Singular life
Tart talk
Petronella Wyatt It was nearly freezing outside but the woman was wearing a bikini decorated with gaudy stars and stripes which clung to her breasts like the paint on the hull of an expensive yacht. She looked quite at home in it, however, as if she were accustomed to wearing bikinis in winter. It seemed inap- propriate to offer her the use of a coat. And then I realised what she was doing.
I had been spending a few days in Ams- terdam, researching a piece on drugs. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Contemporary Amsterdam is known for two things: cannabis shops and the red light district. Prostitution in Amsterdam began when the city became a port in the late-13th century. Hello Sailor and all that. By 1478 it was so widespread that prostitutes straying outside their designated area were marched back to the sound of pipe and drum. A cen- tury later the Calvinists tried to outlaw prostitution altogether. But their attempts were half-hearted, as it were, and by the mid-17th century it was openly allowed.
Anyway, the red light district is one of the most gobsmackingly singular sights in the world. First, its location is extraordinar- ily pristine. Amsterdam really is the Venice of the North West. Which reminds me of a joke I once heard. Man asks woman: 'How did you learn to swim so well?' Woman: 'I was a call-girl in Venice.' The canals are lined with tall houses, many of them built during the Dutch Renaissance, the façades resembling the silhouettes of 17th-century courtiers, with exquisite pediment carvings and cornices. Some of the side streets, of which there are many, still look much the way they did in Rembrandt's day. During the autumn and winter months a mist drifts in from the canals and, in the distance, can be heard the silvery shiver of bicycle bells.
When the morning sun parts the clouds, prostitutes can be seen sitting or standing in the windows. I could see them from my hotel which was supposed to be one of Amsterdam's most 'charming'. You would have thought the sight would be offensive, but strangely it isn't. This is a different breed of prostitute from the ones who pop- ulate other European cities. It is as if one were from the donkey family and the other from the horse. Street girls in London have that frozen, stupid look, as if they have seen death. Not surprising given that a fist or a knife lurks around every corner and at each pair of traffic lights. You wouldn't say that the prostitutes in Amsterdam looked like Claudia Schiffer either, but they are certainly more de Mau- passant than Jack the Ripper. Their win- dows provide a snug cocoon of relative safety. The sides arc fitted out like doors. No one can enter if the woman doesn't want them to. During the day the streets have an almost festive air. The girls dress in spangly outfits that would not look out of place on a bareback rider in a circus. Tourists even take their children there. There was a crowd of Japanese with cam- eras, the flashing of which made the girls angry.
These tarts are much more in control and look it. Indeed, some of the women were so young and attractive that you won- dered why they were on the game at all and not raking in the chips as swimwear mod- els. The answer is probably that they rake in more chips doing what they do. There is scant evidence of seediness, no reek of strangled corpses and Parisian pissoirs. Per- haps as a result the place attracts a better- looking client. The men I saw coming in and out were far from the elderly mackin- tosh types.
Prostitutes are 70 per cent less likely to be attacked in Amsterdam than they are here. Laws should be based in part on utili- tarianism and in part on ensuring the moral good. This includes mitigating the disad- vantages of the inevitable. The statutes in Holland regarding prostitution spring from both rationales. It is puzzling when you think of how recent successive British gov- ernments purport to favour women when they still allow the old laws on soliciting to remain. Every day the lives of women arc put at risk because of an unworkable law. The only other way to 'deal' with prostitu- tion is to shoot the prostitutes and put them out of their misery.
Were I a women's rights lobbyist I would be pestering the government not about quotas and all-female parliamentary selec- tion lists but about legalising prostitution, in other words soliciting from safe houses. The girls I talked to in Amsterdam were horrified by the conditions in which their British counterparts are forced to work. One of them said to me simply, 'It just proves the old cliché that the English don't like women.'
`Well, to be honest . .
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