An Argument for Legalizing Prostitution: The Zola Story

            Within the past 24 hours, a story told by Zola on Twitter has totally blown the F up.  Zola, our storyteller, is a self-possessed Hooters waitress in Detroit who strips on the side for extra cash.  She’s self-possessed and self-assured and clearly very confident in who she is.  While working at Hooters and stripping are often looked down upon in our society, Zola knows enough to not judge herself by society’s standards.  Plus, she makes bank doing it.  We should all be more like Zola.  We should all have so much confidence.

            Zola, attracted to the potential for making money, rides to Tampa, Florida with a customer, Jess, she met literally the day before in order to make some extra cash stripping.  Also in the car are Jess’s boyfriend Jarrett, and a big, old black man.  I might not have gone with them myself because I am perhaps more cautious than Zola, but Zola saw dollar signs and counted herself in.  In this way, she is basically a female Jordan Belfort – someone who thinks money is more important than personal security or, you know, anything else.  The big difference is that I’d rather hang out with Zola than Jordan Belfort.

            What follows is a story about a desperate woman (Jess) stuck with a murderous pimp (big black man who goes by Z) and a bipolar boyfriend (Jarrett) who doesn’t want Jess to “trap” (“trap” means to prostitute oneself) anymore.  Zola, for her part, does not trap because she is not about that life, but ends up stuck in a situation that was definitely not as advertised.  A weekend of stripping, making money, and having a good time turned into a weekend of trapping, pimping, violence, guns, death threats, murder, and attempted suicide.  Do not go with a girl you just met to strip in Florida for the weekend.  Some money is just not worth it.

            Some of the elements of this story could have been avoided, however, with a couple tweaks in how we as a society view prostitution.  For example, if trapping were legal, Jess would have had a legal recourse against Z when he takes all of her money she made from said trapping, despite the fact that she found most of those johns on her own or with Zola’s help, not through him.  Plus, when Jess straight up gets kidnapped at the end of the story and beaten until she’s unconscious, calling the police would have been a more viable option.  They can’t, because Zola and Jess would be arrested (Jess for trapping, Zola for pimping and for carrying a gun Z gave her “just in case”).  Instead, Z shoots the kidnapper/rival pimp IN THE FACE in order to “rescue” Jess. 

            I’m not advocating that everyone become a sex worker, or that some people involved in the sex worker business are not just terrible people.  However, as it stands, sex workers are simply not protected by law like they should be.  For many sex workers, there are simply few or no other options available.  Many get started at a young age, don’t have much of an education, and are in environments where there are few alternatives to make money.  Forced into prostitution, these women then find that the law doesn’t care what happens to them at all.  A court case in 2007 ruled that holding a sex worker at gunpoint and forcing her to have sex with three men wasn’t rape; it was theft because the johns didn’t pay for her services.  A recent serial killer case in the southern Ohio/West Virginia region ended only because a sex worker had the presence of mind to shoot dead the man attacking her.  The police had known there was a serial killer looking for prostitutes and had done literally nothing, considering it almost a blessing to be ridding the area of prostitution.  Serial killers going specifically after prostitutes are common - from Jack the Ripper to The Green River Killer to The Grim Sleeper, just to name a few.  Whatever one’s thoughts are on the morality of prostitution, these women deserve at least some legal protection.

            Most importantly, if person A wants to give person B a blow job, why do I care?  Why does the government?  Legalize it.  Tax it.  Everybody wins.

            This story would have been far less dramatic if sex work wasn’t so dangerous.  How do we make sex work less dangerous?  Making it illegal doesn’t make it go away.  There’s always someone somewhere willing to pay for sex – and someone else willing to sell it.

An Analysis of CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

            There’s a new show on CW about Rebecca, a high-powered lawyer in New York who quits her job just as she’s being offered a promotion so she can move to the Inland Empire.  She pretends it’s because she wants a change of pace, but it is very clearly because of a high school boyfriend she just reconnected with.  She is a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

            The show is cringe-worthy, and I still haven’t made it through the second episode (but I will!).  As I watch, I want her to realize what a rockstar she is, that she can get any guy she wants because she’s fabulous.  Instead, she’s made some guy who can’t even be bothered to text back in a time-appropriate manner the center of her universe.  His worst offense, honestly, is that he’s boring.  As an audience member, I want to shake Rebecca into realizing she’s better than him, he’s boring, and she needs to move on.

