Pillow Talk - French Prostitution Across Centuries and Continents

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2 days ago
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Anna Drury & Laura Noller | Lancaster University

Anna Drury and Laura Noller talk French prostitution across centuries and continents.

Anna’s research centres on the history of the sex workers’ movement in Brazil; exploring the nation’s colonial and imperial legacies and their resonances for sex worker activists. Laura’s work focuses on the oft-overlooked Nazi Occupation of the British Channel Islands during the Second World War.

Anna: So, Laura, we’ve discovered a fascinating connection in our work: French prostitution.

Laura: Haven’t we just? The prostitutes that come up in my work are women, predominantly French by nationality, who are brought to the Channel Islands to staff Wehrmacht sanctioned brothels. These brothels were set up by the German Army to boost morale among the troops, most of whom were absolutely fed up of being on the Channel Islands.

Anna: So, these French women are specifically for the German soldiers?

Laura: Yes, and there were separate brothels for the rank-and-file soldiers and for the officers, because of course sharing a woman with a subordinate was unacceptable. These women were brought over to the Islands, and they were kept separate from any Island women who might be intimate with a German soldier. I’m not going to be talking about Islander-German relationships today, despite the fascinating stories to come out of them, largely because they have had a lot of quite negative media attention, whereas these French prostitutes have been soundly ignored by historiography. What I will say on the matter of Island women who entered relationships with German soldiers, though, is that their numbers have been grossly exaggerated.

Black and white photo of a Wehrmacht soldier kissing a French prostitute. The man kisses the woman's cheek. She's wearing a blouse with a bow. — Wehrmacht soldier kissing a French prostitute in Brest, France, undated. (Wikimedia Commons).

Anna: What were the Island women’s take on these French prostitutes?

Laura: They were pretty upset, if we’re being honest – although not for the reasons that you might think. On the Islands, men and women’s rations were separate because men need more calories in a day, but there was also a second criterion: standard rations, and so-called ‘heavy worker rations’, with more calories, designed for manual labourers and so on. Now, many Island women worked as nurses, which, especially in those days, was a very physically demanding job. Despite this, nurses were denied heavy worker rations. Yet, the ‘ladies of leisure’ as the French prostitutes are referred to, were actually given heavy worker rations.

Anna: Do you think that’s because greater value was attached to what the prostitutes were doing for the German soldiers, versus the nurses, who were more than likely helping anyone on the Islands?

Laura: I think so. I think it’s about who they’re serving, because nurses were going to be looking after Islanders, whereas these French women were specifically “looking after” German soldiers. Also, if you look at it from the pseudoscience of race around the Nazi occupation, there’s this particularly interesting document in the Imperial War Museum, in which a German soldier states that it was Hitler’s express wish that a ‘distinct differentiation should be observed in regard to the people of northern France and the Channel Islands.’ And, according to another document, which is in the Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives), the Islanders were seen as ‘racially perfect.’ They’re seen, basically, as close to the Aryans as it’s possible to get and far more racially valuable than French women. So, there’s an interesting dichotomy here of Island women being seen as worthy, perhaps, of courtship or romance, whereas French women are decidedly sexualised, more literally objectified.

Anna: There for a “good time”, not for a long time.

Laura: Exactly. Now whether these women chose to objectify themselves or were essentially victims of sex trafficking is difficult to determine. I want to stay quite far away from ideas of consent because consent doesn’t exist in the same way in this context – Regina Mühlhauser writes a fantastic book about Sex and the Nazi Soldier, and she suggests that the line between voluntary action and coercion in these contexts is very blurry. So, some women wanted to work in military brothels because their alternative was forced labour or even rape. Whereas, at least with prostitution, they’re getting something out of this deal, even if that’s just being able to stay and work in familiar surroundings, because the Islands aren’t that far from France and they could still get home.

Regardless, we know these women weren’t treated well; there’s a report from a man who was on the Island of Alderney, who wrote that when the women arrived on the Island, it was like a ‘cattle market.’ And there’s been a lot of dismissal by male historians of this – not just male eyewitnesses – but historians too. Shortly after the war this report is released about Alderney, and the way that the man who wrote this report puts it is really interesting. He says, ‘the German armed forces, in their wisdom, normally made provision for the sexual distraction of their troops in occupied territory by running or making use of brothels under official supervision’ but that on Alderney the number of French prostitutes brought over was not ‘on the scale to which a Garrison of 3000 men might in happier circumstances, have felt entitled.’ So, there’s no acknowledgement by this author of the sexual violence these women were being exposed to, perhaps because of the presumption that they were choosing to be there due to their description as ‘prostitutes.’

