes about the world of indoors prostitution.

Too many lies and stereotypes who the punters really are.

Punters are not Richard Gere. Escorts are not Julia Roberts.

This should not need to be said, if the film was just escapism fantasy – there would be no need to say.

But too many promoters of the sex trade want the Richard Gere punter to be the norm – at least when speaking or writing in the public arena.

The promoters of the sex trade used the image of the Julia Roberts escort to recruit – as in they have the image of whore-goddess, the image of the courtesan, the image of the high-class hooker to pull the vulnerable in.

These promoters know it all a lie, know it just used to hide the violence and degradation.

The sex trade love “Pretty Woman”, and have used it place prostitution in the centre of pop culture, and even getting acclaimed as art.

But to watch “Pretty Woman”, is to be place back into a world of pain, a world without hope – a world that planted complex trauma into me.

“Pretty Woman” has the evil lie, the lie that destroys the prostituted everyday – the lie that there is such a thing as a punter who will rescue the prostituted.

First, there is no such thing as a nice punter.

I do not care if he does choose not to rape.

I do not care if he does not beat up the prostitute.

I do not care if is just a talker.

I do not care if he has respect.

No man has the right to buy another human for his sexual greed and entitlement.

So it is impossible for a punter to rescue the prostituted, with the punter still having control and power over the prostituted.

The nice punter is just bullshit.

But the message of “Pretty Woman” plants poison into many who are embedded inside the sex trade.

It gives hope that a punter will somehow get a conscious, and see that his prostitute is a full human being – then he will become the white knight.

This never happens – but many of the prostituted cling hold to the illusion.

It is part of the trap keeping the prostituted unable to exit, unable to reach for real help, and unable to know their own inner strength.

It allows the ordinary male violence that is prostitution to continue, as the prostitute hopes beyond hope that the next punter is Richard Gere.

It allows the sex trade profiteers to say that indoors prostitution is safe – for after punters who consume escorts or girlfriend are gentlemen like Richard Gere.

This lie is driving the prostituted to suicide, this lie is allowing punters to be sadists, this lie is hiding the murders that is common in indoors prostitution, this lie is allowing the sex trade to become normal.

It is a giant lie that carries the screams, the blood, the bones and the tears of all the prostituted who thought that a punter could be made to give a damn about their welfare.