Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women
By:
Alexa Albert
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Description:
When Harvard medical student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study as the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in the union where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the brothel could have predicted the end result. Having worked with homeless prostitutes in Times Square, Albert was intimate with human devastation cause by the sex trade, and curious to see if Nevada’s brothels offered a less harmful model for a business that will always be with us. The Mustang Ranch has never before given an outsider such access, but fear of AIDS was hurting the business, and the Ranch was eager to get publicity for its rigorous standards of sexual hygiene. Albert was drawn into the lives of the women of the Mustang Ranch, and what began as a public-health project evolved into something more intimate and ambitious, a six-year study of the brothel ecosystem, its lessons and significance.
The women of the Mustang Ranch poured their stories out to Albert: how they came to be there, their surprisingly deep sense of craft and vocation, how they reconciled their profession with life on the outside. Dr. Albert went as far into this world as it is possible to go — some will say too far — including sitting in on sessions with customers, and the result is a book that puts an unforgettable face on America’s maligned and caricatured subculture.
Description:
A journey into a fascinating subculture, Alexa Albert's exploration of Nevada's infamous cathouses began as a public-health study into the safe-sex practices of these legal working girls and the effectiveness of condom requirements in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. It took her three years to gain access to the brothels, and when her project was eventually approved by the head of the Nevada Brothel Association, she was surprised to be invited to stay at Mustang Ranch, among the women of the brothel, for the duration of her research. She learned that despite the legalization of prostitution in several counties of Nevada, the working girls still faced restrictive local ordinances and work regulations that kept them virtual prisoners inside the brothel compound. Outside, they encountered the same social stigma that has always haunted sex workers. In her compassionate, engaging first book, Albert answers all the questions you might ever have about prostitutes, providing a rich and nuanced depiction of a largely hidden world. --Regina Marler
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 2001-05-08
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Purchased for an anthropology course. - I read this book as part of a class assignment. I have long believed that criminalizing prostitution does more harm than good. The book vindicated my views - the author cites several studies which demonstrate that prostitutes in legal brothels work under much safer conditions than prostitutes who work illegally. However, I also learned that the current system of regulated prostitution in Nevada is far from adequate and has much room for improvement - for example, living off the income of a prostitute is illegal. This law was designed to prevent pimping, but it was written under the assumption that sex workers only support themselves with their income - so a person's spouse and child(ren) are automatically made criminals under this law. Another law requires weekly testing of a "cervical specimen" for a prostitute to work legally, which means that anyone without a cervix is effectively prohibited from working as a prostitute (which includes not only trans women and cis men, but also any cis woman who's undergone a total hysterectomy.)
Overall, this was a very well-written, eye-opening ethnography. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about legalized prostitution, although the reader should keep in mind that it was written in the 90s and that much has probably changed since then.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Very quick and interesting read... - Alexa Albert was able to peek into a life that most of us will probably never get close to, aside from having our noses pressed up against car windows. Wanting to run a public health study on the condom use in Nevada Brothels, she was invited into Mustang Ranch, which I might add, was once closed down, but is now open again today. Women are not normally invited inside this world, unless they are going to work there, but this researcher was able to spend months living there, and was able to get the ins and outs of how they did things. What started out to be a research project on condom use, ended up being much more than she had ever expected. She befriended many of the women, was able to see more than she bargained for when she was invited into a couple of "dates," (not to join, only to watch) and shattered some well known myths about the prostitution industry.
Though there may have been a few graphic scenes, (one of which includes S & M and toys) Albert mostly discusses the women and where they come from, their lives away from the brothel, what brought them there, and the camaraderie (and sometimes disagreements and fights) with the other women. Though some women were wary to open up to the author at first, most of them were able to eventually trust her as a true friend. The women discussed that they weren't just there to give the men sex, but also companionship, and surprisingly, a lot of these women said that they would enter a "helping profession," if they were not able to work at the brothel anymore. In a way it makes sense, they see their jobs as "therapy," and they felt that they really helped those men through some tough times. The author writes about these women as real people, women to be respected, those that are only trying to take care of their families at home.
Even if you don't agree with their career of choice, maybe after reading it, you will (as I did) see these women in a different light, and not just as some others may see them, as a woman with no face, or as a sexual object, whose only job is to pleasure a man.
Highly recommended!
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
An MD Studies Safe Sex Practices and Legal Prostitution - Let the reader of this review be aware that the reason I wrote it is because it was written by a former local Boston author that was also a neighbor of mine for a while and we share a lot of friends and acquaintances. I like my readers to know if I have a personal bias about a book I'm reviewing. It doesn't usually affect my reviews other than influencing me to do review the book in the first place.
While the young medical student and researcher who was doing a study on safe sex practices at one of Nevada's legal brothels (called ranches) she realized there was enough interest in this subject that she should also write a book about her experiences while doing the research project at the Harvard University School of Public Health. This ranch was later seized by the IRS for non-payment of taxes by the owners and at one time was going to be turned into a museum and park for the namesake wild horses that inhabit the area. It's since been literally moved to another location.
Alexa Albert spent three years trying to get permission to do her study on the use of condoms at The Mustang Ranch. She was finally given permission since she was an accredited medical expert on the subject from Harvard School of Public Health. Since the state regulators and the ranch managers insist that only sex with a condom is allowed, they already knew what the medical research study would confirm and weren't worried about any additional adverse publicity that would have the public up in arms to shut down Nevada's legal brothels. The author was most surprised at the reaction her study produced from the 100 plus working prostitutes at the ranch. They were dying to tell their stories. They individually confirmed that they never, ever practiced unsafe sex at the brothel. They knew such an action would not only endanger their lives, but would also get them fired from a job that annually paid many of them more than the President of the United States gets in a year. The women at Mustang were neither poor nor unwilling to be sex workers and were drop-dead beautiful. Most of them were supporting other family members.
