When we think of trafficking, we usually think of it as happening some-where-else, usually poor and desperate, and not in ‘enlightened’ Western countries. But that would be wrong: women and girls are traded everywhere. This forceful piece by Rachel Lloyd written for Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the US, highlights mainstream corporate support for the normalisation of prostitution through the sponsorship of men who romanticise pimping.
Corporate sponsored pimping plays role in US human trafficking
By Rachel Lloyd
January 11, 2010 
Don Magic Juan and Snoop Dogg arrive with his unnamed female companions on dog leashes for the MTV Video Music Awards in 2003. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day and President Obama recently proclaimed January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Yet when we think about trafficking, we think about it happening to children from Asia, women from the Ukraine, domestic servants brought in from Africa and Central America. All of these examples are real.
But rarely we do associate trafficking and slavery with the girls and young women that we see on HBO specials like ‘Hookers on the Point’, girls sold for sex on the streets, on Craigslist ads, girls on the pole in strip-clubs. The primary face of trafficking in this country looks like an adolescent girl of color trafficked for sex, sold by adult men to adult men.
See also :Women and popular culture: The pimp chic debate
Now in its second printing!
