Paris Journal; Paris and Prostitutes: Withering Love
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Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s oils captured the raucous friendliness of turn-of-the-century brothels, Emile Zola wrote warmly about a big-hearted prostitute in “Nana” and as recently as the 1950’s, life on the sidewalks of Montmartre was set to music in “Irma La Douce.” The prostitutes of Paris, it seems, always had artists on their side. And together, for the best part of a century, they helped shape the city’s image as a haven of love, romance and sensuality for inhibited — though hardly puritan — northern Europeans in search of carnal thrills and spills. Even now, latter-day can-can girls at the Moulin Rouge and Crazy Horse still evoke the naughtiness of Paris for gray-haired married couples who arrive in tourist buses from Germany and Britain. They could probably see the same shows at home — but Paris is Paris. Yet if life here once imitated art, that is no longer the view of Parisians who have witnessed the transformation of the Bois de Boulogne into a seamy sexual bazaar where from dusk to dawn women and men, including many transvestites, publicly trade in their bodies. More : query.nytimes.com |