"Rent a girlfriend" website raises polemic in France
A new website is currently raising polemic in France, that is called "loueunepetiteamie.com" (word to word english translation: rentagirlfriend.com).
Indeed, while in France prostitution is NOT forbidden (an escort/prostitute/Sex worker can totally create and publish her own website and advertise on different places as long as she pays taxes on her income), pimping is condemned by law. There are about 10 webmasters per year condemned for hustling cause they agreed on designing websites for escorts. Law considers they "helped and benefitted from someone else's prostitution." The same way, no escort agencies are allowed in France and France-based escort directories or any directory that would promote escorting is likely to be condemned by law, with the risk of 7 years of jail and a 150,000€ fine.
So how does "loueunepetiteamie.com" work around law? Well, they just say that according to a specific article in the french law penal code, they are not "hustling", they are merely "offering to RENT a girlfriend" for anyone who wants to present a girlfriend to his parents during a family reunion and the like (bullshit, right? Just like McDonald says: I'm lovin' it.) One would wonder why the website offers a "night" rate then, not sure if their clients will have parents waking up at night to meet their son's new gf? Whatever, save me from the headache of further explaining why such excuses are lame, I think you got me.
French law doesn't condemn "renting" a girlfriend for one or many hours as much as it sounds absolutely incredible that you can rent a person (and the minute you say you rent the TIME of these girls, then they are companions but hey... do what the law says), cause both persons know in advance what is expected of them and "loueunepetiteamie.com" website writes in bold in the fineprint that NO SEXUAL RELATIONS WILL EVER HAPPEN BETWEEN THE TWO PERSONS AND IF IT DOES, IT IS BASED ON MUTUAL ATTRACTION AND THEREFORE PERTAINS TO THEIR PRIVATE LIVES. Bite me. Also, once they wrote that, french law representants can't do anything else than trusting the website, since the client and the "girlfriend" will have (electronically?) signed something releasing the website from any responsibility whatever happens in the room when they meet up, in order to not have to worry about the risk of... oops, I mean, in order to respect their privacy.
Check out the prices so you can have a good laugh:
http://loueunepetiteamie.com/
1h: 20€ / 1 night: 180€ / 1 week-end (48H): 540€
Real escorts charge around eight to ten times more than each of these prices for the same time period.
How do I see this evolving?
a) I love the fact it'll create a jurisprudence. If the website owner is not condemned somehow by law, then you'll see the french market quickly satured with such (fake) "rent-a-pussy" (kidding - well, not really kidding but you got me) websites
b) I fear for the women, young or older, who might see this as an eldorado for "social escorting". I'm always very doubtful about anything called "social escorting", because at such prices (20€, 180€ for "one night" - what the heck are the social activities you can do during a night? tell me cause I clearly don't see...) you'll just have losers, potential violent and bad clients in front of you. Even street sex workers don't have such low prices (I say "even" to refer to the fact they have a higher volume of clients and lower rates, presumably). Well how would I know, uh? But I doubt they do. The concept has yet to be tried so I will wait and see - but I hope nothing ugly happens, cause it just sounds bad.
c) the website is opening in 17 days as of writing this message, which means that basically they're making a "buzz" around it and I bet you (they didn't say anything about it yet) that they will make money on charging registration for members and escorts and then again advertising spaces for escorts oops sorry, should I rather say "girlfriends" ? Whatever... To me this method would even more assimilate them to an escort directory.
d) professional escorts will start calling themselves "professional girlfriends" and agree to whatever the website has to say while obviously on phone or in private messages they'll tell their real rates and go on with their usual fee when they meet up with the guy. It makes of this system a brand new, while not so brand new, avenue for the escort and the client to meet up.
e) french law representants might find some ways to investigate and make the website close down, depending on if there is a messaging system showing that there are escorts and clients exchanging on real escorting with usual industry fees involved in private messages. Just like they might not care and get the cash from the website's taxes, just like France gets the cash from prostitutes' taxes. Talk about a complicated law.
Personally, I'll call it bullshit (and play on words/current laws) until proven the contrary. It's probably a big fat fake to create some press around a more classic dating website yet to be released. But I like how it gets french society to think of its approach to escorting and laws related to it.
What do you guys think of this? Do you have or did you have similar cases where you live?