Read all about it! A Prostitute's Life.

An article on the life of a prostitute is featured today on the homepage of NYTimes.com. Barbara Terry has spent almost her entire adult life working as a prostitute in the Bronx. This jaw-dropping “character study”, as the paper defines it, gives a glimpse into Ms. Terry’s outlook on her “job” as a prostitute, her motives, and the struggles she has encountered but has learn to overcome.  She is presented as being proud of her “job” and of the fact that she is one of the oldest women in the business.

Just in case anyone has doubts, prostitution is indeed illegal in New York. A summary of the laws can be viewed here.

We don’t hear about any regrets. Her adult children, however, continue to beg her to get off the streets. “I’m the mother, so they can’t say anything,” she says, “when I’m ready to get off, I’ll get off.”

On one hand, we have a woman who has no idea of her dignity as a woman, as a human person. She sells a most intimate part of herself for the pleasure of another. There is also a trivialization of the sexual act and a person’s sexuality (which we also saw in the sexual abuse phenomenon commented on in the last post). Then, we have this reality publicized and left without analysis or contextualization.

It is hard to guess what would be the intentions of the journalist or the paper with this article. This life as a prostitute is portrayed as something normal and even acceptable, at least by Ms. Terry.

It goes against Ms. Terry’s dignity to publish an article on her life as a prostitute, whether she thinks so or not. But the article written as such fails to orient the reader. What kind of information is this? Here is a woman who lives a degrading (and illegal) life and she is cool with that. That’s it; the article ends there.

This is the one article on the homepage today that is centered on a woman. This is the only model of woman given to the public by this major paper today. The photo of Mr. Terry, a 52-year old expert prostitute and mother of four, is the featured photo of the homepage.

It is no doubt that we are in a need of renewal of culture, to rediscover what is means to be a person, to be a woman.