The System That Thrives On Women
By Countercurrents.org
22 February 2013
Countercurrents.org
Women have been made commodities in the world market system, and the market thrives on the “commodity”. The system begins the function of profiteering with women in economy. Then, it shapes society, culture, etc. Attitude and behavior pattern are parts of these. The following news reports show only a tiny fraction of the state of women the world market system has shaped:
Quest for beauty
A BBC report by Jonah Fisher (Oct 27, 2012, “The cost of being "pretty" in Thailand”) on product promoter women and cosmetic procedures market in Thailand, a country with a growing reputation for cheap and dangerous cosmetic procedures, said:
They're beautiful and for the right price will promote anything from washing powder to luxury cars.
But working as a product promoter or ‘pretty’ in Thailand is an occupation where image counts for everything.
At 32, Athitiya Eiamyai had reached the age when most "pretties" start to find demand for their services falling.
For a decade she had batted her eyelashes and flashed a ready smile to promote everything.
But for Athitiya, or Kratae as everyone knew her, retiring gracefully from this $100-a-day job was not an option. She had parents and siblings who depended on the money she earned and she told her friends she was determined to fight ageing every step of the way.
In the last five years of her life, she had invested thousands of dollars into altering the way she looked. Her skin had been lightened and she'd had several rounds of surgery to change her nose, narrow her jaw and augment her breasts.
But according to her best friend and fellow pretty Pim Saisanard, she still wasn't happy.
‘She [Kratae] wanted bigger hips to match her bigger breasts. And she said that would make her perfect.’
The filler is not cheap and despite Bangkok being one of the cheaper places to have surgery the procedure costs $2,666. So one of Kratae's friends put her in touch with Thanat Natveerakul, a stylish young man who went by the nickname ‘Dr Pop’.
Natveerakul was no doctor, and had very limited experience of cosmetic surgery, but he did have a good reputation among the ladyboy community, having helped many of them achieve a more feminine shape.
He agreed to meet Kratae in an apartment and inject her buttocks with gel filler for a cut-price $1,333.
Exactly what went wrong with the procedure is still unclear. But in the minutes after the gel was injected Kratae complained that she was having trouble breathing.
It seems likely that instead of finding fatty tissue Dr Pop injected the filler directly into an artery. The gel would then have traveled into her lungs, created a blockage which in turn led to her brain being starved of oxygen.
In a panic Dr Pop drove Kratae to the hospital but shortly afterwards she collapsed into a coma from which she never recovered.
Three weeks later, her parents agreed that the ventilator should be switched off and she was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
The Bangkok's House and Condominium Show was the sort of event that provided Kratae with work year after year. Not surprisingly the pretties' smiles this year were more forced than normal.
Alisa Phaiboonnantanpong said: ‘All the pretties are having surgery, at the very least Botox.’
Alisa herself is no exception. At the age of 25 she has already had a number of procedures, including the painful removal of eight teeth to reshape her jaw.
She says her aim and the image which many of the Thai pretties crave is what's known as the "Korean look". Light skin, an oval-shaped face and a high bridge on the nose.
Kate Moss
An A-Line report by Suzy Byrne (Oct 31, 2012, “Kate Moss confesses to ‘nervous breakdown’ over sexy Calvin Klein photo shoot with Mark Wahlberg) on Kate Moss said:
When Kate Moss landed the Calvin Klein ad campaign with Mark Wahlberg, it helped propel the then-teen to superstardom in the modeling world. The black-and-white photos, snapped in 1992, featured the two stars pressed up against one another with Wahlberg's muscular arms (and abs!) a stark contrast to Moss' frail frame. While the images have become an iconic representation of the era, and launched the ‘heroin chic’ look of skinny models with dark circles under their eyes, Moss has regrets about participating in the shoot, saying it caused her emotional issues.
‘I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with Marky Mark and Herb Ritts’, Moss, 38, tells Vanity Fair. ‘It didn't feel like me at all. I felt really bad about straddling this buff guy. I didn't like it. I couldn't get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die.’ She finally pulled herself out of bed to seek professional help — not that it was the answer to her problems either. ‘I went to the doctor, and he said, 'I'll give you some Valium,' and [photographer] Francesca Sorrenti, thank God, said, 'You're not taking that.' It was just anxiety. Nobody takes care of you mentally. There's a massive pressure to do what you have to do. I was really little, and I was going to work with Steven Meisel. It was just really weird — a stretch limo coming to pick you up from work. I didn't like it. But it was work, and I had to do it."
Another traumatic experience as a young model was posing topless for the first time — when she was only 16. ‘They were like, If you don't do it, then we're not going to book you again’, the British beauty recalls. ‘So I'd lock myself in the toilet and cry and then come out and do it. I never felt very comfortable about it.’
