There was this instagram model who posts naked or bikini pics all over her social media which an be considered sex work to an extent, but said she still wouldn't want to sleep with someone in exchange for money. I also know other women who aren't on instagram, but have mastered the art of getting large sums of money from men whom they have never met and never slept with. Others have found a financially well-off bf who takes them on vacations in fancy places. So everyone draws the line at what they think is acceptable behaviour or not.
At the end of the day, I can't fault young women for taking advantage of a system that was designed that way, if you're young and can capitalize on your body/sexuality. That being said, I don't know if I would consider it really empowering. I used to think these women were in control and were beating men at their own game by making the most off the system and the situation they were in, but i don't think this anymore. My opinion on this topic is constantly evolving.
As someone who finds hetero sex inherently degrading, and wouldn't engage in it, but often hear my friends who engage in hookup culture and casual sex talk about feeling used, I can honestly say it is like prostitution. Even though it was encouraged as a form of "liberation", at the end of the day, they are giving males exactly what they want – sex with no strings attached, and no effort or care required. Sites like tinder agregate women as consumables, that's why the demographic is so skewed, like 90%male, and 10% female. The whole dating industry makes money off commodifying women. It doesn't come close to what women go through when they enter sex work, but we can draw a lot of parallels. There was this social media influencer who used to claim that to get women to "take off their clothes, and sexually pleasure strangers" you had to sell them on a dream: promise them they're gonna find love, be treated nicely, etc, and that's what tinder does. Many people believe that having casual sex is actually gonna evolve into a loving relationship.
I'm glad I personally don't have to navigate the madonna-whore dichotomy. Because even though promiscuous behaviour might be encouraged during your youth, chances are, once you're no longer young and desirable, you're considered damaged good, both because you're not young anymore, and also because if you've been around, you're not considered "marriage material" or whatever bs. There are tons of arbitrary rules that het-women who pursue have to confrom to, depending on where you stand on the madonna-whore dichotomy, or on a scale of 1 to 10 of "fuckability". That's why a lot of older women (not all, but some) project their insecurities and inadequacies onto younger women by telling them to stay chaste and adopting the same attitude as basically a male chauvinist pig, ultimately it's still a way of controlling women. Or projecting their insecurities regarding their bodies, since during their youth, they've been told it's their most marketable asset, and it could be anything from being too old, not having a hot enough body, being too fat, saggy skin, etc...
Someone once said that men were at the bottom of the totem pole because they cannot imagine what it's like to commodify your body/sexuality, but I'd argue that men aren't even at the bottom since they create the demand/market. And that at the bottom of the totem pole (of desirability) it's actually older women, the older you get the more you lose "value". A lot of older women are bitter about this, and that's why they blame the young women, instead of blaming the system that commodifies them. I'm not interested in chastizing individual women instead of a system. Just like I'm not interested in critiquing prostitution/sex work, if we're not also critiquing capitalism.
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