Let me introduce some terms from a philosopher called Hannah Arendt to make my response clear; I'm having trouble wording it. She identified three different forms of human activity:
Labour: The process by which a human being creates consumable objects in order to live, ex: farming.
Work: The fabrication of a lasting physical object, ex: factory work, smithing.
Action/Speech: The means by which a person reveals their innermost thoughts and feelings to others, ex: writing, art.
It's obvious that there are cases where work becomes labour; when one sells the results of their work to provide for their own living. It's also obvious how common this is under capitalism.
What's less obvious is that there are cases where action becomes labour, where one commodifies their thoughts and feelings to provide their means of living. An academic, for example, is paid for their thoughts and feelings, and paid more if he can communicate these well to others. Though the performance is commodifed under capitalism, the fact that the academic has a certain amount of agency in how the action/speech is performed makes him less objectified than a farmer or a factory worker.
An escort is the same way. A john doesn't just pay for a job done properly, he pays for the job to be done in the escorts way. As such, an escort, though still objectified, is less objectified than other workers because their clients pay for their actions as well as their labor, or in simpler terms, who they are as a person is relevant to their labor.
TL;DR An escort is less objectified than other workers because clients want them as a person, not just their for their labor.
who just really need the money
You can watch a lot of interviews with sex workers, and they're often asked "why are you in this industry?" The answer varies, but almost always includes some variant of "I like sex" or "I like making people feel good". I don't think most middle-high class escorts are in it for the money, I think they do it because they enjoy the work.