Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.metro From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Moscow women offer soft touch to clients Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 15:01:10 EST Message-ID: \SE B;METROPOLITAN;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD Moscow women offer soft touch to clients \BY Wendy Sloane \CR ASSOCIATED PRESS \DT MOSCOW MOSCOW - Olya Ivanova flips a plastic album open to a photo of a young woman in a skin-tight dress posed suggestively beside a bed draped in pink taffeta. "Tatyana, 23, brown hair. College graduate, speaks English, knows how to drive," the inscription beneath the picture reads. Tiny letters at the bottom add: "Doesn't want to work only as an interpreter." Many escort agencies and personal massage services for men have opened in Moscow in the past six months as puritanical communist mores fade and entrepreneurs pursue easy profits. In the chaos of building capitalism on the ruins of communism, it is easier to order an "erotic massage" by telephone than to order pizza. Beautiful, obedient women have become status symbols for men - especially the nouveau riche - in a male-dominated society where feminism has yet to take hold. "If a businessman is accompanied by a beautiful girl, then everyone pays attention to him," says Miss Ivanova, 28, a former model who heads Engagement International, advertised in newspapers as Russia's first escort service. Engagement International offers foreign and Russian clients the choice of about 150 attractive women who will talk to them, interpret for them, sit with them in business meetings, look good next to them in the theater, and accompany them to dinners or on out-of-town trips. Officially, the agency's escorts will do anything for their clients except engage in sex. "We only invite decent girls with foreign language skills to work for us," Miss Ivanova says. "We don't provide sex. "We want to retain our prestigious name. If the question of sex comes up, we tell the client he has to discuss it with the girl. We don't want to get involved." Russian prostitutes have catered to visiting foreigners for decades, but still face prosecution. Until communism collapsed last year, the idea of an escort service would have been blasphemous. Now, Moscow tabloids are full of ads for escort and massage services. "Gentlemen: You don't have to go to the seaside to have a holiday," says one in Private Life, a weekly. "We offer the following services so that your spirit and body can relax from cares and worries: Automobile transport, bodyguards, Russian choirs, beautiful girls from escort services, food and wine to your taste." A newspaper ad designed to recruit escorts reads: "If you want to spend your life on a yacht instead of in line, if you want to sell your beauty for a real price, then you have only one choice: the Women's Beauty Bank." Ellada, a massage service that advertises "elegant girls at your service at convenient times," charges 8,000 rubles for the first hour and 4,000 for each additional hour, and in the case of a house call, 1,200 rubles for transportation. The average Russian makes 5,000 rubles a month, the equivalent of about $25. A woman employed at Ellada told a telephone caller its services include "psychological support, erotic massage" and sex. She said the women it provides undergo medical tests every three weeks and that clients who contract venereal diseases are financially compensated. Miss Ivanova, a slim redhead who says her original dream was to start a mail-order bride service, says she was inundated with phone calls from prospective escorts after placing ads for Engagement International in several Moscow newspapers. Her agency, which opened its small office in April, employs more than 150 women between the ages of 18 and 30. For Russians, fees are 1,500 rubles an hour or 35,000 for two days - about $7.50 and $175 respectively. Foreigners pay the equivalent of about $15 an hour, in hard currency. Apparently, not all foreign businessmen want more than companionship. "We had a Chinese man who called and said he needed a tall blonde with a big chest," Miss Ivanova recalls. "They walked around Moscow museums for two hours, had a cup of coffee, and then he put her in a taxi and sent her home." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM