Lombroso and his sex workers

Prostitution has and always will fascinate people. The number of artists who have been inspired by courtesans is endless. Among the most famous, you can count Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso. I often avoid telling people I meet for the first time that I am running an escort service in Berlin with a partner, otherwise I have to spend the best part of an hour talking about the relax industry. People think that harlots differ a lot from the average woman. Last time I checked our escorts, they all still had two arms and two legs and if you were to pass them in the street, you would never have thought that they were on the game.

In the 19th century though, we had the Italian Cesare Lombroso who thought otherwise. Apparently not only artists took a particular interest in fallen women. He was convinced that they had certain physiognomic properties. His research took him to police stations, prisons, and madhouses. There he studied the tattoos, cranial capacities, and sexual behaviour of prostitutes and prisoners in order to establish a female criminal type. Does it surprise you that Lombroso came to the conclusion that that criminal women are far more cunning and dangerous than criminal men…

I would lie though if I were to pretend that there is hardly a difference between women who turn tricks and good housewives, although you would be surprised by the number of mothers who have a little secret. Even their partners sometimes don´t know that hidden part of their personality. I don´t know what the old fraud Freud would have made of that? Would he still have come up with his madonna-whore complex? I have to admit though that tattoos and piercings are overrepresented in prostitutes. Some also have a tendency to dress provocatively and have a penchant for loud labels but what really makes the difference is their mind.

I know that this is a truism but that organ really distinguishes the pros from the amateurs. Forget about a high libido, sex-craved nymphos and fornicating erotomanes. As far as I am aware of, prostitution, contrary to homosexuality, never got an entry in the American psychiatric bible DSM.

According to my non-scientific opinion, sex workers have an open mind, like sex and don´t fall easily in love. They are impulsive and like to experiment. Mentally, they have to be tough in order to demarcate their boundaries and master the strong emotions the job provokes. Some do have indeed a low-self-esteem which they try to compensate by being paid for sex. This validates their worth and puts them on a pedestal. This doesn’t mean though that they all suffer from major psycholigical disorders.