Author: Espi Kvlt

Wiping the Lipstick Off: The Silhouette Girl

When I tell people I’m a sex worker, I know exactly what is running through their minds. Red lipstick, heels, fishnets, short clothing, long nails, and every other stereotypical thing that makes up the sex worker “ideal.” That is my life to them, even if I’m standing in front of them wearing sweats and a sweatshirt, hair a mess, nails chewed, and donning a pair of flip-flops. There seems to be a huge disconnect between “sex work Espi” and the Espi that is standing right in front of them. What most people don’t realize is that “sex work Espi” and the Espi they know are the same person. Sex workers are detached – another realm of humanity that the average person can’t grab hold of or put a face on. We are long-haired, long-legged, high heel-wearing silhouettes. When the average person comes to the realization that they actually know one of us, we become the test subject, and every ounce of our lives becomes theirs to put a magnifying glass over. So where is this disconnect? What makes us these shadows in the night, foreign to the average person? The answer is simple: nothing.

When I tell people I’m a sex worker and that I make porn, it’s seemingly impossible for them to realize that my life is more than just shoving stuff into myself for a camera. It’s like people don’t want to see me as a person as “normal” as they are. They don’t want to hear about the cats I have to feed, the snake I have to water, or the family I’m visiting. They don’t want to know that I spend most of my time binge watching television shows, just like they do. To them, I am another silhouette figure, lying on my mattress covered in dildos with mascara streaming down my face and a camera recording my constantly sexual life at all times. With the release of the documentary, Hot Girls Wanted, I’ve thought a lot about what it is that makes society only want to see the parts of us that are our jobs. It’s rare I’ll watch a documentary about porn and see the people in the documentary expressing anything other than pornographic thoughts, and this new (and problematic, though that could be a whole new article) documentary is no exception. To some extent, I can understand why: it would be boring if people knew the truth about sex workers. If they knew that we do normal things and are normal people. However, this trend still reflects a greater, more troubling issue, and that’s the issue of the Silhouette Girl.

The Silhouette Girl has no agency. In Hot Girls Wanted, she is presented through the lens of the people around her and what they think about her choices. The full service sex worker is typically presented through the lens of abolitionists and anti-sex workers. When an article was written about me, I was utterly silenced by those in the comments who used my story as a platform to explain why sex work was wrong. It does not matter how loudly we scream, we are always the Silhouette Girl. Looking at this trend and how it is reflected in the media, especially when it comes to documentaries, that is where we see why people aren’t interested in knowing who we are as people. If the average person is able to completely himself/herself from me and see me only as a walking sex toy, completely devoid of my humanity, their whorephobia and the crimes against me go unnoticed.

The same can be said when people use the phrase “sell your body.” No one in sex work is selling their bodies. Only people in the underground organ market do that. What we sell is an experience – an allotted amount of time paid for by the customer where they have access to my sexual content. By using the phrase “sell your body,” it makes it okay when sex workers are sexually assaulted and killed. If we have been bought, we become property. If we are property, then our “owners” are able to do with us whatever they please. The Silhouette Girl is once again devoid of any sense of agency and any sense of rights.

So how do we go from being viewed as the Silhouette Girl to being viewed as Your Average Person? Unfortunately for sex workers, that lies in the hands of the non-sex workers. It’s up to the non-sex workers to start viewing us as human beings and not like shadows on a lipstick-stained backdrop. It’s up to the non-sex workers to start making documentaries that expose our everyday lives instead of just the dramatized side of our lives that is our jobs (though in an ideal world, I would prefer those making documentaries to actually be made by sex workers). It’s up to the non-sex workers to ask us questions like “what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?” instead of “do your parents know you do porn?” By limiting us to our sex work side, we are limited, too, in our ability to speak up and be noticed as individuals.

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June 23, 2015
Why Asking Me How to Be a Sex Worker is Annoying For Me, and Bad for You

We all complain about it on a regular basis. Yet the questions keeps pouring in. “Tell me how to be a cam girl!” “Tell me how to be a stripper!” “Tell me how to be a full-service sex worker!” While my experience is mostly in “Tell me how to sell my nude photos/masturbation clips!” we all hear all of the above constantly. And now I am here to shine a light on why it’s not only terribly annoying for us, but also why asking us is pointless for you, and a waste of both of our time.

