Why would someone in their right mind do this?
18-year-old Aleexandra is planning to sell her virginity to a complete stranger for a minimum of 1 million euros – all in the hope that she will raise enough money to make her dreams of a university education, and a home for her family, come true. She explains her decision to Holly and Phillip.
You may have stumbled across an article or two about young women auctioning off their virginity online, and receiving exorbitant sums of money from the highest bidder. As unbelievable as these stories may be, many have been proven to be true.
Who are the young women who choose to offer such an intimate, personal experience online for a price?
Who are the men who pay vast amounts of money to spend one night with them?
Do the women themselves keep most of the money paid by the clients, or does most of the money go to the websites that broker the transactions?
Are the websites legitimate and safe for both the clients involved and the women being auctioned off?
Much of the online sex trade falls into a legal gray area. All moral and ethical judgments aside, is it okay to do business with websites that sell sex, or does the money wind up supporting something much more sinister like sex trafficking?
Here’s what you need to know.
1. Many Young Women Are Inspired By The Success of Romanian Model Alexandra Kefren, Who Auctioned Off Her Virginity For a Staggering $2.5 Million
At age 18, Romanian model Alexandra Kefren auctioned off her virginity for a whopping $2.5 million. Who was the winning bidder? Maxim reports that a wealthy Hong Kong businessman placed the highest bid. The auction was brokered by Cinderella Escorts, a highly successful site that hosts virginity auctions as well as offering escort services. Cinderella typically takes a 20% cut from each transaction, so for Alexandra, that amounted to about $500,000.
What did Alexandra plan on doing with her earnings? She told Maxim that she planned on buying her parents a house, and using the money to pay for her tuition at the prestigious Oxford University. It’s unclear if Alexandra was actually accepted into Oxford.
2. 19-Year-Old American Model Giselle Came Along & Auctioned Off Her Virginity For an Incredible $3.9 Million
A 19-year-old American model known only as Giselle decided to try her hand at auctioning off her virginity as well. Like Alexandra, she used Cinderella Escorts to broker the auction. Bids for the young model’s virginity began flooding the website, news.com.au reports.
Bids for several million dollars came in from various wealthy men from around the world, including a well-known Hollywood actor according to Giselle, though she declined to identify him. Ultimately, the winning bid was submitted by a businessman from Abu Dhabi.
Giselle has expressed no regrets as far as her decision to auction off her virginity online. She told news.com.au that the whole experience was a dream come true. She described it as her “emancipation.” Financial freedom has allowed her to buy a house, travel the world, and essentially do whatever she wants.
This was yet another success story for Cinderella Escorts, taking 20% of Giselle’s earnings.
3. Virginity Auctions Have Become a Competitive, Lucrative Business, With Auctions Brokered By Multiple Sites As Well As Women Who Choose to Represent Themselves
There are a lot of websites where women can sell their virginity online. Some appear to be more legitimate than others. Cinderella Escorts seems to be the most well-known and trusted site, but there are other serious competitors in the industry.
Take, for example, Dennis Hof’s famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Nevada. A 23-year-old woman named Bailey Gibson has signed on with the Bunny Ranch, for the express purpose of auctioning off her virginity. Her asking price? An incredible $10 million, reports the NZ Herald. Part of purchasing Bailey’s virginity is receiving a letter from her doctor certifying “proof” of her virginity after a medical exam.
Other popular sites include Elite Virgins, Virgins Wanted, and a multitude of other sites on the dark web. However, the legitimacy, safety and practices of those sites are unknown.
A woman can choose to represent herself without going through a broker in order to avoid paying a fee. That said, there are obvious risks involved, and there is no third-party to protect her from potential sexual predators, traffickers or worse.
Cinderella Escorts is considered to be one of the safest sites to deal with, as they do thorough background checks on their clients in order to protect the women featured on the site. Additionally, a deposit is required before the actual meeting takes place, to ensure that the escort is not cheated out of her money. Cinderella also requires its escorts to undergo several medical exams, and if they are virgins, they are required to have a letter from a doctor attesting to such.
An interesting note about Cinderella Escorts is that it is owned and run by a German man in his 20s who lives with his parents. His parents, evidently, have no idea what their son does for a living. In the meantime, he has earned several million dollars. For more information, Cinderella Escorts’ page devoted to virginity auctions can be found here. The owner of Cinderella Escorts did not respond to a request for comment from Heavy.
4. Realistically, Women Who Auction Their Virginity Online Should Expect a Much More Modest Sum.
The majority of women who auction off their virginity online do not earn six figures. The woman who earn hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars are extreme examples. As Slate explains, the average woman can expect to earn between $10,000 and $32,000. The amount of money a woman earns, put in very vulgar terms depends on the “quality of the merchandise.” Now, $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at, but there is a big difference between earning $10,000 and $1 million.
It is a grim reminder that auctioning off your virginity is prostitution, and when you are viewed online by a potential bidder, you are being completely objectified. That is not to say that prostitution is right or wrong; it’s simply a reminder that the vast array of articles describing women earning millions of dollars by auctioning off their virginity are misleading and can result in extremely unrealistic expectations. Oddee.com compiled a list of women who sold their virginity online for prices that are much more typical in today’s market.
What motivates women to sell their virginity online? The money, of course, but what is the money primarily used for? Many of the women state that they are trying to fund their education. Some speculate that this is a good way of attracting potential bidders; they are giving you money to better yourself. Of course, that is not to say that these women are not, in fact, trying to pay their tuition. With many people graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt, it does not seem so far fetched.
5. Selling Sex Online Can Support Sex Trafficking
As The Daily Beast explains, thanks to the dark web, many children are being auctioned off online to be sold into sexual slavery. As incomprehensible as it seems, some parents are willing to sell their children for the right price.
The Daily Beast elaborates:
“The International Justice Mission is a nongovernmental organization that works to identify and rescue young victims of cybersex trafficking. It has found that the median age of the victims is between 15 and 16 years old, but more than half (54 percent) of those rescued were under the age of 12. The group’s extensive research found that men will pay almost twice as much for a pre-pubescent girl’s virginity as for one who has already reached puberty with prices sometimes reaching up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
CNN published an extensive report on the mothers who sold their daughters into sex slavery. The article focuses on the most impoverished areas of Cambodia, where children can easily be found in brothels. That said, many sites on the dark web are nothing more than brothels full of children. They are simply hidden from view, accessed online. Child exploitation, however, is showing no signs of slowing down; it’s simply changing.
It is inaccurate to say that all sex work funds and benefits child sex trafficking. Not all sex work is bad, and when it’s a transaction between two consenting adults, it’s a much different situation. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to protect children from sex trafficking due to the secrecy of the dark web, the desperation of poverty, and the seemingly neverending lack of demand.
Source Heavy