Day shift. 
Three blocks from where I live in Logan Square, Chicago, we have a one-tooth crack whore, and she’s able to make a living. Well at least she’s been their for over a year, so there seems to be a market for everything 
Used to, yes: Ilona Staller - Wikipedia
I wonder if that market might end up increasing as the number of people who grow up with easy access to internet porn increases. I know that as I’ve gotten older, while my appreciation of fresh young faces has not really diminished, my appreciation of those somewhat older has gone up.
The vast, vast majority marry, get jobs, have kids, live out the rest of their lives.
What other answer could you possibly expect? No doubt a few die from abuse of (or by) drugs or alcohol or boyfriends. They probably would anyway. But most will go on and just live. They’re just people. What alternative fate could you imagine for them? Yes, they may be all around you. Yes, the grandmother may have done a porn film. You know what? Her grandmother may have done so as well. Porn films have been around for a hundred years. Pornographic photos for much longer. The people in it aged just like everybody else and went on with their lives just like everybody else and had kids just like everybody else and have wild tales they could tell about their youth just like everybody else.
But you know what? They won’t tell them to you.
Yeah, Exapno Mapcase, but what do they do for money? The crack whores don’t get more employable in a traditional sense when they get older. (Actually, I can answer that to a point, as we get some of them in the library - not enough to explain the entire demographic, though. I’d say for every twenty homeless men we get, I might see one homeless woman. Maybe more like every thirty.)
ETA - and recall, these are not people who are paying into Social Security.
They’re only 20, so they probably go to college.
Me ears are burning!
In Bangkok, they often end up in the Beer Garden in Sukhumvit Soi 7 or especially the Thermae “coffee shop” on Sukhumvit Road between, I think, Sois 13 and 15. Thermae espcially has some ancient hookers; it’s been running since the Vietnam War days, and I swear some of those girls are from that era. It’s largely a Japanese hangout these days, and I’ve not been in for a while, but there used to be this one ancient lady who was always going around pestering guys to take her home. I never ever saw anyone take her anywhere, and she became something of a legend. She may still be there for all I know.
Other girls may become bartenders or mamasans, the older mother-figure lady who looks after the girl in a bar. Some do find sugar daddies, sometimes several sugar daddies. But many simply return to their villages upcountry with little or no stigma involved. They may have saved a little to open a beauty or dress shop, although the Thai bargirl’s penchant for all-night gambling tends to evaporate any savings.
Well, crack addicts are a different story. Sure if you’re so strung out on crack that you’re whoring yourself out just for a few rocks, then there isn’t much future in that. But crack whores aren’t trading on their good looks and youth, they are trading on the fact that they have a vagina. The crack dealers who use crack whores are crack addicts themselves.
So that’s not really about over-the-hill sex workers, it’s about over-the-hill crack addicts. And you’re right that the prospects aren’t good. Either you eventually get off crack, or you end up with a tag on your toe.
But we’re talking about regular sex workers who work for money. And suppose they work in the industry during their 20s, and continue in their 30s but making less money, and in their 40s they are finished. Well, they are like anyone else who hits 40 without having much in the way of marketable skills and with a sketchy resume. They look around for whatever work that they can do, just like the 40 year old recently divorced single mothers and people of that ilk.
So the same sorts of things happen to them. You aren’t going to get a glamorous high paying job with no marketable skills and no resume, but there are plenty of working at IHOP that have little marketable skills and no resume either who didn’t work in the sex industry first.
I used to know a fair number of strippers. Those that had their act together married a rich dude, and are living quite nicely thank you. I imagine a fair number of Trophy wive’ had 'dancer" somewhere in their past- what better way to meet men with too much money and no ability to socialize with “normal women”?
Others got into drugs and went downhill early.
WTF? what happens to old telemarketers when they can’t stand what they do anymore?
They move on. This thread reveals a shocking amount of prejudice; most of you seem to think there’s something inherent in a person’s genetic code so that “sex worker” is what they are.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sex work is just something they do, and the vast majority of them take advantage of other opportunities as they crop up.
