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mattbellAmsterdam's red light district makes for some of the most interesting people-watching in the world. It's a multinational human carnival full of people from different backgrounds, all reacting to the base reality of human desire. Strong stimuli bring out strong reactions. People are confronted with their prejudices and instincts.
In some ways it was an international supermarket of male desire, and I like browsing supermarkets in different countries because it gives me a sense for what people of different countries like to eat. In this case it gave me a cross-section of the tastes of men from different cultures. Most of the women seemed to cluster into two groups – the thin, plastic, fake boobies look and the darker-skinned, curvy, voluptous look. The former were popular with northern Europeans, Brits, and Americans, and it's amazing the degree to which these clients are obsessed with blonds. Blonds seemed to get far more of these clients than similar-looking dark-haired women. This is ironic because blonds are sometimes stereotyped as “easy” but in this case all the women are equally easy. At least changing hair color is lot less invasive than a boob job. The second cluster (more voluptous women) were more popular with Italian, Spanish, and South American clients. It's not too suprising, I suppose. People go for their country's fashion ideal instead of experimenting. However, the outliers were very interesting. There was a small cluster of thin boyish small-breasted women with short hair as well as a number of fairly petite women who had a very everyday natural look. There was even one woman who looked like the sort of bookish intellectual that's common in my social circle. She looked like she was having a lot of fun working the window. I wondered about her story.
Emotionally, some of the women seemed sad and a tad desperate, even if they had a happy veneer. They pay a fixed amount to rent a window, and can end up taking a loss if they don't get at least a couple of clients. It is a vicious cycle – the more frustrated they get, the less desirable they will appear. Others seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves and not just putting on a happy face. The women who worked a brothel together seemed to be generally happier than the ones working alone. I also saw women doing the empowering thing of rejecting clients who were too drunk, too aggressive, or otherwise a possible risk.
The potential clients also presented an interesting range. Many of them were drunk or stoned, and they tended to cluster in groups. Groups of Brits and other foreigners on weekend stag parties often wore the same clothing, roving in packs teminiscent of A Clockwork Orange. Some of them were unbelievably rude to the prostitutes, while others semi-sheepishly stood around daring each other to go for it. Either way, the stag groups seemed to be less likely to buy, and the prostitutes weren't terribly fond of them. Smaller groups of older tourists, clearly veterans, wandered around doing comparative shopping. The true regulars, mostly older Dutch men, slipped through the crowds and into the windows almost without anyone noticing. There were lots of people – men, women, couples, bachelorette parties, families, all strolling around taking it in. Some of them had clearly never seen anything like it and were either freaking out or giggling uncontrollably.
The social interaction between the prostitutes and potential clients was also interesting. The normal rules of eye contact in social interaction were broken. Prostitutes tended to be very assertive with eye contact. Relatively few guys were able to acknowledge the eye contact in a sane way. They either looked away after a second or two, acted like douchebags, did the vacant drool thing, leered back in a sketch-tacular way, or came up and asked the price. The trouble is, it's hard to acknowledge the eye contact in a sane way. There's a pane of glass preventing any verbal communication, and the nonverbal communication is focused on luring you in. Unfortunately, both sides are objectifying each other, so the communication on both ends is fairly subhuman until the guy goes inside. It's business.
I did finally get the chance to break this script when I watched a guy dressed as Batman and drunk off his ass try to ask one of the on-duty prostitutes on a date. As he walked off, the woman and I exchanged an across-the-glass laugh and a look of “wow, that was weird even by Amsterdam standards”. It was nice and humanizing.
I reaalized that the windowed prostitutes are basically providing the prostitution industry's equivalent of fast food. The goal is instant gratification, not a quality experience. Apparently the standard sex package requires the guy to lie flat on his back while the woman rides him, and he's not allowed to touch her in any way. This is done for safety reasons as it lets the woman remain totally in control. However, it's about the least appetizing sex imaginable – no two-way interplay of passion and sensation, no touch, just a human playing the role of a sex toy.
However, while there's fast food, there's also surely fine dining. Apparently about half the prostitutes in Amsterdam work in clubs, in more secluded brothels, and as escorts. Unfortunately I couldn't get a sense for these places without doing some very un-Matt-like things and spending a lot of euros. Perhaps in these situations they're able to have a more human interaction with their clients. I think it's important to preserve the humanity on both sides, or both the prostitute and client will end up objectifying all members of the opposite sex. Thus I think courtesan-style interaction is healthier than the sort of interaction you see through the windows.
San Francisco recently voted down a measure (by a 2 to 1 margin) that would have decriminalized prostitution. It's a damn shame. Prostitution is impossible to stamp out, and it's much better to have it legal, regulated, and comparatively safe than it is to leave it to the province of organized crime. Plus, it provides the government with badly-needed tax revenue and reduces the long-term cost of law enforcement. While I'd like to see it as a cleaned-up, classy operation, I know that if this approach is taken too far and drives prices too high, then illegal unregulated street prostitution would flourish.
