The Courtesan Economy

Rachel Uchitel Is Not a Madam

And the bottle girls who work at clubs are not prostitutes. As Tiger Woods’s very public escapades through the 21st-century courtesan economy suggest, it’s all much more complicated than that.

  

• By Lisa Taddeo
• Published Apr 4, 2010

(Photo: Art Streiber; Styling by Nikki Pennie/Solo Artists; Hair by Daniel Erdman for Redken/Solo Artists; Makeup by Jenn Streicher for Dior Beauté/Solo Artists; Prop Styling by Jamie Dean/The Magnet Agency)

The sexiest part of an affair is where it begins.

 

You know what the middle looks like, hotel-sheeted and ultimately routine, and you know the way it will end, but where and how it began is always a little surprising.

 

Historically, powerful men with slavering appetites have mainly acquired their girlfriends the way a pair of pants gathers lint—rather incidentally. Bill Clinton and his intern. JFK and his secretaries, his stewardess. Collecting a mistress in this way seems, as everything does in the past, more innocent. An abundant young woman wears a daring dress to the office party, and catches the president’s eye.

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http://nymag.com/news/features/65238/