Students can engage in sex work without leaving their shared houses
If I told you that you could make an extra £1,000 a month, tax free, for a few hours of work – and that you’d barely have to leave the house to earn it – wouldn’t you be at least a little bit tempted?
According to a new study, released by the University of Swansea, one in 20 students has turned to sex work in order to secure extra income.
Researchers surveyed 6,750 students, of whom 5 per cent said they’d worked in the sex industry. Almost a quarter admitted they had considered it.
The reasons they gave were to fund their lifestyle, pay basic living costs, reduce debt at the end of university, sexual pleasure and curiousity.
One in 20 sounds like a lot, hence a general shock at the findings.
But frankly, given the relative ease of sex work – and the fact that it’s so lucrative – I’m surprised more undergrads aren’t giving it a go.
Think about it: students are busy, between lectures and generally hungover. Amid all the turmoil of being in your late teens/early twenties, the last thing you want is 30 hours of hours of waitressing a week.
Regular jobs are time consuming and tiring. Sex work, on the other hand, is flexible, freelance and lucrative. If you’re young and adventurous, it’s now a real consideration.
The rise in sex work amongst students is something I’ve seen first hand.
When at university, well-adjusted, educated young women decided that they’d rather work a couple of hours a week and make the same money as they’d make pulling six or seven shifts in a pub.
From stripping to webcam work, and prostitution, sex work left them with more time to study, socialise and spend their cash.
More students are turning to sex work
Of course, we should bear in mind that the Swansea University’s study applies to the umbrella term of ‘sex work’, covering everything from being an operator at a chat line to dominatrix work, webcam shows and stripping.
Lots of sex work doesn’t actually include having sex: it can be a simple as talking on the phone, or online.
If one in 20 students was curb crawling between Physics lectures, that would be more shocking than the revelation that one of my friends from first year made £35 a pop selling “used” underwear online.
The actual income of a sex worker varies wildly. Full sex can reach up to £1,500 for an overnight; a student dominatrix will charge an average of £200 an hour; a webcam sex session can cost around £4 a minute, per person watching – racking up about £150 for half an hour. Phone sex operators can pull in £2 a minute. And there’s also the option to charge for one off bespoke pictures – where feet do particularly well – fetching an average of £40 per bespoke foot selfie.
The consistent factor between the branches of sex work popular with students is that now, as opposed to 15 year ago, work is solicited online. There’s no standing around on street corners. There’s not even a need for an agency to be involved. Many sites offer a platform for sex workers to advertise their services, whether that’s phone sex, cam sex or full sex.
I had a university friend who would put on a 40 minute show using the selfie camera on her iPhone, then hang up and go back to watching re-runs of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and fighting with her housemares about who hadn’t done the washing up.
Other girlfriends of mine would meet attractive, successful and somewhat lonely men to go for lunches at nice hotels, wander around the shops and finish with a spa treatment.
Their combination of their sex drive and degree-level intelligence was a serious premium, which they were happy to use as a commodity.
The student sex market is crowded
The online nature of sex work has rendered it an exercise in branding, just as much as seduction.
From personal websites to social media profiles, sex work is a crowded market for a young woman, as the one in 20 statistic demonstrates.
Student sex workers end up building personal brands in order to secure work. (I’ve heard of some writing their pre-graduation CVs and ruing the reality that they can’t use sex work as evidence of their business acumen).
No-one is pretending that it’s an ideal situation that young people are using sex work to combat the astronomic costs of getting a degree.
There are, of course, less than pleasurable elements of sex work. But aren’t there in every job? Millennials are a practical generation, used to working against adversity. Getting a degree is an expensive business, and slaving away doing long shifts in a smelly pub, where the landlord grabs your bum every time you change a barrel, is pretty grim.
Student sex workers aren’t victims; they’re making a choice.
And after all: they’re running a business; handling the accounts, branding, marketing and sales. How many other undergraduates can claim that?
Eric Stonestreet Sends Sex Toys to Jesse Tyler Ferguson: How Jim Parsons Is Involved
That’s a Big Bang delivery! Jesse Tyler Ferguson told Meredith Vieira a hilarious story involving one of his Modern Family costars and fellow primetime television comedy star Jim Parsons.
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Ferguson, 39, appeared on The Meredith Vieira Show on Tuesday, April 7, where Vieira asked him: “I understand somebody was sending you sort of X-rated items in the mail. I wondered what kind of pervert would do that?”
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“What kind of pervert would do that?” Ferguson replied. “His name is Eric Stonestreet, he plays Cam on Modern Family.” On the ABC comedy, Ferguson and Stonestreet portray a gay couple, and it turns out that their funny dynamic on the series spills over into real life.
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“He was sending me toys that he found on the Internet and labeling, with my name on it — not any sort of alias — to my house,” Ferguson complained. “The worst part was he called me one day and said, ‘Did you get this package?’ And I said, ‘No, but sometimes my neighbors get my mail.'”
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Unfortunately, one of those recipients is a big television star. “That neighbor happens to be Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory,” the actor told Vieira. “So I had to go over to Jim’s house and go, ‘Hey, did you receive anything in the mail?’ He said, ‘No, I didn’t. What was it.’ I ended up telling him what it was but see, the thing is… I usually receive Jim’s New Yorker Magazine. Oh God, how embarrassing! I receive his high-brow magazine and he’s receiving lewd things in the mail that he thinks I ordered. Which I didn’t.”
