Reading William Vollmann’s Rainbow Stories is not for the meek or weak-stomached. Journeying deep into the dark, dirty, and seedy parts of San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin district in the mid-eighties, Vollmann stops, takes a look around, starts a conversation or two, and writes down what he sees and hears. He hangs out with Neo-Nazi skinheads. Homeless drunks. Prostitutes. Drug addicts. Cops. He does what most of us would find unthinkable or impossible – he engages conversation and listens to them until their stories begin to emerge, until they become actual people, rather than caricatures. Their stories are collected and given to us, in print, with very little commentary attached. In turn, it’s almost as if we are asked to do what Vollmann has done. We are to listen to their stories until we begin to see their human-ness. We look them in the eye until we begin to understand.

The collection of stories which most caught my attention was “Ladies and Red Lights,” a group of narratives all in some way related to prostitution. As a woman – as a feeling person – this was the hardest of all to read. These women were the hardest to look in the eye. Reading their stories almost felt voyeuristic – I felt I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to see; walking in on a shame that was never meant to be uncovered. I felt pity for their desperation even as I felt revulsion in equal measure. Vollmann, in his no-nonsense descriptions of the prostitutes, nevertheless seems to empathize with them a great deal. He writes of Starr, for instance, who dances and dances in her pink tank top and high heels on the sidewalk while she talks with Vollmann, screaming occasionally at passersby “Come at me! Oh, I’m READY! Let ‘em come at me!” He writes of the dancing: “At first I thought she was doing it to please herself, unlike the strippers at Dino’s, but then I remembered that she, too, had to do it… The world rubbed her the wrong way that night, like a lover with sandpaper hands, so that her dance was a ballet of nervous irritability, which must go on until exhaustion disposed of her,” (Vollmann 88-89). Reading their stories, it’s hard not to eventually empathize as well.

As I continued reading through “Ladies and Red Lights,” I began to wonder if perhaps I was setting the prostitutes up as completely separate Others, people who have no connection to my own experiences in everyday life. When we see life existing at such sad and pathetic depths, I think it’s possible we naturally distance ourselves so as to maintain some sense that we could never stoop so low. But when I’m honest, I have to admit that there are connections present, if I’m only willing to look below the surface of circumstances. Yes, selling sex for cash is probably at the far side of the prostitution spectrum – but when I look a little more deeply, I can’t help but wonder if we’re all somewhere on that spectrum, selling ourselves in ways of our own, for the same purpose. “We are all anchored by something,” Vollman writes, following his description of a blind old bum who would simply hold his trembling head in his hands as an entire parade traipsed by, but who looked up and immediately started counting the coins as soon as 22 cents clinked into his hand. “Most of us are anchored by money,” (Vollmann 84). In a country firmly anchored to capitalism as its preferred pursuit of happiness, it is hard to doubt those words. In an online interview, Vollmann puts it this way: “…In this society, everyone thinks that money is the most important value… to such an extent that it’s become invisible. Parents tell their children, you know you have to learn how to sell yourself. Of course they’re outraged by prostitutes selling themselves, but that’s what we are, we’re a culture of prostitutes,” (DuShane).

I can’t help but wonder what advice pop-star Britney Spears’ parents gave her when she was young. Following a turn in Disney’s star-producing machine – The New Mickey Mouse Club, which also starred future pop-stars Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera – Britney released her first single, Baby One More Time, in 1998. In the video, the fresh-faced sixteen-year-old danced and shook her pig-tails in a Catholic school-girl outfit, with her white shirt tied to reveal her midriff. A little naughty, yes – but it worked. The album was a huge hit and began her rise to stardom. Each album, each video would grow a little more risqué, a little more revealing. Oops… I Did It Again declared, “I’m not that innocent,” and debuted at No. 1 in 2000, selling a million copies in its first week. 2001 saw Britney dancing in a barely-there bikini with an albino python draped around her shoulders, singing “I’m a slave for you…” (People.com). All part of the business, and it made her a multi-millionaire, but at what cost?
I couldn’t help but think of Britney Spears’ most recent performances when I read “Slow Nights at Dino’s,” one of the short stories in “Ladies and Red Lights.” Dino’s is a topless dancing bar, and on this particular night, although only two seats were empty, business was slow. Vollmann paints this portrait of the poor woman dancing in front of all the bored men:

“The impressive blonde, who was slightly less impressive now than she once was because her buttocks had begun to sag, lifted her leg and undid the sash of her yellow dress, and we saw that she was wearing not only a vinyl leopard-skin crotch cover but also a black brassiere to stretch the suspense out for another tune, but no one was in any suspense; and she wiggled her sagging ass until the next song started, and then she took her bra off, facing the wall, and turned around to show us her small high breasts, which had not begun to sag yet; and at the end of each number the barmaid clapped pointedly so that we would clap, too, however grudgingly; and then the music started again and the poor blonde wiggled some more, but no one gave the barmaid any dollars to snap into the blonde’s G-string, so gradually she started snapping it herself and staring into our faces, but no one took the hint, so she turned her face away from us and made us look at her slightly saggy ass for longer and longer periods of time, and the barmaid shook her head and snickered but no one gave the blonde a dollar. Finally her fifteen minutes were up, and she pulled her yellow dress back on, shuffling off to stand by the door…” (Vollman 119, italics mine).

