Chris' Fish Place

What is the worth a person?  It’s all equal you say.  Well, that would be nice, but let’s get real.  Turn on the nightly news, and the only people that ever go missing are white, attractive women from good families.  Okay, sometimes there might be a minority or an older woman.  But the national news seems to be saying that if you are poor, ugly, a minority, male, or above a certain age you do not have to worry about going missing or anything happening to you at all, unless it is winning the lottery.

                Likewise, say that the news does not pay attention to the young black men who die daily in cities, and you, like Philly’s mayor Nutter, will be accused of being insensitive to veterans.

                So I ask again, what is a person worth?

                In part, the question of worth is one that this book raises, or at least how society at large perceives worth.  The lost girls, as they called, are the prostitutes who were found murdered near Fire Island.  Lost has a dual meaning here, lost as in missing as well as lost as in fallen by the wayside of society.  For these girls, by and large, did not have easy lives.  And when they became escorts they became even more unimportant by whatever measures society uses to judge us.

                Sadly, I must admit that the kindle version, at least, makes it very difficult to remember which girl is which.  This is partly due to the use of escort names.  Each girl has at least two, if not more, names.  There is a reference, cheat sheet, in the back of the book, and in a print version it would have been no matter to flick back and forth.  It is somewhat more difficult and annoying in an electronic format.  This problem, therefore, is more of a format book type problem is no reflection on Kolker.

                The focus of the book is on the issues that drove the woman to the lengths they went - in many instances a combination of poverty, drug abuse, and family issues - as well as the effects of the discovery of the bodies.  Kolker shows us not only the family of the victims but also the area in which the bodies are found, looking at the reasons why the area might have made a nice body drop.  This also allows him to work in local politicians.

                In some ways, though Kolker never directly seems to address it, the society that rejection the women in life has embraced them, if only for a time, after their death.  With not only some family and friends using the limelight to tell their story, but various bloggers and even locals, moving in on the story.  It is sad and it is hard, in many of the cases, to see it as little more than a further prostitution of the women (which makes one wonder about the book, I suppose).

                Kolker does speak strongly about prostitution and the effects and dangers of the trade, at the very least, he strongly advocates a re-thinking of the legalization debate and a further in depth look at what occurs on Craigslist and the like.  Still, at times, one does wonder when Kolker starts talking about the bonding the victims’ families go though; it sounds like he sees it as publicity or fake on all the women’s part.  I have to wonder about this judging of how someone else processes their grief.  Yet, Kolker’s criticism of society, news, and the media in general make it a thought provoking read.