The Rent-a-Girl

I've resisted piling on Spitzer mainly because I've been struck dumb.

Like many New Yorkers, I totally bought his guy-in-white-hat persona. Bottom line is, as my dear husband pointed out, imagine how different this story would be if Spitzer had spent his $80G on a shrink.

So it goes ... .

I come not to praise or bury Spitzer but to share my two cents - not a lot I know, but maybe I can structure a bank transfer later this afternoon - on Kristen, aka Ashley Youmans.

Yesterday while I was grinding out a book chapter, Ashley made $200,000 in a single day on a little song she'd posted on the web. And Larry Flynt offered her a million dollars to pose naked. Ka-Ching!
Lots of women want to know, what exactly does Ashley do that provokes men to pay a thousand bucks an hour to rent her? What tricks of the trade might we married women learn from her that could keep our own husbands happy and, ahem, home on Valentine's Eve?

What amazing oral, vaginal or anal stunts did she perform to inspire one of her satisfied clients to tell her pimp "Now I can die happy!"

I'm willing to wager Ashley's hourly take that what she does is something pretty simple, something that doesn't even rise to the level of skill possessed by those legendary Asian hookers who can smoke cigarettes from their nether orifices.

What Ashley has down cold, no doubt, is the ability to provide lumpish, boring, self-absorbed men with the illusion that they are desirable, sexually capable and making her happy. In other words, she did a damn good job of pretending that she actually enjoyed whatever they wanted to do with her.

Besides the fairy tale come true of having her music "career" catapulted into celestial media heights she could only fantasize about a week ago, and the temporary porn-ification of New York's three newspapers, what does her success at fragile male ego-stroking tell us?

To me, the creepiest thing about Ashley is what she reveals to us about the entertainment industry and its marvelous way with women. This Jersey girl is just another pretty face and set of enhanced boobs in a cast of thousands of striving starlets in Hollywood who also got their start giving blowjobs for pay in Ferraris.

How many under-endowed entertainment bigwigs and financiers, deceived into believing the pretty girl they pay really likes their moves, has been inspired to produce and finance the next movie about the dorky nerd or the repulsive balding old guy who gets the beautiful babe in the end?

Go to the multiplex and let me count the ways.

In her book, "Female Chauvinist Pigs," Ariel Levy masterfully compiled the ways in which modern American women now participate in their own commodification. If she'd been born male, Ashley might be lucky enough to be selling used cars in Paramus, crossing the bridges and tunnels to club in Gotham at night and dreaming of striking it rich in a Wall Street boiler room. As a woman with a similar set of material dreams, she chose to rent her own flesh, and for that, she has been amply and now publicly rewarded, confirming the wisdom of her career choice for thousands of pretty but average teen girls whose futures right now are only as bright as the Mass Comm course at the community college.
You go Girl!

Comments

[S1m0n]

Funny how no one ever uses blatantly sexist lines 'she chose to rent her flesh' to describe pro athletes, or ballerinas, or garbagemen.

[pajamadeen]

What I find creepiest about the whole Spitzer-Ashley affair is the fact that Ashley's only five years older than Spitzer's eldest daughter. YUCK! Silda must be so pleased. Not.

[peterg76]

They call it the oldest profession - we don't articles explaining how it works. What we do need, however, is for the media to get back to at least pretending they report on actual issues.

[Novista]

I have a theory that these blokes are seeking someone on their own intellectual and maturity level Remember the John Saxon Syndrome where they keep picking the same type again.

Of course, if this were France and not America the Puritanical, it wouldn't even get a day's play in the media. Curious.

[accountability]

hmmmm,
Where to begin..

I don't want to come across as pro prostitution, but I am not anti-prostitution either. I believe it should be de-criminalized as should drugs. Maybe legalized and regulated. We would probably actually make money on it instead of spending huge amounts building more prisons and outsourcing prisons as well.
I'm sure there are those who will feel that it is immoral to legalize it, that it is in effect saying it's ok to take drugs or turn tricks.

Well we do the same with alcohol cigarettes, gambling, trans-fats. I wouldn't consider myself a libertarian... and certainly not a republican but I really do not like the government involved with my body.

In any event Ms. Burleigh you sound very judgmental and self righteous. You and I have no idea what drives women to turn tricks. For each it is different. This woman is 22 years old. To me that is a child really... or barely more than one.
Yes, in (some) other cultures she would probably have children and been married for several years, though not in that order. In our culture we consistently send out signals to live free for awhile before marriage, go out and have fun, don't tie yourself down. We glorify youth and we equate youth with fun, wild times, partying, sex, drugs, rock and roll. For women we give them images in Vogue, Cosmo, movies, TV, that youth is very sexy and very hip and very all about getting it while you can with lots of faux glamour and attitude. Pop Culture.

