Frauenzimmer
October 15, 2008 1:55 AM   Subscribe

Brothels in Germany (pics): Photographer Patric Fouad's book, Frauenzimmer, takes a look at the insides of German brothels. (mostly SFW unless you are offended by the occasional sex toy hanging on the wall and blurry porn in the background)
posted by chillmost (60 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite


 
Oh yes.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:49 AM on October 15, 2008


These are pretty great, and the rooms don't have too desperate a feel about them. Which isn't to say some desperate folks might not inhabit them, on both sides of the transaction. Looks like rooms that would be way more fun to have sex in than, say, the local Motel 6.
posted by maxwelton at 2:53 AM on October 15, 2008


Oh yes.

This room looks like the kind of place Bluto would take Olive Oyl, just prior to Popeye's appearing and beating him into seven different kinds of canned military rations.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:18 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Yikes. I don't think I would want to use bedclothes and pillows that looked difficult or expensive to clean and therefore less likely to have been changed before I arrived. Then again, I wouldn't want to have sex with someone who's had far more partners than I've had meals. People who aren't particularly bothered about their sexual partners probably aren't too bothered about whether some strange guy's sweaty ass was writhing on the pillow a few minutes earlier.
posted by pracowity at 3:21 AM on October 15, 2008


Also: either those are some of the *tidiest* prostitutes known to man (and I can imagine that native German prostitutes might be somewhat tidy -- in the same way that the Gestapo kept pretty good records), or that photographer sent a stylist in before he took the photographs.

I mean, how likely is it that *all* of those women would arrange their underwear and sex toys elegantly around the walls of their room for the delectation of their customers? My guess is, not at all likely.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:26 AM on October 15, 2008


This room looks like the kind of place Bluto would take Olive Oyl, just prior to Popeye's appearing and beating him into seven different kinds of canned military rations.

Ahh, but there, Popeye would never appear! And Bluto and Olive would set the night on fire.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:28 AM on October 15, 2008


This room looks like the kind of place Bluto would take Olive Oyl, just prior to Popeye's appearing and beating him into seven different kinds of canned military rations.

You have just, perhaps accidentally, touched on the real divide in America today. It's not blue states vs. red, it's not McCain vs. Obama. It's whether you think of him as Bluto or Brutus.
posted by jbickers at 3:33 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


...either those are some of the *tidiest* prostitutes known to man ... or that photographer sent a stylist in before he took the photographs.

Probably a little of both, actually. But, naturally enough, folks in all walks of life will be prone to tidy up their homes or workplaces before company or clients arrive, or especially a photographer (ok, maybe we can leave, say auto repair shops out...). But very tidy rooms seem to be the norm, for example, in the Amsterdam red light district, at least in those little rooms that have the plate glass display windows, which enable clients to see the very same room where the deed will take place.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:37 AM on October 15, 2008


I'm no internal decorator, but I would have a difficult time maintaining a hard on in any of these rooms.
posted by bystander at 3:38 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Ah yes, internal decorating would probably require that you keep that woody at least long enough to... decorate.


I'm so sorry
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:40 AM on October 15, 2008 [4 favorites]


(still waiting for you to prove me wrong 80s decorating ladies).
posted by bystander at 3:41 AM on October 15, 2008


(still waiting for you to prove me wrong 80s decorating ladies).

You got the Deutsche Marks, big boy?


I know, it's all Euros now, but that's so boring
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:46 AM on October 15, 2008


These are pretty great, and the rooms don't have too desperate a feel about them. Which isn't to say some desperate folks might not inhabit them, on both sides of the transaction. Looks like rooms that would be way more fun to have sex in than, say, the local Motel 6.

The local motel 6 would be paradise compared to the "brothels" that I've seen in the US (except for in Nevada). Which is why I generally eschew purchasing sex in the puritanical throwback USA, where religion-addled busybodies create misery through prohibition of pleasure in every square mile.
posted by telstar at 3:53 AM on October 15, 2008


flapjax, could we exchange it all at midnite by a dark river? *never thinking currency could be sexy*
posted by bystander at 3:55 AM on October 15, 2008


Just a guess, but I think a photograph of a grim looking Sitting Bull staring down at me might be slightly distracting.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:56 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


For serious decorating along these lines; Japanese love hotels<>.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:10 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


In Australia, one of the few countries where prostitution is explicitly legal rather than decriminalized, a visit to the brothel is statistically pretty safe as far as STD's go.

