Body identity in prostitution

A reflection from the film Pretty Woman

Abstract

Body identity and the expression of sexuality in Western culture are marked by taboos and must be restricted to the intimacy of the “four walls”. However, the experience of intimacy is socially constructed and carries with it all the marks of a historical time, in which bodies are inscribed. Prostitute women who defy the moral prescripts of sexuality linked to reproduction and marriage and who monetize the sexual experience suffer from social penalties, such as exclusion. The objective of this work is to reflect, based on the movie A Beautiful Woman, the way in which the body identity of female sex workers is socially signified, based on Brazilian literature. The chosen methodology is film analysis, through the thematic categories: objectification of the female body, social invisibilization of the female body and body training. The clothes, the aesthetic composition of a sex worker belonging to a lower-class context, as portrayed in the film by the character Vivian, are the target of a stereotype of vulgarity and reduces her to a sexual object. These women become more vulnerable to various types of violence, abuse and exploitation, which, in addition to the dehumanization of bodies, promotes the invisibility and disposal for those who do not feed the stereotype of prostitution. To belong to the class of “respectable” women, they surrender to bodily and cultural training, which becomes the passport to social visibility. This path occurs in the film with the character Vivian, who undergoes through a training of her body and the containment of her previous gestural habits, in order to socially perform the role of a morally respectable woman, which can also be understood as violence, which can be considered an illustration of the Brazilian scenario.