Candy Barr, infamous 1950s stripper and stag film star once romantically linked to mobster Mickey Cohen and associated with Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, has died. She was 70.
It's easy to think "good riddance" of the beautiful Candy Barr, but then you read this:
Barr said she began life as "poor white trash." After her mother died when she was 9, she was ignored by her stepmother and sexually abused by a neighbor and a baby-sitter.
She fled to Dallas at the age of 13, married a safecracker at 14 and soon fell into exotic dancing and prostitution. Later claiming that she was drugged and forced to perform . . .
Assuming it's true, it says a lot about our country's smut problem. Many of the women in the trade have suffered enormously, and they're continuing to suffer by providing sex. Yes, there are a few exceptions. There are young women who are aspiring doctors and lawyers, but who use stripping as a means to pay the tuition. But they're not the norm. Most strippers (and porn stars and prostitutes) are pathetic individuals who need help. The best way I heard it put was by a woman who questioned a group of johns during a rehabilitation meeting: "Would you extort a retarded or disabled person? That's what you're doing when you solicit a prostitute." (rough quote)
It's exploitation, yet America continues to protect the sex trade. When people like me cry "exploitation," the pimps yell "freedom to choose." When people like me yell "degradation," the pimps scream "the women make lots of money." The thing is, the pimps are correct. But that doesn't make them right. Not when most of the women are emotional cripples who can't intelligently choose and don't know what to do with the money.
