Should Britain Update Its Attitude Towards Prostitution

Ten years ago the general consensus was that women who stripped, appeared in adult movies, acted as sex phone operatives and prostituted themselves were dim degraded whores. Now in the cosmopolitan noughties things have changed. Couples indulge in porn and strip clubs together, girls make money for university through flaunting themselves on web cams and it is now possible to make more money through pretending to be 'Cassie, 18, a horny cheerleader' than working on the stock market. All of these adult careers are no longer looked down on, their not even shocking. Some might say (and I agree) that women assert their sexual power through participating in the adult industry for a while.
Jaqui Smith is now calling for paying for sex provided by a pimped prostitute to be illegal. However hard Jaqui may try you will never remove the age old market: men wanting to pay for sex. But for as long as we try to suppress prostitution in Britain, the easier it becomes for the seedier side to emmerge. Young girls reliant on drugs, imports from abroad, rape...it will all continue because there will be no regulation. Not that this will cease to exist if the government were to bite the bullet and legalise prostitution, but it would make things safer for those involved in the trade. There would be less of a chance of paedophiles praying on vulnerable girls, STI's would drop and the adult industry would become far safer.
So why is it that we cannot sit up and think that women who prostitute themselves are also taking hold of their sexual reigns? The government tells us 'its bad'. Roussou, a French phillosopher, said that it is not certain acts that are sordid, but it is society and societies obscure expectations and views that make them so. Maybe if in Britain we decided to lower the pinky and protect the women that do choose to work the streets for a living our society would be safer.