The Office of the Mayor of Paris is currently seeking to ban a new
dating website for wealthy men seeking to meet younger partners that has
been accused of inciting students in the French capital to prostitute
themselves.
According to Agence France Presse, AFP, a trailer hired by the
website richmeetbeautiful.fr drew the ire of students and was widely
condemned on social media on Wednesday after it was parked in the 5th
district of Paris, home to the Sorbonne University.
“Hey students!” read the low-budget poster stuck on a trailer pulled by a car.
“Romantic, passionate and no student loans,” it continued
next to a picture of a man, considerably younger and less wrinkled than
the intended users of the site, whispering suggestively into the ear of a
woman.
“Go out with a Sugar Daddy or Sugar Mama,” it concluded.
Reacting to images circulated on Twitter, the Paris mayor’s office
said late Wednesday that it had alerted prosecutors and would seek to
ban the site.
“As well as the public order problems caused by an advert that can be seen by minors, this site is an offence against women,” deputy mayor Helene Bidard told AFP.
“Behind these airbrushed images there are young people who could end up in prostitution,” she explained, adding that she hoped investigators would press charges for pimping.
The Norwegian-based website ran into similar problems last month
with a campaign in Brussels where authorities also launched a
prostitution probe and impounded posters.
Site boss Sigurd Vedal told AFP afterwards that criticisms likening the site to prostitution were unfair.
“It’s a classic misunderstanding,” Vedal said. “We are like a normal dating site, but financial is part of the checklist.”
In France, student association FAGE said it had also lodged a
criminal complaint about pimping, adding that the advertising campaign “is aimed at attracting vulnerable students… and encouraging them to perform sex acts with older people.”