Prostitutes. They're everywhere. No matter what time of day, they've got a job to do. On my way to the gym at 2 in the afternoon, they line certain sidewalks, and on my way home at 4pm they're chatting with well-dressed businessmen. And it's always the well-dressed, normal-looking joes, with kids and a wife at home too.
France is the country of equality, fraternity, and liberty and that includes the oldest-profession known to man. The way its regulation works is, prostitutes are not fined, but their customers are. Which seems incredibly backward to me, but whatever. It's so weird, especially because, as far as I can tell and from what most French people have told me, none of the 'pros' are French. They're all immigrants. So then, decriminalized prostitution just seems like a way of encouraging (or rather, not discouraging) racial/economic job profiling. No self respecting French woman (or transvestite, as it sometimes is) is going to do it, so that leaves the vacuum wide open (no pun intended) for newly arrived, impoverished, accented immigrant women.
As my first year English students would probably say -- I am not agree!!
End rant.
