Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
As for the prostitute’s relations with her clients, opinions vary and cases undoubtedly vary. It is often emphasized that she reserves kissing on the lips, the expression of real tenderness, for her true love, and she makes no connection between amorous embraces and professional ones. Men’s views are dubious because their vanity incites them to let themselves be duped by simulated orgasm. It must be said that the circumstances are very different when it is a question of a “mass turnover,” often physically exhausting, a quick trick, or regular relations with a familiar client. Marie-Thérèse generally did her job indifferently, but she mentions some nights of delights; she had “crushes” and says that all her friends did too; a woman might refuse to be paid by a client she liked, and sometimes, if he is in a difficult situation, she offers to help him. In general, however, the woman works “cold.” Some only feel indifference tinged with scorn for their clientele. “Oh! What saps men are! Women can put anything they want into men’s heads!” writes Marie-Thérèse. But many feel a disgusted resentment of men; they are sickened, for one thing, by their perversions, either because they go to the brothel to satisfy the perversions they do not dare to admit to their wives or mistresses or because being at a brothel incites them to invent perversions; many men demand “fantasies” from the woman. Marie-Thérèse complained in particular that the French have an insatiable imagination. The sick women treated by Dr. Bizard confided in him that “all men are more or less perverted.” One of my female friends spoke at great length at the Beaujon hospital with a young, very intelligent prostitute who started off as a servant and who lived with a pimp she adored.
“All
men are perverted,” she said, “except mine. That’s why I love
him. If I ever discover he’s a pervert, I’ll leave him. The first time the client doesn’t always dare, he seems normal; but when he comes back, he begins to want things … You say your husband isn’t a pervert: you’ll see. They all are.” Because of these perversions she detested them. Another of my female friends, in 1943 in Fresnes, became intimate with a prostitute. She emphasized that 90 percent of her clients were perverts and about 50 percent were self-hating pederasts. Those who showed too much imagination terrified her. A German officer asked her to walk about the room naked with flowers in her arms while he imitated the flight of a bird; in spite of her courtesy and generosity, she ran away every time she caught sight of him. Marie-Thérèse hated “fantasy” even though it had a much higher rate than simple coitus, and was often less demanding for the woman. These three women were particularly intelligent and sensitive. They certainly understood that as soon as they were no longer protected by the routine of the job, as soon as man stopped being a client in general and became individualized, they were prey to consciousness, to a capricious freedom: it was no longer just a simple business transaction. Some prostitutes, though, specialize in “fantasy” because it brings in more money. In their hostility to the client there is often class resentment. Helene Deutsch speaks at great length about the story of Anna, a pretty blond prostitute, childlike, generally very gentle, but who had fierce fits of anger against some men. She was from a working-class family; her father drank, her mother was sickly: this unhappy household gave her such a horrible idea of family life that she rejected all proposals to marry, even though throughout her career she had many opportunities. The young men of the neighborhood debauched her; she liked her job well enough; but when, ill with tuberculosis, she was sent to the hospital, she developed a fierce hatred of doctors; “respectable” men were abhorrent to her; she could not stand gentility, her doctor’s solicitude. “Don’t we know better than anyone that these men easily drop their masks of gentility, self-control, and behave like brutes?” she said. Other than that, she was mentally perfectly well-balanced. She pretended to have a child that she left with a wet nurse, but otherwise she did not lie. She died of tuberculosis. Another young prostitute, Julia, who gave herself to every boy she met from the age of fifteen, only liked poor and weak men; she was gentle and nice with them; she considered the others “wicked beasts who deserved harsh treatment.” (She had an obvious complex that manifested an unsatisfied maternal vocation: she had fits as soon as “mother,” “child,” or similar-sounding words were uttered.)
