The category of sex tourism, which assimilates phenomena ranging from southeast Asian brothels run for foreign men by international crime cartels with the covert support of national governments (see Hall, 1992 and Truong, 1990) to the 'sugar mummie' phenomenon wherein older women tourists travel to tourist centres in order to enjoy sexual encounters with local youths, is well suited to represent the expolitative character of much of the tourism trade between the developed and less-developed countries in so far as it foregrounds the destructive playing out of empowereds' irresponsible desires on the bodies of those immobilized by poverty and lack of alternative opportunities.