            Unfortunately, emotions aren’t rational.  And if I’m being perfectly honest, as much as I have trouble watching it, I’ve been Rebecca before.  I’ve had obsessions about guys who only sort of knew who I was for much longer than I’d care to admit.

            We’ve entered a new era of female roles, one that is less about Damsels In Distress and more about Strong Female Characters.  Don’t get it twisted – the Strong Female Character is an improvement, sure, but can often be just as one-dimensional as the Damsel In Distress.  She’s powerful and intelligent and beautiful and doesn’t take shit from anybody.  She’s an Ideal, which often comes at the expense of a sense of humor or, worse, any sense of humanity.

            There’s a double standard in unrequited love stories.  When a boy loves a girl who doesn’t love him back, it’s romantic, and we’re meant to sympathize with the guy.  Even when she just wants to be friends, he complains about the Friend Zone, and we’re still supposed to feel bad.  When a girl loves a boy who doesn’t love him back, it’s creepy and weird.  Love is to be decided by what the man wants.  A woman’s worthiness is to be decided by the man who may or may not want her.

            With both the Strong Female Character trope and the unrequited love double standard in mind, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend emerges as a breath of fresh air.  Rebecca is a human face to a woman who is smart and successful and not strong in any way.  She puts a human face to a woman who knows chasing a guy across the country is crazy and has to pretend she moved for other reasons.  Rebecca tells a story many women are more familiar with than they’d care to admit, and from a perspective that is rarely showcased.

            I don’t know how long Crazy Ex-Girlfriend will be on the air, and it does have some kinks to work out still, but its perspective and its characters are refreshing.  When there’s discussion about more women in Hollywood, we don’t just mean more female roles.  We mean more female stories.  We mean Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Valid

            I have been sad for some time.

            It’s not the kind of thing where one is always sad.  I don’t walk around always sad.  That would make me a cartoon character.  I have met very few people who are always sad.  I think they want people to know they are sad.  I don’t know what that feels like, so I can’t relate to their struggle.  I don’t like other people knowing I’m sad.

            I work very hard at being happy.  Perhaps I focus on it too much, and that’s why I find a lasting version of it to be so elusive.  Perhaps I overthink things I should just mentally toss away, as if thinking about past events could somehow change them, or as if constantly thinking about someone’s actions could give me the answer on how to make them like me.

            It isn’t to do with the people in my life.  I have been so very blessed.  My support system is large and present.  I am very lucky. 

I have every reason to be happy.

            I have hopes and goals and dreams that I want to achieve but I can feel myself not working hard enough to make them happen.  I get scattered.  I tell myself other things will make me happy too, other more attainable, easier goals that can replace the ones I’ve always had.  But I always find once I start going for it that I’m wrong, that they won’t make me happy, and then I’m stuck trying to figure out how to either pursue a thing that probably won’t work out or find a thing that will work out but isn’t what I really wanted to begin with.  Would the latter make me happy?  If I chose happiness and worked at it hard enough, would it appear?

            Does any of this make sense?

            I recently quit a job that paid well and was never going to fire me.  I quit because I didn’t like it.  I didn’t like the culture, I didn’t like the mentality of “this job above all – even your own family” when it wasn’t something I could get passionate about, I didn’t like the hours, I didn’t like the stress, I didn’t like the job itself, and I didn’t like the customers.  And I never got a break to take a step back and develop my own life and keep some perspective because the job was six days a week, except for when it was seven.  The job made me jump through hoops to go to my goddaughter’s first communion, to go to my cousin’s wedding, to make it on time to Christmas Eve mass with my family.  It guilted me when I wanted to go home on time.  It tried to take over my life, but it didn’t offer a reason beyond money.

            I had looked around for other jobs.  I’ve had a few interviews.  But the only thing I was really enjoying (besides hanging out with friends and family and my boyfriend, which are not career paths) were the classes I was taking or the extracurricular activities I was doing for free.  I couldn’t get excited about applying to account manager jobs.  Some interviews I got I didn’t want – I thought I might as well stay at my current job than take another job I would hate just as much.

