Romanian Teenager’s Virgin Offering

In Renaissance Europe, and in the ancient and medieval Hindu and Mughal societies, the young courtesans were much in news and played a vital role. Even in this computer age the tradition continues as exemplified by a Romanian teenager who auctioned off her virginity for $20,000.

Alina Percea, 18, has spoken for the first time about her night with the highest bidder, reports LiveNews. Percea (photo above) auctioned her virginity on a website in an effort to “pay for her computing degree.”

“The eventual winner was a 45-year-old Italian businessman who paid for her to fly to Venice, where the couple had a night on the town before spending a night in a five-star hotel. Ms Percea says the tryst turned out to be a positive experience.” More here…

In India there is a village en route to the famous Taj Mahal where virgins are still openly sold. Here is an earlier story from The Telegraph…See here…

A virgin was much coveted in the Asian culture, and was available to the highest bidder for the purpose of pleasure and entertainment. A Japanese Geisha and the Indian ‘kothe wali’ or ’singing girl’, although highly trained in the arts and cultures of their respective civilizations, also catered to this demand in a subtle and sophisticated manner.

The tradition and culture of courtesans in India is “singularly responsible for development and preservation of Indian music and Indian dance forms.” However, at the beginning of the 20th century, the courtesans had to bear social stigma and condemnation of society due to displacements of morality (courtesans were associated with the flesh trade) and orthodoxy that took place in India. More here…

And here…

In the famous 19th century Indian mutiny against the British, the Lucknow-born Azizan, the well-known Muslim courtesan of Kanpur, called upon Hindus and Muslims to unite for the cause of freedom and organized a battalion of women. A diarist notes: “Armed Azizan is flashing everywhere like lightning; often she stands in the streets giving milk and sweetmeats to tired and wounded Sepoys” and preferred martyrdom.

Japanese Geisha are “not exactly” prostitutes, as a blog notes. “They are not wives meant to bear children, cook, clean and run the house. They are ‘counter culture’, providing a chill zone for rich, powerful men. Their aim is to find a rich patron and be his unwed wife, whose job is recreational, not reproductive. More here…

Pietro Aretino, an Italian Renaissance writer, wrote a series of dialogues (Capricciosi ragionamenti) in which “a mother teaches her daughter what options are available to women and how to be an effective courtesan.” The French novelist Balzac wrote about a courtesan in his Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1838–47). Emile Zola likewise wrote a novel, Nana (1880), about a courtesan in nineteenth-century France. See here