The Secret Diary of a Call Girl (Guardian)
I haven't seen any of Billie Piper's new TV series but I know that it's about the life ('secret diary') of a fictional call girl. In this case, the call girl enjoys a lifestyle of champagne and caviare. The article I'm linking too is from the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' site and criticises the programme for being unrealistic and for glamorising an industry it doesn't even reflect in a realistic way.

The Secret Diary of a Call Girl plumbs new depths in its distortion of reality. Piper as the call girl has a luxurious lifestyle, earning huge amounts of money having enjoyable sex with pleasant - and often handsome - men in smart hotels. In a staggeringly disingenuous interview, Piper defended the series, arguing that her character was "in control" and that, while such an experience of prostitution might be rare, it was a story that deserved to be told. She provided a succinct summary of how feminism's language of empowerment has been hijacked to serve male entitlement.

What, of course, gets missed out of Piper's glamorous champagne-and-silk-negligee account is a few facts. In the UK, more than half of prostitutes have been raped or sexually assaulted. Three-quarters have been physically assaulted, 95% are drug users, and 90% want to get out. Nearly 70% meet the criteria of post-traumatic stress disorder, in the same range as victims of torture and combat veterans.

The prostitution market in this country is being transformed by eastern Europeans, trafficked or desperate. They're cheap and they are worked hard - up to 40 clients a day - in private flats hidden in the most unlikely of leafy green suburbs from Peterborough to Cheltenham. Police raids across Cambridgeshire uncovered no fewer than 80 new brothels last year. While sex trafficking is booming as one of the most lucrative forms of organised crime (low risk and high returns), Piper pops up in a fairytale role as sinister as the witch enticing Hansel and Gretel into her gingerbread house.

The central point the author wants to make is that, 'The screen adaptation of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl legitimises a trade [prostitution] that in reality is utterly brutal and misogynistic.'

As is frequently the case with Comment is Free, the comments from readers are more interesting than the piece itself.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the programme, or on the representation of prostitution in the media?

(Cross-posted to relevant communities.)