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Book Review
| Kate Holden, In My Skin: A Memoir, Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, 2005. pp. 285. $32.00 paper.
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| Since it was first released in September 2005, In My Skin has been hugely successful and is about to be published in the UK, USA, Czech Republic, Germany and Turkey. We might attribute this success simply to its subject matter: Kate Holden's memoir records the heroin addiction of a nice middle-class young woman with a loving family and an Arts degree from Melbourne University. It traces her resort to prostitution as a way to finance her habit and her eventual recovery from addiction and exit from the sex industry. Its portrait of the seamy side of Melbourne in the 1990s would always have had a certain sensational appeal. |
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But In My Skin is different to the handful of other published memoirs written by sex workers or madams in Australia over the last few decades. For a start, it is very well written, combining acute observation of human frailty with compassion and humour. And, as the advertising blurb says, it is 'searingly honest'. Holden is all too aware of the moral compromises she has made and the pain her behaviour has brought to the people who loved her. It is impossible not to like her and to identify with her struggles and eventual triumph. |
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While I found the book as absorbing as the thousands of other readers drawn to its human story, In My Skin is also a rich source for anyone interested in exploring the sociological dimensions of the contemporary sex industry. Holden brings to her experiences intelligence, acute powers of observation and the critical skills of an Arts graduate. Her text is as reflective as it is evocative. She comments on the way in which workers in the sex industry view themselves, each other and their clients. She is acutely perceptive about the strategies workers employ to cope with the demands of their work and manage the contradictions most experience between their working and private lives. She analyses both the worker/client relationship and employment relationships in brothels in relation to the broader legal and political/cultural economy. She challenges many of the popular stereotypes about sex workers and their clients, canvassing the range of personalities and motivations and presenting these with complexity and subtlety. What is especially valuable about Holden's account as a primary source is the range of her experience in the sex industry. She has worked in both the high-class brothels and on the streets of St. Kilda and in a range of establishments in between. She is able to observe and comment on the limitations of the legal system as well as the ways in which illegal operators evade the law and exploit the addictions of their workers. |
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Of course, the main danger in this text as a source for historians is also one of the things that make it attractive: it has a seductive appeal for those of us who want to believe in the power of human agency. It is easy to forget that her story is far from typical, that the physical and psychological costs of engaging in sex work were and are often much greater than Holden's experience would suggest, that her triumph over heroin addiction is all too exceptional. But that more typical story would probably not sell so well. |
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| Monash University |
RAELENE FRANCES | |
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