This popular film is a perfect example of the way art is used to transform something intrinsically evil into a thing of beauty.

I've watched--and enjoyed watching--Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman (1990) more than once. The viewer is swept into the fairy tale and kept enchanted by the acting and attractiveness of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Everyone loves a Cinderella story and that is what this film is.

Here Cinderella is a poor but deserving prostitute with a trashy fashion sense. Prince Charming is a wealthy financial wheeler-dealer who falls in love with her and sweeps her off to a better life. Julia Roberts as Vivian is so clean (she's takes several baths in the film), so healthy, so intelligent, so deserving, that we easily forget what she has been doing for a living for an indeterminate number of years before the film opens.

The film was one of 1990's highest grossing films, earning about 464 million dollars. I've read reviews that compare Pretty Woman to My Fair Lady (film based on Shaw's play Pygmalion). Both Eliza Doolittle and Vivian Ward learn to dress better and behave and speak better in high society, but there the comparison ends. Eliza sold flowers, not her body. She was poor, but she was not a prostitute.

One of the movie taglines is Who knew it was so much fun to be a hooker?

Who knew indeed?

According to Melissa Farley's Fact Sheet on prostitution,
80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape
73% have experienced physical assault in prostitution.
72% are currently or were formerly homeless.
83% are victims of assault with a weapon.
92% want to escape prostitution immediately.

According to a Canadian report, girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average.

Oh, you might say, that's not the kind of prostitute Julie Roberts plays in the movie. Julie plays a "high class" hooker. She's healthy. She doesn't do drugs. She belongs to the 10% of hookers who operate without an abusive pimp. She has a wholesome prostitute roommate.

As Andrea Dworkin puts it, "The circumstances don't mitigate or modify what prostitution is."

"High class" hookers are no happier than the women who hang out in doorways. Another study quoted on the Farley site found that 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide.

One "escort" prostitute interviewed in a study plied her trade in Washington D.C. Her clients were probably very similar to the man played by Richard Gere. This "pretty woman" had "a beautiful apartment...expensive car...lovely clothes" and the money to travel. Sounds great. But she goes on to say "I was miserable to the core. I hated myself because I hated my life. All the things I came to possess meant nothing. I could not look at myself in the mirror. Working in prostitution lost my soul."

One realistic scene in the Pretty Woman fairy tale occurs when Edward's associate, played by Jason Alexander, humiliates Vivian by acting out his contempt for her and her line of work. We all cheer when Edward punches him out. Something we don't think about is the fact that in a prostitute's life such scenes of humiliation are a daily occurrence, chipping away at a woman's sense of worth until she feels, as one child prostitute put it, "like a piece of hamburger meat-– all chopped up and barely holding together." Even in the fairy tale film Vivian has clearly been slapped by men numerous times before; she wonders aloud if boys are taken aside in high school to be taught how to slap a woman.

In her powerful talk to a group of female law students, Andrea Dworkin makes a convincing case that prostitution is the foundation of political male dominance:

"What prostitution does in a society of male dominance is that it establishes a social bottom beneath which there is no bottom. It is the bottom. Prostituted women are all on the bottom. And all men are above it."

In prostitution, as in every area of human activity, exceptions certainly exist. Some prostitutes may have turned their backs on other ways of earning a living in order to do what they are doing. They may have found ways to ensure their safety and possess a psychological makeup that enables them to separate themselves emotionally from their trade. They may even see themselves as independent businesswomen, on a par with entertainers such as Madonna or Angelina Jolie, who exploit their sexuality while keeping their "johns" at a distance.

For most of the world's female prostitutes, however, the occupation is more like slavery than entrepreneurship. Most women get into it because they were abused as children or because they are poor, homeless, or helpless. It is hardly a career choice deserving the beautiful treatment it receives in Pretty Woman.

A reviewer on the IMDb site says "I, old fashioned and strict as I am, wouldn't hesitate to let my young teen see this movie."

I can't agree. For all its charm and superb acting and production values, Pretty Woman does a disservice to all women. It perpetuates the notion that prostitution is a victimless crime. It suggests that a woman who sells the flesh and orifices of her body does it willingly and is able to maintain a sense of identity and worth while being used by a parade of strangers.

Prostitution is a social evil. A film that glorifies it or habituates our minds to it is not appropriate for viewing by teenaged girls or anyone else.

You can find the text of Andrea Dworkin's "Prostitution and Male Supremacy" at the Dworkin online library.