The first thing people need to understand is that no two sex workers have the same experience. None. Just because I make as much doing sex work as I do at my vanilla job doesn’t mean you will. Just because I can balance sex work, a vanilla job, and going to a university doesn’t mean you’ll be able to. Just because I’ve branched out my sex work into several different directions doesn’t mean you will. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t do the same things I do, or make as much as I do, but you do need to understand that you and I aren’t going to have the same experience, and that’s a crucial aspect of being a sex worker.

Asking me how much I make in an average month is not just rude—it’s useless information. It will in no way determine how much you will make and it’s kind of a ridiculous question. There is no “average” for me. I make as much as people spend. This isn’t a vanilla job, and I’m not guaranteed to make anything at all. Please consider how it feels to be at the other end of the computer screen with someone asking you for your income for the previous two years. Please consider how rude that is. I know it’s not always intentionally rude, but that tone will always exist, regardless.

Another thing people need to understand is that just taking my niche and trying to market it not only makes you come off as someone who can’t be creative by yourself, but it’s very unlikely you’re going to make sales that way. I had someone come to me talking about how they want to use “Kvlt” in their model name, and I was blown away. To me, that just screams “I’m taking what you’ve already built and am going to remarket that because I believe it will get me more sales.” And I can guarantee you: stealing concepts/niches from other sex workers will not earn you instant success, and in fact, will make people a lot less likely to buy from you. Why would someone want to buy from someone who just steals ideas from the original creator of those ideas?

The same goes with content ideas. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve put a set or video up for sale, only to see another sex worker, or sometimes multiple sex workers, put up the same exact thing. Even if the content itself isn’t that original, to put up the same thing an hour or two after another sex worker, once again, is not the way to go about this business. Be creative! It’s unlikely you’ll make very many sales on ideas stolen from other people.

And perhaps even worse than all of that, the dreaded question, “How do I get started?” I’ve seen this question rise more and more the more I’ve been on Tumblr and every time, it baffles me. No one coached me into sex work. I figured out everything by myself, made mistakes, did everything on my own. I would say “use Google,” but even that shouldn’t be necessary. In the two years of being a sex worker, I’ve never Googled how to do anything. Everything I’ve done, I’ve figured out by myself and I think that I’m doing fairly well considering. Honestly, if you need someone to coach you into how to be a sex worker, this is not the industry for you. Especially working independently. If you won’t take the time to figure out the ins and outs of this industry, then you definitely aren’t going to take the time necessary to be successful in this industry. It may sound harsh, but it’s the truth.

I’ve seen so many girls come into sex work and fade away just as quickly. They’re the kind of people who put up one video, never advertise, and wait for the money to roll in, and that’s just not going to work. When people send their laundry list of questions about becoming a sex worker, it’s usually also met with the final sentence, “I’m hoping to make money really quick.” Well, you’re probably not going to make money really quick. Newbies in the sex industry really need to get that idea out of their heads asap, or they’re very likely to be disappointed.

Similarly, I’ve received questions like “I’ve been doing sex work for about a month now, and I’m so upset because no one’s buying anything!” Sex work is not an industry of instant success and if no one’s buying anything after a month, that doesn’t mean you suck as a sex worker. It means you’re in an industry where people aren’t always going to buy your content, and that’s just a fact. If you drop out a month in because no one has bought anything, you probably weren’t going to make it very long in sex work, anyway. And there’s of course the questions that need to be asked: Have you even advertised your content at all? Just posting it once on Tumblr and then nothing else isn’t really advertising. Please keep that in mind.

There’s also the new sex workers who ask me for a list of where I’ve gotten every article of clothing I’ve worn in all the content I’ve sold. Please don’t just wear the same things other sex workers wear. While I understand some of us are going to wear the same lingerie sometimes and that’s fine, purposefully trying to sell content in the same things I wear after asking me for a list of where I got everything is just lazy. Look for original stuff yourself. Please.

What this really boils down to is that a lot of new sex workers want those of us who have been doing this for a while to hold their hands down the path of selling sex. Well, most of us aren’t going to do that. And if someone does, it’s unlikely their advice will help you, and in fact, their advice is more likely to damage your future career. Figure it out on your own. For the sake of us, and for the sake of yourself, figure it out on your own.