Most prostitutes are morally adapted to their condition; that does not mean they are hereditarily or congenitally immoral, but they rightly feel
integrated into a society that demands their services. They know well that the edifying lecture of the policeman who puts them through an inspection is pure verbiage, and the lofty principles their clients pronounce outside the brothel do little to intimidate them. Marie-Thérèse explains to the baker woman with whom she lives in Berlin:
Myself, I like everyone. When it’s a question of dough, madame … Yes, because sleeping with a man for free, for nothing, says the same thing about you, that one’s a whore; if you get paid, they call you a whore, yes, but a smart one; because when you ask a man for money, you can be sure that he’ll tell you right off: “Oh! I didn’t know you did that kind of work,” or “Do you have a man?” There you are. Paid or not, for me it’s the same thing. “Ah yes!” she answers. “You’re right.” Because, I tell her, you’re going to stand in line for a half hour to have a ticket for shoes. Myself, for a half hour, I’ll turn a trick. I get the shoes without paying, and on the contrary, if I do my thing right, I’m paid as well. So you see, I’m right.
It is not their moral and psychological situation that makes prostitutes’ existence miserable. It is their material condition that is deplorable for the most part. Exploited by their pimps and hotel keepers, they have no security, and three-quarters of them are penniless. After five years in the trade, around 75 percent of them have syphilis, says Dr. Bizard, who has treated thousands; among others, inexperienced minors are frighteningly susceptible to contamination; close to 25 percent must be operated on for complications resulting from gonorrhea. One in twenty has tuberculosis; 60 percent become alcoholics or drug addicts; 40 percent die before forty. It must be added that in spite of precautions, they do become pregnant from time to time, and they are generally operated on in bad conditions. Common prostitution is a hard job where the sexually and economically oppressed woman—subjected to the arbitrariness of the police, humiliating medical checkups, the whims of her clients, and the prospect of germs, sickness, and misery—is really reduced to the level of a thing.
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There are many degrees between the common prostitute and the grand hetaera. The main difference is that the former trades in her pure generality,
so that competition keeps her at a miserable level of living, while the latter tries to be recognized in her singularity: if she succeeds, she can aspire to a lofty future. Beauty, charm, and sex appeal are necessary for this, but they are not sufficient: the woman must be considered
distinguished
. Her value will often be revealed through a man’s desire: but she will be “launched” only when the man declares her price to the eyes of the world. In the last century, it was the town house, carriage and pair, and pearls that proved the influence of the cocotte on her protector and that raised her to the rank of demimondaine; her worth was confirmed as long as men continued to ruin themselves for her. Social and economic changes abolished the Blanche d’Antigny types. There is no longer a demimonde in which a reputation can be established. An ambitious woman has to try to attain fame in other ways. The most recent incarnation of the hetaera is the movie star. Flanked by her husband or serious male friend—rigorously required by Hollywood—she is no less related to Phryne, Imperia, or Casque d’Or. She delivers Woman to the dreams of men who give her fortune and glory in exchange.
There has always been a vague connection between prostitution and art, because beauty and sexuality are ambiguously associated with each other. In fact, it is not Beauty that arouses desire: but the Platonic theory of love suggests hypocritical justifications for lust. Phryne baring her breast offers Areopagus the contemplation of a pure idea. Exhibiting an unveiled body becomes an art show; American burlesque has turned undressing into a stage show. “Nudity is chaste,” proclaim those old gentlemen who collect obscene photographs in the name of “artistic nudes.” In the brothel, the moment of choice begins as a display; if choosing is more complicated,
tableaux vivants
and “artistic poses” are offered to the client. The prostitute who wishes to acquire a singular distinction does not limit herself to showing her flesh passively; she tries to have her own talents. Greek flute-playing women charmed men with their music and dances. The Ouled Nails performing belly dances and Spanish women dancing and singing in the Barrio Chino are simply offering themselves in a refined manner to enthusiasts. Nana goes onstage to find herself a “protector.” Some music halls, like some concert cafés before them, are simply brothels. All occupations where a woman displays herself can be used for amatory purposes. Of course there are showgirls, taxi dancers, nude dancers, escorts, pinups, models, singers, and actresses who do not let their sexual lives interfere with their occupations; the more skill and invention involved in their work, the more it can be taken as a goal in itself; but a woman who “goes onstage” to earn a living is often tempted to use her charms for more intimate commercial
ends. Inversely, the courtesan wishes to have an occupation that will serve as her alibi. Rare are those like Colette’s Léa who, addressed by a friend as “Dear artist,” would respond: “Artist? My lovers are truly most indiscreet.” We have said that her reputation confers a market value on her: the stage or screen where she makes a “name” for herself will become her capital.
