Enclosed are articles about French students working as part-time escorts to help pay tuition.

It evidently pays better than waiting on tables or being a recess monitor for school children.

See this web page - http://chronicle.com/news/article/3780/french-students-increasingly-become-prostitutes-to-pay-tuition-2-books-suggest

Also see this article - http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3213049.ece

For those who travel overseas, how common is this occurrence to see students advertize as escorts ??

How common is it in the United States ??

Comments welcome !!

==
January 21, 2008

French Students Increasingly Become Prostitutes to Pay Tuition, 2 Books Suggest

Two books published in France last week have focused attention on the phenomenon of young women moonlighting as sex workers to finance their university education, The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported today.

One book is a memoir of a 19-year-old modern-languages major named Laura who writes that, in her first year at an unnamed university, she was obliged to resort to prostitution in order to support herself. The other book is a study by Eva Clouet, a 23-year-old master’s student in sociology at the University of Toulouse II, Mirail. In La prostitution étudiante (Student Prostitution), Ms. Clouet focuses on how the advent of the Internet has facilitated certain kinds of prostitution, such as escort work, that students find more palatable than “traditional” streetwalking.

In publicity materials on its Web site, Max Milo, the publisher of both books, cites recent estimates by a student union that as many as 40,000 French students resort to prostitution to finance their studies.

The French newspaper L’Express, which published excerpts of Laura’s memoir, noted in its coverage of the two works that the police estimate the figure at 15,000 to 20,000 students.

A 2006 survey by Kingston University, an institution southwest of London, suggested that the number of British students resorting to sex-industry work to finance their studies had risen sharply in recent years, spurred by recent increases in university tuition.

Desperate students in Britain, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States have, however, long resorted to sex-related jobs to finance the cost of their studies. —Aisha Labi

==

Also see this article - http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3213049.ece

January 19, 2008

Confessions of a student who sold sex to live and learn

Charles Bremner in Paris

Laura D is not quite 20 and in her second year of university but she has succeeded this week in alerting France to an ugly phenomenon in its midst: student prostitution.

The modern language student at a Paris university has drawn national attention with a book about a first year in which she paid impossible bills by selling her body to men.

Thanks to the internet, many women students are being tempted into occasional paid sex to cope with living costs that can no longer be met with part-time jobs, Laura says.

In Mes Chères Études (My Dear Studies), she describes the trap into which she fell soon after starting university at an unidentified city in 2006.

Talking to The Times, Laura was scornful of claims by prostitutes’ rights groups who argue that tales of students selling sex en masse is a figment of media imagination.

“It’s upsetting the way the experts react when the media talk about this,” she said. “There are a huge number of girls like me who do not talk about it, even with their friends. It’s hard to talk about, so it stays secret and taboo. It’s incredibly easy to get sucked in. There are a lot of students who can’t make ends meet.”

Police estimate that up to 20,000 sell their favours.

Despite working 15 hours a week in telephone sales, Laura said that she went hungry. Her workman father and nurse mother, who live in a council house in the same city, could not afford to help her. Their minimum wage incomes barred her from very basic student aid, like tens of thousands of others.

“Not a bean, unpaid bills and rent to pay. Never a penny in my pocket and forced to cheat on public transport. It was a generally unbearable life,” she writes. A click on the internet revealed a wealth of demand for escorts and masseuses. She decided to answer an advert saying: “Young man of 50 seeks occasional masseuse. Students welcome.”

In her book, written with a 23-year-old student, Laura says: “I said to myself that ‘massages’ would easily give me the luxury of choosing what I would do. I did not realise that it was exactly the opposite: I would never have the choice again. From the moment you reply to an advert, you have been dragged in.”

At her first session, in a hotel room, “Joe”, her track-suited, fiftysomething client, paid €250 (£190) simply to watch her. When she fled to Paris last April, she was making €400 a time but she resolved to give up. “I couldn’t sleep. I turned in my bed with images of horror passing before my eyes.”

Now working in a Paris restaurant, Laura is determined to stick to her decision. She realises that she has been damaged: “It is difficult now with boys. I hope never to go back to it. It is very violent. It’s a money relationship and there is financial domination. It is very difficult to rebuild oneself afterwards.”

Capital lessons

France

£1,078 Yearly education costs of average student
£3,348 Student’s estimated annual living costs
£5 Price of a pint of beer in Paris
£4.10 Price of a McDonald’s Big Mac burger

Britain

£2,019 Yearly education costs
£5,333 Annual living costs
£2.60 Price of a pint of beer in London
£1.94 Price of a Big Mac burger
£2,642 Average student loan

France does not offer such loans

==

-- Modified on 3/2/2008 12:42:17 PM

advertise "Coed" or "College Student" all of the time.  There is one amazingly beautiful provider from LA who is very active on the boards and outright states that she will stop upon graduation.

And with the price of education, who can blame them?

see, capitalism, free markets, exchange economy -- totally amoral.  That those youngs maidens have to sacrifice the precious gift of their innocence, well, that's a damn shame.

