Working in the sex industry means you get a lot of rando men telling you a lot of things about yourself that you didn’t ask for. Jaye Rose discusses negging, and how to respond to it with the requisite sass.
My name is Jaye Rose and I have worked in the sex industry all of my adult life. I’m based in the UK and started out in the industry aged 18 as a nude model, taking my clothes off and opening my legs for an array of top shelf magazines and subscription sites. I then started working on late night TV channels, where I’d sit around in brightly lit studios in tight fitting lingerie, bouncing my ass whilst taking calls from horny, masturbating men. This got pretty old pretty fast and so I switched to webcamming, where I’d do the same thing except in the comfort of my own home and with much less flattering lighting. I then found myself, aged 22, taking part in hardcore porn scenes for a multitude of different sites and with a multitude of different partners. It was fun but I am now “retired” from the porn scene and these days you can find me making and producing my own online content, writing a sex and lifestyle blog and taking part in the occasional webcam show.
Being in the sex industry for such a long time means that I have amassed quite a substantial online following and, as a result, means that I am inundated daily with messages from horny men – and yes, they are always from men. These range from demands that I sleep with them or send them free content, or detailed descriptions of their fantasies, listing all the ways in which they would “destroy” my holes and orifices, given the chance.
Male entitlement online is a whole different ball game but, like it or not, these sort of messages are par for the course when you make a living getting naked online. As much as they can aggravate, annoy and even freak me out at times, I do expect them. On the flip side I also get lots of nice, respectful messages – which sounds like something of an oxymoron when you take into account that most of these messages are still describing my vagina – but what rankles me most are the messages from people who are attempting to be complimentary but are, in fact, still annoying and even offending me in their own clumsy, backhanded kind of way.
And so, for your viewing pleasure, here are the top 4 “backhanded compliments” that I receive the most often:
1. “You’re actually quite intelligent”
Yes, I know.
Just because I’m more likely to be climbing up a pole than a corporate ladder does not mean that I am any less able to hold a conversation or have opinions on things other than hair extensions.
This is usually said by people who are aware of my job before they meet me and then, upon talking to me, are genuinely surprised that I do what I do. There’s this massive stereotype that women who work in the adult industry are, by default, not very bright. Now I will not lie to you, I have worked with some girls who may be a few keys short of a piano, but I’ve also met a multitude of people in a whole range of 9-5 jobs or in fully fledged careers who are thick as shit (NB: for any American readers, this means that they are not very bright but “thick as shit” is an excellent idiom and I implore you to start using it). Most women who make a living in the adult industry are whip smart when it comes to business, marketing and making their money. Society oversexualises women whether we like it or not so profiting from your sexuality is not a “cop out” because you couldn’t get a job elsewhere. The sex industry is pretty much recession proof and one of the only industries where women outearn their male counterparts by a mile; seems like a pretty clever move to me.
2. “I want to get to know the real you”
I would say that, on average, I receive a message like this at least once every two days and they annoy me for a multitude of reasons.
First of all, the guy writing it assumes that I am so downtrodden and broken by years of being leered at by men, that to have somebody comment on something that isn’t my arse is enough for me to swoon and want to marry them immediately. It isn’t, by the way.
They never bother including a photo either, assuming that their words alone will have won me over and so confident are they that the fact that they fancy me means that I will inevitably feel the same about them. I know you probably think I’m just being a bitch and I promise you I’m not, but do you know how annoying it is to have people assume things about you? Secondly, by wanting to meet the “real” me, you’re suggesting that I put on a fake persona online and that is not true. Granted, I don’t actually pay workmen in blowjobs in my real life but I also don’t put anything out on social media that isn’t 100% how I am, how I act or what I think day to day. What you see is what you get, although I tend to wear more clothes these days.
And finally, even if the guys writing me do turn out to be hot, 97% of the time they haven’t even bothered to work out where I’m from and assume I must also live in their American city I’ve never heard of, thus wasting everyone’s time.
3. “You’re a real woman”
I really hate this one. I appreciate that the person saying this is genuinely trying to be complimentary, but I don’t like it when someone suggests that I am any more of a woman than any other female, purely because I’ve got a couple of curves. I’m not any more or any less of a woman than someone else simply because she’s a few dress sizes smaller than me or her bum isn’t as round or she’s tall and willowy. Every single woman is different, and we spend our lives being pitted against each other; don’t make it worse.
I was quite a late developer and spent what felt like forever being so, so painfully self-conscious, convinced that I wasn’t worth anything because I didn’t have any tits and boys didn’t find me attractive. I know you’re trying to be kind when you call me a “real woman”, but my current shape is quite literally a combination of too many carbs and years on the contraceptive pill, which suddenly gave me hips and boobs. If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t look at me twice and that’s what you’re telling me.
4. “You being comfortable with your figure has given my wife so much more confidence in herself”
I tend to get this comment mainly from men on Tumblr and to be honest, I’m quite confused by it. I am not a supermodel. I’m not doing anything groundbreaking, I’m not giving the finger to societal expectations, I haven’t broken down any barriers or paved the way for anyone, I just quite literally took my clothes off as a quicker way to pay my bills. We aren’t in 1993 anymore where everyone wanted to be as thin as possible. Now when women ask “does my bum look big in this?” they WANT you to say yes, so me having a little bit more meat on me than some other industry girls really is no big deal in this day and age. If I’ve genuinely made someone feel more comfortable in how they look then obviously, that is a good thing, but you pointing out that its applaudable that I am comfortable with how I look has, if anything, made me now question how I do look!
5. “I wish my wife looked like you”
As flattering as you think that is, you’re a dickhead and I hope your missus checks your internet history.