What Women Want From Men They Can Get From The Market
A new theory on money and power
A Diouana Woman’s Obsession
Upon revealing my latest crush on a man twice my age, a close friend of mine quipped, “he’s certainly your type.”
Feeling judged, I asked her to explain herself. “It’s just,” she began, “you just seem to have a thing for men in power.” I proceeded to defend my geriatric choices, but kept swirling her accusation in my head. Her words had Freudian implications, but I was certain she was seeing it all wrong.
He was handsome, surely that was reason enough, but she knew me well enough to know that wasn’t the full story. With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you that the truth is rooted less in the man, or the position he occupied, and more in my fascination with the systems of power that determine the quality of our lives.
Daddy Harvard was my first lesson in systems of power, and as a coed at the college, I began to circle around a new question in my power plays:
“who gets what, and why?”
The High Priestess of Erotic Capital Economics
At 22, I sat across from a man in a dimly lit Greek restaurant who asked me how much money I needed to make my ambitions come true.
“A hundred thousand, give or take.” I said.
“Really?” he replied, “that’s so cheap.”
I’ll never forget that dinner. It was a lesson in audacity, alignment, and the understanding that, in some dynamics, money is a signifier of the value of a person—both receiving and giving. But more than anything, it showed me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that men would underwrite my ventures if—and only if—they believed in my vision as much as I did.
I never did get that hundred dollars; partly because I didn’t know what I was doing, and partly because my vision at 22 was still half-baked. And now, as my vision has crystallized into a thesis, I, too, agree that a hundred thousand is cheap. $100 million checks need only be cashed.
And it’s this through-line of women, wealth, and men that has found me circling back to an existential question I’ve had since undergrad:
“who gets what, and why?”
Here are the stakes:
We find that 21st century capitalism enslaves people who worship money, but rewards people who understand incentives. And to the ire of economists, incentives do not have to lead to rational behavior; and often do not. Hence why beauty has function as an exchange of value (read: capital).
Thus, my intrigue with The Wisdom of Whores has been rooted in my interest in the psychological understanding some women have about the power of incentives in a capitalist system.
Through this understanding, these women have arrived, through the most unconventional means, on top of a structure designed to enslave even men.
Not laboring through a 20+ year career in a corporate hellscape designed to extract, or striking it big as a young founder by betting the entire farm, nor even by worshipping money and thus entertaining any relationship just for the money, but by their implicit understanding of incentives—in all realms and dimensions.
To quote a former colleague, “show me the incentive, and I’ll tell you the outcome.”
This is the spiritual essence of my independent research to mastermind the theoretical grounds of Diouana Womanomics. I call this theory Erotic Capital Economics. It has a simple premise: how does a woman profit whilst still retaining her soul? It’s the echoing of Matthew 16:26, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
I bring in the New Testament because, to me, beauty is found in the spiritual. Those who have attended a Diouana Woman Salon know I’m a devout reader of The Book of Psalms. Psalm 37 reassures us that “the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy peace and prosperity” by “refrain[ing] from anger and turn[ing] from wrath” and “hoping in the Lord.” I take our earthly inheritance seriously. I have faith, and righteous belief, that Diouana Woman should, and will, know “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
Thus, Erotic Capital Economics is the study of this earthly inheritance as analyzed through how beauty functions as a mechanism for capital exchange between man and woman1. Our commitment to beauty has economic implications in the opportunity cost of not investing in the stock or property market but instead “investing” in ourselves through increasing our “stock” on the marriage market. But with no promise of bridewealth, these “investments” are riskier, I argue, than betting everything on Dutch Tulips and riding the wave.2
Thus, our investments in beauty must be as strategic as our investments in stocks or property. It’s not enough to simply aim to look “hotter” or become more “beautiful”— in fact, if beauty is not akin to you, “ugliness” can have its own erotic charge—it’s more about understanding which beauty investments give you the highest return on investment and prioritizing those purchases so that the difference in terms of freed-up capital can then be directed into investing in stocks or property.
This is the value proposition of my Diouana Womanomics platform to you as a user: in first understanding your feminine financial profile through my archetype assessment and then logging in your beauty expenses and rating their corresponding gained benefits across financial, social, and psychological domains, you can see which beauty expenses to double down on and which you can do without. Those savings can be used as you please. But it is the house’s view that you invest the difference.3
Beauty is just as much wealth management as it is spiritual maintenance.
