Appearances matter...but not in the way you think. 

I love asking my clients for blog suggestions - it keeps me in touch with what people find interesting and stops me from going off an any weird tangents (well, most of the time!) Today's blog idea comes courtesy of a really lovely long-term regular of mine. He's a little bit older than me, and also a little bit shorter. This is relevant for reasons that will become obvious as you read on.

"You've done blogs about physical ability and penis size and lots of stuff that guys worry about," he said, "but you haven't actually talked about physical appearance specifically."

We we were sharing a milkshake in a local cafe. Only a few months before, we had celebrated his fortieth birthday with chocolate cake and a threesome. Both myself and the person who joined us were younger than my client - not that we even considered it at the time! Working as an escort has allowed me to meet and play with so many different types of people, and I think I had forgotten that physical appearance is a troubling issue for some people.

It's very common for me to meet an older man who feels self-conscious about sleeping with a younger woman. And then there's the persistent myth about guys who see sex workers: that they must not be able to 'get sex any other way' and thus must be less attractive and personable than regular folk. As I sat sipping my share of the chocolate milkshake, seated across the table from my favourite client, I reflected that this was CERTAINLY NOT TRUE. I've also met people who don't fit into the 'normal' box for whatever reason, who feel that they must be less attractive to me because of this - the woman who has had a mastectomy, or the guy with brown skin who feels out of place in our predominantly caucasian city. 

It's not an issue that troubles me much in the course of my work. Sometimes I feel like we're all weird-looking little monkeys, anyway. If an alien landed on our planet I'm sure it would be very startled, perhaps horrified, by our various orifices and flaps ("...and it had a breathing tube ON ITS FACE!") Society has conditioned us to find some faces more attractive than others, but really we all have appendages of roughly the same shape and size, and all that remains are those minute differences that allow us to create a hierarchy of 'attractive' and 'unattractive'. In addition to this, we tend to be very good at discriminating on the basis of age or race (with all the physical markers that denote this: skin elasticity, hair colour, skin colour, posture, ways of moving, facial expressions.... it goes on.) Thus physical attractiveness is almost completely a matter of mental state, not of practical ability or attributes. As we grow and age out idea of what is attractive will change too - and if it can change then, why not now? why not just open ourselves up to a wider definition of 'attractive' than the conventional?

I see the effort someone puts into their appearance as a much better indication of their worth than their inherent physical characteristics. If my client has a haircut that suits them, or a beautiful tattoo, or a great geeky t-shirt, those attributes are just as capable of making them attractive to me as the shape of their nose or the colour of their skin. I love a man who will put on a suit just to meet me: I find it incredibly sexy that someone values my presence enough to go to the trouble. I have a young client who was quite shy and conservative when we first met, but after a few play sessions he grew a moustache .... and we were both pleased with the way it expressed his personality!

To me, good grooming and an expression of individuality will trump natural 'good looks' every time. Because beauty is fleeting (and essentially subjective) but good character can last forever.