One of the nurses I worked with who went off to do GP stuff went so far as to recommend a trip to a brothel over an attempt at a pickup in a bar if all someone's after is a one night stand as the chances of not waking up with something strange down there in the morning is much greater!
posted by Silentgoldfish at 4:14 AM on October 15, 2008


flapjax, could we exchange it all at midnite by a dark river? *never thinking currency could be sexy*

Oh dear, I was speaking in the voice of one of the German prostitutes... didn't know you'd take it as a come-on!


But... how, um, you know, dark is that river?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:39 AM on October 15, 2008


This must be for anyone who wants to get their goofy on in front of a Disneyland concession stall.
posted by mandal at 4:41 AM on October 15, 2008


I'd be more worried about the nasty Oder.
posted by mandal at 4:44 AM on October 15, 2008


I'd be more worried about the nasty Oder.

You forgot to link that comment.
posted by chillmost at 4:53 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


chillmost, now THAT is best of the web.

Plus those horns in picture 10 could REALLY be dangerous.
posted by sfts2 at 5:00 AM on October 15, 2008


Wo ist der Klopfen-Shop?
posted by Abiezer at 5:01 AM on October 15, 2008


Frauenzimmer vier features a natty office-style suspended ceiling and lighting unit, which is the sort of thing that you will notice too late, at or after brenschluss, the discovering conjouring up in your mind an array of grim connections between your seedy present and your crushingly mundane daytime cube-farm existence. More of that classic German Sense of Humour, obviously.
posted by my face your at 5:39 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Wo ist der Klopfen-Shop?

I don't understand.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 5:42 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


Neat find.

This one is kind of creepy. Are there really people who fantasize about getting it on in their grandmother's bedroom?

[remembering some of the things I've seen on the Internet]

Um, I guess that's not so surprising. Count me out, though.
posted by greenie2600 at 6:11 AM on October 15, 2008


Probably because it was a piss-poor joke that occurred and amused me for no particular reason, Nick Verstayne. Imagining an English tourist attempting to ask where the "knocking shop" was in slang that means nothing in German.
posted by Abiezer at 6:19 AM on October 15, 2008


Abiezer - I'm not sure you got my own piss poor joke then.

Nick Verstayne = Night Verstehen

I hate having to explain that.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 6:24 AM on October 15, 2008


Aargh! "Nicht" not Night ffs.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 6:25 AM on October 15, 2008


Looks like our comedy double-act's a non-starter here, Nick. :(
posted by Abiezer at 6:32 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


I see your name more as Tom Verlaine-alike I think is the problem That and me being a bit thick.
posted by Abiezer at 6:34 AM on October 15, 2008


at least in those little rooms that have the plate glass display windows

We must have been in different parts of Amsterdam. All the ones that I saw had the hookers standing in little 2x2 cubicles, with the actual bedroom hidden from view. I always wondered if it was like those Indian Restaurants on 14th St(?) in the East Village, where the joke is that they all back on to one enormous kitchen that serves the same food to everybody.

Mind you, I didn't stare too long. It seems kinda rude if you aren't buying.

Also: He's obviously Bluto. People who think he's called Brutus are just wrong.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:35 AM on October 15, 2008


Am I the only one who wanted the last photo to be of the hookers, with a "match the woman to the room" game? I really want to know who created some of those spaces.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:05 AM on October 15, 2008


Some of those look like my grandmother's bedroom, which is filling my brain with the opposite of sex.
posted by munchingzombie at 7:28 AM on October 15, 2008


This one is kind of creepy. Are there really people who fantasize about getting it on in their grandmother's bedroom?

Capitalism: Find a niche market, then exploit it.
posted by Catfry at 7:34 AM on October 15, 2008


Yikes. I don't think I would want to use bedclothes and pillows that looked difficult or expensive to clean and therefore less likely to have been changed before I arrived.

Do you know many German people? Cuz I'm willing to bet their room cleaning and sheet-changing schedule is somewhat methodically organized. Alles spic und span!
posted by miss lynnster at 8:29 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: filling my brain with the opposite of sex.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:53 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


Good post, interesting find.

