Bodies

For the record, I'll try to briefly clarify my feelings I referenced when mentioning the Red Light District. I have to go soon, so it might not come out perfectly, but:

It's incredible and strange to me (and, also, rather disgusting--as in, when I look at the "purchasers") that people are viewing bodies, yes in the Marxian sense, as commodities. But it's so much more than that. It's about body / soul dynamics.

There are full-length windows with female bodies dressed up as if they're in Victoria's Secret windows, with red velvet all around them and floor lighting. They're like moving mannequins, and old men oggle by with rented bikes, going slowly. It's revolting.

I just can't seem to get my head around it--do they not understand that souls are attached to those bodies? That bodies are the vessels for personality? You can't separate the body from the person who gives it life. The soul may be separated from the body, but the body's purpose is to harbour soul--the soul gives it expression, acts as the cause behind the symptom of the body. The idea that someone could desire another's body, exclusively, seems heinous in a sacrispiritual way. The idea that a whole segment of the population could be taught that this is acceptable is unbelievable.

My friend who got coffee with me, and I, were discussing this, and I couldn't help but sputter about my disbelief in the way other humans...view other humans. And she said, wisely, that of course, it's all about the gaining they may do. These purchasers are paying for the ability to gain from this avenue that is given so much social and cultural significance, and of course it requires the losing of some other party (namely, the party with the body in question). I refer to it as "taking" and "using", but she was able to see, in a maybe less-biased way, the motivation behind such actions. Of course in the end it's never about the person inhabiting the body. It's not even really about the body, in the sense that the body itself has any say in what's happening--no one cares about the body in the sense that it has thoughts and feelings and wisdom of its own. It's about the Conquistador, and if your body is the avenue that's best used to gain elevation, so be it, in prostitution.

There's so much more to say, and I had a great way of describing this earlier, and I liked it better than "commodification" or "objectification" but when I remember, I'll post it.

love,
miranda.

EDIT (20 Sept. 2009): So, here are two attempts at the quick phrases I'm feeling:
1) desiring the body for the services it can provide
2) separating the body from the person