My Job as Eye-Candy in the Recession-Era Economy
Not too long ago, I was hanging out in a London nightclub, beer in hand, friends in tow, talking to some British guy I hadn’t the faintest interest in. During a particularly agonizing bout of small talk, this gentleman asked me what I was doing in London. I told him I was writing for a magazine. He was confused.
“You’re too pretty to write for a magazine,” he said bluntly. “Shouldn’t you, like, be in one?”
I decided to spare him my familiar diatribe about how women can, in fact, have aspirations beyond being leered at. Instead, I sipped my beer and politely excused myself. I was in a club, after all—my career ambitions were not particularly relevant here.
A few weeks later, that changed. I unexpectedly lost the part-time weekend job that was keeping me afloat between low-paid freelance projects. With long-term travel planned for less than two months away, my prospects of securing a job I would actually want to keep were slim. So I went from spending the occasional Saturday night in a club by choice to working in one every weekend. Suddenly, I was no longer free to walk away from inane conversations with drunken men in dimly lit corners. Flirting with them was now my job.
When feminist journalist Gloria Steinem donned an electric blue satin bunny outfit to work in New York’s Playboy Club in 1963, she did it in the name of journalistic investigation. I wish I could say the same about my own stint working as eye candy. I did it to pay the rent.
When feminist journalist Gloria Steinem donned an electric blue satin bunny outfit to work in New York’s Playboy Club in 1963, she did it in the name of journalistic investigation. I wish I could say the same about my own stint working as eye candy. I did it to pay the rent.
Read the rest of my experience @ GOOD
