TigerHawk

TigerHawk (ti*ger*hawk): n. 1. The title of this blog and the nom de plume of its founding blogger; 2. A deep bow to the Princeton Tigers and the Iowa Hawkeyes; 3. The nickname for Iowa's Hawkeye logo. Posts include thoughts of the day on international affairs, politics, things that strike us as hilarious and personal observations. The opinions we express are our own, and not those of each other, our employers, our relatives, our dead ancestors, or unrelated people of similar ethnicity.

Monday, September 29, 2008

How will the financial crisis affect high-end hookers?

By Charlottesvillain at 9/29/2008 05:07:00 PM

According to this article in Slate, maybe not the way you might think.

Sex workers of the past waited on street corners, outside bars, and around parks, and their transactions were fleeting and usually for a few dollars. Today's high-end sex workers see themselves as therapists, part of a vast metropolitan wellness industry that includes private chefs and yoga teachers. Many have regular clients who visit them several times per month, paying them not only for sex but also for comfort and affirmation.

The cost may be thousands of dollars for an evening of leisure. Few people outside of the corporate work force can afford this price tag. And, in good times, Wall Street came calling.

But bad times seem not so bad either, at least in the short run. After the dot-com bubble burst and again in late 2006 when the housing market began to flatten, the high-end women I interviewed in New York and Chicago reported upticks in business. Their clients were coming to them for a mix of escape and encouragement. As Jean, a New Yorker and a 35-year-old former paralegal turned "corporate escort" (her description) told me, "I had about two dozen men who started doubling their visits with me. They couldn't face their wives, who were bitching about the fact they lost income. Men want to be men. All I did was make them feel like they could go back out there with their head up."

Uh, read the whole thing?

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7 Comments:

By Georg Felis, at Mon Sep 29, 05:42:00 PM:

Are you suggesting that we Tigerhawk readers go check out this story personally?

By Anonymous, at Mon Sep 29, 05:52:00 PM:

Uh, read the hole thing.

By Escort81, at Mon Sep 29, 09:19:00 PM:

Elliot Spitzer called, he wants his punchline back.

By Assistant Village Idiot, at Mon Sep 29, 09:24:00 PM:

The older I get, the more sex is about affirmation.

By Pax Federatica, at Mon Sep 29, 09:30:00 PM:

In (probably) related news, you may have heard that Hugh Hefner recently had to lay off a bunch of his Playboy bunnies, amid reports that his once-mighty porn empire is being eviscerated by the credit squeeze.

By Dawnfire82, at Mon Sep 29, 09:33:00 PM:

Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the mass availability of free and more interesting porn on the Internet...

By Georg Felis, at Mon Sep 29, 09:40:00 PM:

The internet has porn? When did this happen?