The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Masquerade

I like the following detail of Ashley Dupre's (I mean, "Kristen"; I mean, Ashley Youmans) biography. According to the New York Post, part of the reason she left home was that she crashed her oral-surgeon stepfather's Porsche. Like you, Hanna, I thought of Margaret Seltzer, concocting a gang identity out of her prep-school childhood. But Ashley actually did make the descent into the tawdry. Will we ever find out why a girl with a seemingly decent childhood becomes a prostitute, any more than we'll ever understand why a governor throws his happy, successful life away because of that prostitute? And speaking of false identitities, don't forget that when "Kristen" showed up at the Mayflower, she was told by her john that his name was "George Fox."