The second sex

There has always been a vague connection between prostitution and art, because beauty and sexuality are ambiguously associated with each other. In fact, it is not Beauty that arouses desire: but the Platonic theory of love suggests hypocritical justifications for lust.

The prostitute who wishes to acquire a singular distinction does not limit herself to showing her flesh passively; she tries to have her own talents. 

A woman who “goes onstage” to earn a living is often tempted to use her charms for more intimate commercial ends.

It is this need to please another or a crowd that connects the movie star to the hetaera. They play a similar role in society: I will use the word “hetaera” to designate women who use not only their bodies but also their entire person as exploitable capital. 

The hetaera does not uncover the world, she opens no road to human transcendence: on the contrary, she seeks to take possession of it for her profit; offering herself for the approval of her admirers, she does not disavow this passive femininity that dooms her to man: she endows it with a magic power that allows her to take males into the trap of her presence, and to feed herself on them; she engulfs them with herself in immanence.

In this way, woman succeeds in acquiring a certain independence. Giving herself to many men, she belongs to none definitively; the money she accumulates, the name she “launches” as one launches a product, ensure her economic autonomy.

The “favorite royal mistresses” participated in the government of the world through their powerful lovers.

Woman might find compensation for the feminine inferiority complex in the money and services she extorts from man; money has a purifying role; it abolishes the war of the sexes. If many nonprofessional women insist on extracting checks and gifts from their lovers — making the man pay — and paying him, as we will see further on, it is not out of cupidity alone: it is to change him into an instrument.

The courtesan has the reputation of being frigid. It is useful for her to know how to govern her heart and her sexual appetite: sentimental or sensual, she risks being under the influence of a man who will exploit or dominate her or make her suffer. Among the sexual acts she accepts, there are many—especially early in her career—that humiliate her; her revolt against male arrogance is expressed by her frigidity. Hetaeras, like matrons, freely confide “tricks” to each other that enable them to “fake” their work. This contempt, this disgust for men clearly shows they are not at all sure they have won the game of exploiter-exploited.

By paying for his steady’s high heels and satin skirts, the pimp makes an investment that will bring a return; by offering his girlfriend pearls and furs, the industrialist or the producer displays his wealth and power through her: whether the woman is a means for earning money or a pretext for spending it, it is the same servitude. The gifts showered on her are chains. And are these clothes and jewels she wears really hers? Beautiful and famous, she can choose another if the master of the moment becomes odious. But beauty is a worry, a fragile treasure; the hetaera is totally dependent on her body, which time pitilessly degrades; the fight against aging is most dramatic for her. Beautiful and famous, she can choose another if the master of the moment becomes odious. But beauty is a worry, a fragile treasure; the hetaera is totally dependent on her body, which time pitilessly degrades; the fight against aging is most dramatic for her.