(no subject)

[pktechgirlbackup]

I was reading a (fiction) book today that made a point about prostitutes targeting the first-timers market. Not just for skill, but for an ability to destress people and keep them at ease. The book made it sound like there were many, many prostitutes who saw only virgins. Upon reflection, the economics just don't hold up. Even if almost everyone sees one of their prostitutes for their first time (and saturation rates were quite high, at least among the nobility), that's still not a lot of business. Most of the nobility probably patronize prostitutes hundreds of times over the course of their lives (very rough estimate- the book was following only the teenagers, so the sample size is skewed). That should mean that there are hundreds of normal prostitutes for each first-time only prostitute. But the only house for which we actually had numbers had three devirginizers, and there was no sense that there were 1000 others somewhere else. The lack of economic reality bugs me.

My second thought? How do they train. You can teach a certain amount, but there's going to be a devirginizer's first time with a virgin, and he or she (the book was very fair on that account) is probably not at peak form, with less stress-reducing relative to normal prostitutes, which kind of defeats the purpose of seeing a specialist. Maybe the devirginizers are the senior prostitutes. They've become better at the psychologist aspect of the job through the shear passage of time, and it spares them from competing against the younger, prettier set for most customers.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

If you assume that there's a relatively less hedonistic fraction of society that sees a prostitute for their first time, and then gets married or fools around with other nobles for most subsequent times, the model might work. The book doesn't really lead one to believe that this fraction of society exists, but it does have a slightly skewed viewpoint due to who's narrating it. At least, if I'm right about what book(s) you're talking about.

[lepid0ptera]

On the other hand, everyone knows that the most decent way to make a living doing this is to acquire a bunch of regulars. There's nothing quite like a steady paycheck. It's possible that if there is a brothel, the madam will send virgins to a particular subset of people that she knows will handle it well, but there's little reason for that subset to do it exclusively.