lilmissnever

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.