One of the most heavily promoted series on cable TV is “The Client List,” about a Texas woman who turns to prostitution in a massage parlor to support her children after her husband skips town. There isn’t a more repugnant glorification of prostitution since “Pretty Woman.” Cybil Shepherd, & Elizabeth Rohm star in the series which is curious & regrettable since they have both been publicly associated with traditional feminism. Jennifer Love Hewitt, the central figure, is identified with the regresson that co-opts feminism to make sexual exhibitionism a matter of empowerment.
In the series, prostitution is another form of female empowerment & Hewitt a loving mother, working woman & business owner. The series isn’t succeeding because of any artistic or dramatic merit. It traffics in the cliches of pornography, the plot lines of soap operas, & the repartee of vaudeville. It’s even worse than the TV series where Hewitt talked to dead people.
The only thing honest about the series is it shows the relationship of prostitution to the power elite & the protections rendered by such patrons--including judges & cops. Other than that--from the fake Texas accents, foot-long false eyelashes, phony hair, & over-exposed cleavage in baby doll lingerie--the show is replete with stock characters & regrettable penis jokes of the bathroom humor sort. There is the cliched hooker with a heart of gold, the tortured war vet needing the solace of a blow-job, the shy guy with fetishes, & the misunderstood guy who just wants someone to listen to him. Hewitt is portrayed more as a sex therapist than a pimp.
But there is a creepy edge that exposes the depravity of prostitution & of this TV series: the massage parlor hires a young woman with a tiny baby voice, a sex kitten, a not so subtle suggestion of pedophilia that is a central part of prostitution.
Massage therapy organizations have been fighting an uphill legal & licensing battle for years to overcome the stigma of association with prostitution & restore its place as therapy & a health modality regulated by medical boards. Such associations between massage therapy & prostitution are dangerous to them. Their petitions & objections to the network fell on deaf ears since the power elite has something at stake in promoting prostitution along with controlling marriage & reproduction. The response of A&E Network (the Lifetime channel) was mealy-mouthed rubbish & something they should stuff a sock in. A&E is a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation & Walt Disney Company & reaches 85 million US & Canadian homes.
The depiction of women on television is getting worse & it is not conspiracy thinking to say represents a war on women and on the gains of feminism. In movies & series, one after the other, women are depicted as predators, killers, stalkers, bunglers, liars, fools, gold-diggers. This isn’t just unseemly & dishonest; it is propaganda.
(Poster from series; please note the tag line, "A mother will do anything for her family.")
(Let me say, I only watched it to document my suspicions. Believe me, it was no pleasure at all.)
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