Prostitution and the politics of respectability: Sex work, stigma, and representations of the Other

This chapter presents and discusses the 2015 exhibition ‘Splendour and Misery: Images of Prostitution from 1850–1910’ at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The exhibition presented art where male artists depict women involved in sex work. The chapter posits that the very creation of an exhibit that explicitly and exclusively includes images of women working in the sex industry reveals a great deal about the stigmatization of this marginalized group. Using feminist literature that explores the politics of stigma, it is argued that an exposition that focuses solely on prostitution and female sex workers reifies a long-held assumption about the Otherness of these women, and capitalizes on our fascination of women who act outside of established, morally grounded norms. The exhibition presents sex work not as something women do, but constitutes it as something that is integral to who they are. The chapter concludes that while there may be some difference between a courtesan, a ballerina or a shop girl, they all share the same common base features: not only are they all women, but they all refuse to engage in the practices of ‘appropriate’ femininity. Their refusal to kowtow to the totem of respectability marks them out – and stains them with the indelible print of stigma.