News

By Terry Vanderheyden

LONDON, February 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Body Shop founder Anita Roddick has criticised pop stars such as Britney Spears and Beyoncé for glorifying a “pimp and whore” culture through their sexually suggestive performances and lyrics.

“A lot of people seem to think it’s cool to be a pimp or a whore,” she told London’s Evening Standard. “It’s not cool. The reality is dark and evil and appalling and unregulated.”

Roddick condemned the pop culture icons for portraying prostitution as glamorous. “The reality is sexual trafficking, which is about young women being forced into rooms to have sex however many times a day so the pimp can take all the money,” she said. “I don’t get it.”

Last year a Vatican document condemned prostitution as “a form of modern day slavery.” The document, released during a First International Meeting of Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Women of the Street, said “Sexual exploitation, prostitution and trafficking of human beings are all acts of violence against women” that “constitute an offence to the dignity of women and are a grave violation of basic human rights.”

In June last year the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) decided that US funds allotted for combating AIDS cannot be used “to promote the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking” and also that groups receiving such funds “agree that they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking.”