There comes a time when a girl can no longer be paid (or loaned money) to read books and then write clever papers about them. Presumably this is because the girl has read enough books and written enough papers that an institution of higher learning has handed her a piece of paper signifying that they are finished with her. No employer will ever care to see this piece of paper. Most employers will not even believe that this paper marks a significant level of intellectual achievement in the girl's area of interest. This paper does not qualify the girl to do anything she could not do before she took a vow of poverty and decided to read books and write papers for an unspecified number of years. In fact, since it has been several years since she has done any work for pay, she is now less qualified for the workforce than she has ever been in her entire life.
Oh my imaginary readers, soon I will graduate and I shall need to get a job. Somewhere there is a company in desperate need of my International Relations/Political Science/China-studying skills, but I strongly suspect that this is the summer in which I will learn to operate an espresso machine and ask, "Regular, or soy milk?"
Work has been on my mind lately, which might be why I broke my rule about non-scholastic reading during the semester and picked up a copy of Indecent: How I Make it and Fake it as a Girl for Hire by Sarah Katherine Lewis. If I had more publishing industry savvy, I would talk about how trendy sex-industry memoir has become. Perhaps I'd go on to tie it all to the mainstreaming of the porn aesthetic and reality television. Fortunately, I am lazy. All that I know is that Indecent goes on my bookshelf next to Michelle Tea's Rent Girl and approximately a thousand miles away from anything ever written by Tracy Quan. No one will ever call Lewis' book a "funny, insightful romp."
Gentlemen and ladies, imagine that the next time you find yourself in the professional company of a lingerie model, stripper, or peep show girl, imagine that while she is gyrating in front of you that she is thinking about how much her feet hurt in those lucite heels. She is thinking about making her stage fee. Imagine that while she pantomimes desire, if she thinks of you at all, it is only because she is thinking about how much she would like to stab you repeatedly in the face. Yes you, especially if you're trying to relate by asking her if she's putting herself through school.
Tracy Quan's sex industry is half HBO special, half chick-lit novel, full of urbane, supernaturally slender women rushing from the gym, to their waxing appointments, to $300/hour in-calls. Lewis and Tea's sex industry is decidedly proletarian, full of women in itchy wigs peeling their clothes off for what adds up to minimum wage. While I'm finding a place for Indecent on my bookshelf, it ought to go next to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed. In the manner that all service industry drones come to hate their customers, Lewis and Tea come to hate men, or at least whatever it is that drives men to pay women money to simulate desire. The Michelle Tea in Rent Girl hates everyone. She's a mean little sociopath who has stopped seeing interactions between people and can only imagine interactions between herself and the contents of your wallet. Lewis, on the other hand, genuinely loves her co-workers - the smartest, funniest, kindest, wisest, and most beautiful women in the world. That affection is what enables her to chronicle ten years of peep shows, whack shacks, and strip joints and still come out of it seeming rather...well...sweet.
I am glad that the world contains women like Sarah Katherine Lewis, but I dread my overeducated, underpaid future. I hope that the people will be smart and funny, kind and wise - and also that I don't stab anybody in face.
- Live Nerd Girls
What do you do with a BA in English?
Looking for a job with a degree in the social sciences is very different from looking for a job in the tech industry (which constitutes pretty much all of my work experience). In the tech industry, if you know UNIX, you look for UNIX admin jobs. If you know networking, you look for networking jobs. If you can program in Foo language, you look for Foo development work.
I have just spent the last several years aquiring a set of skills and knowledges so open-ended that they could be applied to just about anything. As a result, I feel that they apply to nothing. The world is vast and full of opportunity - I'm just not certain what those opportunities are right now.
Re: What do you do with a BA in English?
However you managed to graduate with some actual skills, like speaking Chinese.
Re: What do you do with a BA in English?
Presumably, I will have two degrees in the social sciences. Strangely enough, I cannot tell the difference on the job market between Political Science/International Relations and a BA in English.
Whatever I wind up doing this summer, I would like to take some classes at the Confucian Institute so that my Chinese doesn't atrophy from disuse. Unfortunately, that brings me back to the need to make money that I can exchange for goods and services.
Re: What do you do with a BA in English?
Much of my extended family is rooted in the social sciences. When they were younger, people from diverse fields would show up somewhere and adapt to the work there. Now it seems like people hiring lknow that there are enough people out there that they can find that weird person with overlapping skills, and don't have to adapt. They want that rare and absurd match (such as Chinese + cultural study + international law). It does happen. There is so much out there, I'm inclined to believe that somewhere there's a few good matches.
The problem is that if there are a number of such jobs, they'd be scattered around the world, and you may not want to move there. In the meantime, I suspect there is less glamorous (but resume appealing) work in this city of many Chinese. Could you assist in translation in a court, for example?
The key is to get closer to the fields you're into (even if it's not glamorous or a good fit yet) and get your hands dirty. That does look good on a resume. Are there social action groups, community centers, etc. you could become involved in? Nonprofits and educational places need grantwriting (for example). Spread your skills out on the table and see where you can put any two or three to use, and think flexibily. Then see if there is anywhere that you can do that and be vaguly close to any other paths you might want to take.
And in this case, it may just be physical proximity. Would you be working with anyone? Another dept of same place etc. that might connect you to something else later?
You're just getting out. Yes, look for whatever major jobs you want (all over the damn world in your case), but also look for resume/experience-builders in town.