The author had previously worked with and studied street prostitutes in NYC and found that they better fit the stereotypical mold of battered women, druggies, and were often working against their will. While they preferred practicing safe sex, their customers didn't want to cooperate and even their own pimps would not provide them with condoms even though they could be gotten from medical authorities at no cost. Many of those pimps and boy friends used drugs and violence to control their posse of "whores."
Albert discovered the difference in the unregulated and licensed brothels was like night and day. The experience convinced her that regulating prostitution was by far the best for the prostitutes, their customers and society in general.
The book is full of interviews and personal stories and even a few unbelievable sex practices which probably weren't necessary to fulfill the book's main purpose but that make it infinitely more interesting to read. Some things are just plain hard to believe and are weird enough to be included in the "Guinness Book of World Records."
The reader of this tome won't be bored, but will learn much that they didn't expect when they started reading about the almost legendary Mustang Ranch that is only miles from Virginia City fabulous "Comstock Silver Mnes" and the world Mark Twain wrote about as a young news reporter. Brothels and prostitution have always been an institution in Nevada, The Silver State.
Albert also wrote a brief forward for "Brothels of Nevada: Candid Views of America's Legal Sex Industry." This book of fine art photography will provide the curious reader with a good look at the inside of the Mustang Ranch as well of most of Nevada's other Legal Brothels. The reader won't find any pictures of the girls themselves in that architectural study by award winning photographer Timothy Hursley. The book is published by the Princeton Architectural Press, which should provide a good clue as to the subject matter. (See my review).
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Classic in Sociology/Ethnography - I'm a sucker for books that take me into a subculture I know nothing about and have no intention of visiting, and this exploration of legalized prostitution in Nevada certainly fits the bill. The author originally approached the Nevada Brothel Association in the early 1990s with the aim of conducting surveys of prostitutes as part of a public health study looking at condom use and efficacy in preventing STDs. However, when she finally did gain access, it turned into a larger anthropological study of Nevada brothel life, focusing on the largest and most well-known of these, the Mustang Ranch.
The author was a live-in guest there off and on, from 1993 until the brothel's closure in 1999, and the portrait she emerged with is an invaluable one for anyone seeking to understand prostitution as a legal, moral, political, and personal issue. She conducted formal and informal interviews with dozens of the women working there, the staff, and others on the outside involved in pro or anti-brothel lobbying, all the while struggling with her own assumptions and attitudes. The only thing more impressive than her fieldwork is her keen synthesis of everything she heard into a compelling straightforward account that is both fair-minded and likely to challenge most reader's assumptions.
The range of topics covered is vast, including: brothel pricing and business strategies, internal cliques and feuds among the prostitutes, attitudes of customers, attitudes toward customers, feelings of kinship among prostitute, the debate among prostitutes as to whether or not "enjoying" their work is acceptable, online "customer" forums, and much more. Perhaps the most surprising (and depressing) aspect to me was the extent to which many of the women interviewed were emotionally blackmailed or coerced into prostitution by family members (usually husbands, but at least one mother and one mother-in-law were mentioned). Indeed, the extent to which informal pimps exist in legalized prostitution is rather a shock. Throughout it all, she presents what she is told in clear, concise, and compassionate prose that raise the veil on a shadowy world and will likely challenge many readers assumptions.
Note: Academy Award winners Joe Pesci and Helen Mirren are starring in Academy Award winning director Taylor Hackford's (Ray) 2009 film, "Love Ranch," which is about the rise and fall of the Mustang Ranch.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
An Author Changes Her Position on Prostitution - Overall, this is an easy read, nothing too filthy, nothing too disturbing, and most definitely a window into a world most of us know nothing of. But make no mistake, this is very adult content.
I found the narrative simple and straightforward, basically a story following the Mustang Ranch until its demise in the summer of 1999.
Author Albert approaches the Mustang Ranch and its women, and her initial research project from a solidly anti-prostitution perspective, viewing it--without the benefit of truly knowing the subject--clearly as the manipulation, subjugation, and entrapment of vulnerable women. But quite interestingly, by the end of the book, having seen the business and its commodity up close and personal, she has had what appears to me to be an almost total change of heart, now seeing prostitution, at least in the context of a legally constituted and regulated industry, as an empowering profession lived by real people who more or less choose their involvement within it.
So, this is not necessarily an objective study on legalized prostitution. For a woman with the kind of medical and research credentials which author Albert professes to have, the book is remarkably devoid of research language, descriptions of her research methodologies, her trials, observations, etc. The book is virtually sanitized of just about any trace of her research, its methods, and its outcome. The entire reason for her to be at Mustang in the first place was for her to conduct research, but that issue and story is quickly left behind for the clearly far more interesting and compelling story of the Mustang Ranch, its ladies, and the business.
If you're looking for graphic descriptions of sexual encounters, this book will not deliver. There are a couple of passages in which she describes sexual acts and encounters, but the descriptions are not titillating. Thankfully, she also dispenses with any kind of medical or clinical descriptions of the acts as well. Yes, the f-word does creep in a couple of times, and there are some passages containing graphic language, although these are usually not from the author, but her quotations of her brothel-mates.
No, author Albert does not become one of the girls, although she is accepted as one by the ladies of the ranch. I was very much reminded of Patpong Sisters: An American Woman's View of the Bangkok Sex World, which I think would be a great companion-read to this book.
As a male reader, it was very refreshing to read the passage in which Albert actually buys a set of hooker lingerie to bring home as a gift to her husband. Now that's education in action.
More than anything in this book, I was heartened to see this story of an author with an established set of beliefs who set out to confirm them, only to have them changed almost completely, all because she kept an open mind and listened to her subjects.
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