ture (especially insofar as the curves of the buttocks serve here as a gateway to the woman's 55 genital area, suggestively encased by red velvet). In the The eroticized handlings of this part of the female body that appear in the brothel mono- Brothel types betray Degas's vulnerability to the erotic appeal of the fleshy buttocks by endowing this part of the body with a persuasive volumetric tactility that the flattened out and blurred bodies of the series do not otherwise possess. In them we witness a record of desire and attraction. In the monotypes overall, so many female features and parts are blurred, occluded, flat- tened, disfigured, elided, and congealed into ink that the relative three-dimensionality and clarity of these particular body parts stand out and invite comment. This observation converts the series into an even more complex, heterogeneous, and contradictory attribution of traits to brothel prostitutes than we had apprehended heretofore. On the one hand, the women are vul- gar and unsophisticated: their bodies are flawed and improper, their heads those of lower-class reprobates. But on the other hand, a certain erotic appeal in the uninhibited use of their fleshy bodies is strongly implied, especially, as we have seen, by the clearly modeled and demarcated telltale posteriors of figures 15, 27, and 28, for example. The conventions of male spectatorship are not fully abrogated by Degas's prints after all. While Degas demystifies most of the reigning fantasies of the prostitute, at the same time he displays an erotic fascination with the bodies from which he otherwise alienates the represented client, "the spectator," and himself. In the hindquarters of the prostitute, Degas upholds the textuality of her body,55 restoring to otherwise de-eroticized figures the old (apparently indis- pensable and unavoidable) spice of the erotic appeal of the sexual deviant and social miscreant.