Well, here's my limited perspective, but it's a discussion worth having because, hobbyists and providers, we're all better for it if we understand where we each come from.

Regarding these French students, it is a choice though. And the lure of the money makes it a difficult choice for someone in a desperate situation, whether they're a student or their husband just went MIA leaving them with two children to raise.  Some of these girls can get really messed up from this "profession" (especially if they feel forced into it, like there is no other choice in life), while others we know, love it, learn and grow from it, set a goal, make a pile of cash, save some money, get an education (like these french girls) and in time walk away, close the book and move on to another chapter of life. But without the right psychological make-up, escorting can have harsh effects.  I would love to find out what the percentages are of women who are in the former and the latter categories.

I would love to hear some perspective from the ladies here.

an approach to finance and women today and perhaps because of the internet find it a lot more palatable than when I was a student. It happened then, but not to the degree that the mass market appeal of the internet gives... Women today are likely more sexually free than their counterparts of a few years ago as well... So long as these women make this decision of free choice, I have no opinion about it... I will stick with more mature women for companionship however... nothing wrong with a tight hard body, but I want someone with an opinion with my cigarette break... " Ah, I dunno" makes me flaccid.

Two of my current favorites are in school and over the years I must have seen dozens of gals who are coping with tuition by escorting.

I'm sure it is common most everywhere.

Here's the scandle:  $8+ for a Big Mac!

most of us love it. you never see that getting printed.

movies depicting us always show some desperate, drug addicted, pathetic woman who is miserable.  

the women i've made friends with go to pta meetings, chaperone field trips and feel lucky to be in escorting as it enables them to take the time to do these things.

i've never seen or read about an escort at a pta meeting in the media.

i wonder what we'd think if there were no tv or newspapers to tell us.
the mind control is mind boggling.

male domination doesnt even exist in the corporate world does it ?
noooooooooo

not even one of my clients have ever EVER disrespected me as much as ANY ONE of my bosses in civvie life.  NEVER do my clients tells me i HAVE to do something i dont want to do.. NEVER.

in civvie jobs, if i didnt do what i was told, I LOST MY JOB. it was a choice between doing what i was told and ZERO income.
THAT WAS NO CHOICE.

now i say no and worst that happens is i lose an appointment. NOT my entire income.

Prices quoted were in GB Pounds.

I'm sticking to the dollar menu.

-- Modified on 3/2/2008 12:26:40 PM

First, you are right...not much positive media print for this business.  However, considering that it is ILLEGAL, I don't see a lot of people stepping up to the plate with accounts of how they fit into legal society, ya know?  That would be kind of self destructive.

Also, I think that has to do with issue #2, which is relative to what you said about "male domination".  I don't think it is so much "male" domination as "conservative" domination. I have known women just as against something like this biz as men...if not more so.  I think it is more our societal values than it is men dominating.

And as for your civvie jobs, most of your bosses probably hated their jobs (most PEOPLE do).  Besides, if you wee fucking THEM, thry probably wouldn't have fired you, either.

There are so many woman in this business who treat it as a business. No drug addiction ect... They have families school bills...its no longer the chick on the corner. Well you can still find that as well but the lady in the nice hotel with a family and bills and a life other than this biz is more common than society knows. The media does not waqnt it to be seen in the light it really is.
I have 2 in braces, both high honors. A house I have paid off. One in college I am paying for and I go to every school function, on every field trip just like my neighbors who have office jobs and what not. Only difference is, I have a better job, have more sex than they do and less stress in my life. But to see me on the street, at my local duncan donuts or what not...You would never know what I do for a living.
It has become more and more like this in this biz than society knows. If they were aware of the true normality of it all...there would be less for LE and the rest of the nay sayers to  bitch about. Keeping this business in the dark corners of society keeps the public afraid of what could be. It throws a bad light on what I have seen to be to the contrary. I have met so many sweet Gentlemen who are good standing members of society, in general good people. But the world still is just not ready to know that.

You absolutely have to have maturity it can have a very harsh effect you are right.
They need to enter this business knowing what they are getting into and all and to know themselves as well. Know what their limits are and where their line is to be drawn. You need to be mentally healthy to be in this biz and not be consumed or carried away by it.

They would bitch anyway, because the biggest problem most have with this business isn't that it created streetwalkers and pimps and dangerous scenarios like that...it was freedom of choice, and freedom in the pursuit of pleasure.

Both things are something that many in society would like to control as much as possible.

Makes you wonder how some of these girls make it through the more prestigous colleges and universities...I know that's what I did,

Wait, is that me you're talking about?

Yup, grad day I'm gone. I'm not going out with a bang... will just quietly disappear and one day people will say gee, I wonder whatever happened to that girl?

Katie

Dear Charlottesweet:
I was wondering could you share your secrets of time management since you completed your Bachelors degree
while working in the hobby? Also how did you work your schedule around your classes and your internships?  Also when did you schedule your clients and then when did you allot certain time for study?  Also what did it teach you about running your own business and paying your taxes and writing off your expenses because I know that your where creative in that area as well.