In some ways it was an international supermarket of male desire, and I like browsing supermarkets in different countries because it gives me a sense for what people of different countries like to eat. In this case it gave me a cross-section of the tastes of men from different cultures. Most of the women seemed to cluster into two groups – the thin, plastic, fake boobies look and the darker-skinned, curvy, voluptous look. The former were popular with northern Europeans, Brits, and Americans, and it's amazing the degree to which these clients are obsessed with blonds. Blonds seemed to get far more of these clients than similar-looking dark-haired women. This is ironic because blonds are sometimes stereotyped as “easy” but in this case all the women are equally easy. At least changing hair color is lot less invasive than a boob job. The second cluster (more voluptous women) were more popular with Italian, Spanish, and South American clients. It's not too suprising, I suppose. People go for their country's fashion ideal instead of experimenting. However, the outliers were very interesting. There was a small cluster of thin boyish small-breasted women with short hair as well as a number of fairly petite women who had a very everyday natural look. There was even one woman who looked like the sort of bookish intellectual that's common in my social circle. She looked like she was having a lot of fun working the window. I wondered about her story.
Emotionally, some of the women seemed sad and a tad desperate, even if they had a happy veneer. They pay a fixed amount to rent a window, and can end up taking a loss if they don't get at least a couple of clients. It is a vicious cycle – the more frustrated they get, the less desirable they will appear. Others seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves and not just putting on a happy face. The women who worked a brothel together seemed to be generally happier than the ones working alone. I also saw women doing the empowering thing of rejecting clients who were too drunk, too aggressive, or otherwise a possible risk.
The potential clients also presented an interesting range. Many of them were drunk or stoned, and they tended to cluster in groups. Groups of Brits and other foreigners on weekend stag parties often wore the same clothing, roving in packs teminiscent of A Clockwork Orange. Some of them were unbelievably rude to the prostitutes, while others semi-sheepishly stood around daring each other to go for it. Either way, the stag groups seemed to be less likely to buy, and the prostitutes weren't terribly fond of them. Smaller groups of older tourists, clearly veterans, wandered around doing comparative shopping. The true regulars, mostly older Dutch men, slipped through the crowds and into the windows almost without anyone noticing. There were lots of people – men, women, couples, bachelorette parties, families, all strolling around taking it in. Some of them had clearly never seen anything like it and were either freaking out or giggling uncontrollably.
The social interaction between the prostitutes and potential clients was also interesting. The normal rules of eye contact in social interaction were broken. Prostitutes tended to be very assertive with eye contact. Relatively few guys were able to acknowledge the eye contact in a sane way. They either looked away after a second or two, acted like douchebags, did the vacant drool thing, leered back in a sketch-tacular way, or came up and asked the price. The trouble is, it's hard to acknowledge the eye contact in a sane way. There's a pane of glass preventing any verbal communication, and the nonverbal communication is focused on luring you in. Unfortunately, both sides are objectifying each other, so the communication on both ends is fairly subhuman until the guy goes inside. It's business.
I did finally get the chance to break this script when I watched a guy dressed as Batman and drunk off his ass try to ask one of the on-duty prostitutes on a date. As he walked off, the woman and I exchanged an across-the-glass laugh and a look of “wow, that was weird even by Amsterdam standards”. It was nice and humanizing.
I reaalized that the windowed prostitutes are basically providing the prostitution industry's equivalent of fast food. The goal is instant gratification, not a quality experience. Apparently the standard sex package requires the guy to lie flat on his back while the woman rides him, and he's not allowed to touch her in any way. This is done for safety reasons as it lets the woman remain totally in control. However, it's about the least appetizing sex imaginable – no two-way interplay of passion and sensation, no touch, just a human playing the role of a sex toy.
However, while there's fast food, there's also surely fine dining. Apparently about half the prostitutes in Amsterdam work in clubs, in more secluded brothels, and as escorts. Unfortunately I couldn't get a sense for these places without doing some very un-Matt-like things and spending a lot of euros. Perhaps in these situations they're able to have a more human interaction with their clients. I think it's important to preserve the humanity on both sides, or both the prostitute and client will end up objectifying all members of the opposite sex. Thus I think courtesan-style interaction is healthier than the sort of interaction you see through the windows.
San Francisco recently voted down a measure (by a 2 to 1 margin) that would have decriminalized prostitution. It's a damn shame. Prostitution is impossible to stamp out, and it's much better to have it legal, regulated, and comparatively safe than it is to leave it to the province of organized crime. Plus, it provides the government with badly-needed tax revenue and reduces the long-term cost of law enforcement. While I'd like to see it as a cleaned-up, classy operation, I know that if this approach is taken too far and drives prices too high, then illegal unregulated street prostitution would flourish.
