The gloves are off! Ashley Dupre, the high-priced escort who brought down former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, lashed out at other women in a blog post.

The 24-year-old said women—NYC ladies, especially—are hypocrites who judge her for having been a call girl, but they still date rich men and bleed their boyfriends dry! Dupre’s choicest insults, after the jump…

When hookers in Brazil want to protest discrimination, they take to the seams. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro walked the runway as models for Gabriela Leite’s Daspu label (“daspu” comes from the slang term “das putas” or “the whores”). The former prostitute started the label four years ago “as a way for prostitutes to gain regular income while also fighting preconceptions of people affected with AIDS.”

“Daspu gets rid of prejudice,” says Leite. “It opens paths for the citizen whore.”

Michael Jackson’s past was checkered, but as Movieline.com pointed out, his death created an even more public spectacle: people prostituting themselves on Craigslist for MJ memorial service tickets. Talk about “Dangerous!” Man, everyone is trying to get their piece in the King of Pop’s passing. And boy were they perverted about wanting someone to just beat it for them.

If you haven’t heard, HBO has a new dramedy, “Hung,” that’s about—well, the title should tell you something. The series focuses on a divorced father in Detroit who loses his wife, his kids (custody, that is), and his manhood. Also? He has a big penis. In order to get by, he decides to become a male prostitute. I know, I know. That happens all the time. But the show begs the question: What are the real lives of male prostitutes like?

If times were tough—I mean, really tough—would you sell your body for money? In her Salon column “Pinched,” Tracy Clark-Flory reports that more women are entering the sex industry due the recession, including Marie, a 30-year-old former white-collar professional with a degree, who now operates out of hotel room and has “been paid more times than she can count, or cares to count, for sex, blow jobs, hand jobs and sensual massage.”

We already knew that sex still sells during a recession—sex toy sales are up, lingerie sales are booming, and sex workers—from prostitutes to strippers—aren’t being as adversely effected by the economic downturn as other businesses. But otherwise professional women who never considered a career in sex work suddenly taking it all off to make ends meet? Is this really a trend?

Leanne Eisen is a Toronto-based artist who creates dollhouse scenes that depict the human condition. One of her most intriguing photo-based series is “Play,” for which Eisen built miniature replicas of brothel interiors. While most dollhouses contain scenes of perfect domesticity, Eisen’s rooms allow viewers a downsized peek inside the mostly hidden world of prostitution. I asked the artist about her mini-sex work project; her response is after the jump. 

You can take our dignity but not our porn! New York’s Governor Paterson is pitching new taxes to help the state’s $14 billion budget deficit. Among them: a $10 tax for strip club patrons and tax on Internet downloads for web porn. Similarly, Texas pols want to place a $5 “pole tax” which was struck down as unconstitutional by a state judge. Oh yeah, the forgotten “right to bare boobs.” Most of these skin taxes have stalled because of conflicts with the First Amendment. No porno, no peace! After the jump, other laws striving to cash in on sex…

As the economy goes soft, some women are seeking to earn extra cash as freelance sex workers. As it turns out, there’s a market for powerful career gals who can dominate a man’s world—literally. According to Tracy Quan’s “Kinkonomics,” recently laid off ladies are freelancing as professional dominatrixes. Although sex workers generally consider pro-domme work the most difficult sex work, these well-educated, middle-class working girls have decided to try their hand at the kinky version of the world’s oldest profession. It’s another type of economic stimulus package; this one includes bondage, verbal humiliation, and foot worship. [The Daily Beast]

With over 16 million members, Second Life is the largest user created, 3-D online game world that features everything from malls to vampire castles, plus all the amenities of a faux-universe to play out your fantasies. It’s no surprise then that the sex market is strong and hi-tech hookers are cashing in—well, kind of.  Sex is cheap! And nowhere is it cheaper than Second Life. For about the price of a drink, you can get your rocks off all night with a 20-something gal like “Palela Alderson.” 

This Friday, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the call girl whose hotel trist with then-New York governor Eliot Spitzer led to the sex scandal of the year, will appear on ABC’s “20/20” for a sit-down interview with Diane Sawyer. If Spitzergate went down six months ago, why is Dupre talking now? Last week, the state of New York declared it wouldn’t be pressing charges against the Love Gov, meaning it’s unlikely Dupre will be charged for her part in the scandal, which frees the former escort to make her case to the public. On the same day, a lengthy profile of Dupre will appear in People. In excerpts from the interviews posted online, it sounds like the 23-year-old is looking to make apologies and mend her ways.

Six months after a sex scandal ousted Eliot Spitzer from office, the New York governor turned “lov gov” is working in real estate, still with his wife Silda, and wondering how it all went so wrong. Meanwhile, call girls are back in the spotlight—and working harder than ever as Wall Street takes another tumble.

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.

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.