Dreaming of Decriminalization
I was struck by a scene in the new HBO series Tokyo Vice (2022) when Samantha, the blonde American woman who is living and working in Tokyo, confrontationally asks Jake Adelstein, the Jewish male protagonist and real-life author of the memoir on which this show is based: “Do I look like a prostitute to you?” The subtext is whether she is the “kind of person” who would be a prostitute—who has the “look,” whatever that “look” might be. After all, the work she does exists inblurryproximitytosexwork: she is a “hostess” at a club where men pay for women to sit with them and talk. Men pay “by the bottle” for the woman’s time. In her introductory scene, she croons Japanese karaoke songs in a glamorous halter dress, men at tables gazing with desire.
Samantha’s question is a response to Jake asking whether she does sex work. The subtext is that Samantha’s answer will determine whether or not Jake can be interested in her, romantically. When I watched Samantha recoil at the suggestion, I was disappointed but also not particularly surprised. After all, the stigma against sex work and sex workers continues to be startlingly present in popular culture, and normalized in these casual ways. This young, beautiful, white woman must retain her purity in the eyes of the show’s presumably anti–sex work gaze, even if she is being paid to flirt with men: she cannot be a legitimate love interest to the show’s straight, white, male protagonist if she exchanges the physical act of sex for money. If she were to cross that line, she would become a different type of person, one seen by viewers—who see the show through Jake’s eyes—as less worthy of love, value, and respect.
Sex workers are often represented in cultural production, but rarely on their own terms. Take, I looked at one painting of a woman who looked uncomfortable, like he is trying to cover herself with a nearby fabric, but not in a titillating way. This was of a “brothel worker,” the description read, whose face gazed “coyly.” Really? I looked back at the figure’s face; it was many things, but coy wasn’t one.
