[Ads-l] "prostitute/whore with a heart of gold" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[victor steinbok]

Chorus girls... choir boys...

There are many uses uses of "with a heart of gold" that contrast it with
other, more obvious personality traits or rough "professions". Bruiser,
tough guy, drunkard, etc. The contrast wasn't only for women and not only
for prostitutes. That seems to just one of the tropes going back at least
150 years (e.g., Bret Harte characters). But there were actually several.
IMO "chorus girl" isn't meant to be a whore (or, to go in another
direction, a slut). Rough, poor, sexualised, disrepected, marginal status
-- yes. Whores? Only some.

VS-)

On 2:23pm, Tue, Apr 28, 2015 Mullins, Bill CIV (US) <
william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil> wrote:


 Upon reflection, "euphemism" isn't quite the word I was looking for.  For e

xample, there was a polite fiction that Miss Kitty of Gunsmoke was a saloon

 keeper/hostess.  But the role she occupied was obviously that of a madam (

who had a heart of gold . . .).  Clearly, the developers and writers of the=
 show needed that character for dramatic purposes, but couldn't explicitly

call her a "whore", so she was therefore a saloon keeper.

 That's what I'm trying to get at with respect to chorus girls/prostitutes.

 Were the dramatic roles they occupied in the 1920s/1930s really that of pr

ostitutes, but everyone turned a blind eye to the fact and called them chor

us girls, to avoid censorship issues?

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