Girls Like Us: Fighting For a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale

Lloyd explains that sexual exploited girls often refer to their pimps by the slang term “Daddy.” Throughout Girls Like Us, Lloyd unpacks the psychological weight of pimps’ authoritarian role in the girls’ lives. Building on the theme of family influence, Lloyd maintains that for many girls, their pimps stand in for the parental figures they lost in early childhood, either to death or to dysfunction. 

Lloyd references the Jezebel stereotype, the public perception that black girls are “‘faster,’ looser, and more promiscuous than their white counterparts,” originating from the era of slavery in the United States (173). Lloyd writes that the Jezebel stereotype leads to the unwillingness to believe or acknowledge black female victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.  

According to Lloyd, Biderman’s Chart of Coercion explains the tactics used to control prisoners and hostages (120). Lloyd shows how pimps use these same tactics on sexually exploited victims to monopolize and force girls and young women to stay. In Lloyd’s work at GEMS, she and her clients draft an adapted version of Biderman’s Chart of Coercion to reflect their own experiences.