Portal:Sex work

Jenna Marie Massoli (born April 9, 1974), known professionally as Jenna Jameson, is an American businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former pornographic film actress. She has been named the world's most famous adult entertainment performer and "The Queen of Porn".

Jameson started acting in erotic videos in 1993 after having worked as a stripper and glamour model. By 1996, she had won the "Top Newcomer" award from each of the three major adult movie organizations. She has since won more than 35 adult-video awards, and has been inducted into the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) and Adult Video News (AVN) Halls of Fame. (Full article...)

Laura Eliza Jane Seymour Bell (1829–1894, married name Thistlethwayte) was an Irish-born courtesan of Victorian England. She was most notorious for the Nepalese Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana reputedly spending £250,000 on her. She later experienced a religious conversion and became a revivalist preacher on morality. (Full article...)

Pearl "Polly" Adler (April 16, 1900 – June 9, 1962) was an American madam and author, best known for her work A House Is Not a Home, which was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2021, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Debby Applegate published a comprehensive account of Adler's life and times entitled Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age with Doubleday. (Full article...)

Sheila R Vogel-Coupe (née Davis; January 1929 – 25 November 2022) was an English escort and media personality. She was known for being the oldest sex worker in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)

Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride (née Gustafsdotter; 27 November 1843 – 30 September 1888) is believed to have been the third victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.

Unlike the other four canonical Ripper victims, Stride had not been mutilated following her murder, leading some historians to suspect Stride had not actually been murdered by Jack the Ripper. However, Stride's murder occurred less than one hour before the murder of the Ripper's fourth canonical victim, Catherine Eddowes, within walking distance, and her act of murder is suspected to have been disturbed by an individual entering the crime scene upon a two-wheeled cart. In addition, both women had been murdered by slash wounds to the throat, leading most authors and researchers to consider Stride to be the third of the Ripper's canonical five victims. (Full article...)

Nguyễn Thị Thiên Thanh (born October 24, 1981), better known by her stage name Tila Tequila, is an American model, singer, reality tv actress. She has also used the names Tila Nguyen, Miss Tila and Tornado Thien. Born in Singapore and raised in Houston, Texas, Tequila moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue her modeling career. She first gained recognition for her active presence on social networking websites. After being featured as a model in numerous men's magazines (including Playboy, Stuff and Maxim), she made her reality television debut on the VH1 show Surviving Nugent (2003). After becoming the most popular person on Myspace, Tequila was offered the opportunity to star in her own reality television series. Her bisexuality-themed dating show, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila (2007), aired for two seasons and became MTV's second-highest-rated series premiere of that year.

In addition to her career in modeling and television, Tequila also pursued her career as a recording artist. She was the lead singer of the bands Beyond Betty Jean and Jealousy, before launching a solo career. Her debut single "I Love U" was released in 2007 to mixed reviews. Despite having strong online sales, the song failed to enter any charts. Tequila followed with several independently released singles, including "Stripper Friends" and "Paralyze". In 2010, she released her second EP, Welcome to the Dark Side. Her book, Hooking Up With Tila Tequila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party, was published in 2008. (Full article...)

Barbara Lee Payton (née Redfield; November 16, 1927 – May 8, 1967) was an American film actress best known for her stormy social life and battles with alcohol abuse and drug addiction. Her life has been the subject of several books, including her autobiography I Am Not Ashamed (1963), Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (2007) by John O'Dowd, L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes and Bad Times (2005) by John Gilmore, and B Movie: A Play in Two Acts (2014) by Michael B. Druxman. She married five times. Payton has been dubbed "one of the all-time great 'hot messes' in Hollywood history." (Full article...)

Jeanne Brécourt, sometimes written Bricourt, (born 8 April 1837), was one of France's most notorious courtesans. Using dishonesty and blackmail, she ruined some of her lovers. She was sentenced 15 years' penal servitude for having one of her lovers blinded. (Full article...)

Lindsey Elaine Normington (born 24 July 1996) is an actress, director, writer, and stripper best known for her role as Diamond, the antagonistic coworker of the titular character in Sean Baker's Palme d'Or and Academy Award-winning film Anora (2024). She also organized the first unionized strip club in the United States. (Full article...)

Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954) is an American certified sexologist, performance artist, former sex worker, filmmaker, and advocate for the decriminalization of sex work.

Sprinkle has worked as a prostitute, sex educator, feminist stripper, pornographic film actress, sex film producer and director, and documentary film director. She became known in the 1980s as a maker of feminist, lesbian, and sex-positive pornography. In 1996, Sprinkle became the first known porn star to get a doctoral degree, earning a Doctor of Philosophy in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. (Full article...)

Elisabeth Eaves is an author and journalist born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Full article...)

Evelyn West (January 30, 1921 – November 14, 2004), a.k.a. Evelyn "$50,000 Treasure Chest" West, and "The Hubba-Hubba Girl", was a vedette and burlesque legend of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. (Full article...)

Thaïs (/ˈθaɪs/; Greek: Θαΐς; fl. 4th century BCE) was a Greek hetaira who accompanied Alexander the Great on his military campaigns. Likely from Athens, she is most famous for having instigated the burning of Persepolis, the capital city of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, after it was conquered by Alexander's army in 330 BCE. At the time, Thaïs was the lover of Ptolemy I Soter, who was one of Alexander's close companions and generals. It has been suggested that she may also have been Alexander's lover on the basis of a statement by the Greek rhetorician Athenaeus, who writes that Alexander liked to "keep Thaïs about him" without directly classifying the nature of their relationship as intimate; this may simply have meant that he enjoyed her company, as she is said to have been very witty and entertaining. Athenaeus also states that after Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Thaïs married Ptolemy and bore three of his children. (Full article...)

Veronica Franco (c. 1546–1591) was an Italian poet and courtesan in 16th-century Venice. She is known for her notable clientele, feminist advocacy, literary contributions, and philanthropy. Her humanist education and cultural contributions influenced the roles of courtesans in the late Venetian Renaissance.

In her notable works, Capitoli in Terze rime and Lettere familiari a diversi ("Familiar Letters to Various People"), Franco uses perceived virtue, reason, and fairness to advise male patricians and other associates. She exercised greater autonomy in her authorship than any other traditional Venetian woman due to her established reputation and influence. (Full article...)

Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Earp (née Marcus; 1861 – December 19, 1944) was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp, a famed Old West lawman and gambler. She met Wyatt in 1881 in the frontier boom town of Tombstone in Arizona Territory, when she was living with Johnny Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona.

Josephine was born in New York to a Prussian Jewish family. Her father was a baker. They moved to San Francisco, where Josephine attended dance school as a girl. When her father had difficulty finding work, the family moved in with her older sister and brother-in-law in a working-class tenement. Josephine ran away, possibly as early as age 14, and traveled to Arizona, where she said she went "looking for adventure". Much of her life from about 1874 to 1882 (when she lived in the Arizona Territory) is uncertain; she worked hard to keep this period of her life private, even threatening legal action against writers and movie producers. She may have arrived in Prescott, Arizona, as early as 1874. The book I Married Wyatt Earp (1967), based on a manuscript allegedly written in part by her, describes events she witnessed in Arizona that occurred before 1879, the year she claimed at other times to have first arrived in Tombstone. There is some evidence that she lived from 1874 to 1876 in Prescott and Tip Top, Arizona Territory under the assumed name of Sadie Mansfield, who was a prostitute, before becoming ill and returning to San Francisco. The name Sadie Mansfield was also recorded in Tombstone. Researchers^[who?] have found that the two names share extremely similar characteristics and circumstances. (Full article...)

Francisca da Silva de Oliveira (c. 1732–1796), known in history by the name Chica da Silva and whose romanticized version/character is also known by the spelling Xica da Silva, was a Brazilian woman who became famous for becoming rich and powerful despite having been born into slavery. Her life has been a source of inspiration for many works in television, films, music, theater and literature. She is popularly known as the slave who became a queen. The myth of Chica da Silva is often conflated with the historical accounts of Francisca da Silva de Oliveira. (Full article...)

