Ill-fitting ensembles, garish face paint, stratosphere level stilettos and alleyway addictions- that’s the prostitution millions envision. Yet in the midst of a recession, the oldest profession might be gaining publicity and speed. Romanian teenager, Alina Percea, recently placed an ad online auctioning her virginity. With a domestic father, unemployed mother and younger siblings, Percea believed that the opportunity could reverse familial poverty and cover her upcoming college tuition.
She projected benefits of about $75,000. An unidentified Italian man offered about $13,000.
According to British news source Daily Mail, she hasn’t spoken yet with him, even though he was the highest bidder.
Percea’s hustle remains quite unoriginal.
She was inspired by an American woman, Natalie Dylan, who reported offers of nearly $4 million for a rendezvous with her.
Dylan told the New York Daily News that she sold herself to cover the costs of obtaining a master’s degree in Family and Marriage therapy. (Go figure.)
I’ve discussed stories of sex-selling with family and friends. I see that it is too easy for some people to offer one-sided condemnations.
Most opinions dismiss these women as spineless whores, but men who so fetishize virginity that they buy it, as if akin to a new ensemble, escape a slanderous wrath.
Such behaviors are prevalent, but for every conscious prostitute, several don’t even consent.
People are silently sold into an international sex trade. Elusive pimps and madams often abuse and place them into brothels and steal their income.
Then there are women (and men) engaging in various sexual acts hoping to acquire accoutrements and glory.
Giving a little something something solely because so-and-so bought dinner is still selling.
A prostitute is a prostitute.
Socioeconomic factors don’t nullify the label that accompanies peddling sexual favors.
Though individuals are entitled to control their bodies, consequences are real.
In as patriarchal a society as today’s is, women have much more to lose when choosing operate outside the confines of socially acceptable limits, particularly sexual boundaries.
Naysayers will talk and narrow-minded people will utilize simplistic cognitive functioning to define gender. Even so, women who wave libidinous flags of liberation sometimes make it harder on ladies everywhere.
The global stronghold on female desire presumably tightens after such exploits become news fodder.
Numerous African and Middle Eastern countries employ female genital mutilation as a way to control supposedly lusty females.
Yes, there are fundamental differences between Percea and Dylan and female victims of sexual abuse in more traditional countries.
But rather than demonizing them, we must collectively attempt to understand how they view themselves as tragic saviors keeping households afloat, or as inspirations to women everywhere pimping themselves before someone else attempts to.
My heart goes out to the myriad prostitutes, but I am not so highfalutin that I believe hookers exist only or mostly on street corners.
Wives who sleep with spouses that they don’t truly love in exchange for new drapes or trinkets are viewed from the same vantage point as ladies who cyber entice men to part with stacks of dead presidents.
Nonetheless, tricking is here to stay and so are the associations with it.
So as food costs raise, unemployment sets in, houses depreciate in value and the future looks dismal to many, what is given at birth first is often the first to go– willingly or not.