Border Lives: Prostitute Women in Tijuana

Investigates the social situation of women working in prostitution in Tijuana, Mexico, drawing on a review of the secondary literature; 1988 ethnographic work, including interviews with 184 women working in prostitution in Tijuana; & 1994/95 interviews with 30 Tijuana prostitutes in their workplaces. In Mexico, prostitution has been denounced as a horribly loathsome practice & a blight on the nation's self-image. However, prostitution remains a quasi-legal activity, indicating that it is more a crime against middle-class tastes than against the social order. The prostitutes reproduce this ambivalence by adopting one identity in their workplace & another outside that space. In adopting a concept of self rooted in homelife & children, the prostitutes are allowed to distance themselves from their profession. The women also adopt certain sexual rules of etiquette, eg, a refusal to engage in particular sex practices & an insistence on practicing safe sex, to further dissociate themselves from the prevailing image of prostitution. 45 References. D. Ryfe