Gillmer

Sophia Gillmer
Professor Ileana Silva-Rodriguez
15 December 2015
Afro-Dominicanas Perceived Ideas of Beauty Seen Through Sex Work
People with dark skin in the Dominican Republic never consider themselves to be black.
They might be dark Indio, or light Indio, but never black because being black means a history of
marginalization and mistreatment due to the color of their skin. These racial issues have occurred
ever since the 1600s when men brought Africans to Latin America as part of the slave trade.
While on the market, slave traders forced the African men and women to be stripped naked to
allow potential buyers to judge their health, and their overall ability to work on their plantation.
Slave owners wanted the healthiest, strongest, and most attractive slaves to work on their fields
because investing in good slaves meant a more profitable outcome on their plantation. The darker
slaves faced hasher conditions than the lighter slaves because they were seen as the most
dangerous and the most unintelligent. Unsurprisingly this trend, where darker skinned people
face more discrimination, carried on even after all countries in Latin American abolished slavery
in the 1880s. This has led to forced sterilization of darker women and denial of race forcing the
citizens to forget the past and current racism in the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Many Latin
Americans deny their African ancestry, but still continual stereotypes prevent these women from
getting the jobs they deserve. People with dark skin continue to get jobs in the service sector, or
as house servants. Specifically, in the Dominican Republic women with college educations work
selling things on the street, or in factories because they cannot get well paying jobs due to their
gender and the color of their skin. Women who need to make money fast, and would rather be
their own boss choose to work as sex workers. Sex work, unlike prostitution means women

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chose to sell their body rather than being told what to do by a pimp. While this arrangement
gives women many freedoms, it also brings many dangers. Having sex with a random person is
dangerous because men can take advantage of women, and women can potentially contract
AIDS, or HIV. Despite these challenges, sex tourism has become the dominant source of money
to Dominican Republic, making it difficult for women to get jobs in other areas. The lack of real
jobs means sometimes womens only choice is to continue sex work despite the negative effects
it has on their body and mind. Women think of themselves as sexual objects due to the continual
stereotyping and lack of opportunity that has occurred in the Dominican Republic and Cuba
since the beginning of slavery.
The approach I will use for this teaching module will focus on the stereotypes given to
women starting at the beginning of slavery, and then continue onto how that has led to sex
tourism in the current day. As I stated before, even during slavery men saw women as sexual
objects. Slave owners hired the most trustworthy, attractive, and strong slaves to work for them,
and most men did not use African women as plantation workers, but rather used them for sexual
and domestic work (OToole 50). European and North American men come to the Dominican
Republic to search for these women to fulfill their sexual fantasies. Men assume that darker
women have more sexual experience than the women in their own country, so women from the
Dominican Republic capitalize on these stereotypes to make themselves money. I have seen
examples of this trend in all of the books and documentaries I have found and will use in my
teaching module. What I have come to realize that slightly shocked me is that information about
sex work in the Dominican Republic can be found in more than just research studies. While
talking to a family friend about my topic he mentioned the somewhat recent scandal with the
American radio show host Rush Limbaugh. A CBS article states that Rush Limbaugh was caught

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in the airport with un-prescribed Viagra while coming back from a trip to the Dominican
Republic. Sex tourism still occurs in the Dominican Republic, and it is important for students to
learn how this stereotype has begun, and also how it has affected women throughout the country
historically as well as in the present day.
The organization of this module will be broken into two parts. I want to focus on the
stereotypes of women in the Dominican Republic and Cuba throughout history with information
found in books like Negras and Brazil and a documentary called Dominicanas. I want to use
those sources to show how the stereotype have impacted womens lives as sex workers and
created an area known for its sex tourism. I found much of the information for my second part in
the two books Whats Love Got to Do with it? and Economies of Desire, as well as with bits and
pieces of documentaries that I found throughout my research. These books feature many
interviews with women and men who tell how sex tourism has affected their lives, for better or
for worse. What many people do not recognize, or at least what sex tourists do not recognize, is
that sex tourism has furthered the racial discrimination and Eurocentric desire throughout the
country. As I previously mentioned, black people in the Dominican Republic deny their African
ancestry because throughout the country people strive to be more European. Being black in the
Caribbean means an unescapable life working in jobs of servitude with less opportunities due to
a history of marginalization. When Europeans come into the country with money and success,
many Afro-Latinas hope to use those men to gain similar success and wealth. Women deny their
blackness by changing their hair and act more sexual in their jobs in order to attract the men that
can help them gain money and support, and also to feel beautiful and worthy of something more
than what they believe black people are worthy of.

