Mary Gaitskill on Damage and Defiance

"Certainly, a lot of women are coerced, and also there's a more subtle thing that can happen, where someone might go into it thinking it's temporary and get drawn in deeper than she intended. But I do think that a lot of women were/are like my character, especially in a city like New York, which is so expensive and so anonymous and, at least in the eighties, so hypersexual and open to whatever."

"But, to address the "defiance" idea, I don't think that is the reason she does it; she really is compelled by economic need, albeit sporadically so. She can't pay her rent with what she's making as an editorial assistant (this is realistic, or was in the eighties), and she's been fired from a long list of part-time jobs. The element of defiance adds a certain semi-appealing flavor to the choice."

"It would have been very natural for a generation coming of age during the Playboy (magazine) era to question society's view of prostitution. My father was a very, very straitlaced person, and yet he had a subscription to that magazine, in which prostitutes were regularly portrayed as (1) stupid and degraded; (2) beautiful and adored; and (3) desirable in either case. This is a very confusing message for a girl to absorb, and one that was reflected in other aspects of culture, too, if less star"

Many women enter sex work under coercion or through gradual entrapment after intending temporary involvement. Economic necessity compels sporadic participation when wages from jobs like editorial assistant cannot cover rent and repeated job loss occurs. City conditions such as high cost, anonymity, and a permissive sexual atmosphere made such choices more likely in 1980s New York. An element of defiance or rejection of received sexual morality sometimes colors decisions, but it often functions as a veneer rather than primary motive. Cultural portrayals, including magazines that alternately demean and idealize prostitution, produced confusing messages for young women.

Read at The New Yorker