On September 2, 2015, Cosmopolitan published “Anonymous Sex Worker Shares the 15 Strangest Things Men Have Asked Her to Do” in response to Alternet’s 2010 article, “Trading Sex for Money, Drugs, Survival: What It’s Like to Be a Street Prostitute.” The Alternet article is an excerpt from the diary of a woman who formerly engaged in survival sex, the practice of engaging in sexual acts in exchange for life’s basic necessities such as food and shelter. Cosmopolitan selected fifteen lines from the passage to fabricate an article perpetuating a non-existing glamour within the commercial sex industry.
Each selected quote is reduced to a bullet point, forever reducing the survivor to the action done to her. While the Alternet article explicitly discusses the dangers of engaging in survival sex, the Cosmopolitan articles does nothing of the sort. In fact, it further contributes to the glamorization of the commercial sex industry that the Alternet article tries to offset. Cosmopolitan’s article falsely establishes the commercial sex industry as exotic and scandalous, and fails to mention the “fascinating” reality of her life as a prostituted person. They fail to mention how the survivor was usually high on meth and had not eaten a nutritious meal in over a year. They fail to mention her poverty-stricken life before turning to the commercial sex industry. They fail to mention how terrified she was when she was gang-raped, knowing she could not report the incident to the police. Articles like this further dehumanize those who have been degraded through their sexual exploitation. These fifteen bullet points embellish the commercial sex industry while completely disregarding the prevalence of drugs, violence, danger, abuse, and death associated with commercial sexual exploitation.
The article’s featured image is a Getty stock photo of a woman dressed in lingerie, cropped to show her legs entrapped in fishnet fights, her thin waist, and no face. Again, the woman is stripped of her identity and is displayed only as glamorous and sexy body parts – a commodity for sale. The online magazine even allows readers to pin the article to their Pinterest boards, letting people save the image of fishnets and a pretty pink title. Or, the readers can easily share the article on Facebook with a click of a button, virtually perpetuating the false glamor of the commercial sex industry.
Allowing our culture to accept the false realities of the sex industry spreads victim blaming, dehumanizes prostituted persons, and perpetuates the fabricated glamor of the commercial sex trade. Instead, of buying into this false glamorization, we must actively listen to survivors’ experiences and recognize the trauma that survivors of commercial sexual exploitation face. Unlike the Cosmopolitan article, the Alternet excerpt allows the survivor to express her experience in a truthful and honest manner. This demonstration of pain, though difficult, offsets the fictitious glamour and replaces it with a greater understanding of the destitution that exists within the commercial sex industry. By replacing the Alternet article’s candid portrayal with a falsely glamorized depiction of the commercial sex industry, the Cosmopolitan article contributes to the distorted public perception of commercial sex and those who survive it.
Molly Anne Krebs is currently a first-year law student at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Molly is from Chicago, Illinois and received a Bachelor of Science in Sociology, Medical Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy from Creighton University. After graduation, Molly hopes to advocate for survivors of human trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
