Something New - Hot Yoga

My motto for this year is "be better". It's nice, and broad, and can cover a lot of aspects of life without too much room for error. I can either be a little bit better at something, or be loads better at it. It works on so many levels, see?

So one way I'd like to "be better", is by being a little bit healthier and trying new shit, you know, putting myself out there a bit more and seeing things from a different perspective. I did just that today, because this morning I tried hot yoga.

Usually, I scoff at yoga. My boyfriend has had to endure taunts from me about how it's all "hippy shit" and not a real work out. How it's all "ohmm-ing" and "woosah" and all that jazz. I've probably just royally pissed some of you off by saying that, but hear me out and stick with me. So, with that attitude, just how in the hell did I end up in a yoga class, I hear you ask?

Well, I have a friend to blame for that. Not just any friend, a friend that gets way too Groupon happy sometimes. Before Christmas, she got especially Groupon happy and because she knows I do Pilates, when she saw this Hot Yoga class deal, she couldn't resist and signed us up.

PAH! This would be a doddle. It's all slow, flowing, om, om, stretchy movements. I can do that. I do hardcore Pilate stretching that has toned my abs to not quite rival that of Jessica Ennins, but they're still looking damn good. And it's in the heat? No problem! I love heat. I've been to Australia. In the summer and I survived, but hey. I'm "being better" and I should give this a go and it will be a doddle anyway, right?

It wasn't.

Within the first three minutes I was sweating and having to stop to take some water and all we'd done were a couple of cobra's and a lot of downward dogging (I lost count of how much dogging we did in class today). The teacher was relentless. We were up, down, sideways warrior-ing, doing the [funky] pigeon, happy babies and there were a load of words I didn't understand, but sounded totally "woosah" and like the hippy shit I was expecting. There was no clock in there and I didn't have a watch, but the class was only meant to last an hour. It felt like we were in there a lot, lot longer.

Apart from not understanding a lot of the words coming out of the nice-teacher lady's mouth and being told to not look to see if I'm doing it right, but instead just "listen to the instructions and the flowing movement of [her] voice," after a while I did start to get the hang of it. That was only after I had the rebellious thought of, "fuck this, it's all too fast, I'm going at my own pace," and I'm pretty sure that's not the right attitude, but whatever. After I thought that, it got better, I got better and actually started to enjoy it.

I liked the breathing. Who knew that breathing in a hot room with other super sweaty people could be so chillaxing? I also liked the balancing. I was good at that and the sequences of balances we did was probably the only point in the class when I didn't look like a total beginner.

The bastard class left me feeling, what I'd like to call, 'yoga-happy'. Yes, I felt all floaty and smiley inside. It's only after I've come down off that inner-tranquillity high and had a cup of toxic coffee with extra sugar that I've been able to write this blog about how pigging irritating it is that I'm going to have to eat my previous words about yoga. It was tough. It was hot. I sweated like a bastard and couldn't keep up, but goddammit, my balancing tree-pose looked beautiful and I didn't wobble once. NOT ONCE!

And yes, if you must know, I am looking forward to next week's class and being just a little bit better than this week.    

How to knock a country's sexual confidence

It's a sad fact that there is some really terrible sex writing out there. While I can't claim that everything I pen in relation to sex is "sparkling copy", at least it generally doesn't make people feel like shit (I hope), like I think this article would.

Titled, 'Why are British men so bad at sexting?', my major gripe with Rebecca Holman's piece was the total man-bashing of British men and the use of cliches and stereotypes to do this. Specifically, it was this paragraph that really pissed me off:

"Sexting is awkward, bad, sexist and never sexy. It’s the natural progression of a nation who once thought Benny Hill to be the height of sophisticated comedy. If a French man were to send me a sexto, it would be a perfectly worded combination of charm, smarm and sex, leaving me in a puddle of lust, excitement and shame on the floor."

Note the use of the word "if" in this paragraph, confirming that she doesn't actually have any hard evidence. I wouldn't mind so much if she didn't go on to write this: 

"I don’t know what it is, but in the UK, even the most articulate of chaps is reduced to the same combination of sexual clichés and inexplicably terrible spelling."

But hang on, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU JUST DID! Or, did Rebecca use that sexual cliche and stereotype of a French man to be ironic? I doubt it.

I don't intend to be bitchy and I'm not out to criticise anyone on a personal level by writing this. It simply makes me sad (and angry) to see an article like this when considering the bigger picture about the UK's attitude towards sex.

Going on my experience, adults in this country worry a lot about sex. They worry about whether they're good enough, if they're saying the right things, if they're satisfying their partner, if they're "weird" for having a particular fetish, or whether the sex they're having is "normal", whether they come too quickly, or take too long. Sadly we're in a society that has a big fucking fear about how good they are in the sack (a lot of the time) rather than remembering sex should be fun, and why do people worry so much? Partly because bullshit articles such as this get published, where a hugely uncorrelated link is made between how well someone can spell and text and how well they might be at sex (see third paragraph from the end).