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February 25, 2015
Sex Work: Behind The Porn

It’s time to dispel the number one myth I have received since becoming an independent sex worker: “That’s easy! All you do is get naked/masturbate on camera, and then the money comes pouring in!” I have two giant problems with this. The first one is that I am going to school to become a writer. Writing comes much easier to me than sex work does. But no one has ever claimed that that isn’t a real job. And the next is what I am going to focus this article on: the idea that what I do is easy work.

Now, if I compare what I do to my vanilla job, (I work at an arcade) then in the short run, sex work is easier than standing on my feet for eight hours. But at the same time, at that job, all I do is refill tickets and give people change for the most part. I deal with stupid questions in great quantity, as well, but I deal with that on an even greater scale as a sex worker. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people have asked me. My personal favorite? “How can you be a sex worker if you have a boyfriend?” They then went on to equate my job to cheating. The cringing was award-worthy. In the long run, sex work takes much more of my time and energy. Each thing I have produced, I have devoted much more time to than I do working an eight-hour shift at my vanilla job. So, here’s how it goes.

The first thing I must do is set up my surrounding area. This alone could take up to an hour. I am my own set designer, and if I finish, and it doesn’t look good, I tear it all down and start over. Sometimes my vision is more than I can take on. Sometimes that means a set or video I have planned won’t even get shot. If my surroundings don’t look good, I can’t shoot the set or video, knowing it wasn’t up to my standards.

Next, I am my own hair and make-up stylist. And I love long, gorgeous wigs. But long, gorgeous wigs are prone to major tangling and small objects getting caught in them. In one of my newest sets, I had to sit there and brush and pick out leaves from my wig for several hours. I had worn it out to the woods for another thing I shot, and leaves were stuck all over it. Make-up is also difficult, because the only one around to tell me if it looks good or not is my boyfriend, and while I trust his opinion, I also think he’s more prone to tell me it looks good than someone else might be. This process can sometimes take four or more hours. Especially when I’m doing full-on face paint with a long wig.

Now for the fun part! Shooting it! The part that people think is all I do, and then it magically gets up and sells itself! And shooting is tough. Really tough. Videos are easier for me. But they require acting, and if a shot isn’t angled in a pleasing way, I will have to delete it and start over. Sometimes I have to redo the entire video because none of the shots turned out how I wanted. And shooting a set is the farthest thing from easy. I self-shoot for the most part. Coming up with poses, angling the camera, figuring out how to work with my space, sitting there for three or more hours coming up with what I’m going to do, distorting my body until it hurts to get a decent photo, struggling with the camera, trying to get at least 200 photos so that when I chop them down I’ll have enough left over. None of that is easy. And it’s exhausting. And my body aches for several days afterwards because of the ways I was posing.

The next part also takes several hours: Editing! This is my least favorite part of sex work. It’s a struggle. It takes a ton of patience It takes a ton of looking at myself taking my clothes off over and over again, watching the same clips over and over, making sure it looks good, flows together, and that the time of each clip makes sense. I have to walk away from it a lot of the time because I get so frustrated.

Then, I post previews, and the marketing begins. And it doesn’t end. I still market stuff I shot two years ago. If I keep something, the job related to said thing never ends. I don’t just throw up a preview, call it a day, and wait for the money to flow into my bank account. If I don’t keep updating, doing sales, reminding people my content exists, no one will buy it. Sometimes I’ll release a video, talk about it for a while, and then come back to it months later and start posting about it again, and get a ton of sales from people who just learned about me and didn’t even know about its existence. More than anything, sex work is about marketing and running your own business – but most of the time, without a business degree. I don’t know the first thing about business aside from what running this “business” has taught me, and yet I do it, and I’m good at it, and I make sales almost daily.

And it doesn’t end there, either. You have to be ready to answer the same thirty questions a day. To be patient with customers who don’t know how to read the page you’ve set up to tell them exactly what they need to do in order to receive your content. To deal with people who think you’re nothing but a lazy whore, and will tell you that over and over again, multiple times a day. It doesn’t matter how many people I put on Ignore on Tumblr, enough people exist in this world who think I’m a lazy whore that they will keep reminding me about it. You have to deal with people who don’t accept that the people in your life could be okay with it. Who will judge you, stigmatize you, and even criminalize you.

