The history of male escorts is really a history of how society feels about women’s desire. Paid female companionship has been documented for centuries, yet men offering the same to women has often been hidden, mocked, or written out of the record. This is a researched look at how male companionship evolved, from early paid companions through the gigolo era to Australia’s modern, female-led agencies, and why that journey matters for women today.
Paid and patronised companionship is ancient, though the male-for-women version has always been the quieter side of the story. One of the clearest historical examples comes from eighteenth-century Italy, where a cicisbeo was a recognised male companion who attended a married woman in public, escorting her to social events with her family’s knowledge.
He was not a husband and not simply a friend, but a socially accepted role. The idea of a woman having a dedicated male escort is far from new. What changed over time was not whether such arrangements existed, but how openly they could be discussed.
For much of the nineteenth century, a respectable woman could not simply go out unaccompanied. The problem was real enough that, before the Civil War, American hotels set aside a “ladies’ ordinary”, a separate dining room for women, and as Yale historian Paul Freedman explains in his history of women and American restaurants, women arriving without a man often struggled to be served at fine restaurants well into the late 1800s.
When a paid male escort could be the difference between seeing the town and staying home, a market was almost inevitable.
Image Source: HiLoBrow.com
One of the clearest forerunners of the modern male escort appeared with the dance craze of the early twentieth century. As the tango and the fox-trot swept Paris and then America, venues employed charming men to partner women who arrived alone. The French word for these men, gigolo, was in English use by the early 1920s and quickly gathered glamour and scandal. We cover that story in detail in what a gigolo actually means.
The dancing partner soon became a business. In late 1935, a young New York Times classified-ad clerk named Ted Peckham founded the Guide Escort Service, offering women respectable, non-sexual male company for a set fee. As the cultural history site HiLoBrow records, he supplied vetted, presentable men bound by strict rules of conduct, expanding as far as London and Paris before New York authorities ended it in 1939, ruling he needed an employment agency licence the city made clear he would never be granted. He even published a 1940 book of applicant letters, Gentlemen in Waiting. It stands as one of the earliest examples of male companionship being organised, professionalised and openly marketed to women.
For much of the twentieth century the male escort lived mostly in the popular imagination, shaped by film and song. The 1980 film American Gigolo recast the figure as stylish and self-assured, and popular culture slowly softened the idea from something purely scandalous into something more human. Perceptions shifted, even if the stigma never entirely lifted.
The internet changed the shape of the industry. Where earlier eras relied on dance halls and personal networks, online platforms let companions be discovered directly. Over the following decades, digital platforms transformed how the work was advertised and booked.
That visibility helped a long-overlooked market grow: women and couples. A 2017 global survey of online male escort listings led by Queensland University of Technology researchers pointed to what they called a significant emerging market of women and couples: more than half of the United Kingdom’s male escorts catered to them, as did about a quarter of Australia’s 516. As more women gained financial independence and felt freer to name what they wanted, the demand came out into the open, and being a companion became a considered career choice, something we cover in our guide on how to become a male escort.
Australia now has one of the more progressive landscapes for this, helped by the decriminalisation of sex work in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. You can read where the law stands in our guide to whether male escorts are legal in Australia.
The local story runs deeper than most people realise. Anna Grosman co-founded Aphrodisiac Male Escorts, which ran from 2012 to 2018, before creating Her Confidant, Australia’s female-led companionship agency built specifically for women, a journey Dynamic Business traced in its Founder Friday profile. You can meet the companions, read a companion’s perspective on booking, explore the psychology behind why women book, or see what to expect the first time.
The agency’s own origin, by Anna’s account, began with a simple conversation among friends who were frustrated by the lack of quality, safe options for women seeking intimacy and connection without commitment.
“For most of history, a woman’s desire was something to manage or hide. I built Her Confidant so that in Australia, at least, it can finally be something she gets to choose.
Anna Grosman, Founder, Her Confidant
Knowing this history does something useful. It shows that women seeking companionship is not new, not shameful and not strange. It is simply something that spent a long time in the shadows and is now stepping into the light, on women’s own terms.
Paid male companionship has existed for centuries in various forms. The recognisable modern version emerged with the professional dancing partners of the early twentieth century and early escort agencies of the 1930s, such as Ted Peckham’s Guide Escort Service.
A gigolo traditionally lived off a woman’s ongoing support. A modern male escort or companion works professionally on a clear, booked basis. Our gigolo guide explains the distinction.
Both have existed, but services aimed specifically at women have historically been quieter and more stigmatised. That has changed significantly in recent decades, including here in Australia.
Yes. Social companionship, such as dinners, travel and time together, is legal everywhere in Australia. Where sexual services are involved, the law depends on your state: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory have decriminalised, while the ACT, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia are more restrictive. Our state-by-state guide to male escort laws covers the specifics.
The history of male escorts is a story of something slowly becoming acceptable to say out loud. Today an Australian woman can choose companionship openly, safely and without apology. If you would like to know more, you can get in touch with the Her Confidant team.