And it’s through this lens, and all my assertions hitherto, that I wrote the questions underpinning my independent research to found Erotic Capital Economics. Provocative in nature, but rigorous in orientation, I ask:
How have dominant theories of value evolved—from debt, to money, to capital, to intangibles?
Where does Erotic Capital fit in this historical lineage?
Why has Erotic Capital been excluded or rendered illegible in classical and neoclassical economics?
How does Erotic Capital Economics drive labor markets, predict spheres of consumption, and influence wealth-building?
How does Erotic Capital Economics influence asset transfers within intimate, heteronormative relationships and present an alternative wealth building strategy for women?
In grounding this research in primary and secondary sources, as well as academic journal articles written by other scholars and my own proprietary Diouana Womanomics dataset, I hope to, by the completion of my research, establish a financially sound, legally viable wealth-building strategy for Diouana Woman worldwide.
It’s an ambitious project with a long-term horizon4, but would you trust my claims of being the Erotic Capitalist Economist if I didn’t deliver this to you?
The System Seeks to Make Slaves of Us All
It irks me, the way the phrase “the oldest profession in the world” has become shorthand for beautiful women existing, for their own benefit, around men who can afford to keep their company.
I reckon these accusations are mainly hurled, not only out of jealousy, but for the historical fact that women have not been owners of vast amount of capital for the majority of history. Thus a wealthy woman is always assumed to have an underwriter, even if the correct answer is that she learned to play the incentives of capitalism better than the rest of us.
And when people hurl these whorish accusations, they really should be starting with slavery, and not prostitution.
Why, you ask?
Well, from my reading of David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, I do not believe prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. I argue it’s slavery. And female slaves, due to their biology, were always subject to abuse in the form of sexual labor. What ever “prostitution” that resulted after she became a slave is really not prostitution, and simply abuse.
In the historical context and narrative of debt, Graeber wrote that women have acted as laborer and lover, through being collateralized by their fathers; who had the legal authority to do so. Hence, their physical labor was used for economic output and their sexual labor was used for personal gratification on account of the creditor. And it’s in this historical evidence that I argue prostitution is not the oldest profession in the world, but likely the second oldest.
So, when we find ourselves in our so-called modern times with our purportedly egalitarian values, accusing a beautiful woman who exists, for her own benefit, around a man who can afford to keep her company, of being a prostitute, we are missing the historical mark. The word we’re looking for is “slave.”
If this sounds extreme to your ears, consider how many people now term their employment as “wage slavery.” I experienced this while working in investment banking. I felt my computer was the land upon which I toiled and my Managing Director was the lord. The only difference between me and a 5th century serf, was access to internet connection. You’ll forgive my being facetious in hopes of hammering my point.
To bring us back; as it relates to beautiful women and men who can afford to keep their company, it all comes down to theories of value. Hence why David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years was my first secondary source for my Erotic Capital Economics independent research.
Remember my first research question, “How have dominant theories of value evolved—from debt, to money, to capital, to intangibles?”; well, understanding money as a placeholder for value is key to answering this question and Graeber does just that within his big red book.
Graeber argues that “who owes what to whom?” is the central thread in the history of money, and Erotic Capital Economics asks this question as well. Insofar that any of us have an obligation to one another, surely we have debts to pay. And if one lavishes and pampers and grooms herself into the image of Esther, is she, too, owed a marriage to a king? If women allow men to have access to their bodies, for the purposes of progeny or pleasure, are they, too, owed compensation through acts of service and gifts?
This is an Erotic Capitalist Economist’s take on the Primordial Debt Theory5: what are any of us owed, if we’re owed anything at all? Is the value we bring to the lives of others—notedly, women, through our beauty (or lack thereof)—grounds for compensation? And what form should this compensation take?
Is our beauty priceless, or is it worth only a Birkin? Is the pleasure we share with others a matter of spiritual connection, and therefore ought not to be tainted with questions of repayment, or is an exchange of value the only way we know we’re valued?