The maverick dancers
In Ball Don't Lie, Dan Devine’s report titled “The Dallas Mavericks Dancers’ new uniforms prove not everything’s bigger in Texas” said:
For the Dallas Mavericks Dancers, the headlines are much more about what they've lost — some fabric.
When the Mavericks Dancers made their season debut during a timeout in a win over the Charlotte Bobcats, they did so clad in the garments — very white, very sparkly and very limited in terms of torso coverage.
The cheerleading team took to the basketball court for the half-time show wearing short, white spandex dresses with cut-out panels.
The costumes bring the Mavericks on par with other cheerleaders in the same Texas city — the Dallas Cowboys' dancers, who are known for the briefness of their hemline.
This, of course, is nothing new — not only do the uniforms of dance troupes and cheerleaders for most American professional sports franchises feature revealing combinations of low-cut tops and short-shorts in a general sense, but the Mavericks Dancers specifically haven't exactly shied away from showing off their midriffs in years past.
The industry
Matthew Day report, headlined “Europe's biggest brothel – complete with coach parking – to open in Austria”, from Warsaw on Nov 5, 2012 in Telegraph.co.uk said:
An Austrian entrepreneur plans to open Europe's biggest brothel, with a complex of 147 rooms.
When opened in 2014 the giant brothel, officially dubbed the "FunMotel", will have capacity for 1,000 "guests" a day with around 150 sex workers employed in the £12 million project. Along with room for buses it will also have 350 parking spaces and a three-meter high perimeter wall to ensure privacy.
Peter Laskaris, the businessman behind the project who already operates a brothel in Vienna, said that the glitzy bordello's "four-star hotel" facilities will be the sex industry's shift from "grocer to supermarket".
The Vienna-based company developing the project claims that "the number of females" and the "affordable prices" will "ensure absolute satisfaction for male customers".
The brothel will be built at a still undisclosed location in the north-eastern state of Lower Austria, which surrounds the Austrian capital.
"We've deliberately spread false information about the location to avoid trouble before we had the authorization to go ahead," Laskaris told the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. "But it will be situated in a location that doesn't bother anyone." Werner Schmuck, a shareholder in the project, explained that new Viennese regulations requiring brothels to have official permits made locating the FunMotel in the capital an impractical option. The Austrian press reported that local authorities and the police have already given their consent to the project.
Moral objections are “irrelevant”
Citing AFP a report in the The Telegraph (Jun 20, 2012, “Australian 'mega-brothel' gets go-ahead”) said:
Plans to double the number of rooms at inner Sydney's "Stiletto" into a 'mega-brothel' complex were knocked back late last year by the city council on the grounds that it was too big.
But the owners won an appeal to the Land and Environment Court with Commissioner Susan O'Neill ruling the Aus$12 million (£7.8 million) development, including a wing for group bookings, should go ahead.
"The issue of a moral objection to the nature of the activities of a sex premises were raised by some of the public submissions and resident objectors," O'Neill said in the judgment.
"As a sex premises is a legal land use and permissible ... with consent, moral objections to the proposal are not relevant considerations."
O'Neill said Stiletto's operation to date had been assessed by the council as "acceptable and better than most" brothels in the city, and the proposed expansion to 40 rooms had addressed traffic and other concerns.
Stiletto promotes itself as "the world's finest short-stay boutique hotel and Sydney brothel". Its standard hourly rate of Aus$370 includes room, lady of choice and beverages.
It is open 24 hours each day of the year except for Christmas Day and boasts a "mixed clientele" which it claims includes top-end celebrities including movie stars, sportspeople and rock bands.
Prostitution in Australia is governed by state and territory laws with brothels being legal in some parts of the country, including New South Wales, while in other areas, such as the Northern Territory, they are banned.
An earlier report by Bonnie Malkin (The Telegraph, Sep 20, 2011, “Plan to build 'the Westfield of brothels' blocked”) from Sydney said:
The owners of the Stiletto brothel had applied to the City of Sydney Council to expand.
The sheer size of the planned expansion contributed to its downfall, with all 10 councilors deciding the development was too ambitious and could put other brothels in the area out of business.
"This brothel is the Westfield of brothels," said councilor Shayne Mallard, referring to Australia's largest shopping mall chain.
"We're not prudes, we're not opposed to brothels, but we have a policy of anti-clustering, spreading them out."
Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor, said she had voted against the proposal because the development would have a negative impact on the area, which includes several residential streets.
"Residents have told councilors about the impacts from traffic and anti-social behavior," she told the meeting.
"Those impacts are expected to increase if the size is doubled. It is the size I think that is of great concern. I believe that this development is inconsistent with our vision for our city, frankly."
Brothels in Australia are not always popular.