Theresa Berkley or Berkeley (died September 1836) was a 19th-century English dominatrix who ran a brothel in Hallam Street, just to the east of Portland Place, Marylebone, London, specialising in flagellation. She is notable as the inventor of the "chevalet" or "Berkley Horse", a BDSM apparatus. (Full article...)

Valérie Tasso is a French writer, lecturer, research worker, and sex therapist, currently living in Barcelona, Spain. She has several university degrees (Economical Sciences, Foreign Applied languages), and in 2006, she graduated in Sex Therapy from The Institute of Sexology (IN.CI.SEX El Instituto de Sexología,) in Madrid.

In 1999, she worked as a prostitute for six months, out of curiosity. In 2003, she wrote her sexual experiences in the book Insatiable – The sexual adventures of a French Girl in Spain. This first book has been an international best-seller, and is the basis of the script for the film Diary of a Nymphomaniac directed by Christian Molina. She has written three more books. (Full article...)

Gangubai Harjeevandas (1907 – 8 September 1977), better known as Gangubai Kothewali or Gangubai Kathiawadi, was an Indian social activist, sex worker and madam of a brothel in the Kamathipura area of Mumbai during the 1960s. Gangubai worked for the rights of sex workers and for the well-being of orphans. She gradually ended up operating her own brothel and is known to also have lobbied for the rights of commercial sex workers. (Full article...)

Zahia Dehar (Arabic: زاهية ديهار, born 25 February 1992) is an Algerian-French model, actress, fashion and lingerie designer, and survivor of child sex trafficking.

Dehar is best known for having been involved in a sex scandal involving footballers at a time when she was being trafficked to escort clientele as a minor. (Full article...)

Phryne (Ancient Greek: Φρύνη, before 370 – after 316 BC) was an ancient Greek hetaira (courtesan). Born Mnesarete, she was from Thespiae in Boeotia, but seems to have lived most of her life in Athens. She apparently grew up poor, but became one of the richest women in Greece.

Little is known for certain about Phryne's life. She is best known for her trial for impiety, in which she was defended by the orator Hypereides. According to legend, she was acquitted after baring her breasts to the jury, though the historicity of this episode is doubtful. She also modelled for the artists Apelles and Praxiteles: the latter's Aphrodite of Knidos was said to have been based on her. (Full article...)

Karenjit "Karen" Kaur Vohra (born May 13, 1981), known by her stage name Sunny Leone, is a Canadian-American actress, model, media personality and former pornographic actress who works in Hindi films. Active in Hindi cinema since the 2010s, she is known for her leading roles in erotic thrillers and appearing in several popular item numbers, and is cited by various media outlets as a sex symbol. On television, Leone is one of the presenters of Indian reality show MTV Splitsvilla. She was named Penthouse Pet of the Year in 2003 and was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2018.

She has played roles in independent mainstream events, films, and television series. Her first mainstream appearance was in 2005, when she worked as a red carpet reporter for the MTV Video Music Awards on MTV India. In 2011, she participated in the Indian reality television series Bigg Boss. She also has hosted the Indian reality show Splitsvilla. (Full article...)

Faith Bacon (born Frances Yvonne Bacon; July 19, 1910  – September 26, 1956) was an American burlesque dancer and actress. During the height of her career, she was billed as "America's Most Beautiful Dancer". (Full article...)

Phyllis Dixey (10 February 1914 – 2 June 1964) was an English singer, actress, dancer and impresario. Her earlier career was as a singer in variety shows in Britain. During World War II, she joined ENSA and entertained the British forces. She sang, recited and posed in naked tableaux which were very popular. (Full article...)

Juanita Dale Slusher (July 6, 1935 – December 30, 2005), better known by her stage name Candy Barr, was an American stripper, burlesque dancer, actress, and adult model in men's magazines of the mid-20th century.

During the 1950s, she received nationwide attention for her stripping career in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, her encounters with the law, shooting her second husband, and her sentence to a prison term for drug possession. Barr was also in relationships with Mickey Cohen and Jack Ruby. (Full article...)