Girlfriend Experience Research Articles

ANALISIS PERSEPSI MASYARAKAT DUNIA TERHADAP VIRTUAL YOUTUBER YANG MENAWARKAN PENGALAMAN KEKASIH

This research investigates the global public's perception of the phenomenon of Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) who offer romantic experiences such as "boyfriend" or "girlfriend experience." Involving sentiment analysis, this study collected and classified 1623 comments from social media platforms using the Microsoft Azure algorithm. The analysis results indicate that the majority of the public holds a negative view of such relationships, depicting the complexity of social interactions in the digital world. These findings underscore the importance of understanding the impact of VTubers' phenomenon in the context of parasocial relationships. The research recommends increased discussions through other social platforms and the development of more advanced sentiment analysis models for a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. The research findings emphasize the relevance and complexity of VTubers' phenomenon in today's digital culture, highlighting the importance of developing social understanding of human interactions in a virtual context.

The performance of labor and downward mobility in Steven Soderbergh’s recession trilogy (2009–2012): The Girlfriend Experience, Haywire, and Magic Mike

ABSTRACT This essay argues that Steven Soderbergh’s 2009–2012 films – The Girlfriend Experience (2009), Haywire (2011) and Magic Mike (2012) – form a loose trilogy depicting the plight of the working class (or precariat) during the Great Recession Linking textual analysis to the economic downturn reveals Soderbergh’s significant critique about this period, ultimately causing him to announce his retirement. His protagonists’ predicaments are the same as contract workers in the new, neoliberal economy, including the creative class in conglomerate Hollywood.

‘So you want to be a #GIRLBOSS?’ Millennial femininity and entrepreneurial selfhood in Girlboss and The Girlfriend Experience

The cultural politics of The Girlfriend Experience (2016–present) and Girlboss (2017) are symptomatic of intersecting discourses surrounding millennial femininity and neo-liberal enterprise culture. Featuring aggressively individualistic, White, twenty-something female protagonists, both shows interrogate the slender ideological crevice that separates economic libertarianism from social pathology. Girlboss and The Girlfriend Experience critically explore the ontological dissonance experienced by a millennial cohort schooled exclusively in the mythologies of a stubbornly resilient neo-liberal culture. As such, these young women are best understood as ideological avatars that expose the entropic conjunction of gendered individualism and entrepreneurial selfhood in a ‘post’-recessionary United States.

Enabling and Managing Authentic Experiences: The High-Class Escort Sector in the Netherlands

In this paper we explore how potentially authentic experiences are brought forth by experience providers on a managerial and individual employee level. We do so by researching the Dutch market sector of high-class, agency-based, female escorts, in which the Girlfriend Experience is offered to clients. Authenticity in the experience is treated as a criterion variable; it being a possible outcome of multiple specified predictors. The findings offer insights into which individual behaviours and managerial efforts need to be in place in market exchange relations to deliver a “commodified authentic experience,” thereby supporting responsible behaviour in the organization and enhancing our practical understanding of the employment sector. Within the Management, Spirituality, and Religion Interest Group domain, the basic philosophical categories we deploy offer a necessary and strategically useful complement to spiritual and religious terminology for “creating a better world together” in pluralistic societies.

Client Desires and the Price of Seduction: Exploring the Relationship Between Independent Escorts’ Marketing and Rates

This article explores Web site content and differences in advertised rates among a sample of 839 independent female online escorts operating their own Web sites in major metropolitan areas in the United States. Statistical analyses of escorts’ rates indicate pricing variation across cities in which escorts advertise; the number of cities and Websites in which they advertise; whether they travel to areas beyond their primary locality to meet clients; their age and stated racial/ethnic/sexual identity; the Internet platforms on which they advertise; and how they present themselves and their services on their Web pages. These relationships between business strategies of independent escorts and their published rates shed light on client preferences and market demand. Our findings provide important new insights into independent online escorts’ business strategies and financial tactics and identify factors impacting perceived market value for escort services. This research supports emerging literature indicating that clients of independent online escorts will pay more for particular provider characteristics, dispositions, and services, and they most highly value erotic services that are seductive and mirror the qualities of nonremunerative sexual exchange, often described as the “girlfriend experience” (GFE).

Putting on the red boots: role-play as ‘coping work’ and ‘creative work’ in the theatrical representation of prostitution

This article examines the representation of various forms of prostitution in a range of contemporary theatre pieces, from the traumatised victims of sex-trafficking in Cora Bissett’s and Stef Smith’s RoadKill (Traverse, Edinburgh 2010; Theatre Royal, Stratford East 2011), to more diverse depictions of sex workers in Alecky Blythe’s verbatim piece The Girlfriend Experience (Royal Court 2008; Young Vic 2009) and the group devised Sex Workers’ Opera (Courtyard Theatre 2014; Arcola 2015; Pleasance, Islington 2016). Particular attention is paid to examining each piece’s claims towards ‘authenticity’ of representation. Alongside this, instances of metatheatricality and role-playing within the role within each of these works are considered, highlighting the adoption of performance practices by real-life and fictionalised prostitutes. Drawing on Kirsten Pullen’s study of the overlap between actresses and ‘whores’, which suggests performance as a strategy that lends agency to sex workers, on Bertolt Brecht’s model of gestic acting, and on Dorothy Heathcote’s definitions of the twin aims of role-play as ‘coping work’ and ‘creative work’, this article examines the potential for each within the performative acts of prostitutes.