Cinderella does not always dream of Prince Charming: husband or lover, she fears he may change into a tyrant; she prefers to dream of her own smiling face on a movie theater marquee. But it is more often thanks to her masculine “protection” that she will attain her goal; and it is men—husbands, lovers, suitors—who confirm her triumph by letting her share their fortune or their fame. It is this need to
please
another or a crowd that connects the movie star to the hetaera. They play a similar role in society: I will use the word “hetaera” to designate women who use not only their bodies but also their entire person as exploitable capital. Their attitude is very different from that of a creator who, transcending himself in a work, goes beyond the given and appeals to a freedom in others to whom he opens up the future; the hetaera does not uncover the world, she opens no road to human transcendence:
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on the contrary, she seeks to take possession of it for her profit; offering herself for the approval of her admirers, she does not disavow this passive femininity that dooms her to man: she endows it with a magic power that allows her to take males into the trap of her presence, and to feed herself on them; she engulfs them with herself in immanence.
In this way, woman succeeds in acquiring a certain independence. Giving herself to many men, she belongs to none definitively; the money she accumulates, the name she “launches” as one launches a product, ensure her economic autonomy. The freest women in ancient Greece were neither matrons nor common prostitutes but hetaeras. Renaissance courtesans and Japanese geishas enjoy an infinitely greater freedom than their contemporaries. In France, the woman who seems to be the most virile and independent is perhaps Ninon de Lenclos. Paradoxically, those women who exploit their femininity to the extreme create a situation for themselves nearly equal to that of a man; moving from this sex that delivers them to men as objects, they become subjects. They not only earn their living like men but also live in nearly exclusively masculine company; free in their mores and
speech, they can rise to the rarest intellectual freedom—like Ninon de Lenclos. The most distinguished among them are often surrounded with artists and writers who find “virtuous women” boring. Masculine myths find their most seductive incarnation in the hetaera; more than any other woman, she is flesh and consciousness, idol, inspiration, muse; painters and sculptors want her as their model; she will nourish poets’ dreams; it is in her that the intellectual will explore the treasures of feminine “intuition”; she is more readily intelligent than the matron, because she is less set in hypocrisy. Women who are extremely talented will not readily settle for the role of Egeria; they will feel the need to show autonomously the value that the admiration of others confers on them; they will try to transform their passive virtues into activities. Emerging in the world as sovereign subjects, they write poems, prose; they paint and compose music. Thus Imperia became famous among Italian courtesans. A woman might also use man as an instrument, so as to practice through him masculine functions: the “favorite royal mistresses” participated in the government of the world through their powerful lovers.
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This liberation can be conveyed on the erotic level as well. Woman might find compensation for the feminine inferiority complex in the money and services she extorts from man; money has a purifying role; it abolishes the war of the sexes. If many nonprofessional women insist on extracting checks and gifts from their lovers—making the man pay—and paying him, as we will see further on, it is not out of cupidity alone: it is to change him into an instrument. In that way, the woman defends herself from becoming one herself; perhaps he believes he “has” her, but this sexual possession is illusory; it is she who
has
him on the far more solid economic ground. Her self-esteem is satisfied. She can abandon herself to her lover’s embraces; she is not yielding to a foreign will; pleasure will not be “inflicted” on her, it will become rather a supplementary benefit; she will not be “taken,” because she is paid.
Nevertheless, the courtesan has the reputation of being frigid. It is useful for her to know how to govern her heart and her sexual appetite: sentimental or sensual, she risks being under the influence of a man who will exploit or dominate her or make her suffer. Among the sexual acts she accepts, there are many—especially early in her career—that humiliate her; her revolt against male arrogance is expressed by her frigidity. Hetaeras,
like matrons, freely confide “tricks” to each other that enable them to “fake” their work. This contempt, this disgust for men clearly shows they are not at all sure they have won the game of exploiter-exploited. And in fact, in the great majority of cases, dependence is still their lot.