Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (38 page)

Some agencies provide more than a steady stream of clients. For some escorts, working with an agency may provide access to social support from management and other escorts, as well as mentoring in industry practices. A recent study of a male escort agency in a small American town found that the men employed there utilized the agency for a variety of purposes—as a social space, shelter (some men lived at the agency house), professional training ground, and a place where business was conducted.18 This agency offered both

“incall” (clients could visit the house for sessions with escorts) as well as

“outcall” (escorts traveled to meet the clients in their homes or hotels). The manager of this agency not only matched clients and escorts based on client requests but also based on the preferences of individual escorts. Men working for this agency reported that the manager was sensitive to their preferences, a practice that helped keep both escorts and clients happy and maintained a stable business. In fact, the men at this agency frequently viewed the manager and the other escorts as friends in addition to professional colleagues. One man who worked at the agency described it almost as a family environment: I like the people here. . . . It’s like we’re all a big brotherhood. It’s cool. It’s just neat hanging out with them and listening to their experiences.19

The physical space provided by the agency became a central location for socializing and accessing social support, a resource many independent escorts report they lack.

The men working at this agency also had the opportunity for some on-the-job training, which resembles in some ways Heyl’s description of a female brothel she studied.20 In the male agency, more experienced escorts mentored novice men, often while out on “double” calls (two escorts for one client).21

Some of the long-term, regular clients were also utilized as “training clients”

by the manager of the escort agency, in that novice male escorts were sent to
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trusted regulars who would help them learn the ropes—also the practice in Heyl’s female brothel.

Many of the men and women who participated in the Classified and Lady Classified projects reported starting out with agencies before transitioning to independent employment. It is possible that as the Internet becomes a more visible and popular venue for advertising, the need for agencies as a link between escorts and clients will decrease.

A D V E RTI S I N G

For independent escorts, the art of advertising to attract desirable clients is one of the most essential skills escorts must develop to be successful in their business. Our research on male and female escorts identified a few key strategies used by men and women to maximize their profit in this business.

These strategies included the following: presenting one’s authentic personality in the advertisement in order to connect with clients they would “click” with on a personal level, marketing specific types of sexual services or fantasy persona, and running a minimal advertisement featuring only basic information. The two ads featured in Figure 9.1 illustrate one type of marketing.

The primary advertising strategy for women and men specializing in more companionate, “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” experiences (GFE or BFE) involves presenting an idealized version of one’s actual self. By selling the experience of “bounded authenticity,”22 an escort works to closely align client expectations with their own personal preferences. These women and men aim to offer sessions that closely resemble a date, one that is pleasurable for both escort and client. One woman described the importance of being “real” this way: What I’ve learned over the years working independently is that the absolute best way to market yourself is to try to find as many like-minded people as you can.

You don’t try and market yourself to the people that aren’t on the same page as you, or have different likes. The more real that you can be, the more you can put of yourself out there as a person, while still maintaining certain boundaries about your personal life. That is going to encourage like-minded people, better chemistry, better repeat clients; then you enjoy your work.

Other escorts endeavored to stand out in their advertisements by stressing their education, intelligence and worldliness. For some escorts, a carefully crafted advertisement not only aims to attract clientele seeking a companionate experience, it also serves to deter clients in search of a more stereotypical “dumb
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F i g u r e 9 . 1 E s c o r t A d v e r t i s e m e n t s . T h e s e a d s a r e c o m p o s i t e s
c r e a t e d b y t h e a u t h o r s .

hooker.” One African-American woman related her strategy for subtly correct-ing clients with racially biased attitudes about women of color: I wrote a poem. I wanted to be special. I wanted them to know that they were getting someone intelligent, not a knucklehead. I can’t pull off the knucklehead type. I talk too much. And people would know, “listen, you’re smart” [laughs].

. . . So I wrote a poem [because] I wanted to be a little bit different than the rest of the ads.

Male escorts who specialized in companionate escorting described similar advertising themes. However, they were far more likely than women to also include information implying their preferred sexual activities and physical assets. These advertisements combined the emphasis on “elite culture” (e.g., describing their education and familiarity with upper-middle-class culture) with a more frankly erotic tone:

On web pages that I advertise, sometimes they have sections where you can fill in and say like how big is your dick. I also describe myself as a top; I may say
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that I am educated, that I lived in Europe for a few years. And my web page is probably one of the most exhaustive web pages for escorts on the Internet today.

I advertise my movies. I show pictures from some of the trips that I have been on. What I [am] saying is, “I’m going to spend a great time with you.”

These men and women stressed that they were not merely selling sex, they were selling an experience of seemingly genuine affection, mutual attraction, and stimulating companionship.

