This guy is so handsome he turns heads and so chivalrous he acts as a human shield between you and life’s harsh realities. He doesn’t mind the silly pet names you call him, and he never complains about anything. The words, “As you wish,” fall trippingly off his tongue, and he compliments you like clockwork every 15 minutes.
Is this the world’s most perfect boyfriend?
Oh heavens no, honey. You’ll have to pay for this dude. And, basically, he’s a rental.
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A startup in San Francisco called ManServants aims to give every woman exactly what she wants: a man who does exactly what she wants. The company, founded by two advertising copywriters, wants to unleash your inner lady of leisure by providing you with a gentlemanly tailored-to-order mashup of butler, bodyguard and cabana boy.
But this is not –- repeat, not -– an escort service.
“It’s completely PG,” said co-founder Dalal Khajah, who works at ad agency AKQA. “We have a very strict code of conduct and a very rigorous training process.”
Among the written rules for ManServants: “A ManServant keeps his penis in his pants and out of the lady’s face.” In other words, minds out of the gutter, everyone.
ManServants, which has been in beta test for months, launches in the fall. As an introduction, Khajah and her business partner Josephine Wai Lin called in favors from their advertising friends in the Bay Area to make a commercial that they will readily acknowledge looks like a skit from Saturday Night Live.
“Everyone who watches it thinks it’s a parody,” Khajah said. “Even the name of the company sounds like a joke. But it’s not.”
The idea for ManServants sprung, partly, from a colleague who insisted that her bachelorette party be male stripper-free. Khajah and Wai Lin said they never understood where that modern tradition came from anyway, since so many women think it’s awkward and unsexy.
Instead, they envisioned a service that would send a pressed and polished man to do a woman’s bidding at such an event, serving drinks, cleaning up, making witty small talk and fawning over the guest of honor. All without a tear-away shirt in sight.
ManServants may also become personal assistants/errand boys, if that’s what the customer wants, because, as Wai Lin points out, “every woman’s fantasy is different.” During testing, for instance, one woman asked for a sassy gay best friend who could give her pointers to spice up her marriage. Another wanted a bodyguard at her office to screen all her visitors.
And yet another wanted to be served food while the ManServant sang tunes from The Little Mermaid.” (There’s no judgment, but songs will cost extra, according to the company’s website).
The service isn’t intended to compete with existing Rent-a-Hubby and other handyman-for-hire companies, she said, but rather fill a void where no entrepreneurs have yet gone. ManServants is open to men, as well, but the founders think they’ll draw mostly women as clients who want to treat themselves or their friends to some testosterone-fueled pampering.