It’s only Tuesday, but we can already declare a winner in the competition for the Most Attention-Getting Press Release Teaser of the Week. It’s Animal Planet, which on Tuesday morning sent around an e-mail with this in the subject field: “The Search Is on for the Best Hooker in America.â€
Of course, Animal Planet also wins the prize for Biggest Press Release Letdown of the Week with the same e-mail, which it turns out is plugging a fishing show called “Top Hooker.†But for a brief moment, the mind raced with questions. How? What format? Would there be auditions? Who would judge such a contest? Perhaps the men from the repulsive Showtime series “Gigolos,†which claims to be a reality series about sex-for-hire studs?
The main question, though, is, Would someone actually make a talent competition show for prostitutes? And the dismaying answer is, do you even have to ask? It’s amazing no one has done so already.
Prostitution has certainly made its way onto television. HBO’s icky “Cathouse†franchise, about the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada, has been going for years. Cinemax has “Working Girls,†a “Cathouse†spinoff of sorts.
These and other sex-fantasy charades, though, contain no more “reality†than “Gigolos†does, since central elements of the prostitution world â€" drug addiction, disease, violence, sexual slavery â€" are nowhere to be found in them. Yeah, “America’s Best Hooker†sounds like a terrific idea for a reality competition series, until you think about it too long.