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In the first section of the workshop I want to focus more on the historical aspect of how
women of African decent were stereotyped, and how that has led women to pursue sex work. The
most useful source on the history of Afro-Latina women called Prostitution, Modernity, and the
Making of the Cuban Republic mentions the increase of colored women as prostitutes after the
abolition of slavery. Despite the high number of white prostitutes in 1847, at the end of the
1880s Cubans blamed the issues created by prostitution on the black population, which showed
racial and class-based anxieties of the Europeans who no longer had complete control (Sippial
88). This book has been the most useful on the history of prostitution because it details Cubas
struggle with race and prostitution from 1840 until 1920. The book mentions how the Ten Years
War spurred an increase in prostitution, and the book has the first real documentation of
prostitutes in the area by police officials. Like today, the sex work, or prostitution as seen in
Cuba between 1840 and 1920, can be directly related to the amount of jobs available to women
in the area. In Cuba when men took womens jobs on tobacco fields, as domestic servants, or as
tailors; women sought prostitution as a means to support themselves in place of these traditional
jobs. Starting as early as 1840, women were vulnerable to the oppression of sex work and
prostitution because men have always been able to take their jobs. This book also mentions that
despite the high percentage of white women working as prostitutes before the abolition of
slavery, after the abolition of slavery, black women have been the ones to blame to for crimes
related to prostitution. Black women have always been the ones to blame due to the racial bias
and the lack of opportunities. This book was helpful in giving me bits and pieces about how race
influenced prostitution in the area. The only slight issue I found with this book is that it focuses a
lot on the health factors of prostitution which I am not too interested in. Although, with the

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organization of the index, I found useful information quickly, which allowed me to skip parts of
the book I did not find as relevant to my topic.
Negras in Brazil complements the previous book nicely because while the last book
focuses more on the exact historical moments that give us an idea of how others treated black
women, Negras in Brazil includes interviews from women with historical context to show how
the discrimination and marginalization against them has led to the development of their
consciousness about gender, race, and their overall self worth. Hair specifically has led to
stereotypes and discrimination against black women. This book has many examples from
interviews and popular culture emphasizing the negative impacts on self worth that black women
experience because of the history and challenges that go along with that style of hair. Style
magazines feature women with straight hair and stylish clothes, but men still travel to the
Dominican Republic to find exotic women who base their style off of Eurocentric beauty. But
an important part of the book that lead me to pursue this topic discusses how men view mulata
women as sexual objects. While Afro-Latina women try to emulate western beauty, men enjoy to
fantasize over women who are different than the women in their country. A subsection of the
book titled Ambiguous Representations of Mulata Subjectivity emphasizes the sexual and
provocative idealizations that men have had about mulata women since the colonial period
(Caldwell 58). This idea struck my interest after my initial research implicated that sexual
fantasies men have about Dominican women must have begun when slave masters started having
sex with their slaves. Having access to something foreign must have made African women seem
more desirable than the slave masters wives. The mens intrigue of foreign women led to
continuous hyper-sexualization of mulata women which can be seen today through through the
demographics of sex work. Men come from all over the world to live out their fantasies with

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exotic Afro-Latina women. Luckily for women, despite the issues with understanding self
beauty, now they can capitalize off of this stereotype. In a town in the Dominican Republic
where tourists have taken over, and the only jobs available to black men and women are the few
lower class jobs in servitude, many single mothers and other struggling women straighten their
hair and wear stylish clothes to use sex work as a way to become more successful in their
community.
Sex work in the Dominican Republic has been an expected and accepted occurrence due
to the stereotypes that I mentioned previously in the module. The situation Afro-Latina women
have been subjected to which forced them into sex work, and the continual stereotyping of
mulata women by men in other countries throughout the world has lead to the increased desire in
sex tourism and ultimately sex work in the Dominican Republic. Sex work in the Dominican
Republic, unlike prostitution, means that women chose to sell their body, rather than working for
a pimp or as a slave. These circumstances sound dismissing because it seems as though women
can choose to make decisions for themselves and their body. But therein lies the issue. The first
issue being that most women employed as sex workers would prefer to have another job, but
because of the difficult economy and discrimination against black women, many women cannot
find jobs they are qualified for, especially that make them the same amount of money that sex
work does. The second issue is that the police take advantage of women by arresting them,
raping them, or making them pay money. Most women throughout the resources I will include in
this workshop have experienced police cruelty in one way or another. Women who do not
participate in sex work even get in trouble by the police if they came from the club wearing a
tight skirt. Sex work, while it should allow women to have the freedom to do what they want

