Not So-One-Trick Pony

In Resurrecting Still Lives, Debo states that working in the brothel “is as much bout theatricality as it is about sex”(Debo 207). Her points center on the abstraction of “looking”, as if it is something more than the verb itself. As she puts it, looking “is layered, circular, and reflexive”, and she’s right, looking can be ambiguous. I can understand the ambiguity of looking when two teenagers are trying to decipher what the other is thinking, or the look your crush gives you when they pass by in an instance, but in a brothel; humans act more like animals, disregarding everything but physical appeal.

A brothel is a place of exchange, specifically, money for pleasure (which can vary among people). The men that go to a brothel already have a predetermined outlook on the women they are going to hire and the things they are going to do. The majority of encounters are emotionless and selfish. Meaning, the men that go to a brothel have to satisfy an inner need. The same mindset is applied to the women; they are out to get money. However, looking is an unselfish act in a brothel; it’s a way to evaluate the women apart from their race, personality, or other characteristics and only for their pure physical attraction, not minding your own physical appeal. Money levels the playing field because men don’t have to rely on their own characteristics to get the women they want, and they even buy into a more exclusive pool of women. Countess calls Ophelia “African Violet for the promise of that wild continent hidden beneath my white skin” and this is the exact reason why men may prefer the “very white skinned black woman” (Trethewey 13, 6). The exotic African appeal drives the men to seek these women for the promise of the hypersexual, good in bed characteristics, but all these “positives” in the brothel melt away on the street where she can’t find an office job. The benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages for Ophelia because she is ambitious.