A Review Primer

By

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May 27, 2013

Screenshot of review on Punter.net, the main escort review site for the U.K.

The following is a quick guide to review practices and terminology across different fields and even countries, compiled by Tits and Sass editors and contributors including Jemima, Lori Adorable, and others.

Escort Reviews in the US: Though there are several popular American venues for reviews, one site in particular (The Erotic Review, better known as TER) has established clear dominance in visibility and popularity. Its insistence upon assigning numbers to a provider’s appearance and the customer’s overall experience have led to lists of highest “ranked” escorts across the country and within each major city. Many escorts advertise with this information (“Ranked in the TOP TEN of escorts nationwide”) while even more advertise with encouragements to “check out my reviews.” Because reviews are such a large part of escort marketing in both urban and exurban areas of the States, escorts may solicit write-ups from clients, write their own positive ones under a fake account, incentivize good reviews with discounts, or even pay someone to praise them in review form. (Review writers for hire will often spam escort email accounts with their own rates.) Despite claims to the contrary, there is no fact-checking that goes into approving submitted reviews, and so false reviews are published with some regularity, both those portraying the escort positively and those attacking her as ugly, unpleasant, or dirty. There is no review board that prioritizes escort and client concerns equally; all are skewed to favor the client and escorts are often ignored or penalized for speaking out against rude customer attitudes, dangerous practices, or retaliatory reviews.

Though academics and civilian observers regularly treat reviews as an indoor work phenomenon, reviews are not limited to women advertising online or using indoor work spaces. For over a decade, men have traded review-type information online about street workers as well, even when they don’t know the woman’s name or regular location.

In Canada: Escort review sites are common in Canada, though it is possible to go through your entire career without using them. In big cities like Toronto, a hub for business travelers, using review boards to find an independent or agency escort is more common than in other parts of the country and many escorts use them as a marketing tool. In Ottawa, the capital, recommendation boards are also common, possibly because of the perceived privacy concerns of those involved in politics. In Vancouver and Calgary, smaller and less central cities, the boards contain a tight-knit community of reviewers and hobbyists, but men who travel there don’t seem to rely on reviews as heavily to find an escort.

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What’s Your “Real” Name?

By

Bubbles

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August 15, 2011

Google is becoming like that irritating customer who thinks he’s so clever for figuring out that stripper probably really isn’t named Fantasia, what with asking people, “No, really, what’s your real name?” Welcome to our world, online handle users! Choosing a work name is one of the first things nearly every sex worker does when entering the business. My name isn’t really Bubbles, Kat’s driver’s license says something else, and Charlotte wasn’t given that name at birth. We all have different reasons for using other identities online from the frivolous (to bitch about work without trouble) to the very serious (malevolent stalkers).

One of our own contributors, chelsea g. summers, has battled with serious online harassment. She’s “come out” under her real name as part of a project that hopes to demonstrate the importance of pseudonyms, the My Name Is Me site, that uses personal stories to illustrate the importance of retaining control over what name you use online.

That site/project came about in response to the (admittedly spotty) enforcement of the use of “real names” on Google Plus. One of the reasons Twitter is my favorite social network is how it allows users freedom to present themselves as they wish. Facebook and Google Plus require more constant vigilance about your privacy settings and who you friend. Maintaining a presence on those sites while protecting your privacy requires a constant battle with ever-changing visibility settings and name requirements.

My Name Is Me has a dedicated category for sex workers. Artist Molly Crabapple describes how she started using her name while working as a nude model, and unlike Janice, chooses to only identify herself that way today, as should be her decision to make. We’re willing to make a deal: You don’t ask us what our real names are, and we’ll put up with the occasional troll, sock puppet, or middle-aged man posing as an escort blogger in order to keep whatever degree of privacy, safety, and anonymity we can still maintain online.

Sexy Bottle of Sriracha: This Year in Dumb Halloween Costumes

By

Bubbles

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October 19, 2012

Dressing slutty in public loses its novelty really fast when you have a dozen pairs of platform heels—made by Pleaser or Ellie, not Jessica Simpson—in your closet. So, for strippers, Halloween isn’t some once-a-year opportunity to slut it up. It’s a once-a-year opportunity to judge other women for dressing slutty, and the stupid costumes that are sexified!

But hey, you’re only young once, and if you don’t get to work off that excess sexual energy at, uh, work, have fun on the one night of the year it’s totally OK to wear underwear in public. I have nothing to say about how Slutty Halloween is a symptom of the decline of the culture or whatnot because I am OLD and I remember my mom and her friends dressing slutty for Halloween back in the 80s for crying out loud. Not a new thing.

But that doesn’t mean that everything needs to be turned into a fucking Sexy (Blank) Costume. Is nothing sacred? No. Nothing is sacred. Here are the costumes that made me click. I had to suffer for this post, and now it’s your turn. Remember, I’m a career stripper, and I’m passing judgment on these costumes, so you know they’re special. I myself will be taking my costuming cues from this piece. Or continuing to work on my Sexy Binder Full of Wom(a)n costume.

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Stripper Music Monday: 2001 And A Dying Format

By

Bubbles

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January 23, 2012

Someone hit my car in a parking lot (he left a note), so it’s been in the shop for a week. The dealer’s loaner is lacking, stereo-wise; there’s no SiriusXM and not even an AUX input plug. After three whole days of thinking “broadcast radio is not cutting it,” I realized that even without being able to plug in my iPhone, there was a way to listen to music in this car. On CD. That means that somehow the old, hard-copy method of listening to music in cars did not register for a full 72 hours.

Strip club music plays from a computer now, unless you’re in a little bar with a jukebox or a stereo with an iPod jack (hello, Portland). If the club allows dancers any control over the music, the DJ will either download requests or rip them from iPods/phones/flash drives. So it’s rare now to see a dancer bring CDs to work. Until relatively recently the ones with a particular interest in what they danced to while on stage would regularly haul their CD cases up to the DJ booth every shift, though.

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Escort Evolution: 5 Classic Hooker Attitudes

By

Charlotte Shane

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May 20, 2013

Sex workers are a profoundly diverse group of individuals, with wildly different backgrounds, circumstances, and work tactics. But I’ve been around the block enough times to know that within this corner of our lives, our experiences often coincide. On a near-daily basis, I recognize another escort displaying the signs of an attitude I too once held. So without further ado, here are five common hooker states of mind that I suspect most of you will recognize, in others if not in yourself.

Everyone Must Know — The most embarrassing, cringe-inducing mindset is also one of the earliest to appear among a subset of privileged, politicized, very young sex workers. Think about the worst qualities of most middle class college kids: their naiveté, which they’re (naively) convinced is actually a very sophisticated and hard-earned understanding of the world; their youthful earnestness; their awkward, hyper-self aware social skills or lack thereof. Throw in a job at the local strip club/jack shack/full service incall and it’s a recipe for humiliating disaster. I was convinced that I could single handedly eliminate at least, like, 50% of the stigma around sex work by making it clear that I — a white, educated, intelligent young woman! — was selling sexual services and was TOTALLY EMOTIONALLY FINE and THRIVING and indeed, STILL WHITE AND EDUCATED in spite of it.

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