And as I circle back to beauty, the words of astrological researcher Claire Nakti ring out:
“Due to the influence of christianity on our customs, many women only beautify and ornament themselves in order to please random strangers…and upon marrying, they shut off and neglect their appearance totally, subconsciously believing it to be the art of immature women or prostitutes.”
Thus, is beauty, and the finances and lightness required to sustain it, only the domain of whores and women who follow in their paths—even if only seeking The Wisdom of Whores? For those who view beauty as a currency—as a tool of mobility within the workplace and the marriage market—does the compensation we receive because of our beauty a determinate of our value as people?
Here, we find ourselves back to beautiful women who exist, for their own benefit, around men who can afford to keep their company. Is she more valuable than we are, those of us without underwriters? Does she know something about money, capital, and incentives that we don’t? Is she more financially free than the rest of us combined? And if so, would she remain around him if that were the case?
In closing, I’m reminded of the endless streams of content I’ve read and seen from women, both younger and older, on their views of men, marriage, and wealth. There’s a sense that for all the ills of capitalism—namely, the drudgery that we now have to endure because the feminists of yester-century won the fight to get us into the labor market as equal participants and compensated as such—men are required to be wealthy to be worth the squeeze. A man’s wealth is the only compensation for the weight of being all things to all man6: a high-performing employee, a hot wife / girlfriend / mistress, and a loving, very-present mother.
This argument is simple enough. But Erotic Capital Economics still asks, even if rhetorically, what is owed to women, us who are programed to give so much of ourselves to everyone, before we even give our essence to ourselves? And if it’s money, I argue that what women are programed to seek from men we could obtain from the market. Stock or property, just pick your poison.
Thus, it’s not that we’re doomed to be whores to the patriarchy if we swear an alliance to our beauty, but that there’s a spiritual dimension we can exist in when we remain committed to our individual beauty; regardless of its manifestation, or lack thereof. And principally, when we concern ourselves with managing a portfolio built on actual returns, and not just endless consumption under the guise of “self-care” or “investing in ourselves,” we can transcend the system through the only route left: financial freedom.
In a capitalist system designed to enslave even men, a Diouana Woman cannot afford to be careless with her capital.
Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman
P.S. Truth or Dare
You know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? Yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.
Truth: An unequivocal commitment to beauty.
Dare: Dependance on men when becoming intelligent investors is a viable option.
A Nightcap Before You Go…
If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:
An Extra Special Announcement
The Diouana Woman Salon is coming back! This time, it’s a monthly live lecture series exploring my independent research on Erotic Capital Economics. The theme remains: how women create wealth through beauty and beyond. We’ll examine how historical and contemporary women position themselves for economic gain and social mobility—a provocative blend of gender theory and finance.
Date: September 21, 2025, 1:00p EST.
Admissions: Monthly paid subscription of $250 or yearly paid subscription of $2,500 (save $500). Paid Subscriptions are now live via the Diary of a Diouana Woman substack. Upgrade your free subscription to gain admissions to the upcoming Diouana Woman Salon here.
Format: Live virtual lecture with interactive Q&A (opportunity to ask any and all tantalizing questions!). Recordings available to paid subscribers; recordings also available for separate purchase upon request. Meeting link will be shared ahead of lecture.
Disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.
The heteronormative of this is a function of the primary, secondary, and journal articles I’m engaging with now. As my research deepens, it is likely that I will expand my focus to gay, lesbian, and queer relationships. That said, I am not confident that I am the correct nor right person to do such an analysis, so I make no promises.
This is not financial advice, or financial dis-advice.
This is not financial advice.
A typical J-Curve in private equity is 5-8 years; we’re looking at 2030 for the Diouana Womanomics Wealth Model to drop. Ride with me until then babes!!
Basically, the idea that we are born indebted to the communities and society that have made our arrival on Earth and our lives possible. This debt can never be repaid, because, we’d essentially be saying we have something of enough value to give that constitutes a human life. Which, in later chapters of his book, Graeber argues that the only thing one can give as payment for a human life is another human life. Further, if the debt we owe is to God, Graeber posits, through his reading of theological arguments, that God wouldn’t, and couldn’t, even accept anything we have; as God exists outside of time, unless us who exist within it.
1 Corinthians 19:22 babes!
geriatric choices has me in tears