Now you can Rent-a-Wife for $40 an hour

What a bargain!

Published August 30, 2013 4:38PM (EDT)

  (<a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-921176p1.html?searchterm=women%20in%20kitchen%20vintage'> Everett Collection </a> via <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/'>Shutterstock</a>)
( Everett Collection via Shutterstock)

A Los Angeles-based business called Rent-a-Wife is, surprisingly enough, not an escort service. It is just a terribly named company that provides personal assistant services to busy people.

Interestingly, founder Juliette Bresnahan says she came up with the idea based on the expressed needs of her single mother friends, who, she recently noted on Fox News, often lamented that they "needed a wife" to help them handle their personal and professional workloads.

Now, it seems, they can get one. For $40 an hour.

Clients select between "Starter Wife," "Good Wife" and "Trophy Wife" packages, and then their "wives" do things like:

Pick up your kids from school and deliver them to soccer

Organize your Tupperware, spice drawer and even your undies

Plan your parties, send the invites, make the space look fabulous, and rent the bouncy house or the bartender

Sell your treasures on Craigslist, assemble your Ikea furniture, cook your meals, and walk your dog

Plan your vacation, be your airport shuttle, Facebook the photos and watch your house & pets without setting off the alarm

Childcare and cleaning, basically. You know, "wife" stuff. What a progressive and romantic view of marriage!

Fine enough business idea. Terrible name. Naturally, Fox News thinks the wife angle is "genius."


By Katie McDonough

Katie McDonough is Salon's politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.

MORE FROM Katie McDonough


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Gender Gender Dynamics Men Sexism Women