Other escorts described experimenting with a variety of advertising strategies before settling on one that aimed to maximize their potential client base. Rather than seeking out like-minded clients, these men and women sought to increase their market potential by reaching as many clients as possible. The effort to create an image of “mass appeal” took many forms. One woman described her technique for maintaining client’s interest by running multiple advertisements in an effort to keep up with client demand for new faces:

I buy stock photos online. I look for somebody that looks something like me, and for photos that are not nude or trashy. It might be sensual or show some cleavage, but they’re not going to be very explicit. I change ads now and then because they lose popularity once they’ve been up for a while. Sometimes I have two up at the same time. I have a friend that advertises four or five ads at once, and when she can’t go she says that she keeps a commission and I can take the job.

Other escorts attempted to appeal to a variety of client fantasies through careful targeting of photographs and ad text. These men and women assessed market demand for different “types” and then endeavored to embody as many of them as possible. One woman described her ad this way: I advertise domination and GFE, so there’s both on the website. Just a lot of dildos, strap-ons, and mistress clothes, and then I have sensual bikini ones, lingerie ones, full-clothes on the website . . . . A lot of white men like Asians and I got my boob job so that helps. You use everything as a marketing tool to your best ability.

Men’s advertisements also incorporated such fantasy “types” with more explicit references to sexual activity: “[My ad has] been tailored over time. You know what works; what sells; what doesn’t. Well, the idea of total top. I’m ex-military. It has a certain cache. Total top. Muscular, masculine sells.”

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The creativity and entrepreneurial savvy shown in these advertising strategies points to the time, energy, and care that many professional escorts invest in their business.23 These men and women are seasoned business people, tailoring their approach to reach the maximum number of clients, with less of an emphasis on their own personal preferences.

By contrast, some escorts minimized the effort put into creating an advertisement. For some this strategy appeared to be an effort to distance one’s self from escorting, which was viewed as an unpleasant means to an end. These men and women did not create an escort persona, neither did they cater to particular sectors of the client market. One woman described her advertisement this way:

I guess I’m just a mainstream, general type. I have not created a persona per se.

I’m not so into it where I make it—I probably should. I’m a bad business woman as far as that goes because I don’t like the business and I kind of do it because I have to. I am kind of trapped. So I don’t really take that time to create a persona, to really go all out.

For this woman, feeling “trapped” in sex work left her unmotivated to invest personal resources in her business. A male escort asserted that “men don’t read your profile anyway” and kept his advertisement to a more basic format: I wrote my profile on AOL, and I just simply state facts about myself, and I have a picture. Tall, blond hair, blue eyes. I just say my rules, which are outcalls only, in Manhattan only. Nothing about my penis size, nothing sexual at all. It’s just very plain, to the point. I don’t even like to read those long profiles. I don’t like to read, you know, three paragraphs on someone. I think you should be simple and to the point.

Escorts who described a more “bare bones” approaches to advertisement were also less likely to display an entrepreneurial or professional orientation to escorting. Instead, escorting was framed as a temporary strategy to earn money.

N I C H E M A R KE T S

Women and men working within the escorting business are a highly diverse group, and many work to expand their network of clientele through offering specialized services that cater to a particular niche market. Some of these
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escorts are capitalizing on physical attributes that are marginalized in the mainstream sex industry—such as being overweight or a mature age—and they realize that there is a demand for individuals with these characteristics.

Others are skilled in offering specialized services to clients, such as role playing or power exchange, fetish activities, or tantra. There is a thriving market for escorts with these special skills and characteristics, and yet in spite of clients’ desire for them, their services are often valued less than those of more traditional escorts.24 This appeared to be especially true for the niche market escorts in the Lady Classified Project, whose rates were significantly lower than the more mainstream women in the sample. Among men in the Classified Project, this difference in hourly rates was not mentioned.

Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism (BDSM)

Several of the male respondents specialized in offering professional domination services, or marketed themselves as “leather daddies.” For these men, mature age was a professional asset, and their business was often framed as a legitimate and valued aspect of the BDSM subculture within the larger gay male community:

I’ve met so many nice people, and you know, they’re very welcoming. So that’s

[escorting] a good thing in the S&M community. And because I’m in all the magazines, you know [name of fetish magazine], people know me. [They say]

“Oh, I’ve seen your ad.”

For the gay men who provided specialized fetish or BDSM services, their rates were not significantly different from those of other male escorts. For the female escorts, however, who were desired for their “exotic” appearance or specialized services on offer, these women’s rates fell into the lower range of the spectrum ($180–$300 an hour) where the mode rate was $400–$500 an hour, and ranged up to $1000 an hour. It appears that Echol’s observation that there is a price for being different may hold true more for female escorts than for men.25

A few of the women offered professional BDSM and role-playing services to their clients. For many, this was a natural extension of their personality and suited them better than “vanilla” escorting. One woman described her transition from regular escorting into being a practitioner of BDSM: After being a regular escort and being told to do some things for X amount of dollars, “No I am not gonna do that, I am gonna give you some of the money
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back.” I realized I am giving a lot of money back and [doing] a lot of arbitration between clients. They are not getting what they want and I am not doing what they want to do. This was happening more than once a week, confrontations. So I met her [an escort skilled in BDSM] and I didn’t know more about [BDSM], and she said . . . “I do this, this, and this. This is the deal, this is how much—