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with their bodies, has still turned into a stigmatized job that make it difficult for women to
support their family without being harassed or taken advantage of.
Whats Love Got to Do with it? will be the primary source that will be focused on the
most in this teaching module because it gave me a lot of insight as to why women took these jobs
in the first place. This book studies sex work in Sosa, a town on the coast of the Dominican
Republic. The author, Denise Brennan, interviews women to learn about their lives as sex
workers in an area famous for its sex tourism. Brennan makes it clear that unlike prostitutes who
are forced into this job, women in sex work choose to sell their body. These women came to
Sosa to find a good paying job, and if lucky, to find a husband to take them to a new country
and help their family. This source, like many primary sources, does a good job of interviewing
different people throughout Sosa to see how sex work effects them. Brennan interviews a
diverse group of women throughout Sosa to show the many effects that sex work can have on
everyone involved. For example, a women named Rita left her family to be a sex worker in
Sosa to pay her daughters medical bills. She told her family she was going to work as a
bartender in the hotel, but instead she opted for sex work knowing she could make the most
amount of money in the fastest amount of time. She claimed to have more respect for herself
than most women because she would not go out with just any man. She felt differently than
many women in that she would not work during the day, and instead only worked at night for
men who would agree to her standards. Ritas situation differs from many other women in the
sex work business because she has a more unique economic situation. Her husband still has
money at home, but they need extra money her husband cannot provide. Brennan focuses on
single mothers too who simply do not have another means of income and need sex work to make
money. Brennan does a good job of making the reader sympathize with these workers and see

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that sex work is not just prostitution, but rather a means of survival. Some downfalls in this book
would be the lack of historical context. Women have been marginalized since slavery, and this
book does not do the history of the Dominican Republic justice. This book also lacks an
emphasis on womens self esteem. She interviews women who claim many women do not value
their bodies, but these women do mention the fact.
This book does a fantastic job of showing how women feel about these jobs. Unlike what
some people might think, many of these women use sex work to support their family rather than
just to make money to support themselves. Whats Love Got to Do with it? even goes on to
mention the difficulties for women to support themselves without the help of men. What really
shocked me is that while women try to be independent as a sex worker, they still rely on the man
for money. Without the man, there would be very few people who require their services, and
most women would go back to their non-independent lives of servitude and housekeeping which
is not necessarily as bad as sex work. This book, Economies of Desire, focuses very much on the
economic side of sex work, and the reason men, and specifically women will choose these jobs
over other jobs. Men find women who they can form a relationship with while they are on
vacation. The men will then buy them dinner and nice jewelry. After the men go home, the
women hope that their relationship will persist, and that they will continue receiving financial
support. Economies of Desire emphasizes this point as well as gives examples of times which a
tourist and a sex worker have had an economically beneficial relationship without having sex.
While these men help the women who cannot provide for their family, the sex workers
continually give into the anti-female stereotype that women need men for success. To me, this
seems like an unfair way to describe the situation in which women try to advance themselves

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without the help of another man, but while many women work on their own without the help of a
husband or partner, women still rely on the sex tourists for their money.
Economies of Desire by Cabezas will be useful in this module because it emphasizes the
fact that the Dominican Republic has been negatively influenced by international tourists and
because of this, sex work has become more popular than ever. Both men and women native to
the area cannot find well paying jobs, and instead they work for the tourists themselves in order
to make money for their families. Women and men who work in these jobs are normally people
of African descent because they have always been forced to work in the service sector.
Unfortunately, once tourism started to rise they either worked in jobs hidden away from the
tourists, or racially sexualized for tourist entertainment. This book continues to go in depth about
how the racial segregation has influenced sex tourism and desire in the Dominican Republic. The
first book I discussed called Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic
further proves the point of Cabezas work because it talks about how in Cuba, when an influx of
people came to find good paying jobs, the officials worried about the increase in crime. Women
have come to the Dominican Republic because they hear they can make it big as a sex worker,
but the tourists have taken over much of the city creating a stricter police force to prevent
possible crime. Unfortunately, instead of protecting its citizens, police discriminated against the
locals, and overprotected the tourists. Most women in sex work benefit from the changing
economy, but many families and locals have entered worse financial situations due to the
changes, and many families have tried to evade the police discrimination against people of
African decent.
An interesting documentary I watched on HBO called Santo Domingo: Sexo Urbano
shows a different side to how most women feel in sex work. The women in this documentary talk

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about how much they love their jobs and how they always have a great time partying and having
sex on the weekends. This documentary bothered me though, because while some sex workers
may enjoy three ways (like many women in the documentary claimed), I am certain, because of
the amount of research I have done, most sex workers do not brag about how much they love
their jobs. From what I have learned, the continual psychological pressure that goes along with
being a sex worker and having multiple short term boyfriends can be more harmful than this
documentary makes it seem. This movie seemed more like propaganda to me rather than an
accurate representation of the women who live in the Dominican Republic. They seem to use this
video to further stereotypes of women of color and most likely convince tourists that the
Dominican Republic is full of great parties and sex. The movie forgets to document the reasons
these women became sex workers in the first place, and if in fact these specific women did not
have any hardships before their job, the producers of this video have forgotten to include a wide
range of women who came to this job for a different reason. All and all, this video exemplifies
the stereotypes that women in the Dominican Republic have been trying to avoid, and glamorizes
sex tourism and sex work.
This being said, other documentaries were useful to me. Specifically, the documentary
called Dominicanas. I realize I have mentioned this movie multiple times before, and while the
majority of the movie does not focus much on the sex work in the Dominican Republic, the
movie emphasizes the discrimination against women who live there, and how women are given
very little opportunities and therefore are expected to conform to the stereotypes given to women
in the country. The beginning of the movie focuses the most on sex tourism with interviews of
women and men working in the business. The men seem to not mind having short relationships
to earn money to take their Dominican girls out to dance, but women on the other hand

