The Legality of Dancing as a Profession in Sonia Faleiro's "Beautiful Things"

Abstract

Sonia Faleiro introduces through her non-fictional quasi-anthropological-cum literary writing on Bar Dancers to world of this profession. It portrays intense involvement of love, sex, violence, of customers and gangsters, of police, prostitutes and pimps. All these personalities are in some or the other way involved in this profession though the difference is someone spends money for pleasure and some earn money for their livelihood. What is it that forces these adolescent girls to become bar dancers? Is it poverty, illiteracy, or independence? Is the morality of bar dancing judged objectively, using the same criteria that are applied to other professions too? Or is it simply immoral and highly unethical. It is rather a big question in itself to be asked and judged about. This paper raises these issues in the light of this legal enactment and literary writing on this issue.