Madison Ashton, the former Penthouse pet and mistress of the late cardboard billionaire, Richard Pratt, made headlines when she outed herself as an escort and attempted to sue the baron’s estate for $10 million in 2012.
The now 43-year-old claimed that Pratt, who died in 2009, promised to set up a $5 million trust fund for her two children and pay her a retaining fee of $500,000 to stop working as an escort and become his mistress.
Although the Supreme Court agreed the pair had the conversation, it was found that Ashton’s acceptance of $100,000 and the transfer of a car into her name was done in full satisfaction of the trust claim.
Ashton lost the case – but her profile skyrocketed to national infamy.
Escort Madison Ashton (pictured) skyrocketed to national infamy when she attempted to sue billionaire Richard Pratt’s estate
‘When you are on the top 20 feed of Sky News for a week straight, with pixelated nipples and outrageously hot photos lying on the beach, cranking it at 55 kilos with an oiled body and beaded water, you kind of have to own it at the school gates,’ the mother-of-two laughs.
She describes the reaction from other mums as hushed silence, claiming that when she was underground, she had experienced moral outrage, but once she became a notorious poster girl for the industry she became a curiosity.
‘School becomes a weird red carpet. My daughter was in Catholic boarding school in rural NSW. I attended her deb ball after just dodging prison in Dubai [after accidentally spending artificial currency]. People fly in on their crop dusters to this shindig. I walked in with my massive cleavage and the whole room literally fell dead silent. Who am I, Mick Jagger? I thought, I don’t care if you’re judging me – but you all want to get in my pants, that I do know.’
Once she broke the ice with the other mothers, some were dying to know what her life was like.
‘They coraled me with deck chairs and asked me about my box of sexual tricks that keep men coming back, while the more conservative mums looked on, horrified.’
Billionaire Richard Pratt died in 2009
Her younger son has banned her from school pickup, like any other self-respecting teenager who hates being embarrassed by their mum.
‘I have picked up heaps of Twitter followers from his college though. They’ll probably all book me when they hit their twenties,’ she says.
To those who see her as a threat who services a married clientele which may include, god forbid, their husbands, Ashton says: Sorry ladies, I don’t want your bloke.
‘Women get paranoid about having their husbands near sex workers, but they are overestimating their guy’s appeal. Most workers are only too happy to send their clients back. I get hired to help men convince themselves of their attractiveness, not steal them away.’
Sex work is a double-edged sword that can attract not just moral finger wagging but feminist ire – some women are uncomfortable about a profession that is at its core about pleasing men.
Others, like Ashton, see sex work as a service that empowers women by giving them agency over their own sexuality, and letting them monetise their own erotic power.
But as the business of selling sex comes out of the shadows and the neon-splashed streets of urban red light districts, and reality shows, memoirs and social media showcase women who choose to get paid for sex, does society still judge them for it?
Madison Ashton leaving the Supreme Court in 2011. Although she quit the escort business for a period of time, she is back working in the sex industry
You bet claims Ashton, 43 – and she says some of the worst offenders are other women.
‘I am seen as a threat and too sexy; a white witch of some description,” says Ashton, who has seen plenty of girl-on-girl action during her lifetime – not just the kind that she charges $1,500 for, but judgement and gossip from one woman to another as well.
‘I get a lot of drama – what’s more I always have.’
Ashton was one of the first Australian sex workers to not only go public, but to unapologetically turn herself into an identity known as Christine McQueen.
She titillates her 33,000 global twitter followers @ChristineMqueen with highly lascivious tweet-teases and campy, digital pin-up imagery.
‘Women get paranoid about having their husbands near sex workers, but they are overestimating their guy’s appeal,’ says Ashton
Many find offence at the glamourising of her profession, but Ashton maintains that she was a trigger long before she courted notoriety in Australia.
‘It started back when I was a pre-teen; I just developed this really intense sexual aura, before I even understood it. Men came out of the woodwork and they all wanted to f*** me. I realised that I was different, unique and rare – but could also see that other girls didn’t trust having me around. I felt cold disapproval from my friends’ mothers, and my peer group treated me as someone to be watched. The other girls seemed to think ‘If I can’t be this, either get rid of it or pretend to make friends and copy it’. But embrace it? Not a chance.’
