Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (39 page)

either go with it or go away.” Works much better.

Many of the male and female escorts who specialized in BDSM services expressed that playing a dominant role was more consistent with their natural personae, and they also appreciated the lower risk associated with non-penetrative sexual activities. This lends support to previous research that found that women create “bodily exclusion zones” as a strategy for maintaining emotional boundaries between themselves and their clients as well as for reducing their risk of exposure to sexually transmitted infections.26

Tantra

The art of tantric practice was a specialized skill offered by some of the women who participated in the Lady Classified Project. These women offered tantric massage and lessons in tantric breathing practices to their clients. These specialized services appeared to accomplish several goals: maintaining boundaries between themselves and their clients, attracting a certain type of clientele, and capitalizing on their age and years of training and experience as an asset to their business. One woman in her late fifties described her tantric work as preferable to offering “regular sex” to clients, which she experienced as less emotionally satisfying and more physically invasive: In my Eros ad I do advocate the tantric massage a lot. . . . When they call you tell them that you have two options. If you want to get intimate it is so-and-so, but you can also have the experience of a tantric massage on the table which is cheaper and which a lot of men go for now because the money is tight! . . . And I don’t mind making less money. I prefer doing something that is not so incriminating and does not use my body so much . . . . Yeah, it’s safe but psychologically very balancing because a man [will] come out of my place with a smile on his face and so do I, because the tantric massage really relaxes them and they get their release at the end because they need it, because they are so tense.

While there is a niche market within escorting for women of mature age, our mature respondents often offered specialized services such as tantra or BDSM to their clients. It may be that mature women escorts need to supple-218

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ment their offerings with such specialized services to attract a broader range of clients within an industry that does not value older women.

Big Beautiful Women

In a culture which devalues women of size, the phenomenon of “BBW” (Big Beautiful Women) escorts appears to have flowered into a popular niche market in recent years. Several of our interviewees identified as BBWs, and their narratives reflected the personal impact that escorting had on their body image in a culture where fat women are denigrated: It’s almost like if you mention the word BBW you’re inbox gets full within minutes. I honestly believe that society has put such stigma on women of size, that men are ashamed to admit that they have a thing for women of size or they get a fetish for it because it’s something that they’re not allowed to have—it becomes taboo. Or they really do just love big girls and when they get a chance to be with one they love it. And it’s huge; I mean all my clients, even the clients that had never been with a big girl before love me. And I’m quite big, I weigh almost 300 pounds; I’m tall too, really curvy, and I wear it well. Yeah, it’s pretty cool, I like it. . . . Before I was a sex worker, I was completely embarrassed to take my clothes off in front of others, and now it doesn’t even phase me. . . . I remember the very first time I had a client who told me to stand up in front of him and take all my clothes off nice and slow, and I’d never done it before like that with anybody because I was so shy. And since then, because of all his praise and because of the way he loved my body, and the way he loved everything about the way I looked [as have] so have many men after that—it’s a great ego boost.

For women of size, sex work affirmed their bodies as sexy and desirable; their narratives of escorting as personally affirming were unique within the larger sample of women. The BBWs reported having many clients and little trouble getting work. However, despite their popularity, their rates were in the lowest range of the sample, indicating that while they were desired and valued as part of the niche market, they were still viewed as worth less than escorts who fit a more normative standard of beauty (thin, young, white).

R A C E A N D R A C I S M

The subject of race and racism within prostitution has been understudied, although there have been several anecdotal personal accounts of racial
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discrimination and stereotyping on the job written by sex workers themselves.27 Collins argues that, in a society where economic opportunities for African-American men and women are constrained by racial stratification, the black body itself is commodified.28 In our research on male and female escorts, there was broad agreement that (1) there is an established racial hierarchy within escorting and (2) the white, middle-class men that make up the majority of their clients held racially stereotyped views of and fantasies about escorts of color.

This may explain why women of color, and particularly African-American women, topped the list for women scoring high on burnout. African-American women reported confronting racist attitudes from clients regarding their intelligence and the value of their services. One woman described being marketed in a racially stereotyped way by one agency that she worked with: There was this woman that I was working for who was trying to start up her own agency . . . but the way she marketed me was kind of like a knucklehead . . .

describing me as someone who likes to be spanked, as this bad girl, and she would put spelling errors, and it was just kind of like low-grade stuff.

Other African-American women in the study described being asked to act out racially stereotyped fantasies requested by a client: I had no idea that a lot of white men have this black slave fantasy. And it kind of bothers me, but I just try to separate my emotions from it and say, this is just a role play, this is just entertainment. It’s not real life . . . sometimes they want me to call them their master—their white master. Or they want to be my slave.

A lot of them have this big black goddess fantasy and they get very turned on despite being subjected to this black woman who’s going to boss—a bossy black woman who’s just gonna tell ‘em where to go and tell ‘em what to do and boss

‘em around, be aggressive.

There was general agreement among the women that a racial hierarchy stratified the sex industry, placing white women on top and women of color—

particularly African-American women—at the bottom. This hierarchy was reflected in the “glass ceiling” reflected in the hourly rates charged by the women in the project. While white women’s fees ranged up to $1000 an hour, no woman of color in the sample charged more than $500. The mode rate for white women in the sample was $500; for women of color it was $400. Thus it appears that the value of being white translates into a real business
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advantage, as acknowledged by one white woman in the sample who charged $1000 an hour:

Unfortunately, white women are more desirable in certain socioeconomic groups.

