Seduction, power, and murder: inside the 2,000-year reign of the gigolo
Handsome, charming, and often dangerous, gigolos have played surprising roles in history. From philosophers’ companions to jet-set playboys, these men knew how to turn beauty into power.
Handsome men, particularly those with a dressy, well- cut style, have a long history of getting what they want. Gigolos can get paid not just for their intoxicating presence but for what they deliver between the sheets. But how did these working boys, over time, gain a legitimacy and respect not often extended to their female counterparts? A few thousand years of history help to explain the power of the male gigolo.
In Ancient Greece, paying men for sex was common. The father of gigolos was Phaedo of Elis, who had good looks and spirited intelligence. When, in the 4th-century BCE, this stunner was captured and sold into Athenian slavery, he emerged as antiquity’s most famous rent boy. The classical ideal that beautiful bodies contain beautiful minds was not lost on the philosopher Socrates. Phaedo was at the sage’s deathbed as he dialogued on the immortality of the soul.
A century later, another famous gigolo, Lao Ai, infiltrated the court of the first Chinese emperor. He did this by pretending to be a eunuch. How he managed to conceal a penis big enough to turn a carriage wheel (according to the Han-dynasty historian Sima Qian) remains a mystery. The detail did not go unnoticed by the queen dowager. Lao Ai manipulated her, with the goal of seizing control over the empire. As punishment for his failed coup, he was dismembered.
Any decent history of the gigolo must touch on France’s Pranzini Affair. In 1887 the Paris police were called to a Champs-Élysées apartment, where three corpses were found. The suspect was Enrico Pranzini, a suave, beautifully dressed gambler and adventurer. The Egyptian-born Italian caught the national imagination as the “dangerous foreigner” whose sublime eyes had entranced Parisian women. Arrested in Marseille, Pranzini was guillotined six months later for the triple murder that occurred as he tried to force his wealthy courtesan’s safe and make off with her diamonds.
Despite this rich history, the word “gigolo” wasn’t coined until the 1920s. Originating from the French slang word for leg, or gigue, “gigolo” is also related to the word gigole, or dance partner. And it was in France, on the Côte d’Azur, that the gigolo reached unprecedented levels of success. Gigi Rizzi, the son of an Italian brickmaker, became the leader of the Saint-Tropez gigolos in the 1960s. Crucially, he wasn’t selling his body but coasted as a socialite on his good looks and his party vibes. He and his buddies danced on tables at popular city nightclub, the Byblos. Rizzi’s star moment came as the arm candy for none other than Brigitte Bardot.
What all these infamous men have in common is a certain respectability throughout history. Certainly, men selling beauty, charm and company are less seen as victims than are female escorts. In each of these examples they are considered free agents, hustling their way out of their disadvantaged backgrounds. They might have sometimes been giving people sex. But they were also trying to, ahem, rise to better things.
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