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Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Meet the Fokkens: Amsterdam's Oldest Prostitutes Still Having Fun At 70!

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Amsterdam's oldest prostitutes have been thrust into the spotlight with the release of their memoirs and a documentary film about their lives. The film, Meet the Fokkens, follows 70-year-old identical twins Louise and Martine Fokken as they share secrets of selling sex in the city's famous red light district.
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Louise and Martine shuffle round their cluttered two-bedroom apartment in Ijmuiden, just west of Amsterdam.
There is an absent-minded synchronicity to their movements.
Louise breaks into an old lament about families forced to flee during World War II. Their mum was part Jewish, something they managed to hide from occupying Nazi forces while remaining in the Netherlands.
"We were very little during the war. When the sirens started our mum would take us down into the basement. We didn't have any helmets so we used frying pans to cover our heads. We all looked so funny. And we had fun there."
But their expertly applied scarlet smiles do not detract from the shimmer of sadness in their eyes.
"Of course, when we were 14 or 15, we never thought we would be working as hookers one day. We were creative and we had dreams," Martine says.
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Louise confesses: "I always say that my husband beat me into it. He was violent and said he would leave me if I didn't sell sex to make us more money.
"He was the love of my life," she adds.
Louise's children were taken into foster care. She holds one of the photographs, showing their small smiling faces, that sits on the shelves of an antique bookshelf.
Martine still sells sex. She says the Dutch state pension alone is not enough to live on. Louise quit because of arthritis.
Martine says she would like to retire but cannot afford to.
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Young men who pass by, some of them on stag parties from abroad, mock her for being old. She laughs it off (like she does with everything) and says she does not care.
She says times have changed: "The boys are different now, they drink too much, they're fat and they don't respect you. They should be on their bikes like Dutch boys, not just drinking all the time."
Despite younger competition next door, there is still a market for Martine's services.
She appears to specialise in bondage for older men. Targeting them with things they like to dress up in. Tempting them into her brothel with an array of dangerous looking whips and high-heeled shoes. It seems she has found a niche in the fetish market.
"We know the tricks, we know what they want. We know how to talk to them and we know how to make them laugh too."
Martine says they are lucky to be alive: "Once there was a man and there was something I didn't like about him. So I made him take off all his clothes. Then I sat on the bed and I felt under the pillow he'd hidden a huge knife."
"There are always ups and downs," Louise adds. "Ups and downs, ups and downs..." the twins sing-song, before falling into each other in fits of laughter.
They have a century's worth of experience between them. And now their story is going global.
The twins say that Meet the Fokkens has helped to change attitudes; some of the abuse has been replaced by respect.
Martine swears they would not have done it any other way.
"This is what we know. If we didn't do hooking then what would we do? This is our life.
"And," she glances again at her sister, "we are still having fun".
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