Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the girl who escorted Eliot Spitzer to his downfall, is now gainfully employed. She writes an advice column for the New York Post. Hey, a girl’s gotta make a living. The Post, by the way, is the same publication that splashed a full page photo of the nude but modest-handed Ashley across its cover shortly after the scandal broke, accompanied by the giant headline, “BAD GIRL.”
“Ask me anything about love, sex, and relationships,” says a bespectacled Ashley in the Post’s promotional video for the column. “Take it from me – someone who could have used a little advice in the past.”
If it sounds like I'm being snarky, I'm not. Honestly, I don’t begrudge Ashley the opportunity one little bit. She’s just another in a long line of professional girls left swirling in the muddy wake of the rich and powerful. The real bad guy at the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal was – well – Eliot Spitzer. The married guy. The powerful guy. The guy with kids. The guy who stood for law and order. The guy who had, in fact, as attorney general of his state, demanded a crackdown on the escorting industry in New York City. And now, in the aftermath of his scandal, he teaches a course on law and public policy as an adjunct faculty member at the City College of New York. He landed on his feet. Why not Ashley?
My insight into the Ashley and Eliot show is informed by Damien Decker, my writing partner on The Act, a forthcoming memoir about his life as a high-paid Manhattan escort. Damien never met Ashley, but he knew her, which is to say he knew lots of girls like her. He was way ahead of the media when the story broke. He knew that Ashley aspired to be a model or something in the performing arts. It turned out she was trying to get a singing career going. He knew she was likely from an upper-middleclass background, as he and many of his female colleagures were, and we watched as, a couple of days into the story, reporters scratched their heads while showing pictures of the million-dollar house she’d lived in before moving to New York. He knew she was using cocaine, the drug that fuels the escorting industry. We waited three days or more for the press to pick up on that detail. When the media reported, its collective brow furrowed in puzzlement, that despite her high fees, Ashley had been homeless for a time, Damien and I were not surprised. He himself had been homeless at the height of his career.
And, by the way, that vice crackdown orchestrated by Spitzer? Damien knew about that ahead of time too. One of his female colleagues had been tipped by a client of hers inside the Spitzer organization.
Escorting ain’t pretty. It’s an industry orbited by drug dealers, bad cops, sexually violent Johns, and, yes, corrupt politicians. It’s a tough business under the best of circumstances. Ashely had to face the worst of it – life under the media microscope, bad jokes by talk show hosts, cruel reviews of her music by talentless DJs, ridicule dressed up as insisive questions by out-of-touch, millionaire “journalists.”
I have a piece of advice for the New York Post’s new advice columnist: You go, Ashley.
Nice post, Tom. I didn't know the details of the situation (which is to say, I didn't know anything about any of it, at all), but your reasonable take on it reassures me that at least someone is keeping their mind when all others around are losing theirs (you know the quote--and while I'm messing it up, it applies here).
ReplyDeleteSex is just not that big a deal. Well, it is, of course, but only because we say so! How it has become the maker and breaker of kings and politicians is far beyond my comprehension. But if that's going to be the case, then I'm glad that one of the queens got to have a little bit of the game.
I proudly second you: You go, Ashley.