“It's Not Just Sex, It's a Profession”: Reframing Prostitution through Text and Context

Abstract

HBO's reality television series Cathouse examines the inner workings of a legal brothel and asserts “it's not just sex, it's a profession.” This article explores the relationship between the production context at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and the narrative constructed on the show. Bringing narrative rhetorical analysis of the series into conversation with ethnographic observations and interviews at the brothel, I suggest that what is represented in the series reflects the lived experiences of the women working at the ranch at the same time as the production context is constructed to represent this particular reality. In this context, the women are “sex workers” who are economically successful, are safe in their work and provide a service to the community.

Keywords:

• Ethnography
• Narrative
• Popular Culture
• Prostitution
• Reality Television
• Rhetoric

Notes

This is a pseudonym that I have assigned to protect the identity of this woman.

A “party” is what they call paid interactions with customers at the ranch. I say “interactions” because they do not always involve sex.

All sex workers’ names that I use in this article are their chosen working names, unless otherwise noted. When I asked, they told me to use their working names rather than their real names or pseudonyms I assigned for other women.

For more on Nevada brothels in general, see other work by Kathryn Hausbeck and Barbara G. Brents (2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer C. Dunn

Jennifer C. Dunn is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetoric at Dominican University.