American College Student Sex Workers

In America, the media has reported on some college student sex workers. On this page, I would like to write about two articles that received mass attention. 

Last fall, at a protest against NYU’s rising tuition, an anonymous student wearing a face mask from Eyes Wide Shut to conceal her identity, confessed that she had participated in sex work to pay for school. When she became unable to afford college after her single parent’s injury, she started working multiple jobs. Since she prioritized her part-time job over schoolwork, her grades started to deteriorate. Even then, that money wasn’t enough, and at one point, she was even homeless and jobless. After she “had exhausted all other resources,” she “thought if [she] wanted to finish school, there was nothing else [she] could do” but enter sex work [1].

On the other side of the spectrum, there are still students whose families are well-off enough to afford tuition, but choose to enter sex work anyway. In an article for the University of Georgia’s student paper, a sugar baby writes about how she “ [likes] the finer things in life” and “[wants] to spend some now on material goods just because instant gratification is always nice” [2].

In addition to the two most common examples of students entering sex work to pay for tuition and for luxury goods, one Masters degree candidate at an Ivy League institution claimed that “for [her], sex work is more intellectual than anything else. … What [she likes] about sex work is the exploration, the digging through layers of sexism and sexual politics, finding where [she stands] and how men act when they are given free reign” [3]. This kind of reasoning was one I was unable to find elsewhere and is interesting because prostitutes from other demographics are not likely to be seeking such intellectual stimulation or be able to say that money is a secondary reward.

[1] Miller, Mark Crispin. "With No Other Choice, This Student Resorted to Prostitution to Meet NYU's Soaring Price." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 09 Sept. 2016. Web. 04 May 2016.

[2] Solomon, Adina. "Student Skips Loans, Finds a Sugar Daddy." Red & Black[Athens] 2011: n. pag. Print.

[3] "I'm Dressed to Kill." Letters from Working Girls. Ed. Susannah Breslin. N.p., 5 May 2008. Web.