I have known women who work in the Sex Industry, some "working girls" some who worked as dancers in strip or semi strip clubs. I would say that more than 90%, probably closer to 98 % of the women in this industry has some kind of abuse in her background. What I think many people are not aware of is that many of these women are supplementing their real lives with income from the sex industry. Single mothers who work full time and go to school, nurses, chiropractic students, Broadway show dancers in between gigs, and there are married women as well, not married to pimps but married to a hard working guy who can't make enough, neither of them can... so they dance (or whatever.)
The fact that they have had some sexual abuse seems to make it somehow more acceptable, or easier to justify. Many seem to believe its no big deal, they don't see options in front of them. They don't even know they have made a choice. It is easy when one has the privilege of a decent education or an upbringing that allowed you your dreams, promoted choices to be intolerant of the choices others have made. But as I said many of these women do not understand the concept of choice, in fact I am not sure that there are many people who understand "choice", that they have actually mad a choice and life didn't happen to them until they are somewhat older and have a few bad choices under their belt... so to speak...

Your article is quite shrill and to tell you the truth I am not sure what the point of it is.
finger pointing? belittling and berating? telling her she should have stayed in New Jersey and worked at 7/11 and been happy with it?
What?


I don't judge these woman and I think it is rather sad that you do. You are missing out on knowing some very fine, complex, women who are struggling with identity and identification, the culture and of course their abuse... this is just the tip of the iceberg.
For me it has been and is a privilege to know them.
For you I suppose it is a relief not to.

[niikeb]

Lets face it, through out history there have been many powerful men who have used their power and wealth to screw any chick they wanted. Historically the women had little choice in the matter, Yet Today some from well do do backgrounds are willing to sell their bodies just because their to lazy to try to make a living like the rest of us. So they turn into a rented slave to rich men. Its sad and disturbing.

[ObGyn]

Women never admit that men always pay them for sex. The prostitute is just more honest. Prostitutes charge per encounter, wives charge by years of "service."

Prostitutes are cheaper than wives. Ask Paul McCartney if marriage is cheaper.

[ObGyn]

Women never admit that men always pay them sex. The prostitute is just more honest. Prostitutes charge per encounter, wives charge by years of "service."

Prostitutes are cheaper than wives. Ask Paul McCartney if marriage is cheaper.

[SethBLiNK]

Pretty much all that you say is true, but there also is a lot of misplaced anger and resentment.

Go live your life, grind out your chapters and do what you do to make the man/men in your life happy and hopefully they will do the same for you.

Some men like/want the kind of satisfaction that only money can buy. Some women are willing to provide it. When it goes public like this it causes a lot of psychoanalytical speculation "bigger lesson" learning, but other than the legal ramifications it is primarily a transaction between two people. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Puller58]

What Ms.Burleigh fails to recognize is that she answered her own question. What Ashley did was to convince her johns that she was into them. That means the women in their lives weren't. Simple. And now the yowling will begin about men being pigs and having minds in the gutter, and yada, yada, yada. A woman in Mrs.Spitzer's position may well seem to be happy, but say that she's not. Hubby comes home from a tough day at the capital and she says, "Not now, dear, I have a headache." Hey, he gets in where he fits in. Other countries like France recognize and tolerate other women. As long as the wife is taken care of, what's the harm? Our own Mitt Romney missed a chance to spill the beans on the under the table polygamy going on in Utah and Arizona. Forget gay marriage, multis! Now that would be a guy who really defined marriage!

[XCITIZEN]

Legalize it!!!!

[cadawa]

If Spitzer's in need of a shrink, then so is most male population of this planet, particularly those with access to wealth and power. It's still a male dominated society and if they can, they do as they wish.
The fact that the Bush's wholly owned Judiciary was after Spitzer is evidence that he in fact was a threat to the crooks and swindlers that now run the country; in short a white hat.
What a man does at work and what he does with his genetalia can be mutually exclusive.
I think you ought to ponder the meaning of "politically motivated witch hunt" before you write your next piece.

[nunzia]

Oh get over yourself and grow up.

If some guy is willing to pay her for it,

and if she doesn't feel any hurt in it,
then good for her.
And you mind your own damned business.

[margie4]

What Ashley does with her body is her business, and if she chooses to use it to make money while she is young in a country that still doesn't offer women equal pay for equal work, that is no skin off YOUR teeth is it? When we sixties feminists used to loudly insist "My Body is My Own!" we meant it.
This sort of moralizing is neither progressive nor feminist - it is simply self-righteous and priggish.

[mikmik]

It's not a 'society thing', it is a historical thing. It goes much deeper than any explanation, there are as many reasons as there are hookers and johns that buy them. I am sure low self worth or shallow values are at the core of many of these women, but so too many of the men.
Whatever the reasons, trying to figure them out is ultimately futile because it is always going to happen. It is human nature, maybe not the human nature most exhibit, but what is?