But female chroniclers of the occupation have a very different perspective; an Island nurse looked after one of these French women brought in for an appendectomy. She said: ‘we had one French girl... lovely blonde girl, very sweet... a Parisian. She had been picked up on her way home from work one evening. I suppose you could say “kidnapped” with several other girls. And they had been brought over to Alderney for the German officer’s pleasure.’ So, there’s a considerable variance in accounts as to whether these are women volitionally taking advantage of the situation they found themselves in for some kind of material gain, or women who came to the Islands as a result of sex trafficking. What does this tension look like in your case, Anna?

Anna: Well, to understand that you have to first understand the Brazilian context. As a state, Brazil was born out of Portuguese colonial expansion, only abolishing slavery and declaring itself independent as the First Brazilian Republic in the late 1880s. Scholars Putnam, Chambers, and Caulfield have described this period as one in which Brazil sought to assert modern values and norms, and Brazilians attempted to ‘shake off the weight of their colonial heritage.’ Often, these ‘modern’ ideals related to the belief that the Brazilian population would become ‘Whiter’ due to natural selection, and the vast movement of emigration taking millions of Europeans across the globe nurtured the dream of a European civilisation in the tropics.

Laura: Fascinating. So, ideas relating to Social Darwinism were at play here?

Anna: Absolutely. And when we’re talking about the French women that were coming to Brazil during the nineteenth century, Jeffrey Needell contends some of the women chose to capitalise on these established fantasies – those surrounding the celebrated French actresses/prostitutes of the Belle Époque – that made them so attractive to many Brazilians. At the same time, Needell acknowledges that a number of these women, perceived as lucrative commodities, came to Brazil as a result of the traffic in European women, who were being brought as slaves to places like Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires, and forced into prostitution. Certainly, contemporary newspapers running stories about the traffic in White, European women mobilised xenophobic and racist sensibilities. Personally, I’m more convinced by Cristiana Schettini Pereira’s argument that, for the new Brazilian republic, discourses relating to ‘White slavery’ and victimised European women were more convenient for those Brazilian ‘civilisers’ wanting to forget historical realities of African slavery.

Laura: There’s something here about consumption, then? Which is really interesting because one of the Wehrmacht soldiers who was brought to the Islands in 1943 was not initially told he was coming to the Channel Islands specifically. He thought he was just going to France, but brings these ideas and expectations of France with him to the Channel Islands. He has an idea that being in France means ‘soft living.’ He talks about ‘living very soft with French wines, French butter, French cuisine, and French girls.’ There’s a definite idea of consumption there – while the Channel Islands women are more respectable, the French women are something to be consumed.

Anna: Yes, absolutely. We see this clearly in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s capital at the time, where elite residents attempted to free the city from any sign of its colonial past by embracing Francophile values and taste. Crucially, Needell argues the valorisation of French prostitutes in Rio was directly related to elite residents’ absorption of French cultural phenomena. New venues, such as cafes and dance halls, echoed the makeup of the Parisian urban landscape and offered, as Needell puts it, ‘French sirens for sexual hire’.

Two men stand in front of a grand building labelled "Teatro Municipal." The scene is sepia-toned and historic, with ornate architecture. — *Teatro Municipal*, located in the *Centro* district of Rio de Janeiro. Inspired by the Paris Opéra of Charles Garnier. (Marc Ferrez, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

Laura: That is a fascinating turn of phrase – I'd like to come back to that.

Anna: Sure! But you see what I’m saying about how French women were exoticised. I’ve found a fascinating example of a quotidian conflict between a Carioca (resident of Rio de Janeiro) and a French prostitute, that contrasts Carioca society’s general romanticisation of French prostitutes. The case originated in Rio in 1937, so a period you’ll be more familiar with, Laura, and was brought to the police by a young woman called Diva; described in the police report as ‘a native of this capital, twenty-six years of age, single’, and as a ‘Meretriz’, a Latin American term for ‘prostitute’.

Laura: So, it’s Diva’s testimony that is going to find another person guilty of something?

