Wow…a Great debate…right here in the cafe.
Yes. If you marry for monetary reasons and not for love, you are a prostitute.
Not trying to start a great debate, just trying to find out where exactly you stand on the subject.
I guess it’s a matter of connotation. But definition a prostitute is based on numbers. From m-w.com
So, by denotation, someone who marries for money is not a prostitute. But depending on how you use the word, than I can easily see how you would consider a “gold-digger” a prostitute. After all, I imagine the popular connotation of the word is “someone who has sex for money” minus the “indiscriminately”.
IOW, the amount of people one sleeps with is technically important when labeling someone a prostitute.
There appears to be a precedent:
But the quoted definition you give here is the verb form of “prostitute”, i.e., “to prostitute”. We seem to be talking about the noun form here, e.g., “is she a prostitute”? M-W defines the noun form as equivalent to “whore”, i.e.:
The number of partners, or the number of acts, appears to have nothing to do with it in this light. This definition therefore seems to cover the idea of a “kept woman”, which we can assume is Fancy’s position vis-a-vis her “benevolent man”.
And to the OP: don’t forget that before she ever charmed a king or congressman, that benevolent man “took me in off of the streets/And one week later I was pouring his tea in a five room hotel suite”.
Yeah, she was a prostitute. She did what she had to do, but call a spade a spade.
When I was 19, I dated a woman who was in her forties, and well off financially.(I never knew how old she was until after we broke up, damn she was hot!) She took me out to eat, to see the Rolling Stones, bought me clothes…You get the idea.
I began to feel guilty about the situation, as I was young, stupid, and still had morals. I’m not sure how I felt. Used maybe. Or perhaps guilty that I couldn’t afford to buy her things, take her out to expensive restaraunts, etc. (It wasn’t until later that another woman pointed out what I was bringing to the relationship) So I did what any confused 19 yo kid would do…I left her apartment one morning, and never went back.
So let me ask you all this: Was I a hooker? A whore? A prostitute? I don’t feel that I was, and I sure as hell wish I could find a woman who would give me the same deal.
[sub]Why, oh WHY did I leave that apartment? Damn…[/sub]
Scratch that last post, I started another thread over in GD. Sorry for the hi-jack racinchikki.
Ooops, my bad. Didn’t notice that it was the verb use, I was in a hurry.
I think once you realized that you were her toy boy, you had the good sense to skeedaddle. That’s why you can look back without feeling like a whore. If you had realized at the time what was being exchanged, but had just shrugged and said, “oh well”, perhaps there’s a small part of your soul that would be dead or at least benumbed at this point.
I’m reminded of the movie Gigi, where the title character is a teenage girl being groomed by her grandmother and grandaunt to become a professional mistress. Kept woman, courtesan, whatever. It’s demimonde yes, but I think a step up from even a high priced call girl. There’s a quid-pro-quo, but not for individual sex acts.
There’s a joke to the effect that a wife is like buying a house, a hooker is like renting a motel room, and a mistress is like leasing an apartment.
By that definition most call-girls are not prostitutes. When you hire one, you are only paying for the companionship, not sex. The call-girl decides later if she will offer to do more.
But see the definition of the noun form of “prostitute”, which I gave above.
I don’t know much about call girls. If she does decide to have sex with her client, is the client expected to give her additional money or gifts? If so, it still sounds like prostitution to me–albeit as a side business, not the main transaction as you’ve described it (i.e., paying for companionship first).
I always thought that Fancy was someone like Marla Maples. Not a prostitute, but rather a mistress. A fine line, but there is a difference.