Model Business

Sex lives of the rich and powerful have never been the same in Europe since dour Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity. Gone were the stables of slave girls and boys, bisexual orgies, sex with animals and other fun stuff. The patricians and the military commanders were accorded one non-divorceable wife, no exceptions.

            Life in the Middle Ages was truly grim. Homosexuality was punishable by death. Peasant girls were unattractive, filthy creatures lacking all sophistication. Noble-born women were few and far between kept in prison-like castles. Meeting with their well-armed fathers, husbands and elder brothers was justly considered an equivalent to encountering band of Saracens on the Crusade. Whores were the daughters of misery lacking full complement of fingers, teeth and eyes.

            It took European nobility nearly twelve centuries to recover. By that time, a new Renaissance culture replaced stone moors of the keeps with the palaces open for lavish parties and created a new type of urban whore, well-dressed and sophisticated. Still, European nobility could not engage in well-organized debauchery of their Chinese or Russian counterparts. Marco Polo writes: “Thither the grand khan sends his officers every second year, or oftener, as it may happen to his pleasure, who collect, for him, to the number of four or five hundred, or more, of the handsomest young women, according to … their instructions… Upon the arrival of these commissioners they give orders for assembling all the young women of the province, and appoint qualified persons to examine them… Upon their arrival in his presence, he [the Khan] causes a new examination to be made by a different set of inspectors… when thirty or forty are retained for his own chamber. Having undergone this rigorous scrutiny, they are divided into parties of five, one of which parties attends during three days and three nights, in his majesty’s interior apartment… The remainder of them, whose value has been estimated at inferior rate, are assigned to the different lords of household.”

            Ivan the Terrible, though an Orthodox Christian, imitated this procedure in XVI Century: “Being bored in his unchaste widowhood, he looked for the third wife. Noble and ignoble brides were collected to Sloboda [his temporary capital] from all towns, more than two thousands in whole. Everyone was shown to him personally. First he selected 24 and then 12, which should have been inspected by the doctor and the nurses. He held lengthy comparisons in beauty, in character and wit…”[1]

            Yet, at about the same time, two horrible innovations—syphilis brought by Columbus’ caravels from the Americas, and the Reformation, proclaiming the return to the ascetic ideals of Early Christianity—once again brought happy frolics of European aristocrats into disarray. Reform theologians, who could not compete with the eternal bliss in the afterlife, opportunistically endorsed by the Council of Lateran (1518?), re-invented another horrible thing: a divorce.

It was still heavily stacked in favor of men, but the simple fact, that many an aristocratic wife had equally powerful fathers and brothers, somewhat restricted toleration of multiple concubines in high society. Increased toleration of the Jews also enhanced the probability that highly positioned members of nobility and the clergy would share their conquests in brothels with the detested circumcised. Yet again, by the eighteenth century, upper classes resumed their exploits in the well-appointed “Isles of Cetera”, “Stag Parks” and other establishments of the Ancien Régime. Propagation of opera, comedy theatre and ballet mightily enabled meeting attractive sexual partners in an amusing setting.  

Then the revolution with its slogan had stricken the newly comfortable world of the old nobility and clergy: “There should be no universal revolution without universal copulation.” (M. de Sade) The answer of the victorious counter-revolution was, well, Victorianism. Uppity Victorians could, of course, have their kept women and frequent prostitutes. Raping servant girls was a natural part of male education in high society. However, there was not a chance that a gentleman could parade his concubine among his peers. This abrogated “pissing contests” between competing males but also made market in kept women highly illiquid—in the absence of social gatherings where the men of quality and the women of endowment could easily mingle—the choice of potential partners for all but the most illustrious of stags (such as Edward VII, “the Caresser”) was severely limited. Remaining photographic portraits of the famous courtesans of the age and consorts of the rich and powerful with rare exceptions do not blind us with immortal beauty.

The discovery of cinema in the Late Victorian Age provided somewhat of a relief. Highly placed men could now present their boys’ toys to each other by pointing at covers and folds of the glamour magazines. But this was a far cry from the free-for-all contests of the Ancien Régime because a potential love interest needed at least marginal acting, singing or dancing talent and, moreover, the dating scene was limited by geographic constraints.