*Sigh*

First study of sexual health among UK Male sex workers

While male sex workers may be getting more of a voice in the popular press, there is still one area of their work that is totally in the dark: their sexual health. Touched on partially in the BBC report I analysed last week - the reporter asked whether any of them would be willing to have unprotected sex with a client, some of them confessed they would at an increased cost - there are obvious conversations happening around the health of male sex workers (MSW), but surprisingly there has been very little research by the medical profession into the male sex worker community. Until last month.

A study published in the online edition of Sexually Transmitted Infections, has attempted to establish a picture of the characteristics and sexual health of men that are selling sex in the UK. A team of investigators studied the 2011 records of men that visited GUM clinics. In total 627,780 men attended sexual health services, but only 411 were identified as being a MSW. That's not many at all, but the authors of the study believed the true figure is higher, however, many MSW's don't feel inclined to disclose their profession when getting tested.

Ok, so this doesn't leave the study with a huge number, but you have to start somewhere and considering no one had attempted to make any sort of document of the health of male sex workers previously (maybe because they felt there wasn't enough data?), then this is the best snap shot we got of how guys working in the sex industry are looking after themselves.

Despite only having a small sample to analyse, it appears that most sex workers are taking their health seriously, visiting sexual health services more than twice as many times as other men (4.5 vs 2.3 visits respectively). Taking that a step further, migrant MSW's are more likely to get tested more often than UK-born MSW's.  

Reading the results, what surprised me the most were the findings about age and where the majority of UK male sex works are from originally. Reading between the lines, it seems that UK punters have a preference for 35 year old South American guys Most MSW in Britain have migrated from South America. So, can we deduce that UK punters have a particular thing for Latino men?

Read the full report here. 

The BBC on gay male escorts

From female prostitutes in Tatler, to male escorts on the BBC website, it's refreshingly impossible to keep a certain credential of sex worker out of mainstream media at the moment. Hurrah! You'll see why I say "certain credential" momentarily.

Hang on though. What was that? A story on the BBC about male escorts? WTF? 

I know, I found it double blinkingly amazing too! It's mostly positive and I love how it has gone for the business angle as a hook - as in the practicalities of how male escorts market themselves - rather than sticking a figure on the work to "wow" readers. Having said that, the Beeb can't completely help themselves and chuck in a quote in paragraph seven in which the interviewee, Brandon, says: "The most I've ever made is £30,000 in a month. When I work that hard, the money can be great." I'm glad they kept in the fact that Brandon had to work hard for that money and not insinuate that sex work is a piece of piss and that figure probably isn't every month, unlike the £20k-a-night female sex workers piece, which made it sound like it was a) easy to achieve that kind of status and b) made it sound like that happened all the time. The BBC even keep up the positivism highlighting the fact that his career choice has afforded him a living space in the heart of London. Well jel!  

It doesn't last though, because, naturally, this lifestyle has to come at a price:

 "I was seeing an arms dealer."

Wow, what a BBC-esque way to take the escort profession down a peg! 'You can have all this great stuff, but you have to cosy up to some pretty undesirable characters that might throw your ethics into whack.' I suppose that's one way to read it. The other is that it could possibly feel very James Bond. Now that is sexy.

Interesting that yesterday, for the ladies, it was all talk of rich oil tycoons, royals, bankers; there was nothing so controversial in there as servicing arms dealers. This is BBC's first stab in the article at reinforcing to readers that maybe this career path ain't so glam after all and just to hammer that home they have the story of Nico: a depressed, drug-taking male escort with family issues. Obviously, as it's the BBC, they need to show both sides of the coin. That's what they're famous for of course: unbiased. However, kudos to them that they didn't stick that right at the end of the story and the feature's parting words actually appear quite liberal and open minded towards male escorting.

Right, that's the bulk of what I wanted to say. Now onto what I meant by "certain credentials". The only other thing to highlight is that this is about gay male escorts. Again, it's excellent that this stem of sex work is getting a voice within mainstream media at all, and that is a positive, but with this article and the one from yesterday it's only progressive to a point.

'There has been a slow societal shift in the acceptability of sex work, says Del Campbell from the Terence Higgins Trust.

"There is a lot less stigma for men who sell sex," he says. "Often, the women are still seen as victims but for some gay men, escorting is now a normal job. You could mention that you're an escort at a dinner party and in some circles, no one would bat an eyelid."'

