AMERICAN PIMP
A CONTROVERSIAL ESSAY BY ROBERT PAUL REYES
ABOUT ROBERT PAUL REYES
I am the most popular online columnist with over 1,000 Web sites providing a link to my column. I write an opinion column for the Internet edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
ABOUT THIS ESSAY
I almost never explain my essays. However I will make an exception this time. This essay is not a glorification of pimps. This essay is not a defense of prostitution.
I see an America at war with itself. I see male and female at odds with each other. The icon of the 21st century is not the Cowboy, but the Pimp. That's just the way it is.
AMERICAN PIMP
I saw a documentary about pimps this weekend.
"Priests need nuns," explains C-Note, one of the pimps profiled in the film. "Doctors need nurses. So ho's need pimps."
C-Note's minimalist philosophy is very alluring. Why tip-toe in the minefield that is the war between the sexes? Why not just declare, "I'm a warrior and ain't no bitch gonna tell me what to do?"
"If a ho don't have instruction," says Charm, a prosperous, golf-playing Hawaii pimp, She's gonna be headed for self-destruction." In Charm's simplistic world he is the Mack-Daddy and his ho's are his wild and stupid children who need instruction. Charm sometimes dispenses instruction to his ho's from the heel of his boot.
The pimp is a quintessentially American archetype. Every American boy dreams of becoming an astronaut or a cowboy, but as he grows older and more cynical he wants to be only one thing -- a pimp.
Mother, your son doesn't want to be a Ricky Martin or a Backstreet Boy; he yearns to be a Kid Rock or a Jay-Z.
The pimps in this documentary are strange, vulgar, bad looking men who couldn't pick up a professional lady in a bar or a nightclub. But the ho's in their stables have their unquestioned loyalty and respect and every man's inner child wants to be a bad-ass pimp.
Why is misogyny so rampant in America? Why does almost every man secretly admire and respect pimps? What is the fascination of pimping? Is it the cash and cars? The jewelry and alligator shoes?
The appeal of pimping to the emasculated American male, is the Darwinian power structure. Men are stronger and more ruthless than women, therefore they exert total power over the weaker sex. To quote a pimp from the documentary named Payroll, "a hooker is a funky, once-a-month-bleeding, dirty-down bitch."
America is a land of extremes. A man either treats a woman like a whore or he spoils her like a princess.
If someone from the Gallup Poll calls to ask me my opinion of pimps, I would indignantly reply that pimps are low-life despicable scum. But I know that even within my politically correct heart, I am not immune to the loathsome lure of the pimp.
© 2000 Robert Paul Reyes
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