Most of the prospective conquests lived in Los Angeles suburbia and to a lesser degree in Berlin before the WWII or Rome’s Cinecitta thereafter, far from established financial centers of New York and London and the center of power in Washington, DC. Only the staunchest and most dedicated whoremongers such as Kennedys could afford, in monetary, as well as in more important social terms, to pursue Hollywood beauties.

Modeling industry has already emerged but, in Coco Chanel’s time, models were little more than glorified prostitutes. They were poor, nameless and could not be accepted in polite society. For quite a few, modeling was an adjunct to their “working on the side.” The revolution came with the 60s and was brought about, ironically, by gays. Andy Warhol with his “superstars”, Robert Mapplethorpe who turned photographic pornography into an accepted art form and Herb Ritts, who propagated erotic art from galleries of Soho to the glamour magazines, became the pioneers and paved the way for many gay as well as straight admirers.

The beginning of the age of a supermodel coincided with the end of the Cold War. Now the Western ruling class could cede the last vestiges of its martial origins and entirely absorb itself in the pursuit of unheard-of-luxury and erotic hedonism. The models were different from courtesans of old by a few important qualities. Rich and powerful men could cavort with them and show them off to one another freely under the guise of charity events, art auctions and fundraisers. With the new invention of private jet they could be shoveled anywhere. Unlike opera and film stars of old, they did not have to possess even minimal talents other than in bed. To assist pissing contests of the elite men, photography in the glamour magazines became even racier than the established pornographic journals in the 50s and 60s thus accelerating the demise of the latter. Unlike the porn stars, underage models could be legally transported across borders and photographed without parental consent.

For the first time since antiquity, open pursuit of underage girls and boys became if not legal then less socially unacceptable under the guise of search for the new talent. If sex with them would still have legal consequences in New York, there were places like Bangkok or Prague, where everything goes as long as you are an American or, in cases of harshest violations, pay the police. Eventually all models had to look like teenagers, being freakishly tall and thin androgynous creatures with enormous accentuated eyes.

A few stories of deliberate starvation and drug abuse, some with lethal consequences, have shaken this comfortable debauchery. Pesky feminists took their cases with renewed vigor further emboldened by the fact that the new tabloid culture would discuss these cases with gusto. Finally, the realization that fashion models are simply the highest-remunerated strata of sex workers started to creep into public consciousness. There came prohibitions for superficially young models and demands for a minimally healthy body weight. The guidelines on the cross-border transportation and parental supervision of international travel and sexual images of the underage models are still absent. But, if feminists get their way—and it hard to imagine that they would not—unless women again are denied the right to vote, they are the next logical step.

Regulations on model agencies and shuttering down those, which are most obviously the institutional pimps, especially in Eastern Europe and Latin America, can be more difficult task but, if money laundering is the guide, it can be accomplished quickly and relatively painlessly with a necessary political will. The main obstacle is that, similar to the world of professional sports and academia, the world of fashion is highly stratified with the economic interests of (very visible) pinnacles of the profession being highly incompatible with the interests of those (invisibles) at the bottom of the barrel.

            The difficulty of modern jurisprudence to cope with these problems can be illustrated by a recent case of Russian tycoon and presidential candidate Prokhorov. He was arrested with a number of teenage models at the French resort of Courchevel and charged with pimping. While the fact of arrest obviously had political undertones attributable to the Russophobe French officials, the accusations of the multi-billionaire mogul of pimping raised a significant legal issue. If one considers an owner of a provincial strip club who gives his girls a heroine fix before sending them to serve his mafia “protectors” a criminal, there is no judicial reason to treat a tycoon who provides teenage fashion model with a pretty nest somewhere in Monaco for cavorting with important Senators and Duma Committee members to lubricate passing of important legislation any different. Yet, the French prosecutors failed to make this case and Prokhorov escaped scot-free and was even able to counter-sue.

