The “manservants” craze: Why women’s sexual fantasies are so embarrassing (With Videos)

The “manservants” craze: Why women’s sexual fantasies are so embarrassing

A startup is pimping out hot guys to give compliments and open doors. Is this really what female desire looks like?

Promotional image for ManServants.co

A San Francisco start-up is letting women rent out attractive “manservants” who give hand massages, dish out compliments and open doors at a rate of $125 an hour. The ManServants website explains the service like so: “It’s not a stripper who gets naked and rubs his greasy body all over you. It’s a ManServant: a gentleman who treats you like a queen. Book one for a bachelorette party or any gathering to be your personal photographer, bartender, bodyguard, and butler all in one.” These remarkably boring-looking, model-perfect men are willing to remove their shirts while providing the aforementioned attentions, but customers are required to agree to not engage in any “demeaning” behavior toward the manservants. No catcalling or showering with dollar bills.
As a woman who delights in seeing the tables turned on men, I should be thrilled at the idea — but I’m not. In fact, it makes me kind of mad — and I’m not alone. Writers Julieanne Smolinski and Ann Friedman have both rented a gent and written about the ensuing awkwardness, and both expressed an unease with ManServants’ interpretation of what women want. As Smolinski put it, the company is “operating under the premise that while men would like to pay a woman to take her clothes off at a party, women would like to pay a man to come to a party and be nice to them.” Friedman said, “I can’t decide if this is a triumph of feminism or the most retrograde thing I’ve ever heard.”
I wrote to a handful of friends to ask them to come up with a dream scenario of men catering to female fantasy in an economic exchange. How might we create the equivalent of what the strip club bachelor party is for men, only for straight women? How could we luxuriate in objectifying men amid female bonding? I was looking for something less demure than hand massages from a tuxedoed gent, but more refined than overly tanned guys in electric pink G-strings. There had to be some middle ground between banana hammocks and Sexy Jeeves, right?
This question coming from someone who was so incapable of answering it that she had her bachelorette party at an animal shelter.

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