It’s easy to forget with a Presidential election as exciting as this one that there are actually many, many, many people and bills on the ballot November 4th besides Barack Obama and John McCain. One of the issues that got our attention early is Proposition K, a San Francisco proposal that would decriminalize prostitution in the city. If passed, the law would forbid local authorities from investigating, arresting or prosecuting anyone for selling sex. The ballot measure still technically would not legalize prostitution since state law still prohibits it, but Proposition K would eliminate the power of local law enforcement officials to go after prostitutes. The local Democratic Party has endorsed the measure, but the majority of actual local government officials are opposed. A similar measure in Berkeley lost in 2006—while San Francisco is typically a liberal-leaning city, it’s pretty up in the air as to whether this Proposition will pass with voters. If it does, SF will become the first major U.S. city to decriminalize sex work. With that in mind, vote in our poll! [The Huffington Post]

While every girl wants to stop traffic, Italian women are being accused of causing car accidents because they’re so damn sexy.  Due to these ridiculous claims, the governments in Rome, Milan, and Florence have just passed laws decreeing that women dress and act more modestly. The legislation states that women must refrain from “adopting poses or behavior or wearing clothing that unequivocally manifest the intention to solicit or practice the activity of prostitution.” Say what?! That sounds like the pervs are blaming the wrong people—i.e. anyone but themselves.  But the government maintains that they’re cracking down on clothing to curb streetwalkers. So what are working girls doing in these difficult times for advertising their goods?  The world’s oldest profession is pulling one over on “the man” by taking up a new habit—literally. All the hookers have banded together and begun to wear nuns’ uniforms. Ha! Pia Covre, of the Committee for the Rights of Prostitutes, explained, “The idea of wearing gowns or habits down to the feet is to confront the decrees which limit even the freedom of what you can wear.” Ironically, now these whores are sticking it to the foolish Madonna complex.  We like their sense of style!
[Telegraph]

Sex sells, and a virgin will cost you a million bucks. While some of us waited for that sensitive teenage boy to deflower us to the Dave Matthews Band (or, rather, the first 30 seconds of “Crash”), a few more entrepreneurial ladies won’t pop their cherry for less than seven figures. 

Natalie Dylan, who recently received her bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies from Sacramento State, went on Howard Stern earlier this month to sell her virginity for a cool mil to pay off her tuition bills. Um, last time we checked, state schools weren’t that out of reach, but we can’t blame the girl for upping her ante. Since Dylan’s sister is one of the working girls at Nevada’s most infamous brothel, and subject of HBO show Cathouse, she worked out a deal with proprietor, Dennis Hof, and her hymen is up for bidding at BunnyRanch.com.  But Natalie is picking who will pluck her and all interested parties must first pass her interview process. In addition to deep pockets, the gent must have chemistry with the young businesswoman. “We’ll take bids until I find a suitor I’m happy with,” Natalie concedes. [NY Daily News]

Frisky favorite Refinery29 has an interview with Frisky friend and call girl blogger Debauchette. These days, call girls are the new black. From the Spitzer scandal to “Sex and the City” creator Darren Star’s call girl HBO show in the making, America can’t get enough when it comes to the secret lives of 21st century courtesans. And Debauchette is one of our favorites. Smart, sexy, and savvy, she exposes the complexities of high-end sex work with unprecedented candor. In the interview, she recounts her journey from a Northern California childhood to graduate school to fetish model to erotic provider. So, what’s a courtesan?

A new essay in the New Yorker takes a look at India’s “sacred sex workers.” In “Serving the Goddess,” author William Dalrymple spends time with the country’s devadasis. What’s a devadasi? An ancient Hindu practice in which women are “dedicated” to a god or goddess, some of those women become prostitutes. “The nature of that service and the name given to it have wide regional variations and have changed through time; only recently have most devadasis come to be working in the sex trade,” he writes. It’s an interesting read about a country in which “sacred” and “sex work” have become strange bedfellows.

Cities benefit big time when they host major events like the Olympics. The upcoming Republican and Democratic National Conventions are two such happenings that will bring in money to more than just the restaurant and hotel businesses. A rather disturbing ABC News article says that prostitution in Denver and Minneapolis will spike during the political conventions in the coming weeks. Apparently, there are ads on the Minneapolis-area Craigslist looking for “hostesses” to help entertain “high-end clients” during the Republican National Convention, which starts September 1. And, over on the Denver section of Craigslist, women are using the convention to push their services under titles like “DNC Delight” and “Help me celebrate democracy.” Has no one learned their lesson from former N.Y. Governor Eliot Spitzer? Seriously. [ABC News]

Months after the Spitzer scandal broke and call girls became the new black, Radar offers up the strange tale of a wannabe working girl in “Secrets of a Hipster Hooker.” Written by Jessica Pilot, the feature is an awkward mix of personal narrative and words from the mouths of so-called “hipster hookers.” It begins with Pilot meeting her would-be, thirty-something, Gucci bag-toting madam at a vegan restaurant, a woman who, it turns out, is a “consultant for a major news media organization.”