You also have to be original to be in this industry. There’s so many people doing the exact same thing, you have got to figure out what sets you apart. For me, it was being a metalhead and a cosplayer. Lots of guys are into my alternative style, and find it sexy. Lots of people find the fact I cosplay a turn-on. I am able to use these aspects of myself to create original content. Figure out what sets you apart, and utilize the hell out of it. Which goes into another aspect of the work behind sex work: you are your own creative director. You don’t have a team of people coming up with your latest, most original video idea yet. You have to do that on your own.

If sex work was easy, there’d be a lot more sex workers selling a lot more content. But the fact of the matter is: a lot of sex workers will quit the industry really fast because they’re surprised the money isn’t pouring in. I’ve witnessed it time and time again. If you think you can just take a quick masturbation video, not edit it, post about it once, and then sit back with a wine glass while people line up to pay for that one video by the thousands, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.

Sex work is real work. Sex work is tough work. Sex work takes time, patience, and dedication. Sex work takes passion. And I put every fiber of my being into being the best as I can be, and it has paid off. Every day, I am getting new customers. My income for this year has more than doubled since last year. No one can tell me that that is because of anything other than hard work.

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January 3, 2015
Sometimes Sex Workers Want To Speak For Ourselves

Being friends with and/or supporting sex workers shouldn’t need a guide. It should be no different from being friends with a dentist or a firefighter. Unfortunately, however, the masses are generally uneducated on how to deal with their relationships with sex workers and therefore, often make mistakes that make us cringe. But, alas! I am here to bring you a useful guide, so that hopefully you will not make the same mistakes and understand that being part of our world will be no different than being friends with said dentist or firefighter.

The first mistake I often see people making is talking over me. “I’m friends with, or know someone who is, a sex worker, so listen to all my knowledge about it!” That’s never a good idea. It would be like someone crying for help because his heart wasn’t working right, and me walking up and saying, “Don’t worry, I know a doctor! I can help you!” I would not pretend to know about a profession I was not part of, yet sex workers are talked over constantly by people who have never lived a day in our shoes.

The next thing is: don’t ever out me. Now, I spend a lot of time talking about how I’m outted to everyone. I wear sex worker support shirts, stickers, tell people if they ask what I do for a living. “Yeah, I work at an arcade, and I also take nude photos and sexy videos.” That’s just me, and it certainly isn’t the majority of sex workers I know. Not even close. Nor does that mean I want my friends telling people I’m a sex worker before I do. It’s just rude. Don’t do it. Not only could you possibly be endangering your friend’s life, but you are once again speaking over us. Let us do the talking. We have voices, even if the media portrays us like we don’t.

Which brings me to my next point. I don’t want you to “save me.” I’m not friends with you, or acquaintances with you, or someone you reblog from Tumblr occasionally, so that you can try to “pull me out” of my career path. Attempting to convince me I can “have it better” is some of the most offensive commentary I receive. And I receive it a lot. I’ve had people told me that they’d be there for me when I realized it’s too emotionally draining being a sex worker.

Never have I once claimed it was, but they took it upon themselves to make that assumption about what I was doing. A person I’ve known for six years informed me that sex work would make me lose faith in love. Never have I once lost faith in love because of what I do. I’m happily in a supportive relationship and she must know that, because it’s right there on my Facebook. The assumption that I would have to develop a coping mechanism to do what I do is something pushed and pushed by the media. And while it may be true for some girls, (I have, after all, witnessed girls who get drunk every time they do their jobs just to be able to cope) assuming it’s true for all of us is a bit mind-boggling. I would never be able to do what a doctor does—to be able to tell people they’re going to die, to look at their insides, to have peoples’ lives in my hands—but do I create stereotypes for doctors due to my inability to even comprehend doing what they do? Of course I don’t.

The most important thing you can do, whether you’re close friends with a sex worker or you just follow them on a social media website, is communicate with them. Find out about us as individual sex workers. Spread awareness for sex worker rights. Support us, while giving us a voice. I am tired of being silenced, and it’s usually, sadly, by feminists, who think they can, as mentioned above, “save” me. As a feminist myself, it’s tormenting to see such stuff said about my profession constantly. And do any of them actually speak to us? Or stop talking over us for two seconds in order to get our take? Of course they don’t.

The most useful piece of advice you can take from this guide is: listen to us.

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December 3, 2014