Male Escorts' Construction of the Boyfriend Experience: How Escorts Please Their Clients

ABSTRACTThe current study examines the ways that male escorts provide highly desired services for male clients. Building on the “girlfriend experience” identified in the female prostitution literature, the authors discuss the corollary experience of the “boyfriend experience” and identify and examine the components of the boyfriend experience that are central to the social construction of the experience. Data is drawn from 627 online reviews of male escorts written between 2015 and 2016. Following data collection, analytic induction, using a 3-step coding process, is used to identify themes. The authors argue that the boyfriend experience is constructed out of perceptions of companionship, authenticity, and passion in both social and sexual interactions. Reviews emphasize the importance of intimacy, socialization, and emotional connections experienced between customer/escort and show that such are commonly more important and valued than sexual gratification.

Being Like Your Girlfriend: Authenticity and the Shifting Borders of Intimacy in Sex Work

In the last decades a series of sexual services that offer company, talk, and more generally, what is understood as a ‘girlfriend experience’, are increasingly offered to a middle and upper-middle class clientele. These services involve a change in the boundaries of intimacy. We argue that they can be interpreted as part of the general process by which late capitalism has subsumed the 1968 critique that demanded liberation and authenticity. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with escorts and street walkers, we explore the discourse of authenticity in escort work in Spain and how the line is drawn between an ‘authentic intimacy’ that is sold, and a ‘private intimacy’, which involves the non-commodified affective life of the sex worker. We argue that escorts and street walkers draw these borders differently, the former emphasising authenticity in their service. Both, however, deploy a form of emotional labour.

Turismo sexual masculino en Costa Rica: espíritu de equipo, diálogo entre pares y papeles de género en una muestra grande de mensajes en un foro de Internet

Hay pocos estudios científicos sobre el turismo sexual en Costa Rica. El estudio más importante sobre los turistas masculinos lo hizo Megan Rivers-Moore, quien implícitamente propuso varias hipótesis. Aquí analizo la totalidad de los mensajes del foro InternationalSexGuide.info entre el 2002 y el 2015, comparándolos con las hipótesis de Rivers-Moore, las categorías del “Prisma de Intimidad” de Milrod y Weitzer y datos de la literatura sobre mujeres que visitan Costa Rica para hacer turismo sexual. El análisis de los 4 409 mensajes muestra que los hombres dialogan, aconsejándose acerca de cómo obtener una visita satisfactoria a Costa Rica, visita que incluye sexo pagado pero no se limita a este objetivo únicamente. Las trabajadoras sexuales tienen poca interacción entre sí, pero los hombres se sienten parte de un grupo que intercambia información útil. El deseo de “Ser Tratado como Novio”, aunque no es predominante, es frecuente y se ajusta a la adaptación biológica propia del Homo sapiens en lo que respecta a interacciones de pareja. La mayoría de turistas masculinos hacen visitas cortas en las que tratan de interactuar inicialmente con varias mujeres para luego centrarse en aquellas con las que se sintieron mejor. Unos pocos casos evolucionan hacia una relación compleja que incluye el compromiso emocional. A pesar de la diferencia de poder financiero entre clientes y proveedores de servicios sexuales, los papeles tradicionales de género subyacen las relaciones, sean los turistas hombres o mujeres, lo que probablemente refleja una compleja combinación de factores biológicos y culturales.

Older Male Clients of Female Sex Workers in the United States.

Recent research has provided increased information about the clients of sex workers; however, little is known about the population of older male customers who contract for heterosexual services online. Clients (N=208) between 60 and 84years of age were obtained through sex work review sites and online discussion forums. Participants completed a 129-item questionnaire focusing on physical health, sexual and non-sexual behaviors with sex providers, and the qualities sought in the same. More than half reported having visited sex providers between 13 and 24 times or more during the past 12months. Participants' advancing age was positively associated with frequency of paid sex. Most frequent sexual activities with providers were fellatio without a condom, followed by penile-vaginal sex with a condom. Analyses also examine the relationship between aging and buying sex. Those with higher incomes and without spouses or partners were more likely to report non-sexual activities with providers, and many participants sought a "GFE" or girlfriend experience, in which paid sexual exchanges are part of a relationship that mirrors conventional non-remunerative relationships.

