…and exotic dancers, or basically anyone whose time they’re paying for. In Valentine’s Day, this is a cutesy subplot, resolved in the ten minutes it takes for Old People to teach Big Lessons. In real life? Not so much:
I’ll be the first to admit that the lion’s share of my knowledge on this subject comes from illegal downloads of Secret Diary of a London Call Girl. But even having said that, I am familiar with this phenomenon: remember when in Season 2 that rich client of Belle’s paid to have an “exclusive” arrangement with her? Yeah, it didn’t work out. Anyway. Allegedly, Tiger Woods was pathologically jealous about the fact that one of his mistresses – Veronica Siwik-Daniel, nom de ahem guerre Joslyn James. So much so, says lawyer Gloria Allred (whose energies, apparently, could not be better used elsewhere) that Siwik-Daniel gave up porn “because Tiger was very jealous and he could not stand the thought of her being with another man.”
Says the Daily Beast’s Tracy Quan, (author, incidentally, of Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and its sequels),
When a jealous, demanding lover resents your clients or your work, the tension can be thrilling and irritating in equal measures, and the deliciously toxic dynamic oh so hard to resist. If we fall for a man’s jealousy, we are falling not just for the man himself, but for our own hyped-up image of ourselves as sex stars. Flattering on the most primal level, it also makes up for the pain associated with outsider status. It says, “I may not be respectable, but I can make you jealous. My power is larger and more ancient than all those rules about whom you should marry.” It’s no coincidence that some of the most jealous lovers of sex workers are guys who wear suits. The challenge is mutual. Male jealousy is also intimidating because it feels like an energy force with a life of its own, equal to our erotic currency as professionals. Against our better judgment, we’re impressed when a man is jealous of our work. In a perfect world, we would filter out his work-related jealousy because it threatens our financial independence. We would find some way to enjoy a lighter, more mainstream kind of jealousy. But there is no such thing for us-no perfect world, no filter that makes jealousy easy to manage. And yet it’s the glue holding too many of our relationships together.
The scenario is stock drama, not just in verite scenarios. Take the appallingly trite Valentine’s Day: Anne Hathaway is a sex-phone operator whose career seems to consist primarily of wacky accents and LARP-ing. When straight-arrow Topher Grace discovers this, (Um, spoiler alert, I guess) he is distraught and breaks up with her. For an hour or something. Then he realizes that you have to love people in all their dimensions blah blah blah and he was a judgmental jerk, and he loves her. Fade to black, or some cutesy kid falling in precocious movie love, I forget which. It’s a gooey resolution for a real issue: as Kari Lydersen wrote in Time Out recently, being a sex worker of any kind involves
lying to your date about what you do for a living-and keeping the charade up for years. Dates who expect you to be wild and kinky, when you just want gentle, romantic lovemaking. Dates who assume you have an STI, even though you get tested more than anyone you know. A stressful job can interfere with dating, but sex workers may have it toughest of all. The above experiences are common ones for those in the trade, not to mention the debilitating jealousy that dates or partners often feel when you make your living through sex.
What’s somewhat ironic about the whole situation is that, as much as male jealousy, we’re inundated with the cultural stereotype of men being the ones who can compartmentalize. While history is strewn with gold-hearted hookers or hard-boiled pros, rarely are we allowed to combine our madonnas and whores. The reality is, as usual, a lot more complicated. In Tiger’s case, very.
Jealous Of A Call Girl [Daily Beast]
Gloria Allred Attacks Tiger Woods At L.A. News Conference. Did She Make The Case? [LAT]
For Love Or Money [TimeOut]