Being Like Your Girlfriend: Authenticity and the Shifting Borders of Intimacy in Sex Work

Abstract

In the last decades a series of sexual services that offer company, talk, and more generally, what is understood as a ‘girlfriend experience’, are increasingly offered to a middle and upper-middle class clientele. These services involve a change in the boundaries of intimacy. We argue that they can be interpreted as part of the general process by which late capitalism has subsumed the 1968 critique that demanded liberation and authenticity. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with escorts and street walkers, we explore the discourse of authenticity in escort work in Spain and how the line is drawn between an ‘authentic intimacy’ that is sold, and a ‘private intimacy’, which involves the non-commodified affective life of the sex worker. We argue that escorts and street walkers draw these borders differently, the former emphasising authenticity in their service. Both, however, deploy a form of emotional labour.

“This Is Me, This Is What I Am, I Am a Man”: The Masculinities of Men Who Pay for Sex with Women

“…Participants in this study seemed to require an encounter that entailed significant emotional labour on the part of the sex worker, mirroring findings in other studies (see Carbonero and Gómez Garrido, 2018). At a surface level, friendliness and conversation were essential, moving through to a complete experience mirroring non-commercial encounters, with strong emotions attached.…”

Kissing Right? Absence of Rightward Directional Turning Bias During First Kiss Encounters Among Strangers

“…Interestingly, the intimacy involved in kissing is demonstrated from qualitative interviews with two categories of sex workers: street walkers and escorts. While the primary service offered by street walkers is pleasurable in the physical sense, escorts also offer emotional pleasure via affection (e.g., company, conversation) to deliver a "girlfriend experience" (Carbonero and Gómez Garrido 2018). Although kissing is a physical act, street walkers define kissing as a "body exclusion zone" (Sanders 2005) and refuse to kiss clients under the notion that kisses are deemed "too intimate" (Brewis and Linstead 2000); alternatively, kissing is a fundamental service provided by escorts (Carbonero and Gómez Garrido 2018).…”

Controlling intimacy: Sexual scripts among men and women in prostitution

“…Like scholars writing about sexuality in general, prostitution researchers have noted that the public–private boundaries between intimacy and commerce are becoming less distinct (Bernstein, 2001; Carbonero and Garrido, 2018; Kontula, 2008; Sanders, 2008). Bernstein (2007) depicts how in late modern societies, commercial sex is dispersed everywhere, covering a broad and complex range of services, all of which do not follow a simple cash-nexus.…”

“…She uses the term ‘bounded authenticity’ to underline that the physical/emotional connection of the exchange is restricted and temporary. Carbonero and Garrido (2018), on the other hand, describe bounded authenticity in escort services as ‘intentional, planned and marketed’ and as different from the ‘private intimacy’ characterising sex sellers’ non-commercial affectionate relationships (p. 395). In our study as well, interviewees used the term ‘girlfriend experiences’ about relationships that may be (but are not always) sexually reciprocal, but do not include emotional attachment.…”