According to the article “Bartering sex for stuff or services” on CNN.com, the world’s oldest profession– prostitution– is not only alive and well (which we all knew thanks to Law & Order: SVU), but thriving amongst coeds.
The author, Michelle Goodwin, cites a study of undergraduates at the University of Michigan that states that students are regularly exchanging sex for favors.
27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren’t in a committed relationship had offered someone favors or gifts… in exchange for sex. On the flip side, 5 percent of the men surveyed and 9 percent of the women said they’d attempted to trade sex for such freebies.
In other words, more people are asking for sex and offering gifts than requesting favors.
Stay classy, Ann Arbor.
But what struck me the most is the variety of services available for trade. Not only can sex get your Hummer filled with gas (regular or premium?) (and yes, pun intended), but it can also get you tickets to a Big 10 football game, control of the Egyptian Empire, and your boxers starched.
This makes absolutely no sense to me; I’m no economics major, but shouldn’t the price reflect the value of the product or service received?
In my opinion, gas (either regular or premium) is obviously worth at least a three-week-long commitment to sex at the seller’s discretion. The price of the Egyptian Empire depends on whether or not burial in a pyramid with servants and everything else you’ll need in the afterlife is included in the package, and of course, how many Hebrews were used to build this pyramid. How much should laundry cost? I don’t know, but I wonder– what exactly does one insert into the washing machine?
Frankly, I blame it on Desperate Housewives. This show teaches us that if we can somehow tolerate sex with Marcia Cross, we too can have home-baked pineapple bran muffins for breakfast.
An RSS feed of The Spin is available