Finally, women can pay for sex too!

Heidi Fleiss is opening a new brothel near Las Vegas -- for women.

Published November 17, 2005 2:29PM (EST)

Legendary madam Heidi Fleiss, who was jailed for 21 months in the '90s for tax evasion and money laundering, is back to promoting the world's oldest profession. But this time, it's with a post-feminist twist. As the Los Angeles Times reports today, Fleiss is planning to open a brothel outside of Las Vegas that will cater only to women. Right now, she's looking for a few good (read: cut and tanned) men to staff the place, which she plans to call "Heidi's Stud Farm." Subtle!

"Women are more independent these days; they make more money and it's hard to meet people," Fleiss tells the Times. "You wouldn't believe the number of women who've told me, 'Heidi, if you do this, I'll be the first one in line!' I mean, relationships are harder than dieting, you know what I mean?" In a letter to the Nye County Liquor and Licensing Board, Fleiss' business partner, brothel owner Joe Richards, said that a male brothel would "address an ever-increasing fact of life," because "society is witnessing a unique evolution of the female gender reaching out for the same service we now offer male clients." Richards argued his case to the Times this way: "Say a guy gets into an argument with his wife. What does he do? Lot of times, he goes out, gets a drink, goes to a place to be serviced. Now women can say, 'Hey, if you can do it, I can too.'"

If and when the Stud Farm opens its doors -- Nevada authorities could deny Fleiss and Richards a brothel license because of Fleiss' felony conviction -- will women flock to it the way Fleiss and Richards hope? We can see it being a prime destination for a kitschy bachelorette weekend, but will workaday broads actually hightail it to Vegas when they're in need of a sexual fix? In some ways, the very taboo of prostitution -- and the fact that it has traditionally been the purview of men -- might actually be a turn-on. We're not sure, so again we ask Broadsheet readers: What do you think?


By Hillary Frey

Hillary Frey is the Books editor at Salon.

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