While it's apparently becoming an accepted profession within the gay male community, what about out of it? What about the men that offer escorting services for women? How often do we hear them, or see them in the media? In this scenario, the focus of the articles are often shifted to be about the women that are doing the buying, because that's the "shock" value. That's still the taboo. The guys get lost in the media storm around "her". Examples here, here and here.

So, my (sweeping) assumption from what I've seen in the last two days is that unless you're a gay male, a high-end expensive female escort, or a woman paying for a male escort, you're going to find it tough at the moment to make it into the popular press.    

Fascinated by Hookers

Did you see the Evening Standard on Monday? No, me neither, but luckily a friend of mine did and spotted a feature titled, 'Call me a courtesan, a call girl, an escort...whatever. But basically I was a £20,000-a-night hooker'. 

He spotted it because practically every woman in his tube carriage was reading it, totally engrossed in the story. My male friend found this fascinating. It would certainly be very telling to spy so many professional female city workers, all on their way home after a dreary day in the office, doing the nine to five loosing themselves in a story about jet-setting, dates and dinners with some of the richest men in the world, sex classes in Paris and then getting a comfortable pay cheque at the end of it.  

The figure certainly makes it an attention grabbing headline. Twenty-grand a night? Fuck me! (Not literally.) Wonder how many women in that carriage had the same initial feeling I did when reading that: one of sheer envy. I imagine it's a wage many of the women reading could only dream of. 

It's not just about the money though that makes this article so interesting, or surprising that so many female readers became hooked on it. It's about gossip. Lets face it, one of the best topics of conversation when a group of women get together is sex. Now, imagine one of those friends is a sex worker that travels the world and her sexual partners are often blokes off the Forbes rich list. Of course you'd want to know what they're like in the bedroom!

Personally, I think that for women outside the sex industry, there is a healthy fascination with those that work within it. Since the revolutionary Belle de Jour blog, we've become much more accustomed to hearing the voices of sex workers and what they're terms of employment are really like, and rightly so for so many reasons - not just for a quick fix of gossip, I'm aware.

As with any reported story on sex work in main stream media, there are, of course, a few points that grind and questions to be raised. Like I said, the sum of £20k for a night of sex is certainly attractive in appearance, but how much of that does the escort see? How much goes back to the Madam running the show and, realistically, how often do those bookings come about? 

The figure later in the story, that most women are around the £5,000 mark (even typing the idea of putting a price bracket on the company of a woman like that makes me feel a bit funny). Don't get me wrong, that's still a huge amount of money for one night of work, it's pretty much what I'd make in half a year, but after you've read the £20,000 marker, anything less kind of takes the shine off the idea.

Perhaps that's the authors intention? Yes, we have become more accepting of interviewing and writing features about sex work in consumer press - 5 or 10 years ago it wouldn't have been touched with a barge pole I'm sure - but can Tatler magazine (where the feature was originally published) really promote sex work to the masses so positively? 

Of course not. Pfft...women's consumer media isn't that progressive yet! 

It certainly tries to emphasise the perceived seediness of the industry towards the end of the article so, you know, they're the thoughts your left with and leaving your nine to five suddenly looks a lot less attractive. Examples of how the piece hammers this home:

'Are the girls nervous? She laughs. “You can’t have nerves! These girls are tough. And there’s a numbness — it’s work. We don’t care about clients.”'  

Or

'“The very least you’ll be paying is £1,000 a night — those are the get-’em-in, get-’em-out service girls.” They’re booked for events like weekend shoots, or to sit in a nightclub making some sleazy guy look good.'

Or

'The top 10 are “champion racehorses”. (Great, compare female sex workers to animals that are ridden [commonly] by men).

Or 

'They want a beautiful girl they can lock in a room and bang, bang, bang.” She pauses. “But they pay well.”

Does that mean other clients treat girls well? “Yes, but...” She takes a deep breath. “A lot of these guys are seriously f***ed up. Their wives don’t do what they want. No woman in her sane mind would do half of it.”

She remembers being put in “an exceptionally expensive outfit so that the client could urinate on it”. One European royal “who has hookers all the time” is so rough that Lauren’s madam refuses to send her best girls.' (Two potentially, consenting fetishes are somewhat slated here.) 

I'm being presumptuous here, but I would assume judging by how high-end this establishment is supposed to be, there would have to be consent from the female sex worker? There must be some pre-agreed T&C's between the escort and the madam as to what services they are willing and able to offer. For this urination story to happen, Lauren (not her real  name) may have consented to water-sports being a service she offers. Having spoken to many escorts and looked at many of their websites, I'm yet to come across one that doesn't include a comprehensive list of services they do offer and just to be extra clear many of them go on to outline what they definitely don't offer to clients.

I don't know these people, or this organisation, so I might be wrong, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't something like that in place in order to match the right escort with the right client.

Fascinating piece though.