The Limits Of Entertainment And Satellite Tv

Love it or hate it, the show Secret Diary of a Call Girl is making its way into the regular satellite TV schedules.  The story of a London prostitute, although a high class one, that daylights as a regular office employee, the show follows the professional and personal ups and downs of Hannah who attends to her “second job” under the pseudonymous Belle de Jour.  Automatically a source of a great deal of criticism from feminists, women, and mothers everywhere, the show is often seen as glamorizing the profession of the high class hooker.  In a society where every other day a new politician, celebrity or golfer is caught having highly publicized affairs with “call girls” it seems that the public interest in seeing the lifestyle for themselves has finally caught up.

Although the more conservative critics of all that satellite TV has to offer may sometimes go overboard, on this one there may be call for alarm.  Whilst the vast majority of women who resort to prostitution in the world live with daily rape, drugs, beatings, underage trafficking and homelessness, high class hooker Belle enjoys the edginess of her luxurious double life.  As she says, she loves “sex and money.”  And clearly the deduction any woman should make is that the only way to have both is by becoming a hooker?  Many women are hearing this message and saying “hold on, we thought the women’s equality thing was finally getting better, what changed?”  For mothers that burned bras and held up signs, vying for things like the right to vote and equality in the workplace, daughters swept up in a world of secret sex with strangers to earn an extra few bucks may not seem to them like the best thing to be watching on television.  Backpedalling its way into the late 1800s, Secret Diary serves to demonstrate to women everywhere that the only way to get ahead is by resorting to the planet’s oldest profession.  

Granted, watching ex pop stars vie for the love of an entire harem in high definition on reality TV is not quality television either, but there is something slightly saddening, defeating even, about a show such as Secret Diary receiving so much attention.  Constantly compared to Sex and the City, the root message is entirely missed.  With the girls of Sex and the City the idea was to show that women could be open about their sexuality while still being safe, intelligent, and maintaining their successful professional endeavors.  The show was designed to demonstrate that being sexual did not make a woman a slut or a bimbo, but normal.  Quite the contrary, Secret Diary seems to exist purely to sensationalize and degrade the notion that a woman could possibly be strong and independent in her sexual endeavors without an excuse: it’s my job.  What will be next for satellite TV?  Maybe a show detailing the exciting double life of a junkie by night, doctor by day?  The world can only hold its breath awaiting such a remarkable achievement for television, and pop culture in general.