Once I went for a job interview at a gallery in Manhattan, a guy who had previously been a street vendor and worked his way up to selling art to billionaires. His gallery in midtown has all these rooms with different decors and art is brought in from the back storage area and shown to the clients in these different rooms. Art to match the walls kind of thing. The decor of the rooms seemed very much like brothel rooms to me. One with the WASPy duck decoy look, one with French Provincial furniture. It was hilarious and now, seeing these rooms, I wonder if he didn't get his idea from actual brothels.

The idea of decorating for brothel types/sex choices seems really amusing. There must be a brothel roster of typical preferences. huh.
posted by nickyskye at 8:59 AM on October 15, 2008


Some of those look like my grandmother's bedroom, which is filling my brain with the opposite of sex.

I was wondering if Großmutter, was hast du für schöne Gardinen! might be some sort of disturbing gerontophile beef curtains innuendo.
posted by jack_mo at 9:09 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Then again, I wouldn't want to have sex with someone who's had far more partners than I've had meals. People who aren't particularly bothered about their sexual partners probably aren't too bothered about whether some strange guy's sweaty ass was writhing on the pillow a few minutes earlier.

Yeah, promiscuous people are so dirty.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:14 AM on October 15, 2008


promiscuous people are so dirty

I was walking home from a club one night with a young doctor who had recently married a sex worker that he'd met through the job -- he worked in STD's believe it or not.

On the walk home, he said, apropos of nothing, 'My wife was working it out today and she reckons that she's had in excess of 5,000 sexual partners'.

How the hell are you supposed to respond to that? 'Wow, man. What a score? Imagine your dick, nestling where all those other dicks have been. That must be awesome!' or 'Presumably you knew when you married a slapper that she must have fucked a few? What was your previous estimate? 500? 600?'

It's not often I'm lost for words, but this left me completely dumbfounded. And to make it even weirder, he just left it at that. It wasn't a follow-up to something. Just a little something he felt like sharing with an acquaintance on his way to becoming a friend.

Once I went for a job interview at a gallery in Manhattan, a guy who had previously been a street vendor and worked his way up to selling art to billionaires.

He sounds like someone from one of Laurence Block's 'Scudder' novels.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:23 AM on October 15, 2008


Claus Oldenburg's Bedroom Ensemble is the first thing that sprang to mind.
Sheesh!
posted by stagewhisper at 10:59 AM on October 15, 2008


Hmmm.....Let's see....

5,000 partners × average amount of thrusts per copulation session × (2 × average length of human penis × the product of .......

Well, I'm sure there is an interesting question there to be answered in the name of science but I don't really need to know.
posted by chillmost at 11:36 AM on October 15, 2008


gerontophile beef curtains

Wow. Googling that explicit phrase comes up with this page, and only this page, in the entire Internet.

Congratulations, I think you just blew the hive mind.
posted by CynicalKnight at 11:39 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]


Hah! Frankly I'm amazed. Did we just sort of disprove Rule 34?
posted by jack_mo at 12:00 PM on October 15, 2008


CynicalKnight, you are a braver soul than I am.
posted by Space Kitty at 12:01 PM on October 15, 2008


jack_mo, the caption reads: Grandma, what beautiful curtains you have! Only the paper towels on the nightstand hint that body fluids might be exchanged here.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:05 PM on October 15, 2008


Actually, all the captions are kind of snarky, and some of them are definitely striving for the Hose and Garden/Sunset book tone. I have to go to work now but if they're untranslated in eight hours or so, I'll provide some.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:08 PM on October 15, 2008


House. Geez, talk about your Freudian slip.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:09 PM on October 15, 2008


This room looks like the kind of place Bluto would take Olive Oyl, just prior to Popeye's appearing and beating him into seven different kinds of canned military rations.

You have just, perhaps accidentally, touched on the real divide in America today. It's not blue states vs. red, it's not McCain vs. Obama. It's whether you think of him as Bluto or Brutus.


From the wiki: ...while Bluto was often portrayed as a fellow sailor who also sought to win the heart of Olive Oyl, Brutus was portrayed as a generic villain, or bank robber, who showed no romantic interest in Olive. Instead, he usually took her hostage, leaving Popeye to rescue her.