Please people, examine your prejudices. This thread is a pretty shocking display of ignorance.
Well, for strippers or prostitutes, I’m guessing the OP’s assumption is not that they “can’t stand what they do anymore” but that they’re no longer able to do so because of their looks.
And if it may not be in a gal’s genetics, but if she spent all of her twenties and thirties pole dancing, perhaps it might as well be? Not a lot on her resume she can carry over into a prospective career change.
AGain, this says more about your prejudices than about the real world. In your first paragraph you assume that the only thing a sex worker has to offer is looks. In your second paragraph, you seem to suggest that difficulty in moving on into a different sphere of employment is impossible, rather than simply difficult. Ever accomplished anything difficult? Your assumption that an ex-sex worker is incapable of doing so is, again, prejudicial.
I’ve known several former sex workers. I know two women in Chicago who were prostitutes in the Eighties, and now both of them are holding down mainstream jobs and living a “normal” life.
Since I’ve been peripherally involved in the adult industry for the last few years, I’ve known a lot more. Right now, one of the models on my website is an active sexworker. He’s also a single father has a kid to whom is exremely devoted and whose welfare is his number one priority. Another one of my guys is finishing a degree in creative writing. On a scholarship yet. His favorite writer is Flannery O’Connor–that’s actually how we met–and his stories show signs of someday being worthy of the comparison. None of the guys who’ve modeled on my site are stupid, two of them have kids, most of them have jobs–you get the picture.
Your cliche, stereotypical ideas of what a sexworker is, which is as individual as any other work, as distinct from what a sexworker merely does when he/she is “at work,” is, again, uncharacteristically ill-considered and prejudicial for what I’d come to expect from Dopers.
Contrary to popular belief, most prostitutes do not smoke crack. You might be surprised how otherwise seemingly “normal” many of them are.
Two words friend: morning wood.
Well, you’ve got a choice: you may cheerfully seize this chance to educate that vast majority of us who have no exposure to these individuals, or you can do the angry, spittle-flaying Donald Duck act. Which approach do you think would be more persuasive?
Funnily enough I recently found an old friend who was a sex worker when we were in college. She’s now 40 and studying psychology in graduate school. I know another ex-sex worker who is now working for a non-profit that works with low-income women. I’m sure most of the others I knew back then have found similar “mainstream” employment. With one or two exceptions, most of them went into the field because it was easy money, not because they weren’t otherwise-employable.
You should probably read it again. I was consciously very, very measured in my tone. Mentioning prejudice is hardly spittle flecked; I didn’t call anyone names or anything of that sort at all. Please take what I’ve said in the spirit intended, and don’t project your own issues, or whatever, for want of a better word, over it.
Prejudice is a perfectly good, measured, and in this case accurate word. I didn’t even say “bigot” or anything; I just pointed out where stereotypes and assumptions seemed to rule the discussion rather than thought and consideration.
Going over and reading what I wrote above I cannot imagine a more polite, measured way in which I could’ve said it, without changing the basic substance of what I was trying to say. If prejudice exists, pointing it out is not inherently “spittle flecked.”
ETA: In other words, Koxinga, can you please try to respond to the substance of what I’ve said rather than turn this thread into another meta-discussion on *how *I said it. You haven’t addressed my points at all; you’ve merely expressed the possibility that you, personally, might’ve expressed it differently.
:shrug: OK, whatever.
lissener, your first post in this thread was a bit vitriolic, as well as the first paragraph of your second post. However, starting from where you said “I’ve known several former sex workers,” seems informative and eye opening. Just my 2¢.
I read an article that Aurora Snow is using her porn career to pay for her schooling to be an attorney. It seems like a lateral career move to me I’d google more, but I’m at work and would really not have that showing up in my history, know what I mean?
From stripper to blogger to Oscar-winning screenwriter in only 3 years: Diablo Cody.
And you can make a nice living as a screenwriter.