Working Girl Wednesdays: "Girls Who Faint at the Thought of Being a Call Girl Never Had the Opportunity"

Welcome to Working Girl Wednesdays! Need advice on handling the complexities of the modern workplace? Well, fret no more! Whether it’s a senior partner making a move or a catty co-worker plotting for your plum position, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book Sex and the Office has a solution. Every Wednesday on Glossed Over, I’ll present a new tip from the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan. Is her advice utterly ridiculous or startlingly prescient? You decide!

This chapter is called “Some Girls Get Paid for It.” Indeed! The intrepid Helen Gurley Brown interviewed four such women to get the dirt. Sadly, this chapter is far less salacious than any of the previous chapters. Below, the zenith of the chapter’s raciness:

Sadistic acts—which Barbara, Norma, Colleen and Anita loathed—call for double, triple and quadruple rates. If two girls are engaged by one man, each girl receives her individual fee.

Good to know! Insight abounds in this chapter. For instance, a man explains why some women become call girls:

If I interpret Dr. Greenwald’s findings correctly, only a girl with an unhappy childhood or unfortunate early conditioning would be likely to accept a first paid assignment, let alone tolerate the kind of life a call girl leads…My other procurer said, “A lot of girls who nearly faint dead at the thought of somebody’s being a call girl never had the opportunity, you see. If they’d been real lookers and somebody kept offering them a hundred dollars to do what they’re already doing free, who knows how long they’d have held out?”

On the variety of women who choose such a profession:

As to the varieties of call girls, there are all kinds—peppermint, fudge ripple, butter pecan. Some call girls are gypsies—no more able to keep appointments and be a success at call-girling than they are at anything else. Some are shrewd and efficient business women. A friend in the public relations division of an ad agency told me he nearly keeled over the other day when a pro got in to see him by presenting a fake business card. Once inside his office door, she briskly announced that she was a call girl and would like to help him in any way she could with clients. If he was thinking in terms of banquets or large meetings, there were many more like her she could recruit, she said. Phil just listened and let her do most of the talking. It’s so rare that somebody comes in off the street and offers to lift burdens from a busy man’s shoulders that I think he was genuinely touched.

And why prostitutes are like macaroni:

This is a business situation in which a call girl might be introduced: One food-store chain in a city does most of the business. One man in the chain places most of the orders. How is he going to decide which macaroni to give extra shelf space to and possibly promote when all macaroni is good—and if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all? If the chain-store buyer should say to a macaroni salesman, “Joe, you must know some swinging girls,” the salesman might not be inclined to spit in his eye. (Listen, I don’t mean to pick on macaroni. I’m just using it as an example. The salesman of any product that looks, acts, tastes, smells and feels a great deal like the competitor’s could find himself considering the “intrinsic” advantages of calling in a call girl.)

Next week, HGB offers words of wisdom for the wives and widows forced to work!

Comments

[Charlene]

Argh. I once worked with prostitutes as a counsellor. Anyone who thinks women who aren't prostitutes are "jealous" because they're "not good looking enough" to become one needs a brain transplant and a kick in the rear end.

Of all the prostitutes I counselled - escorts and street prostitutes, men and women - every single one without exception was either mentally challenged (fetal alcohol syndrome being the most common disorder), a victim of child molestation, or a drug addict. Most fit into two of the categories, and a handful hit the trifecta.

The only differences between escorts and street prostitutes were that escorts didn't look used up yet and were usually white (or at least not Indian). Both had the same chance of being an addict; both had the same chance of carrying HIV or Hep B.

Too many men and women fall into the "Pretty Woman" trap of thinking that escorts and escorts are smart young people wisely using their bodies to make money and have fun in the process. I don't deny that somewhere there may be a prostitute who falls into this category, but in ten years I never met one. I also failed to speak with one prostitute who thought his or her work was fun, or who enjoyed it sexually in the least. One of them told me it was about as 'fun' as cleaning a filthy toilet.

[Kelly]

I so love these excerpts.

[Miss Terious]

Charlene: Is it possible that as a counselor, you were only seeing prostitutes and escorts that needed counseling? People who were unhappy and wanted to leave the business?

It seems to me that escorts who were content with their lives wouldn't seek you out, and *that's* why you never encountered them.

Just my two cents.

[Athena]

I just love it when people say things like "prostitutes are only getting paid to do what women are already doing for free." Yes, because every woman sleeps with multiple men in one week (nothing against those who might).