She charges a hefty fee , but only the men pay. I guess if everyone knew, it would make him feel like a loser,'' says Bennett. A fixture on the social scene, Bennett is often approached at parties by people who know of her, or she may go and talk to a particularly striking woman. She then spends at least an hour ''interviewing'' her candidates. She has hundreds of photographs of women, all of them bearing information and vital statistics, crammed into a leather briefcase.
Men have a different set of criteria although good looks are always the top of the list.
They also usually stipulate that they don't want a woman who smokes, or has children from a prior relationship. ''Even if my male client has kids of his own, he usually doesn't want to be introduced to a woman who has them. This isn't democratic,'' says Bennett. They also steer clear of women who are ''overly aggressive, controlling, complaining''. The payment, stresses Bennett, only guarantees ''that they meet the kind of girls they want to meet, and not that it's going to work''. Weber has known Bennett socially for a few years, but says he gravitated towards becoming a client of hers in the past three years.