The business of sex

I was reading about the 27 year old single mother owner of one of the busiest escort agencies in North America.  Located – not in New York or LA, but in Fort McMurray, Alberta in the far north of cowboy country.  Fort McMurray a "gold-rush town" is home to some of the largest oil rigs around with loads of well paid, single, and obviously lonely oil workers. Apparently a sex trade worker can make up to $800 an hour, and hooking is a booming business in oil country.

But there are a few differences to the May West type of lifestyle in the new black gold.  For instance, in the traditional hypocracy of Canadian laws that effect prostitutes, it is not only illegal to discuss sex for money (it’s the solicitation, not the act that gets you in trouble), these girls only come to you there is no "in calls" so nowhere can it be said that there is a brothel.  It also can’t be in any parked car. Besides the crazy weather, the Transportation officers in Alberta wield alot of power.  If you are caught in a prostitution sweep, those officers can take your car as well as sending you off to see a judge.

It’s called the oldest profession, but I see big changes in the business of providing sex.  Advertising in a more “in your face” way, and now how being an escort like the new book by the Vivid Girls called How to be a XXX Porn Star (see August’s post) is now a job with a certain amount of cachet. Marketing sex in places like Fort McMurray is another example of how sex can go mainstream, and how if you have a certain amount of savve, you can turn sex into a mainstream business wherever you are.  Even in as redneck a place as northern Alberta.