I'd check for schools (even small liberal arts schools) that have a strong Asian or Chinese program, with overlap with your other work. Taking a summer teaching or social work job in China wouldn't be bad either.
Good luck!
Re: What do you do with a BA in English?
Re: What do you do with a BA in English?
I'm afraid it's much worse than that. I'm going to law school.
In the meantime, however, I need to pay some rent.
Re: What do you do with a BA in English?
I'm not very good with the rent thing- I have generally squeezed by on 2-5 random skills. Freelance web design pays decently well and is flexible hours from home if you can get the gigs. Advertise on Craigslist or something?
I know, hence: or at least whatever it is that drives men to pay women money to simulate desire.
and hi, I think we met while I was on my honeymoon road trip in 2002, and was staying with Erin. Or at least you sound like the girl I met then.
I don't know. If men need to feel like they're the center of attention, why is it so important that women take their clothes off while they're paying attention to them? I suspect that neither of us is really equipped to figure this one out. I need to ask some men to who actually go to strip clubs.
Also, hi! I am that girl. I probably talked about politics too much.
I'm sure there are as many reasons as there are guys who go, but I think the really regular ones know it's all fake, that you're (sic) just doing it for the money, but they're desperate for that woman who will do anything for them, even if that anything is beat the shit out of them until the timer goes off.
It could be that they're lonely. I was intrigued by the observation, made by SKL and other sex workers, that many of their regular clients seemed to want a woman who made them believe that she was a perfectly normal, nay innocent girl who just happened to have oops stumbled into this strip club, and now hee hee her clothes are falling right off of her.
I'm really curious to hear from men who regularly go to peep shows and/or strip clubs to hear what they think about their motivations, but I strongly suspect that my livejournal is not the right forum for that.
It's the focus and jumping after things, pursuing you passion, regardless of setbacks and hardships that finds you (often years, even decades later) in a position to live your dreams.
If you have focus and determination, you're lucky. I feel like I've got much talent and luck, combined with learning and skill all over, but so much alll over that I don't pursue any one thing with enough focus or passion to get too far. Trying to fix that.
The trick is doing what you're interested in. Better that and poor/busy that disinterested and lacking passion.
The revulsion and disdain with which C and J spoke about the people who paid their rent was my first adult glimpse into that world, and it left an indelible mark.
Dominatrix comedy
When M is done with the adult industry, I will ghost write her memoir. If I'm feeling particularly perverse, it will be a funny, insightful romp.
You know I'd be happy to come over and take a look at it.
So...where did you put Indecent?
My favorite class was probably the anthro "Sexuality and Society: A Globalized Perspective" (the required reading was awesome). We watched "Live Nude Girls Unite" (which I then remembered gigglingly when I actually got to visit) and talked abou Phillipino drag queens, and the Taiwanese marriage racket.
Somehow the topic got on to pornography, and one of the girls in the class spent fifteen minutes ranting about how pornography enslaves women. I had to leave, I was so upset by some of the blanket statements she was making - I wanted to yell at her "Seriously honey do you know any dominatrixes? Hell, have you ever even had an orgasm?" The professor was so alarmed by my expression that she followed me out the door to check on me. By the time the girl had stopped her tirade (at the prof's behest) there were five other girls who'd posed nekkid on the interwebs sitting outside with me.
Mmm, you may or may not enjoy reading boobiebar, and/or Mistress Matisse's blog feed.
I am of two minds about sex work. On one hand, I think it's vitally important that sex work should be legal and regulated because driving it underground creates a danger to sex workers. On the other hand, I don't think that sex work is necessarily a great job. I think it's possible for sex work to be sex-positive and empowering, but I think that more often it's exploitative and alienating.
I would not want to be a sex worker, nor would I want to be a customer, but I want to live in a world where both sex workers and customers are at least reasonably safe.
It was a website devoted to putting up naked pictures of 100% of the Boston People I Never Want To See Naked.
The Naked Brain (in a jar)
I'm familiar with the site. At the nadir of the dot-com bust, when I was threatening to turn the concrete bunker into a strip club staffed by unemployed geeks, J immediately pointed me there. There was going to be a fooseball table and a two-Snapple minimum!
Honestly, I don't think that anyone would pay me money to take my clothes off. Likewise, I can't think of anyone who would shell out money for me to keep my clothes on. It looks as if I will have to make my living using only the mighty power of my brain.
Re: The Naked Brain (in a jar)
I'm being somewhat sarcastic — some of my friends have modelled for that site, and I know Cloei in passing. She actually moved in with sbazzy after heresiarch moved out.
In practice, though, the site squicked me out. Every time I saw it, there would be someone on the front page whose bits I just, didn't, need to see. Many of my friends who modelled for her were not particularly happy about having done so, though it's unclear to me whether her business practices were any less ethical than elsewhere in the industry.
Seriously, though, whatever you do, just remember: it's all writing fodder. To date, I still haven't located the quintessential novel of our generation on any bookstore shelves, so I am counting on you.
so, clubs....blahblahblah....
how about more actual hanging out? you supposedly have books for me? indulge my geekiness....please!
you are beautiful, and you don't kiss my butt....wheeeee!
xoxox
---L
ps- i am a terrible cook and i burn/fuck up everything.....
;)
i want to raid your closet....
i bet i have things for you.
i'm throwing away everything size 3 and up...
even though you are teenie...
The Whore of Mensa