Britney Spears performed recently at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, and it was nearly the same scene. This performance was supposed to be a comeback. Since the success she tasted earlier on, Britney had been through two marriages (and two divorces), two children whom she no longer had custody of, a public breakdown in which she shaved her head bald in front of flashing paparazzi cameras, and several short and unsuccessful stints in rehab, not to mention scene after scene of odd, off-balance, crazy behavior. Performing in front of the crowd, she barely went through the motions of her dance routine, lip-syncing badly, even forgetting to move her lips at times. She seemed in a daze. But there she was, in her sequined bikini, shaking that saggy ass for the bored customers. This crowd didn’t even clap grudgingly; they booed. This shell of a person didn’t have the heart to make the act believable anymore.

“Here is a definition of an unfortunate profession: one whose practitioners become unfit for it in proportion to their practice of it,” (Vollmann 85). At some point, there is nothing left to sell. Nothing left to reveal. The same magazines that lauded her sexiness now berate her for being trashy. Britney Spears embraced the life of an American celebrity wholeheartedly, and sold herself, piece by piece, under the guidance of those who directed her young career. It’s only now we’re beginning to see how little is left her, a young woman navigating a shaky early adulthood. Exhaustion seems ready to dispose of her at any moment.

Lest I think Britney Spears is distant on the spectrum, I flip through the pile of magazines on my coffee table. Cover after cover of photo-shopped faces and exaggerated breasts, actresses and singers and models baring nearly all to sell a copy of a magazine. And I purchase them. Why? So I can pick up tips on how to make myself more marketable – to the unforgiving world at large, to my workplace, even to my husband. Granted, I’m never going to show up at work or school in a desperately revealing outfit – but the idea is there. Attractiveness sells. Sexy sells even better. While it may be true only part of the time, we believe it a great deal of the time.

A Tulane University study interviewed 164 female MBA graduates and asked them if they had ever taken part in any of 10 sexual behaviors in the workplace. For example, “I wear a skirt or something more revealing than usual around clients or supervisors to get attention,” or “I draw attention to my legs by crossing them provocatively when in meetings or sitting with a group of men at work,” or “I purposely let men sneak a look down my shirt when I lean over a table.” Although the behaviors were ineffective in gaining pay increases or receiving promotions (the highest-paid women said they had never engaged in such behaviors), 49% of the women surveyed said they had tried to use their sexuality at least a small portion of the time (Arabe).

It’s not easy to blame them. Other studies coming out of the University of Texas and Michigan State University estimate that “plain people earn 5 percent to 10 percent less than people of average looks, who in turn earn 3 percent to 8 percent less than those deemed good-looking,” (Lorenz). We might be selling something more seemingly innocuous than sex, but we are nonetheless trying to get the most we can with what we’ve got.

Christina, one of the prostitutes interviewed by Vollmann, has an entire list of what she offers: “As a pleasure factory, Christina offered a number of options to the serious investor, for she had not only a VAGINA ($40.00 minimum), but also a MOUTH ($20.00) and she had small brown hands which could be rented more cheaply still ($15.00). How convenient Christina could be to use! Men enjoyed thrusting their penises inside her, and Christina, although she did not enjoy being thrust into, spread her legs peacefully, because, as Calvin Coolidge told us in 1923, ‘Economy is always a guarantee of peace,’” (Vollman, 90). We don’t walk around with a conscious menu and price-list in our minds of what we’re worth, but still, so often, we dance and wiggle.

I dance when I carefully apply more make-up than usual and dress my best (in a skirt, of course) to head into an interview. I see young college co-eds dance when they wear their most revealing clothing to a night out at the club, trying to score free drinks from the men who may or may not get what they’re hoping for – it depends on the number of drinks. The Seahawks’ cheerleaders dance at every football game. Our celebrities dance for the magazine’s cameras and spill their stories and secrets for a fee, just as Vollmann’s whores do.

It’s an unfortunate profession – for all of us. The more of ourselves we sell, the less of ourselves we own. Eventually, our wares will tire out and wear down, and what once seemed so intoxicatingly attractive will become sad and pitiable. Prostitutes are, indeed, an easier and more obvious example – but if we look only at the prostitutes and not at ourselves, we’ve missed out on an opportunity to silence the noise of our demanding culture and see our own value – completely separate from what the world is willing to pay.