            I sometimes feel like I’m swimming in a body of water, and I’m tired, and I want to get out and come ashore, but I have no idea where the land is.  I feel like, when I take a step back and look objectively at what I want, it’s easy to see what I’m supposed to do, but once I get back to actually doing the thing, my mind fogs up and my productivity freezes.

            I quit my job and I cried all day.  And I cried for the next week.  And the week after.  The job was comfortable, and secure, and it was killing me.   It was killing me because it made me feel like I was a thing that I wasn’t, and it made me feel like I would never be anything else except for this thing I’m not supposed to be.

            Does this sound like entitled bullshit?  It feels like entitled bullshit.

            The breaking point came a couple weeks ago, when they changed something that made me feel like they couldn’t be bothered to even pretend to care about their employees more than the bottom line.  And I wondered – if I stayed after that, would I ever be able to leave?  If I don’t leave after that, when do I leave?

            I’m trying to figure out how to live the life I want to live.  It started with quitting a job I hated, even if I didn’t have anything 100% lined up afterwards.

            I wish I wanted different things.

            I wish it was easier to be happy.

Miley Cyrus and Her Social Issues

             Before I delve into this too deeply, I want to state some inarguable facts about Miley Cyrus.

            Miley is a talented singer and a talented performer.  Miley has been in show business for quite a long time, starting at quite a young age.  Because of the above facts, I like a lot of Miley Cyrus’s songs, and I look forward to her hosting stints on SNL because she’s a funny performer and game for anything.

            I also have some nonessential opinions about Miley Cyrus.  I’ve stopped caring about her sticking her tongue out.  She’s going to do it.  It’s weird, sure, but it’s overall not the worst thing in the world.  Secondly, I wish she’d stop talking about weed all the time.  It’s really not that interesting.  Everyone smokes weed.  Multiple states have not only decriminalized it, they’ve flat out legalized it.  It’s not edgy to smoke weed.  Also, if you have to tell everybody how edgy are, you probably aren’t all that edgy to begin with.  Finally, I think she looks dope with short hair.  She’s got great cheek bones, and the pixie cut really shows that off.

            Miley Cyrus, as a sociological figure, is fascinating.  When she discusses gender and sexuality issues, she comes off as a bright, educated, intelligent, and insightful speaker.  She’s done her research.  She’s adding visibility to a lot of these issues.  By coming out as genderqueer and pansexual, she’s not only teaching people what these words mean, she’s teaching them that to identify with these labels is acceptable.  Sexuality and gender are not categorical, they are spectrums. 

I also appreciate that she calls herself a feminist.  I personally think the Free the Nipple movement is a little silly, but I can respect Miley’s comments on it.  They’re thoughtful and compelling. 

            When you hear Cyrus talk about gender and sexuality issues, you get excited about a new, exciting voice in pop culture today – one that is socially aware and self-aware, one whose opinions and insights you want to hear more of (if she stopped f*cking talking about weed – nobody cares you smoke weed).   Cyrus speaks intelligently about gender and sexuality, but she also tells jokes and makes it relatable as she does so.  She’s exactly the kind of spokesperson you want when it comes to bring visibility to LGBTQIA issues outside of gay marriage (they exist!).

            Unfortunately, Cyrus has a major blindspot.  However well she speaks to gender and sexuality issues, Cyrus speaks just as poorly on race.  She’s been accused of appropriation for years now, and instead of exploring why she’s being accused of it and how she can fix it, she’s leaned in to the appropriation even further.  When speaking on Nicki Minaj’s comments earlier this year, she ignored the validity of Minaj’s comments and focused on tone, and then doubled down at the VMAs by ignoring the wider social implications of Minaj’s comments and instead acting as though Minaj was only talking about herself, as a singular person, rather than for black women as a whole.  Her reaction to racial criticism is juvenile and ignorant, and as of now she shows absolutely no signs of correcting her behavior.  It’s too bad, because it makes her intelligent commentary on queer culture seem almost self-serving.  Cyrus only cares about social issues as they pertain to her.  If she has to change her behavior, or if she has to examine her own privilege, Cyrus is not interested.

            Cyrus is still young, so she has plenty of time to grow and mature and learn.  When I hear her talk about exploring her gender and sexual identity, I hear a woman interested in exploring the world outside of the social and cultural norms of mainstream society.  I only hope she takes that same intellectual curiosity and applies it to all aspects of our culture today.