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The Front Line
Paperback
Published October 23, 1986
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October 10, 2019While in Candy Girl Cody’s workmates are usually little more than background noise, Nickie Roberts gives over half of her memoir to her colleagues as she realizes that it is “not enough just to tell my own story; other voices need to be heard too.” Published in 1986, Roberts’ The Front Line was written because, she says: “Everybody it seems has an opinion about the sex industry and what should or should not be done about it; everybody except us, that is.” The first half of The Front Line is Roberts’ own story and the second consists of monologues by her friends and co-workers: strippers, peep-show dancers, prostitutes and club managers. The diversity of the writing gives us a broader picture of the London sex industry during the 60’s and 70’s.
Roberts addresses a motivation often overlooked in writing about the sex industry: The money. All of the sex-working men and women in The Front Line have come down to London from ‘The North’ leaving behind a certain life of drudgery. Issues of class are notable and discussed angrily in this book. Roberts has scorn for the middle-class women who call her choices immoral: “Why should I have to put up with a middle-class feminist asking me why I didn’t do anything — scrub toilets, even? Rather than become a stripper?” And the Judges who one day are soliciting sex workers and the next handing down hefty fines and sending those same women back onto the streets to earn the money needed to pay them, their “legal pimps” back. Roberts highlights the hypocrisy of middle-class ‘morality’ and the reality of what lies underneath; “the middle classes are the weirdest,” she says. Roberts’ anger is palpable, and at times weighs down the book, which is understandable given that she was writing at a time when strippers were marginalized even more so than today.
Reading this book, although at times angry and upsetting, one gets a sense of solidarity between the men and women in the sex industry. Roberts and the others often talk of their respect for one another because they are in it together: “Every time one of us speaks out about our lives, another connection is forged between us, sex industry workers everywhere.”
Roberts addresses a motivation often overlooked in writing about the sex industry: The money. All of the sex-working men and women in The Front Line have come down to London from ‘The North’ leaving behind a certain life of drudgery. Issues of class are notable and discussed angrily in this book. Roberts has scorn for the middle-class women who call her choices immoral: “Why should I have to put up with a middle-class feminist asking me why I didn’t do anything — scrub toilets, even? Rather than become a stripper?” And the Judges who one day are soliciting sex workers and the next handing down hefty fines and sending those same women back onto the streets to earn the money needed to pay them, their “legal pimps” back. Roberts highlights the hypocrisy of middle-class ‘morality’ and the reality of what lies underneath; “the middle classes are the weirdest,” she says. Roberts’ anger is palpable, and at times weighs down the book, which is understandable given that she was writing at a time when strippers were marginalized even more so than today.
Reading this book, although at times angry and upsetting, one gets a sense of solidarity between the men and women in the sex industry. Roberts and the others often talk of their respect for one another because they are in it together: “Every time one of us speaks out about our lives, another connection is forged between us, sex industry workers everywhere.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review