Post #2 Hustlers
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Marieme Jiddou on
Marieme Jiddou on It was interesting to see from the very first sentence of the article how the author made her informants’ dreams and visions clear to us. She doesn’t start the article with “this is the story of women who work in the sex/entertainment industry who stole money.” She starts it out by giving us the informants’ vision of herself, that Roselyn is smart enough to have worked in wall street. This sets the tone for the rest of the article. Roselyn and the other women in the story constantly try to separate their identity from strippers and prostitutes, and I believe this why they’re known as “hustlers”.
These women have created a strong cultural belief between them that the men they deal with are horrible and deserve what they get. It makes their job easier and consciousness clearer. This belief became more like a rule to them. When we see Roselyn feel for the man with an autistic son, Samantha reminds her of the shared belief they have, that all men are terrible. I believe this shared belief was just a way to numb their mind from the fact that they are not any better than the men who they are drugging and stealing from.
The author did an amazing job of trying to build a background story to create sympathy and understanding for these women, especially for Roselyn. The way the author told Roselyn’s story makes it seem like she was destined to end up the way she did, which I don’t think is true. Roselyn didn’t have a good family, no one believed in her and she fell in with the wrong people. Roselyn and the author use these circumstances always after she’s done something she’s not proud of, which makes it seem like they’re trying to justify her actions through her early childhood.
The author describes the girls’ physical features in an innocent way to create a shock factor when we hear the terrible things they’ve done. But we keep hearing this language that the hustlers use like “I have dignity”, “I’m not a stripper”, which makes me as a reader feel for them and distracts me from the truth. The girls created this community of strong women but we can actually see that it’s not as strong as they make themselves seem. Roselyn had compared her and Samantha’s relationship to Kobie and Shaq’s, but the author constantly brings to our attention how Roselyn always sees herself as stronger, with a better vision for the future than Samantha.
This description and use of details the author implements shows us the insider point of view of these girls. At the time the story was revealed the world saw these women as strong, manipulative, and united, however, the author gives us these small details to show us the fear, division, and emotional distress they were all feeling.
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