A wildly entertaining and thought-provoking exploration of gigolos from the tea rooms of 1920s New York to OnlyFans today--from a woman who knows what it's like to hire them What kind of woman would hire a gigolo? It's a question that gripped Hallie Lieberman since living in Berlin in 2017, where she first paid for sex, sparking her to go on a Gigolo Quest.
Spanning six parts,
Gigolos: An Exploration of the Men Who Sell Sex and the Women Who Buy It is an absorbing tapestry of cultural history, reportage, and pop culture critique to tell the story of male sex workers and their female clients. Sex historian and journalist Hallie Lieberman takes readers across time and space--from clandestine tea rooms in 1920s New York to male strip shows in Las Vegas.
Along the way, she encounters countless women who paid for sex, legally or illegally, for a wide variety of reasons: to guarantee an orgasm, to ensure a sexual partner who respected consent, to save a sexless marriage, or to access sexual touch previously barred by disability. Ranging from heartwarming to hot to hum-drum, their experiences not only challenged rigid societal assumptions around the dynamics of sex work but also posed bigger questions about gender, class, race, and power.
Thought-provoking and deliciously entertaining,
Gigolos is the rare non-fiction book that features candid conversations about the sex lives of real men and women alongside a comprehensive cultural history of a topic that's wildly understudied.
