The Escort Files

Gender, Empowerment, and the Selling of Sex: Interviewing a High-Class Escort 

Written by Natalie Walsh

Charis sits on her bed in a silk pajama set, smiling. Flaxen blonde hair is strewn carelessly over her shoulders. She picks her cat up from off the floor, holding her to the camera, stroking her long, black fur. She speaks with a forthcoming casualness, nothing to indicate, beside the topic of conversation, that she has been a high-end London escort for the past five years. “Before I started,” she explains, “I always thought of it as quite seedy, with brothels and all that. I really knew nothing about high-class escorts”. Charis is the antithesis of this pre-convieved notion, and instead a perfect example of the real, modern-day sex worker.  

We begin by discussing her introduction to escorting, and the logistics of the profession are in fact not far off from the contemporary dating of any gen z or millennial. Introduced to the industry by a girl at a party in Central London, Charis began finding clients through an escorting website. She explains that she always calls them before their first meeting, assuring me that “you can tell a lot by how they are on the phone”. Not only does it make her feel safer to hear a voice on the other end, but she notes that she can tell just by the tone of their voice if they are actually going to show up to their meeting. Am I remiss, then, to postulate that one of the only few differences between her and other women on dating apps is that she is paid for her service? When I ask what’s something she enjoys about her work, she responds with the same line most millennials do in the post-Covid era, “it’s nice that I get to work from home”. “And the money, too, of course,” she giggles.  

She stresses that escorting is a “business transaction”, saying that there is nothing wrong with providing sex and companionship as a service that men subsequently pay for: “there is this stigma around the girls in the industry. But it’s not like that. It is our choice to provide a service and if men want to pay for it, that’s their choice”. If anything, she is simply profiting off of the culture of online, transactional dating, and hyper-sexuality. In this way, through the contemporary post-modern lens, high-end escorting is merely another mechanism of the same frameworks we as a collective have structured within society. Could it be argued, then, that in some ways, Charis is more empowered than the average woman of her age engaging in similar, yet non-paid, activities? She has identified a need and subsequently turned the process into a business opportunity. Therefore, is it exploitation if both parties are enthusiastic, consenting participants? Or is this perhaps the definition of ‘empowerment culture’? When I ask her what empowerment means to her, she responds simply with “empowerment is when you feel like you’re in control, and have a sense of self-worth. It’s especially important to feel empowered in this line of work. When I feel empowered, I’m not letting judgment affect me, and am content in what I do despite what other people think.” This definition is not exclusive to escorting but is applicable to every other profession or experience, underscoring how the industry is in fact a business like any other, wherein women are able to acquire wealth and autonomy. “I live in Central London,” she adds, “I have so much freedom, I travel, I do all the things that I want.”

One topic that arose was gender differences and the misconceptions about one another from both sides. To this, she laughs, “well, I can say that one difference is that men pay for sex and women don’t.” Expanding, Charis remarks that before escorting, she did not realize the extent to which men can detach and compartmentalize sex in a way that most women are not hardwired to do. She draws a distinction between paying an escort for sex and having an affair, noting that the former is a business proposition. This taps into the very real psychological assertion that men cannot forgive physical cheating, whereas women can’t forgive emotional. In this way, she argues that escorting is in and of itself the demarcation between the genders. Men can perceive sex, she says, as “no string attached”, whereas for women the act often offers the association of a deeper connection. “I’m also like their therapist,” she remarks, saying that in addition to physical intimacy, men want someone to talk to about “their lives, sex, their marriages, and the fact that they’re not having sex”. She also urges that “you’ve got to be open-minded in this line of work,” but that in working with men and hearing what they want, she has “definitely become more open-mind sexually”. 

Men of all ages, backgrounds, and social spheres pay for her services, and despite perhaps popular assumption, there is no one image of a man that personifies the “John”. Instead, she is paid by all different kinds of men, often because they’re no longer having sex in their romantic relationships, particularly marriages, or because, as evidenced in recent studies, the percentage of 18 to 30-year-olds reportedly having no sex in the past year has tripled over the last decade. The population of men under 30 not having sex has hit nearly one-third. It comes as no surprise then, that many seek out the websites such as the one Charis is on to meet escorts, and why she is so busy every day with work, “I’m meeting with a client at 4pm today, and probably another after that. We’ll see, because of the nature of it, men tend to book last-minute.” 

Interestingly, Charis’ experience within the sex industry is similar to any millennial's personal and work life, going online to find a sexual partner, the new normal of work-from-home, and finding her way through the minefield of our contemporary gender constructs. Despite its progression along with all other spheres into the fast-paced digital age, the monetization of the female body is nothing new. The common reference to sex work as “the oldest profession” is, in fact, not far off. For millennia, escorting has taken many forms, from elusive mistresses to concubines and courtesans to prostitutes. In these forms, women have sometimes resultantly been privy to great power, exemplified by Kings’ mistresses becoming Queens, international spies, socialites as the precursor to pop culture stardom, and later in history, Hollywood fame. In this way, empowerment derived from the selling of sex is in fact nothing new, nor is, more plainly, the empowerment of the female body. 

Interview conducted with @london_charis