Online Female Escort Advertisements: The Cost of Sex

Interesting study I just found. [view link]. Female escorts represent an occupational group that charges a fee for sex, which can be regarded as an extreme form of short-term mating. The present study examined if the fees charged by escorts are related to traits typically associated with female short-term mate value. A total of 2,925 advertisements for female escorts offering sexual services in the United States were examined, as a customized software program was used to download all the advertisements from an online escort directory. The advertisement content was coded, and relationships between advertised physical characteristics and the hourly rate charged by female escorts were examined. The analyses showed that higher fees were associated with female escorts who advertised a waist-to-hip ratio near 0.7, lower weight and body mass index, younger age, and photographic displays of breast and buttocks nudity. The findings provide evidence that evolutionarily relevant traits associated with female short-term mate value are systematically related to fees charged for sexual services. Escorts’ information was obtained from an online escort directory. This site was chosen because of the large number of advertisements and the consistent and well-formed structure of the data (i.e., each profile was designed to allow a women’s measurements, pictures, and biographical information to be presented in a standardized online template). A total of 3,599 female escort advertisements were collected for this study. After controlling for duplicates, the final sample of escort advertisements was 2,925. These duplicates were a result of the website allowing escorts to advertise in different states and cities which created multiple advertisements for those escorts. The escorts were all females offering services in the United States with ages ranging from 18 to 70, with a median age of 26. Participants were predominately in the age range of 18 to 29 (67.2%) with the remaining being 30–49 (31.2%) and 50–70 (1.6%). Participants were predominantly Caucasian (64.9%) followed by mixed (10.4%), Asian (8.1%), Hispanic (8.0%), Black (7.0%), and Other (1.5%).