Body as a working tool. Women’s body in relation to the female escort agency workers’ identity negotiation process

A major objective of this article is to analyze how escort agencies’ female workers experience their body within the professional context. It represents the analytical attempt to reconstruct their way of perceiving and understanding the body that at the time of professional interaction in progress is considered a theatrical costume, which facilitates performing the prostitute’s role. The body that is experienced as an object, which requires constant reshaping, adjusting to working conditions, might get damaged, and worn out. The body that in the aftermath of internalizing new techniques of impression management starts being perceived as a working tool and enables, thus, the construction of new interpretative frames for the understanding of typical professional interactions and one’s professional role. Finally, the body that is abstracted away from one’s intimacy, experienced as an interactional partner mediating escort’s professional interactions with her clients