Khunrum emails: "Great article below. In Asia it’s not just the bar girls who are putting out but practically all the girls. My young buddy Phil was boffing a beautiful Thai Muslin coed but first had to buy her a gold necklace that was as thick as a rope. A Frenchman I know was doing great at his restaurant but was diddling around with a Thai University sweetie. He set the gal up in a condo. Word was she was boinking the Frog and the local Thai Police Commander. His wife (the cook) caught wind of his infidelity and left him. He hired a new one but the food wasn’t the same. He didn’t pay attention anymore and was spending too much time away from the business which went down the drain. Now he’s on the street, sleeping on friend’s couch’s. Oh! what that furry creature will do to a man. arrrrrggggghhhhh!"
So, Sophie Anderton is a prostitute. Two weeks ago, the underwear model offered an undercover News of the World reporter the freedom of her body in return for £10,000. Clad only in a G-string and Christian Louboutin stilettos, she expertly negotiated the sum while hoovering up lines of coke in a London hotel. Okay, so Anderton is on the game. This is shocking news. But hold on. Didn’t we always suspect that there was a ?ne line between model and escort, escort and prostitute? The steps between each stage are alarmingly small. After all, the fashion industry is full of impoverished models who are expected to strip off and work the circuit during the day, so why not do it at night, too?
Model agencies are regularly approached to send batches of girls to parties; the girls are happy to oblige because they might get noticed. One fashion insider reports that “loads” of models are happy to provide a beautiful presence for rich men in return for hard cash. “One Saudi prince pays girls to come to his huge parties. They are booked, paid well, then come back with even more cash, and they are weighed down with jewellery like you wouldn’t believe. He always has the most beautiful girl on his arm. The girls don’t take payment for sex. They just know they’ll be sorted with diamonds.”
What Anderton did wrong was to be upfront about it. Actually, asking for money shunted her that little bit further, locating her in a marginally different category from women who sleep with men with fast cars who have just taken them to Nobu, or who attach themselves to a rich man they ?nd emetically unattractive, or social climbers who marry a house. But then, when it comes to sex, money and power, male-female relations are as grey as the winter skies.
It’s not a new story: three centuries ago, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wondered whether marriage was not, after all, a form of legalised prostitution. In many sexual relationships today, physical intimacy is often tacitly offered on the presumption that the recipient will provide a quid pro quo of some sort.
Anderton’s motive was typical of a woman desperate to upgrade her life: she was selling her body to help pay for a three-bedroom house in Notting Hill. Chelsea is full of slightly unplaceable twentysomethings who exist in the same twilight zone – models/actresses/stylists/whatevers with no discernible sources of income, who have jaw-dropping wardrobes full of £5,000 designer shoes and coats, and who can’t even afford the buckle on a Birkin bag unless they put out. They’re not naming a price, but they’re happily going on the shopping trip.
The transaction may appear below the line, but generally, a deal is being done, and it is one in which both parties know the rate of exchange. Only Anderton’s blunt manner – her tendency to cut the crap and ask for the goods – sets her apart from women who party, put out and run off with the diamonds. Her tale of woe simply lays bare the fact that most of us, at some point and in some way, on whatever scale, are selling ourselves. Maybe not sex for £10,000, but there are plenty of women who have agonised over whether they should snog a guy simply because he paid for dinner. One especially solvent man of my acquaintance says of his girlfriend: “She wakes up the next morning and tells me her washing machine is broken. It’s no big deal to give her £500. The following week, I take her out for dinner, and she stays the night. It’s no big deal to spend some time and money shopping the next day.”
Indeed not. No big deal to him, and possibly quite fun for her. But where do you draw the line? When drugs and power are involved, you would be surprised how far seemingly normal girls are prepared to go. One woman recalls how, as a student, she used to visit a Greek shipping tycoon in Chester Square, Belgravia. She would strip to her undies and play with herself, and leave with £150. Now in her thirties, she looks back on it without pride.
“I was abused as a child, and I think that low self-esteem and a desperate need for attention led me to do it, because abuse makes you think that your only utility is as a sexual object,” she says. “I used to work in a casino and a guy offered me £10,000 if I’d go on a dirty weekend with him. I thought, a weekend will be over quickly, but the fact that I’d prostituted myself will mentally last a lifetime.”
Has she been tempted to offer sex for money since? “I need an operation that I can’t get on the NHS, and I’m in the early stages of a relationship with a Muslim guy. He’s offered to pay, and I know it’s because he wants to spend time with me,” she admits. “It’s hard to judge people who are desperate, but I think that these girls are essentially greedy. Like Anderton, who wants to pay for a house she can’t afford, they are just lost souls. They think that the trinket or the holiday or the car is worth more than their own self-respect, but it never is.”
