- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Hello from "the gray zone" of sex work - it's not definitely prostitution, but it's not exactly not prostitution. When I was 23 to 26, I too beefed up a sucky salary (publishing) and graduate school skimping with some photo shoots here, some BDSM work and stripping there. Honestly, the sex work money was helpful - but I stopped doing it, for various reasons. My advice to you is:
If you want to teach, don't go near anything that will record an image of you. Period. Final. I never wanted to teach, or go into politics, or anything like that, so I didn't have this restriction.
All guys who do fetish videos promise that it will be a "regular thing" and hint at a solid income stream for you from it. This will not come to pass, unless you really apply yourself to this, as in moving to Southern California, starting up your own web site, etc. This is part of what fetish video guys promise you to get you to go on camera in the first place. There are women who coordinate careers in this, and they are your competition.
If you can't deal with just handing over your underwear to a guy without feeling afraid/uneasy, your intuition is telling you something, and that something might be: sex work/fetish work will not be good for the person that you are. I was OK with videos and fetish work, but being a stripper skeeved me out; all my erotic nerve endings switched off, even when I wasn't dancing. I did it until I had paid for having my wisdom teeth pulled, and then I quit doing that.
How will you feel if a friend or program colleague asks how you're funding the Ph.D and you don't feel good about saying "Actually, I made a foot fetish video!" If you can't be honest to them, the secret will undermine you.
Sex work may seem like easy money, but really, it's work - the time you get paid for is compounded by phone calls, "bringing some clothes", your makeup, and a whole lot of associated wierdness. Having my sex work money as extra money, not something I depended on, made it easy to leave a job or site if I thought the person was wierd or dangerous, which did happen.
Good luck with it all....