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continually stress their dislike in sex work. They tell stories about abuse in their families and on
the streets, and the danger of sexually transmitted diseases. The documentary also emphasizes
the racial and sexual way Afro-Latin men discriminate against their women. One man
specifically said he preferred tourists to Dominican women. He clarified it was because they paid
him money, but one women standing near him was offended, as she should be, because black
men in the Dominican Republic have the capability of degrading their own women. With these
new standards, women not only experience tourist discrimination, but also discrimination from
their family and friends. Not to mention women have to live up to the standards that the tourists
set in order to get hired. They have been discriminated against for so long not only by tourists
but also Dominican men. It makes it hard for Afro-Latina women to overcome the sexist
stereotypes. Women explain how they work in these jobs because they have no other way to
support themselves, but the psychological problems that go along with their work seem to
sometimes be more damaging than the sex work itself. The video later goes on to point out that
women all throughout the Dominican Republic are discriminated against, not just the sex
workers. The movie shows the struggle for highly educated women with degrees in economics to
get jobs. Some women in jobs unrelated to sex work even experience sexual harassment by their
superiors. The psychological pressure these situations place on these women show the damaging
effects that the society has on women in the Dominican Republic.
Sex work allows for many women in the Dominican Republic and Cuba to make a living
when they have no one else to help them. Ever since slavery women of color have been seen as
sexual objects, or service workers. People on the street ask women of color if they need a job as
their house maid, even though they are intelligent women who already have well paying jobs.
Women have never been able to leave this stereotype. Women continue to work for other men in

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jobs that they do not enjoy because tourists have taken their jobs and not trusted them. This has
negatively effected the way Afro-Latina women view themselves because they will never be
deemed worthy enough to have jobs. They will also always strive to whiten their family so they
can get out of the poverty and have better, more influential, and well paying jobs. Changing their
style of hair, or marrying a white man will give their kids a better life, and more opportunities.
Sex work has given these women the opportunity to give themselves and their family a better
life, but women have not always been successful in their new transnational marriages, or their
original relationship with a Dominican man.
Sex work has been attributed to women throughout the past four hundred years, and
families have a hard time escaping their fate, because for many families it is their only option.
Girls see other women on the street, and expect to live a similar life, and police will harass
innocent women because they could potentially be prostitutes. This reoccurring theme has ruined
the meaning of beauty for Afro-Latina women, and has forced many women to conform to the
Eurocentric ideas of beauty in order to succeed in life. People hope to leave their African roots,
and while doing that they lose a part of their culture and potentially become unhappier. This
trend can be a result of pre-slavery ideals of black men and women, and how Europeans coped
with a changing environment.
List of Further Readings:
Whats Love Got to Do with It?- Brennan Denise
Economies of Desire- Amalia L. Cabezas
Sirena Selena- Mayra SantosFebres
Negras in Brazil- Kia Lilly Caldwell
Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic: 1840-1920- Tiffany A. Sippial

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Works Cited
Brennan, Denise. What's Love Got to Do with It? : Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the
Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print. Latin America Otherwise.
Cabezas, Amalia L. Economies of Desire : Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican
Republic. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2009. Print.
Caldwell, Kia Lilly. Negras in Brazil : Re-envisioning Black Women, Citizenship, and the
Politics of Identity. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 2007. Print.
Mirrors of the Heart. YouTube. WGBH Educational Foundation, 1993. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
Murphy, Jarrett. "Rush Limbaugh Detained With Viagra." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 27 June
2006. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
O'Toole, Rachel Sarah. Bound Lives : Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in
Colonial Peru. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 2012. Print. Pitt Latin American Ser.
Santo Domingo/Rep. Dominicana. Prod. Cuatro Cabezas. HBO GO. HBO Latin America, 27
Feb. 2006. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.
Sarmiento Garcia, Carmen., Zumarraga, Cristina, Nolla, Jos, Video Spot, Televisin Espaola,
and Films for the Humanities. Dominicanas. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities &
Sciences, 1995. Print. Women of Latin America.
Sippial, Tiffany A. Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic: 1840-1920.
Chapel Hill: U of Carolina, 2013. Print.

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