by CLARISSA SEBAG-MONTEFIORE
PHOTO/Ozgur Albayrak/Gallery Stock
Is the growing market for male escorts a sign of female sexual liberation or just a re-run of the same old stereotypes?
In the middle of every month, when the moon is full, and straight after payday, Louise meets Tom in a smart hotel in north Sydney to indulge in what she calls ‘my little ritual’. She lays out a bottle of her favourite Champagne, a box of chocolates and a punnet of fresh strawberries, and dresses thoughtfully for their rendezvous, in a mini?skirt or tight jeans.
What follows is tightly programmed: Louise is paying for Tom’s time, and for a hefty fee this smooth-talking 48-year-old escort with greying temples will wine, dine and massage her. He’ll also make love to her. Their last meeting lasted six hours. ‘We sit down, we talk, we have a drink,’ says Louise. And sex? ‘A few times.’ She giggles. ‘Three, four. I lost count.’ Tom provides relief from her humdrum career in accountancy – it’s all about her. ‘I spend practically the whole day before in the spa and the hairdresser,’ she explains coquettishly. ‘It’s fun. It’s just treating myself.’
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In What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013) the American writer Daniel Bergner argues that female sexuality is as animalistic – if not more so – than male. ‘We’d rather cast half the population, the female half, as a kind of stabilising force when it comes to sexuality,’ he explains. The idea that monogamy is more suited to women is no more than a ‘fairy tale’. Bergner claims another misnomer is that visual stimulus is not especially important for the average woman. Studies with a vaginal plethysmograph (a tool used to measure blood-flow and lubrication) have shown that female response to visual stimuli is visceral, immediate and, in some cases, more pronounced, to a wider variation of sexual images than with men.
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