Anna: Exactly! Guilty of pimping (or lenocínio in Portuguese) in this case. Diva met ‘the French prostitute Renée’ after moving onto a new street. They struck up a friendship, with Renée complementing Diva’s youth and beauty. Renée then advises Diva to start giving her daily earnings to her, for Renée to manage and look after.

It emerges the two women had some form of a sexual relationship, and Diva started to give her daily earnings to Renée. But she quickly discovered Renée was doing this with other people! Renée was having the same sort of shenanigans with another woman, Josephina, ‘better known as Fifi’.

And the money Renée was supposedly looking after for these women was being given to her male lover, Rubens. Diva, quite rightly, loses all trust in Renée, convinced she ‘only wanted to exploit her’. But Fifi, upon learning about Diva, is not happy, and ‘began to make constant threats to slash her face’.

Laura: And so that threat of bodily violence is also a threat to Diva’s profession, isn't it? Because she would struggle to market herself – a commodity – with a scarred face.

Anna: Absolutely. After receiving these threats, Diva wrote Renée a letter, in which she said she wanted nothing more to do with her. Renée called Diva up, demanding an explanation. The same day, Diva encountered both Rubens and Renée in a public park. Rubens physically assaulted Diva by kicking her and Fifi continued to harass Diva.

Ultimately, the investigation was closed due to a lack of evidence. It couldn’t be proven that Renée had been extorting money from both Diva and Fifi to pass on to Rubens. Renée denied giving any money to Rubens and exploiting the two women.

I find this case intriguing for several reasons. Particularly in relation to ideas about consent. Reading between the lines, beyond the moralistic language, can we speculate that the relationship between Renée and Diva was, perhaps, and in the beginning, consensual? Friends and neighbours, whose relationship blossomed into something more. And what transpired was a severe, but, nonetheless, everyday conflict between a group of lovers. It’s also fascinating how each of the women involved are sexualised, deceived, and victimised in the language deployed by Rio’s urban authorities.

Laura: The language used around Renée really plays into this idea of French women as having a kind of dangerous allure, doesn’t it? There’s that sense on the Channel Islands too, where Wehrmacht authorities, who set up the brothels, do try to dissuade the soldiers from frequenting them. Partly because venereal disease is rampant, but also because of fears around what today we might call ‘pillow talk.’ There’s a very real fear around soldiers divulging classified information around troop positions which might be used against them by prostitutes, so the German army are certainly nervous about the supposed deceitfulness of these women. And, as I mentioned earlier, these prostitutes are plagued by accusations of exploitation, whether that’s for information, or leveraging their position to get more food, like the heavy worker rations. So, there are absolutely tensions here, even between Island women and prostitutes, because of notions of prostitutes being exploitative and them receiving benefits from men.

Honestly, Anna, there are so many interesting threads of connection to pick at here – I don’t quite know where to begin.

Anna: I think there are some fascinating similarities and differences. To name one, the way French prostitutes are regarded on the Channel Islands versus Brazil. French women were perceived as a luxury commodity for the Carioca elite, versus the Channel Islands, where French prostitutes were there for a fun time, and not for a long time. For anything serious, go for an Islander. These French women are highly sexualised, highly commodified. And both the German and Carioca men are constantly flirting with the idea of having a French woman.

Laura: Yes, these themes of consumption and commodification – they want to ‘try’ French women, like one would try French cheese, or French wine, but there’s no future there in the Channel Islands’ context, due to the racialised rhetoric. I think this idea of French women as dangerous – whether due to their race, due to information gathering, whatever – I think that is so fascinating as well. I mean, let’s go back to what Brazilian historiography has called these prostitutes: French sirens. There’s a very strong sense here that French prostitutes were perceived as commodities that were fundamentally dangerous.

Anna: I know, it’s very telling these French women continue to be framed as corrupting commodities. And the commercial opportunism that can come with selling sex is still stigmatised. The stigma that’s attached to prostitution, and to the individuals who carry it out.

Laura: The key takeaway for historians looking at prostitution – no matter where or when – is that there’s a constant tension between self-commodification as an act of agency, and external commodification, through forms of sex trafficking. All through this, as well, we have curious intersections of racial identity, which point towards a need for intersectional approaches toward the history of prostitution.

Anna: And it’s comparative discussions like these that help us to see those intersectional threads. So, thanks so much for this discussion – I’ve loved it.

Laura: Me too, it’s been an absolute pleasure.