Teenage virgin sells body for $32,000

From the NYT. It mentions other cases too. I find it strange that she didn't even offer a picture, which means the bidders were only going based on her age and virginity. If we took all women who traded sex for money and predicted how much they could command in the market, using as predictors both their age and virgin/non-virgin status (or maybe lifetime number of partners more broadly), I would bet there would be a strong interaction effect between age and virginity. That is, imagine the extra boost above average pay you'd get from being 19 years old, regardless of virgin status. Also imagine the extra boost above average pay you'd get from being a virgin, regardless of age (i.e., including 30-something and 40-something virgins).

If these effects only acted independently, you'd predict a young virgin would make the average, plus the age boost, plus the virgin boost. I'd estimate the average sex-seller gets between $100 and $1000 for a single act, let's say $1000 to be generous. Being 19 might earn you a $5000 premium, all else equal. And virginity wouldn't get that much by itself -- maybe $1000? -- simply because that's not a very strong attractor per se, for Western guys anyway. So we'd predict 19 y.o. virgins to make $7000 -- far below what they can truly command. It looks like the interaction, synergy, or mutual reinforcement between the two has the most predictive power -- there's something especially fascinating about knowing she's both young and a virgin.

And likewise, a 40-something who's had over 100 partners is going to suffer for both of those things separately, but will probably be able to charge hardly anything due to the interaction of those deficits. Her anti-virginity actually compounds the effect of being middle-aged.