When and if fashion models will acquire rights similar to registered prostitutes in some European countries, e.g. Germany, i.e. the right to public pensions and health care, police protection in case of abuse or cross-border trafficking, monitoring of work conditions, such as exposure to the elements and/or dangerous animals, their exploitation by the rich and famous might cease to be that much fun. Joining modern Hollywood and talk show circuit stars, fashion models can become another boring group of highly paid career women. The arms race between predatory alpha males and women rights advocates is to be continued.

            However, the powerful and the mighty have strong social tendencies in the Western society on their side. The monogamous marriage, which has been inviolable in Europe since adoption of Christianity is now under attack from above and below. First, the communities of Moslem immigrants, which established themselves in the centers of Western Civilization, such as London, Paris and Berlin practice de facto polygamy. Because, in many countries, especially England, Holland and Scandinavia, formerly France—but there Sarco “the American” fought it vigorously—established themselves as virtual enclaves with their own justice and customs, sometimes not even allowing the local law enforcement to enter their strongholds, Sharia-approved polygamy proliferated among Europe’s poorest classes.

On top, the upper classes of the Western societies live in virtual polygamy. The expressions “starter wife” and “girlfriend experience” appeared either in Wall Street and Hollywood to describe two different facets of this abandonment of the Christian-Germanic monogamy. In the former case, the upper-class men practically enter a contract with woman, who must support them at initial stages of their careers—run around the agents, type scripts and resumes, cook food and iron tuxedos—until they achieve some recognition and can drop her for a co-equal in their profession. Of course, nothing is new in this world, and the phenomenon of French grisette in XIX century provided an obvious template.  

On later stages they can part with the career wife as well, and start marrying long-legged bimbos decades younger then themselves. Or, if they cannot or would not abandon their social wife, they can be served by “a girlfriend experience”, i.e. a whore paid not only to perform tricks but also to provide the hustler a company to opera or social functions (here, life imitated art because “Pretty Woman” seemed to precede wide opening of this new market). These women obviously evolved from high-end escort services but unlike the latter, they are paid not only for playing tricks but also for faking emotional attachment and concern for her patron’s career being at the same time as disposable as the former.[2]

Among the new wealthy of Russia, “the oligarchs”, the following pattern became the norm. A middle-aged man marries a very young woman, typically a model and/or a winner of a beauty pageant (‘miss’ka’, a worldplay on ‘Miss something’ and ‘cooking pot’) who provides him companionship before their children go to school. Then the offspring followed by his mother is sent to the prestigious boarding school somewhere in Switzerland or UK and the cycle is repeated. Now, this is true, not a serial, polygamy, because these women usually must maintain relationship to their man at his pleasure to get support for their lavish lifestyle in London or Paris. While in the puritan US true harems are a rarity, such national treasures as Hugh Heffner and Ted Turner can maintain them in full splendor.

            Our post-Christian, American-centric world instead of becoming secular adopted Neo-Paganisms typical for the Roman Empire. The American elites under the guise of “Biblical Christianity” (heavily influenced by the Mormonism and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism of the Haredim) promote a cult of militaristic state as an extension of male-dominated units of nuclear families. There are even propagandists of such worldview, who abandon its religious shell for the reformed social Darwinism (Charles Murray, etc.). The lower orders largely hold heterodox superstitions mainly resulting from this “Biblical Christianity” but which also include New Age cults. The main underpinning behind all of them is the replacement of the Christian doctrine of Providence by the Pagan doctrine of “luck” (Fortuna) mostly associated with the worldly possessions. Feminists are right to feel that, despite all of their successes, they belong to the city besieged.

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[1] “Скучая вдовством, хотя и не целомудренным, он уже давно искал себе третьей супруги… Из всех городов свезли невест в Слободу, и знатных и незнатных, числом более двух тысяч; каждую представляли ему особенно. Сперва он выбрал 24, а после 12, коих надлежало осмотреть доктору и бабкам; долго сравнивал их в красоте, в приятностях, в уме.” V. Karamzin, Russian XVIII-XIX century court historian. Tsarist censorship excised the detail that the “brides” were paraded naked before him and his teenage son.

[2] There is XIX century anecdote of a village girl arriving in Paris who asked an established prostitute how it happens that men would pay such exorbitant sums for so little. Experienced hooker answered that the wealthy men pay you not only to come but also to leave quietly.