I know that just from looking through websites, that Brazilian women who come here charge a much lower rate even though they are more attractive and that’s apparently the most desirable thing in the business. And I am from far the most physically attractive escort on line; I am fairly attractive and I have certain height, certain body weight and skin type. I am white and that means I can earn more money.

Overall, the rates charges by men of color did not differ from those charged by white men, although men of color did report confronting similar attitudes from some potential clients online:

I don’t get certain clients. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I’m like a beautiful body but wrong color. . . . I’ve had really demeaning comments, like one . . .

would basically belittle me to the point to where they don’t pay so much for a

“nigger,” so what is your rate, and I tell them. “Oh that’s way too much. I’d never pay that much for a nigger. Twenty-five or thirty bucks, maybe.” And that can be really disturbing, emotionally disturbing. . . . What is up with . . . the way that these men think?

Another biracial man talked about negotiating race: Sometimes I do advertise that label “biracial.” And I get a lot of clients who aren’t into strictly black [providers], I guess, but then seeing that I’m biracial, they’re curious and they’re also more inclined to be interested, instead of you being a black guy. . . . So I get a lot of business that way.

The reports of confronting racism and discrimination in the sex industry were consistent across the samples of male and female escorts. The narratives of African-American escorts were most pronounced in their experiences of racism on the job; Asian, South Asian, and Latino/a escorts in these samples were more likely to report neutral feelings about the impact of their race on their experiences in the industry. These narratives reflect a racial hierarchy in escorting. However, both our male and female samples were majority white, under-representing men and women of color. More research needs to be done on the latter to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which race and ethnicity shape the dynamics of escort–client interactions.

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STI G M A

Female prostitutes have long symbolized sin, immorality, and disease in religious and medical literature.29 Male prostitutes, who serve primarily male clientele, are doubly stigmatized for their engagement in prostitution as well as breaking the taboo against homosexuality.30 Unfortunately, social scientific research on sex workers has often reflected and reproduced the stigma against prostitution through work which casts these men and women as victims or deviants.31 This body of research rarely questions the underlying assumption that prostitution constitutes a social problem.

For persons with concealable stigmas, the decision to conceal or reveal one’s membership in a deviant group becomes a crucial strategy for managing the impact of stigma on one’s life.32 Stigma management strategies often take the form of information management techniques such as “passing” (hiding one’s stigma in order to pass as a non-stigmatized person) or “covering”

(selective disclosure to trusted confidantes or family members). Individuals who possesses multiple concealable stigmas may disclose one while concealing the other. For example, an openly gay man may conceal that he works as a male escort, thus managing two stigmas in different ways.

The marginalized status assigned homosexuals and prostitutes in this society surfaced throughout nearly every one of our interviews with male and female escorts. Awareness of the stigma attached to prostitution shaped men and women’s perceptions of their work as well as their choices to disclose or be open about it. One man described his ambivalence about being an escort:

“The money’s great, and you may have great sex or whatever. You still have the stigma of being, in essence, a prostitute or a houseboy. And that’s a hard label to shake mentally sometimes.”

Concern about being labeled and judged by one’s peers led many escorts to conceal their work:

I’ve had difficulty in terms of, not secrecy per se, but it’s not the sort of thing that you just share with everyone. “Oh, what do you do?” “I’m a male escort.”

“What does that mean?” “You know, a male prostitute, I’m a whore.” So, inevitably, there tends to be a degree of keeping it quiet and/or lying that’s involved, and I don’t like that so much.

Female escorts often reported feeling isolated and growing distant from friends and family as a result of the need for secrecy: I don’t have any really close friends right now. I’ve been distancing myself from people. . . . A lot of my energy has been focused on my work; I don’t want to expose
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them to any baggage that I may have. And then, if anyone does find out [about escorting], I don’t want—I’m just afraid of getting found out by these folks, because a lot of people know that I’m very open-minded sexually and stuff, but they don’t know how open I am. . . . I guess I’m afraid of how they’re going to react. . . . I guess I’m kind of ashamed of what I do, and I don’t want them to know.

Both male and female escorts who engaged in passing often reported feeling socially isolated as a result. Their efforts to protect themselves from being stigmatized and labeled as prostitutes also may have prevented them from accessing potential social support as they managed stigma and the emotional demands of the work. One woman drew a direct connection between avoiding work-related burnout and disclosure: I’m out to everyone. All my friends know, my family knows, so I’m completely out with it. . . . And talking about burnout, I think the biggest contributor to burnout is not having a support system. That’s where most of your conflict lies, that whole, “Oh am I gonna be judged? How’s it gonna be if my mom finds out?

How’s it gonna be if my boyfriend finds out? Or is my best friend since kindergarten gonna disown me because now all of a sudden I’m doing this?”

[
Interviewer
All the consequences.] And all of that stress. I mean of course there’s stress involved in the business regardless, but when you couple that on top of everything else, that there’s no changing the other factors that are stressors in the business. But when you [have] a support system in place, that really is one of the biggest keys of reducing burnout for me. And that was when I stopped being conflicted about it, really.

This participant, who self-identifies as feminist, explained some of her initial resistance to the stigma associated with prostitution as her rejection of the “virgin/whore” sexual double standard. Her attitude evolved from an initial ambivalence towards her participation in sex work towards one of pride in the services she offered.