What happened to the once widespread male prostitution on the Croatian coastline? Our editor Lily Lynch gets in touch with some of the boys still operating. Bronzed, brawny and glistening with suntan oil, the gigolos of coastal Croatia have long roamed Dalmatian beaches in search of Western women willing to open both their legs and their wallets. Predominantly heterosexual, galebovi have historically catered to upper and middle-class tourists from Western Europe and North America.
While a little research reveals that the practice is still alive today, it is undergoing some significant changes, many of which are linked to the broader social transformations taking place in Croatia on the eve of its accession to the EU. Patterns of female sex tourism are notoriously difficult to study. It is believed that popular destinations for female sex tourists are Southern Europe mostly Croatia , the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
As Dr. Consider the female clients of local men in the Caribbean and parts of Africa today. Despite the fact that the Croatian economy has grown significantly over the last two decades, unemployment still hovers at around And while the average monthly income has risen to Euros, it is still far below the EU average of 2, Euros. Many female sex tourists are middle-aged, and say that they find it difficult to meet interested single men of their own age in their home countries.
While some feminists applaud middle-aged women for being so brazen as to pursue sex for pleasure, others object to what they say amounts to the exploitation of poor young men from developing countries. Nothing less than a genuine dog-collared racial ideal of Teutonic Forest will do to satisfy my taste for depravity. But galebovi can also be demeaning in their assessments of the middle-aged women who come to Fantasy Island to have sex with them. It can all get a bit confusing, figuring out exactly who is exploiting whom.
In an effort to form my own opinion, I placed an online ad so I could meet some of these galebovi myself. To my surprise, the e-mails began rolling in that afternoon. Despite the fact that I made it clear that I was a journalist doing research for an article, several of the men were quite aggressive salesman.
