The tragic Prostitute...
I know that talk a lot about the fabulousness of what I do and how prostitution has liberated me and allowed me a freedom that a regular job doesn’t. But don’t be fooled, because this business can sink a girl into the deepest and darkest despair imaginable.
This business has been known to introduce women to substance abuse, disease, mental problems, assault, arrest, and murder. It’s kind of like entering an imaginary world where everything seems perfect except for these land mines everywhere, and the object of the game is to get around these land mines without stepping on one.
Far too many women in this business have stepped on land mines and been destroyed.
I’m going to introduce you to a historical woman who was destroyed by prostitution.
Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (1789 - 1815)
Sarah was a slave of Dutch farmers near Cape Town when Hendrick Cezar, the brother of her slave owner, suggested that she travel to England for exhibition, promising her that she would become wealthy.
Sarah was exhibited around Britain, being forced to entertain people by gyrating her nude buttocks and showing Europeans what were thought of as highly unusual bodily features. Due to her steatopygia, she had large buttocks and the elongated labia. According to paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, "The labia, or inner lips, of the ordinary female genitalia are greatly enlarged in Sarah, and hangs down three or four inches below the vulva when she stands, thus giving the impression of a separate and enveloping curtain of skin". Sarah never allowed this trait to be exhibited while she was alive.
Her exhibition in London, scant years after the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807, created a scandal. An abolitionist benevolent society called the African Association petitioned for her release. Sarah was questioned before a court in Dutch, in which she was fluent, and stated that she was not under restraint and understood perfectly that she was guaranteed half of the profits. The conditions under which she made these statements are suspect, because it directly contradicts accounts of her exhibitions made by Zachary Macaulay of the African Institution and other eyewitnesses.
Sarah was sold to a Frenchman, who took her to France. An animal trainer exhibited her under more pressured conditions for fifteen months. French naturalists visited her and she was the subject of several scientific paintings at the Jardin du Roi, where she was examined in March 1815: as Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier, a younger brother of Georges, reported, "she was obliging enough to undress and to allow herself to be painted in the nude." Once her novelty had worn off on Parisians, she began to drink heavily and support herself with prostitution.
She died on 29 December 1815, aged 26, of syphilis.
This business has been known to introduce women to substance abuse, disease, mental problems, assault, arrest, and murder. It’s kind of like entering an imaginary world where everything seems perfect except for these land mines everywhere, and the object of the game is to get around these land mines without stepping on one.
Far too many women in this business have stepped on land mines and been destroyed.
I’m going to introduce you to a historical woman who was destroyed by prostitution.
Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (1789 - 1815)
Sarah was a slave of Dutch farmers near Cape Town when Hendrick Cezar, the brother of her slave owner, suggested that she travel to England for exhibition, promising her that she would become wealthy.
Sarah was exhibited around Britain, being forced to entertain people by gyrating her nude buttocks and showing Europeans what were thought of as highly unusual bodily features. Due to her steatopygia, she had large buttocks and the elongated labia. According to paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, "The labia, or inner lips, of the ordinary female genitalia are greatly enlarged in Sarah, and hangs down three or four inches below the vulva when she stands, thus giving the impression of a separate and enveloping curtain of skin". Sarah never allowed this trait to be exhibited while she was alive.
Her exhibition in London, scant years after the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807, created a scandal. An abolitionist benevolent society called the African Association petitioned for her release. Sarah was questioned before a court in Dutch, in which she was fluent, and stated that she was not under restraint and understood perfectly that she was guaranteed half of the profits. The conditions under which she made these statements are suspect, because it directly contradicts accounts of her exhibitions made by Zachary Macaulay of the African Institution and other eyewitnesses.
Sarah was sold to a Frenchman, who took her to France. An animal trainer exhibited her under more pressured conditions for fifteen months. French naturalists visited her and she was the subject of several scientific paintings at the Jardin du Roi, where she was examined in March 1815: as Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier, a younger brother of Georges, reported, "she was obliging enough to undress and to allow herself to be painted in the nude." Once her novelty had worn off on Parisians, she began to drink heavily and support herself with prostitution.
She died on 29 December 1815, aged 26, of syphilis.
So sad. When I was reading this it sounded like a long life of pain. Shocking that she was only 26 when she died. Whatever happened to the story about the mulatto brothel you were writting? The 1st part was awesome.
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