After last week’s post about proposed legislation in San Francisco that would decriminalize prostitution and our poll that indicated that 73% of you not only supported decriminalization but legalization as well, we decided to take a more in-depth look at both. After the jump, we break down the differences and the pros and cons of both. There may be a soap box moment from yours truly as well.

We’ve been thinkin’ about hookers lately, after last week’s poll and our new obsession with Secret Diary Of A Call Girl. After researching ladies of the night in films and TV, we’ve noticed an interesting trend—pricey call girls are incredibly fashionable, as Secret Diary suggested, but news that Darren Star would be producing an HBO based on Diary Of A Manhattan Call Girl proves it. Play a hooker in a relatively “serious” movie, and guess what? Oscar is the only man you’ll take home! (Your chances are even better if the director is Woody Allen.) After the jump we break it down with the help of a fun timeline of sex workers on TV and in the movies.

The world’s oldest profession wants to finally go legit—the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU) in San Francisco is trying to protect their hard working membership, the Johns, and the Janes, by asking for the decriminalization of solicitation and prostitution. The city already has a unique First Offender Prostitution Program, which allows people arrested for soliciting sex the option to pay $1000 tuition fee for a graphic sexual health class.  Frankly, it also has a pretty poor success rate for scaring attendees back into thinking the best things in life are free, but the ESPU is less concerned with curbing their clients’ desires.  What the union really wants is to keep its workers safe, as many sex workers don’t report assaults or rapes because they’re afraid of being penalized for breaking the law with their profession. The ESPU has a bill on the ballot this fall that would decriminalize sex work in the city. They argue that when the pros have to sneak around to handle their business, it makes them exponentially more susceptible to abuse and exploitation. [Newsweek]

So what do you all think: should sex work be decriminalized (in San Francisco or anywhere else in the U.S.)?

I’m a self-described reality TV junkie. I watch it all, including Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, America’s Next Top Model and I’ve recently taken up a new addiction to VH1’s I Love Money. But I have to say I’m less than excited about the reality show Ashley Dupre is reportedly developing. Dupre, as you may remember, was the high-priced hooker that took down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer earlier this year. And now it seems she is looking for love and romance…or just more notoriety in the same fashion as A Shot At Love’s Tila Tequila. I guess I’m just totally sick of these celeb-reality stars thinking the American public is dumb enough to believe you can find love under the watchful eye of a production team. And I ask you, what exactly does Dupre have to offer in the ways of love? As far as I know, love has never been a job requirement of prostitution, although perceived romance has. Dupre would better serve society by developing an instructional reality show on how to make copious amounts of money with only a few hours of work. Now that’s a show I’d watch, as long as her techniques were legal. I’ve got student loans, you know. [New York Post]

Our economy is in such a state that women are actually having sex in exchange for gasoline. Police in Fort Work, KY, arrested a woman last week after going undercover and discovering that she would have sex for a $100 gas card and other gifts. The 34-year-old was charged with prostitution AND “doing business without an occupational license.” [WLWT.com]

Grand Theft Auto IV came out on Tuesday and made bajillions of dollars in sales. However, some people are up in arms because the video game allows you to have sex with prostitutes and then kill them afterwards. Boinkology has an excellent post up about the line between video game fantasy and real, live misogyny. But we want to know how you feel—does this video game in particular bother you? Video games have always featured violence, but is this one too over-the-top?

Over the course of its many seasons, America’s Next Top Model (a new episode airs tonight) had tread into some fairly risque and/or controversial territory, though not in the way that Tyra Banks intends. Though she thinks the shoe has gotten “edgier” and more “fierce”, a number of women’s sites and organizations have cried fowl over some of Tyra’s creative choices when it comes to the photo shoots—a couple seasons ago, the models were photographed as highly sexy looking corpses, which many said glamorized sexual assault. Now a blog called “Menstrual Poetry” (stay with me ladies!) says that the current season’s opening montage features the women looking like less like models and more like, um, whores. “Her entire attitude in the first 15 seconds exudes sex–not modelesque, look at me kind of sexy, but look at me and give me a dollar bill sexy. When the America’s Next Top Model hopefuls are pictured, we are given a series of somewhat disturbing images including a few in particular of Kimberly, Dominique and Marvita, who look like prostitutes waiting in a dark alleyway.”

Seriously. First Hugh Grant. Then Charlie Sheen. Now New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. So. Disappointing.

Discuss! My friend and I did. Our shameless back and forth, after the jump.