After drifting into full-time sex work, Ashton worked her way through the X-rated eco system, from rural to urban brothel, then overseas in Singapore and Europe, where she discovered high-end escorts clad in Chanel earning the equivalent of executive salaries, and realised that she had been selling herself short.
Ashton left the industry for a few years when she married and subsequently tried ‘civilian’ life as a wife and mother.
Ashton turn herself into an identity known as ”Christine McQueen”
When she was with her second partner in her late twenties – ‘in love, with the rose-coloured glasses on – she says rumours percolated about her former life.
But in the end, life as a domestic goddess didn’t suit her and she returned to sex work post-motherhood, remaining cynical about marriage as an institution.
‘Women give away a hell of a lot of free labour in marriage. If you presented the terms as simple work conditions, any union would throw them out and marriage would be outlawed. But we buy into the dream early.’
Even in the unusual, very intense atmosphere of professional sex, Ashton claims it can still be handbags at dawn.
‘Oh sex workers judge each other – instead of sex, the issue becomes “your filler is crap” or “your drug use is worse than mine”.’
Ashton points out that cosmetic filler use is so rife in the industry (‘we jam it in like there is no tomorrow because we’ll work more’) that it replaces fashion sense and style as a lightning rod for criticism and judgement from colleagues.
In the brothels Ashton was also deemed a business threat on a slow day: ‘There was always drama. The other girls would give me shade, “oh look who’s busy”. I also saw girls undermine each other by revealing the real life identity of other sex workers all the time.’
Although the women were competing for business in a hothouse atmosphere, there was some reprieve. ‘There would inevitably be some nice, supportive chicks in the group that would say, “Don’t worry, I was hot as a pistol like you back in the day so come and hang with us.”‘
Ashton believes that the best way for sex workers to shrug off the age-old stigma of their profession is to out themselves
Ashton’s claims that her own life did change profoundly with the support of one woman – a female magistrate.
Ashton says she was self-represented during a court case.
The female magistrate asked me, ”why didn’t you file anything?” I said, ‘What’s the point? The system is screaming that the sky is falling because I do sex work – although it’s a legal job. All my life I had been slagged off, and the threat of exposure had been used to smash, brutalise and legally coerce me.’
Ashton says that the magistrate stated very clearly that the court welcomed parents who are sex workers in this state and she would give her a fair hearing.
‘It was the first time that someone had declared that I had human rights, just like anyone else. It literally blew my mind and from that moment I was ready to live and die by that principle; I was done with pretending,’ she says.
So Ashton outed herself, all guns blazing. ‘Christine McQueen’ was born – flagrantly, defiantly in-your-face.
‘A lot of sex workers hide what they do from their family and children. I understand why: all through my twenties I bought into hiding it,’ says Ashton
Ashton believes that the best way for sex workers to shrug off the age-old stigma of their profession is to out themselves.
‘A lot of sex workers hide what they do from their family and children. I understand why: all through my twenties I bought into hiding it and cowered under threats of legal exposure from my exes. But it’s far better to show your family how to stand up for your own choices.’
To this end, Ashton appeared on SBS’s The Feed in 2016 with both her daughter and doctor father. ‘When dad agreed to show the world that he supports me he did one of the greatest, most spiritual things you can do: lift consciousness to a higher level. It showed people a whole other narrative, my parents are tertiary educated and love me unconditionally, I own two apartments – there isn’t a trailer park in sight.’
Ashton says she hopes her mission to overwrite the blueprint of prostitution and its associations of ‘tragic hot mess’, with her own ‘awesome, badass’ persona – and launch of her upcoming, eponymous website – will be supported, not derided by other women.
‘Whenever you gain ground by white-anting women like me – or even just anyone who plays up being sexy – you are letting a sister down. There is a bit of the whore in all women – we have all manipulated our feminine wiles to some extent to get ahead in life. The crux of the matter is that my sex life is consensual and no one else business – whether it’s commercialised or not.’
But Ashton, a divisive, crowd-parting figure, says that it has taken her a long time to feel this good in her skin.
There are certainly some who disapprove of her but to those who applaud her ‘MILF-flavoured’ moxie she says, ‘welcome to your beautiful new judgement-free life goddess – you just got a whole lot sexier.’