‘Total girlfriend experience’: examining marketplace mythologies on sex tourism websites

The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic content analysis of sex tour websites to understand how sex tours are marketed to potential clients. A total of 380 web pages from 21 sex tour websites were reviewed. The sex tour websites sought to promote privacy and hassle-free travel with a local ‘escort’ and the opportunity for ‘hooks-ups’ with no strings attached. Three themes emerged around the description of sex workers: (1) enjoyment and complete acceptance, (2) a ‘total girlfriend experience’ and (3) exoticisation of the ‘Third World’ woman. The majority of the sex tourism websites used marketplace mythologies concerning racism, sexism and imperialism to appeal to sex tourists’ desires for fantasy experiences, power and domination, and a renewed sense of identity. Legal and STI-related information was largely missing from the websites, and when it was included it was aimed at protecting sex tourists, not sex workers. It is of importance for researchers, social workers and others engaging with sex workers and sexscapes to recognise the power of language, cultural myths and framings and their ability to generate real-world social and health implications.

Voice, Body and the Transmission of the Real in Documentary Theatre

This article analyses how listening is used to develop performances in Alecky Blythe's verbatim theatre. Listening includes Blythe's use of recorded oral interviews for devising performances, and also the actors’ creation of performance by precisely imitating an interviewee's voice. The article focuses on listening, speaking and embodiment in London Road, Blythe's recent musical play at London's National Theatre, which adopted and modified theatre strategies used in her other plays, especially The Girlfriend Experience and Do We look Like Refugees. The article draws on interviews with performers and with Blythe herself, in its critical analysis of how voice legitimates claims to authenticity in performance. The work on Blythe is contextualised by brief comparative analyses. One is Clio Barnard's film The Arbor, a ‘quasi-documentary’ on the playwright, Andrea Dunbar which makes use of an oral script to which the actors lip-sync. The other comparator is the Wooster Group's Poor Theater, which attempts to recreate Grotowski's Akropolis via vocal impersonation. The article argues that voice in London Road both claims and defers authenticity and authority, inasmuch as voice signifies presence and embodied identity but the reworking of speech into song signals the absence of the real. The translation of voice into written surtitles works similarly in Do We Look Like Refugees. Blythe's theatre, Barnard's film and The Wooster Group's performances are a useful framework for addressing questions of voice and identity, and authenticity and replication in documentary theatre. The article concludes by placing Blythe's oral texts amid current debates around theatre's textual practices.

The Actress Experience: Cruel Knowing and the Death of the Picture Personality in Black Swan and The Girlfriend Experience

Using recent work from philosophy, film studies, and economics, this article analyzes two instances of star discourse — Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience — to identify an emerging trend in contemporary cinema. I argue that these filmmakers exploit what I term the audience's cruel knowledge about actresses in order to position the films in relation to the other art forms associated with their actresses (ballet and pornography). Building from the premise that spectacle and excess are necessary to both celebrity and cruelty, I argue that contemporary directors activate cruel celebrity culture in three interrelated ways. I begin by discussing the spectator's role, a position from which the noncelebrity takes pleasure in witnessing the celebrity's destruction. The spectator's cruel desire to see more and more of the celebrity's destruction activates the second type of cruelty. Black Swan and Girlfriend Experience depend on the cruelty of the camera's eye: the paparazzo's invading eye, which takes the spectator beyond scopophilic pleasures into the realm of at least simulated interaction with the celebrity. Finally, directors deploy the cruelty of celebrity culture to gain their own prestige. By making casting choices that exploit tabloid knowledge and by recreating cinematographically the scene of the paparazzo's invasive gaze and the celebrity's evasion, filmmakers energize their own art works through the excessive extradiegetic attention carried by the celebrity into the film. In the cases of Black Swan and Girlfriend Experience, the overpowering extratextual discourses of Natalie Portman's and Sasha Grey's celebrity do not just inform their film roles but are in fact necessary to their work within the films' diegeses. By deploying audience knowledge about celebrities, these contemporary directors clear ground for the artistic merit of their films against the other art forms embodied by the films' stars.

The Hobbyist and the Girlfriend Experience: Behaviors and Preferences of Male Customers of Internet Sexual Service Providers

This study provides descriptive information about the background characteristics, sexual preferences, attitudes, and motives of men (N = 584) who locate and contract with female Internet Sexual Service Providers (ISSP) for paid sex acts through a prostitute review site on the Web. The questionnaire-based findings showed these men preferred the “girlfriend experience” or GFE over all other personal qualities and behaviors. The study contributes to our understanding of a rapidly emerging category of men who seek sexual services on-line and their desire for mutuality and excitement in a provider who is willing to replicate some aspects of a conventional, non-remunerative romantic relationship.

“This number is the nadir of passion”: Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience

“This number is the nadir of passion”: Steven Soderbergh's <i>The Girlfriend Experience</i>