to think that being an escort is a valid career choice?

[whatkatydidathome]

I have a friend who is 19, unqualified and attractive. She was a lap dancer but is now considering escort work. She has tried it a few times and appears able to earn £200 an hour working for what appears to be a reputable (well as reputable as you can get I suppose!) agency in London. I have been thinking about how I feel about this (and discussing it with dh) and can see why she is doing it and I sort of think that I do think that it is a valid career choice (as long as she sticks with the agency who provide back up etc).

19? Plenty of time for getting qualified.

roffle at binary SEX/DEATH

what laurie said about sucking stranger's cocks for money.

She is a prostitute with a nicer name. Frankly, aside from the physical risks, I would be concerned about the long term emotional damage she could do to herself. Has she spoken to any long term prostitutes?

Also, just because she doesn't want to potentially die in the armed forces, doesn't therefore mean another high risk job is a good alternative.

Finally, I'm with the others who don't consider this to be a career. Its not. If she is smart at all, she will save the cash and invest, both in her education and in income-generating assets. However, if she was smart she wouldn't be doing this at all. I wish her luck, she'll need it.

I am giggling at the "unsavoury CV" bit, haha!

June 2010 - Mar 2014
Company: Escorts R Us
Position: Doggy usually
Responsibilities: Having sex with strangers
Reason For Leaving: Got too old.

I don't understand why she would need to make £200ph to live, good lap dancers make plenty money. Escorting is in no way a career, it is a job. She is putting her health at risk and I doubt any future partners would be pleased with her chosen occupation. However not illegal and completely her own choice, we cannot make those choices for others.

She could move but anywhere where there is work also tends to have high rents. I can not see how anyone single (ie no entitlement to benefits) can survive.
She was also caught shop lifting at 15 so has a record which means that she cannot do care work and so would probably struggle (understandibly I guess ) to get shop work.
She has not had a good time of it. Her father left when she was 18 months old - not seeen him since and her mother remarried when she was 15. New husband did not want children so she was thrown out on her 16th birthday. Various forms of semi sheltered housing then via connecxions but at 19 that all stops and she is now left to fend for herself.

She doesn't make £200ph for many hours. With escorting she can work once an evening and pay the rent. With lap dancing you have to pay the club to be allowed to dance - you make the money from the private dances and have to do quite a few an evening to make enough. I think that she'd rather do more with fewer men and get the same money.

It's very sad that she sees that as her only option.

Is there no way she could get some further education/grant/student loan?

God that's very sad; But you are undermining yr own argument - she doesn't really have a choice, does she? Escorting is therefore neither 'valid' nor 'choice'.

She needs training, or further education. Are there no grants? I would have thought that it would even be preferable to use lap dancing to fund her education, then stop when she is qualified.

I blame Billie Piper and her stupid Belle de Jour series for making prostitution seem like a job worth aspiring to.

While the girl's situation doesn't look the brightest, I would still have to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to consider prostituting as a job option. I can see how women could get sucked into it due to addictions, dependancy issues, or acute financial distress. But to make a conscious choice to become an escort is a cop-out IMO. Unless she is doing it to fund studies/qualifications/anything that gives her a chance at a better life!

Um, plenty of 19 year olds manage to survive without turning to prostitution.

I'm going to join Ronaldinhio in a

OP, I have a friend who is a lap dancer and with a months wages she paid off her car and got her breasts done. I know some dancing venues do charge the dancers a lot but from what I've been told these tend to be really sleazy places.
I understand she would like to do less work for more money (who wouldn't?!) but surely she recognises she would be a lot safer working in a club, the security are there if she happens to dance some mad man but in a hotel room what is she able to do?

It depends what you mean by choice
She does have choices - she could join the forces, she was finding it relatively easy to keep a roof over her head by finding much older boyfriends prepared to put her up but that was simply prostitution by another name.

I can see your point though - I suppose my original question was more about how people saw escorting as a "thing to do". Yes it is selling sex for money but the conditions under which it is done are very different to being on the streets and also the number of men is far fewer. The risks are also far lower. She rings the agency before and after each session so that someone knows where she is and is expecting her to call in at a pre agreed time. Also it is very much only safe sex.

Why are the forces ("killing people") her only other option?

She rings the agency before and after each session so that someone knows where she is and is expecting her to call in at a pre agreed time.

--

A lot can happen between those phone calls. Just saying.

I know of a lady who was an escort, not even an attractive woman she did earn £1,000 a week some weeks, but then other weeks she earnt nothing at all.
However she did things my husband wouldn't dare ask of me after 15 years of marriage so you could say she deserved every penny and I happen to know she is deeply ashamed and constantly worried about her past catching up with her now she is in a relationship.

Oh and if she is expecting the agency to give a shit if she gets beaten up your friend is mistaken they will be on the side of the client who they don't want to lose after all he is the one paying and there's plenty more where the girl came from.

She can't find another job that will pay enough to cover rent. She can't get a student grant as she doesn't have any qualifications so cannot go to university. For college courses she was told she could get £35 a week but nothing else. She possibly could get housing benefit (am not sure how the system works) but all the local housing ads say "working only" so not much use if she could. I tried getting her somewhere to live but couldn't (council said that she "needed a baby to stand a realistic chance of housing" and gave me a list of various homeless shelters). So yes, she could live on £35 a week, study something like basic literacy at college and queue for a bed in a shelter each night or she could do this.

I would have thought that it would make young women rather depressed and bitter about men over time, and vulnerable to using drugs. I wouldn't accept it as a valid career for my daughter. Although I might be able to get work myself as a 'squasher'

A bit of a no-brainer and a somewhat obtuse opening post- especially as any lurker would have found the various debates about lap-dancing and the like quite easily. There have been several.

You seem to know every single bit of this girls life including all her finacial details etc etc etc, Are you the girl in question?