Young people who sell sexiness or sex and resist victimisation, in the UK

Young people selling sex or its illusions resist victimisation by a typically tut-tutting reporter who not only asks them the facts but also tries to get them to feel bad about their jobs. Someone should make a compilation of just the reporters’ side of these conversations, with their disapproving expressions and head-shaking as they reveal that money matters to people (golly, do they really think most people get to have such neat jobs as theirs??) while at the same time other things than money matter, too. The kids win the show hands down, even though the reporter gives the impression that he Knows Better (latest nomination for Rescue Industry reporter of the month). See the site for two videos, both involving girls, that I cannot copy. In one of them, the escort admits someone once pinned her down and she didn’t like it. Horror from the reporter: That’s rape! (trying to get her to cry on camera, was he?) The escort says I am okay now. Reporter reiterates his personal shock at what she’s said. Feh, I hate this stuff!

Ben and Alex
‘Butlers in the buff’ Ben and Alex are in for the money
My body makes money

10 December 2010, BBC Radio Two

My journey starts in Bristol with students Ben and Alex, both 21 who say their Saturday job is “cheekier” than most. It’s a dream job. We get paid to go to parties, says Ben. We head to a party where the boys have been booked for a few hours. They make their big entrance wearing nothing but a tiny apron, bow tie, and cuffs. They’re butlers in the buff. In my first year I worked in a bar, in order to earn 50 quid, I’d have to work 10 hours. Now I can do that in two hours at the weekend, says Alex. The boys say they love the attention, but admit it’s all about the money.

Topless on TV

Next, I go to meet twins Preeti and Priya, who work for Babestation – one of the UK’s biggest adult TV channels. The girls take calls from viewers while they are topless and say it’s their choice of career. We both left school with good grades. We had a lot of possibilities open to us, says Preeti. They say job satisfaction is the main reason they chose to work in the sex industry over other careers but admit there’s a potential to earn a lot of money. If you work hard you could be earning up to a hundred grand a year. But don’t think, ‘I’ve never done this job before and I’ll walk in and they’ll say that’s your salary’, it doesn’t work like that.

Someone who has used her body to become rich and famous is glamour model Keeley Hazell. However, she says going topless isn’t always the best way to achieve her kind of success. I was lucky to be in that 1% of people that get that, and become really successful. Keeley believes people who want to go into glamour should ask themselves why: If it’s for money, then I’d probably play the lottery.

‘Not prostitution’

I end my journey by meeting a former teenage escort who worked under the name ‘Hannah’.  Aged 18, she was preparing to go to university and owed her family and friends £4,000. A friend suggested escorting as a quick solution to her debt. An overnight stay would cost £800, she says. Hannah doesn’t consider what she did as prostitution because she didn’t stand on street corners. Although she misses the money, she stopped because she became obssessed about catching STIs and couldn’t cope with the nightmares she was having. I don’t feel like I degraded myself in the sense of my naked body being plastered up on a billboard saying, ‘Call this number for good times. But I did degrade myself in that my body was no longer just for people who loved me.

— Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

3 thoughts on “Young people who sell sexiness or sex and resist victimisation, in the UK

  1. Pingback: keeley hazell » Topless | Buff | Sex Work | Young People | UK | Laura Agustín, the …

  2. Dave

    That’s one thing I always liked about Larry King on CNN. He would interview people and seemed largely non-judgmental (at least relative to the sensationalizing celebrity super star anchors that the TV news seems to be turning out these days).

    The expressions and cherry picked questions don’t just convey how they expect the interviewees to behave. It also tells the viewing audience what the proper reaction should be to the story.

    I find myself relying more and more on reading news on the internet rather than getting it from TV. I want the news delivered straight without a performance.

    And I’m glad we’re seeing more sex workers who don’t accept the mantle of shame that the media and public bestows upon them. It’s work. It can be done well or badly. It’s serves a market just like any other product or service, and has risks and rewards like any other career. If you took away the public shaming (ie: persecution), I’d be willing to bet many more sex workers would be willing to include themselves among those who admit to doing it by choice rather than simply playing the victim because that’s what rescuers, the media, and law enforcement want to hear.

    Reply
  3. sascha

    The reporting is a bit sensational, on the part of the interviewees it’s notable that both the pole dancer and former escort so clearly try to dissociate themselves from other sex workers. It’s sad to me when one person in the sex industry is so determined to separate themself from other sex workers, typically along class lines.

    Regarding the “that’s rape!” comment, he’s clearly trying to evoke an emotional reaction, but it also sounds like she was in fact sexually assaulted, and she mentions being bothered by nightmares. It’s gross that he was trying to sensationalize the whole thing, but I don’t think that means he’s entirely wrong. “I’m fine now” can mean a lot of things, in this case it sounds more like “I’m alive.”
    I don’t think acknowledging that sex work can involve sexual assault, create or worsen PTSD symptoms weakens the arguments of the sex worker rights movement. Stigma prevents us from being able to address these as actual issues, the same as physical and mental stresses that are the result of any occupation. We deserve mental health care to deal with this shit. What usually gets me most about the stigma is not just being looked down on, but more feeling that speaking bad experiences I’ve had in the industry is somehow strengthening the arguments of the anti-sex work front.

    Reply

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