So I suppose it all depends on what you think Bluto/Brutus's motivations are for taking Olive to the fabulously apportioned boudoir.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:32 PM on October 15, 2008


German prostitutes might be somewhat tidy -- in the same way that the Gestapo kept pretty good records

Whoa. What is that? Some kind of Godwin #34?
posted by rokusan at 1:22 PM on October 15, 2008


Wow...I don't think that keeping a bawdy house should be illegal, but decorating one certainly should.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:25 PM on October 15, 2008


My wife was working it out today and she reckons that she's had in excess of 5,000 sexual partners

Sorry man, but it's 5001 as of Wednesday.
posted by phrontist at 3:29 PM on October 15, 2008


He sounds like someone from one of Laurence Block's 'Scudder' novels.

The gallery owner in question is a quintessential New Yorker. Classic rags to riches, he dresses marvelously and is a total gentleman. He was quite open with me about his humble beginnings but I'd prefer to respect his privacy on the web. No doubt many of his customers and people he dines with know all about his rise up the ladder. But looking around on the web for his early history I noticed he's not talking about it. A little hint. He bought a painting for a few hundred bucks 25 or so years ago and last year sold it at auction for about 30 million.

That said, his brothel style art selling rooms in his gallery prompted me to think of him as an art pimp.

I've known 2 people, one male and the other female who each said they had about 5000 sex partners. One man, now dead of AIDS said he had more like 10,000. They were all quite delightful but deeply wounded people in their own way, gregarious and emotionally needy. People with that kind of history -and probably that might be said of many, if not most, hookers too- are typically from abusive/incest perpetrating/molesting families and that kid of sex partner history is a type of acting out.

With that in mind it's kind of strange to see the chocolate box wrapping look of the brothel rooms.
posted by nickyskye at 5:28 PM on October 15, 2008


i_am_joe's_spleen wrote: jack_mo, the caption reads: Grandma, what beautiful curtains you have!

Yeah, hence my earlier curtain-based musings. (Bizarre that I can remember the German for 'curtains' but struggled to introduce myself/order a beer/ask for directions when I was last in Germany. Go GCSE curriculum!)
posted by jack_mo at 5:56 PM on October 15, 2008


How the hell are you supposed to respond to that?

"So you're better than at least 5000 other guys?"

"Does practise make perfect?"

and I can imagine that native German prostitutes might be somewhat tidy -- in the same way that the Gestapo kept pretty good records

Paying for sex is just like exterminating Jews, homosexuals, and left-wingers!
posted by rodgerd at 7:40 PM on October 15, 2008


So I suppose it all depends on what you think Bluto/Brutus's motivations are for taking Olive to the fabulously apportioned boudoir.

I like your thinking here. What you're saying is, if the motivation is is kidnap for ransom, to sell her into sex slavery -- or, as is most likely in one of the miserable King Features shorts -- he has no obvious motivation whatsoever, other than a desire to do bad, then the villain would be Brutus.

However, if the motivation is to impress Ms. Oyl with his fabulous apartment in the hope that Olive would figure him for some kind of metrosexual or possibly even a closet case, planting the seed that -- given this is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord -- she could save both his life and his immortal soul via the ancient Chinese conversion cure, Hot Pune Tang, then that dastardly protagonist would quite obviously be Popeye's romantic competitor, Bluto.

and I can imagine that native German prostitutes might be somewhat tidy -- in the same way that the Gestapo kept pretty good records

Paying for sex is just like exterminating Jews, homosexuals, and left-wingers!


In non-Soviet East Germany, prostitute pays YOU?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:00 AM on October 16, 2008


Mod note: removed some outfreakage - metatalk is a good place to try that if you need to.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:56 AM on October 21, 2008


You are the word coinage queen, Jess... I mean, shruggo just the other day, and now outfreakage. I hope someone's keeping a list of these somewhere.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:59 PM on October 21, 2008


It's not just that - outfreakage is beautifully Teutonic, structurally exactly what the nominal form of freak out would be in German. I'm imagining a seperable verb ausfreaken, noun der Ausfreak or die Ausfreakung.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:40 PM on October 21, 2008


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