Residents of Camperdown, an up and coming suburb that is also home to the prestigious Sydney University, expressed fears about noise, parking problems and that part of the development would become a sex shop.
Residents said that the area was already well served by brothels and that there was no need to expand Stiletto.
However, local police had no problem with the development.
On monastery premise
From Moscow Tom Parfitt’s report “Moscow police 'discover brothel on monastery premises'” (Telegraph.co.uk, Oct 29, 2012) said:
Moscow police discovered a brothel on the premises of a monastery.
There sexual services were offered from £35 per hour.
Father Tikhon, the abbot of the monastery, is said to be a religious counsellor to Putin, who is a confirmed Russian Orthodox believer.
There were conflicting reports over the ownership of the brothel.
Life News, a popular muckraking website with close ties to the police and security services, said the building where the brothel was located had been rented out by the monastery.
However, an attendant at the monastery was quoted as saying: "Some time ago we rented premises for our seminary. The bordello was only found then, when we started to check which rooms had become temporarily ours, and which hadn't. This establishment had been there for a long time; it belongs to someone and has absolutely no connection to us."
It’s not an industry
The following was posted by Andrea Cornwall on July 26, 2012 in guardian.co.uk:
Women's bodies and sexuality are not commodities and they are not an "industry." So, prostitution is not an "industry," it is just any other desperate means of trying to survive in the world, just like thievery. It is not a solution to the problems, it is a part of it. I.E. lateral move, not progress.
I'm sorry, can we please stop finding any way possible to defend an industry that is fueled by female bodies? It is really insulting, as a woman, to hear (mostly from men) that women have to put up with the worldwide selling of our sexuality to appease your hope of making sex OK (prostitution does not do that) etc. Because THIS is why prostitutes are stigmatized. It has nothing to do with Puritanism or religion. And seriously, if you are a man, please stay out of the debate about legalization. When it's YOUR sexuality on the market, you have a right to speak up.
Sex workers have repeatedly said that they do sex work for the money they earn, not to enhance male sexual power. Why is it so difficult to accept this different world view?
Working with sex workers has taught me that it is male sexuality in the market. They demand and get paid for sexual services on their own terms. We realized that this was part of the business even before we started organizing sex workers for their rights.
A different voice
There is another voice, the voice of the women. There is courage of women that is overlooked most of the time. The voice and the courage manifest in different ways.
A report by Eliza Murphy (ABCNews, Nov 8, 2012, “Women Face Their Fears By Skydiving in Their Underwear”) said:
Near Lake Elsinore, Calif., Jennifer Hoffman and Marisa Gallegos, founders of Esme & Eve Photography in Los Angeles, and five other brave women skydived. They did it to throw away “all inhibitions to the wind, literally.”
The jump is part of Esme & Eve's "Be Bold. Take the Leap" initiative, in which they urge women "to face their fears, take a risk and push against whatever is holding them back from carrying out their dreams."
Each of the women participating in the jump has lived through something traumatic, such as a death in the family, coping with being a rape victim, or overcoming an eating disorder. They're coming together to find ways to put those difficult times behind them.
Hoffman told: "I get really motivated by these women. We all follow the tragedies of our lives, but we don't follow the triumphs. We want to highlight the triumphs.
"We really wanted to make sure we had women with different stories that people can resonate with. I know how much one person can change another person's life, and we're just trying to do that on a smaller level. I don't expect any massive change happening out of this, but I would love for it to have a ripple effect."
Gallegos admitted that the idea to skydive is nothing. When the pair arrived at the skydive location for their first jump last May, it was more than 100 degrees outside. Neither of the women was particularly excited about putting on the heavy, bulky jumpsuits, so they decided to go without.
"When we landed, it just hit us how powerful the experience was," Gallegos said. "We needed to come back and do it in a big way with a bunch of other women that have all faced certain fears and insecurities and moved past them. It's all about empowering them. Life is about evolving and moving past things so we can move forward."
One of the jumpers, Rachel Elizabeth Murray, explained why she chose to participate.
"This cause is very dear to my heart. I was raped in college. It destroyed my confidence, but through fitness and faith I've regained it," Murray said.
The founders hope their message inspires people to step out of their comfort zone and do things that scare them, which will eventually make them feel more empowered.
"We would like to start a yearly 'Be Bold' day," Hoffman said.
"We'd love to invite women nationwide to do one thing that's uncomfortable or scares them at least one day of the year. True confidence is in the knowledge of what you're capable of. If they take a day to surprise themselves and stop limiting themselves and push themselves a little bit harder, it's amazing what they're capable of."
It can be hoped that women around the world shall defeat fear and opposing forces, gain courage, assert their rights and ensure their rightful position in all areas of life. The initiatives may differ. But the goal is single: Equality.
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