I’ll start my post today saying that I know I said in my last post that I’d write about my camping and hiking experiences from a month ago (was it only 3 weeks?), but I got a bit side-tracked. Last week was Mr. Muses and my 16th wedding anniversary, plus – we had a house guest – plus, we had a get-together grill-out with friends for their visiting family. Their family seems to have become our extended family so, therefore…
But I digress…
As I sit here in my screened porch basking in the final rays of the sun and sipping a Bee’s Knees, I feel compelled to write about a message I received via Facebook from a young woman of 18 asking me about modeling.
She wanted to know what I modeled, did I make any money, and ultimately she disclosed her desire to get into modeling as a way to make a living and get out from under the rules of the house with her parents.
Now, let me remind you that I’m 39 – old enough to be this young ladies mother – and I found myself staring at my computer screen, shaking my head at what I was reading. Sadly, I told her that most models lose money and the likelihood of her making enough to live off of was very slim. She said she’d been told the same thing by a couple of other people she had asked and then said that she’d probably look into dancing at a gentleman’s club.
I advised against it even though I admitted that some dancers have been able to make quite s a lot of money. She retorted that I probably have never done it based upon my response; I admitted she was correct and while one day I may entertain the idea of jumping on stage for amateur night, the idea of being a dancer at a gentleman’s club had not even entered my mind at age 18. The conversation effectively ended with me saying that while I appreciated and admired the dancers’ athletic prowess, the fact is that most of the these women are objectified and that went against my “code”.
Later, I pondered this conversation wondering how it is that a young lady would even seriously consider the idea of, for the sake of shortening a few words as we go along, a stripper?
I went to college when I was 18, and I picked a degree I felt I would reasonably enjoy: Agri-business. By my second year, I decided to double-major, adding History to the Ag-biz, simply because I had so many credits in History. But stripping? I didn’t know anyone who did and only one guy in the dorm who would make the multi-mile drive to the closest strip joint in a seedy part of the city in which it was located. He would come back with stories of dancers ridden hard and put away wet, for lack of a better analogy.
Twenty years ago, so many of the stories I had heard about stripping were about desperation and last resort moves. They were about a lack of options. Eighteen seems far too young to have a lack of options.
And now? Now, I still think there is a whole world of opportunities before this young lady – but admittedly, I don’t know her whole story. I don’t know her reasons for so desperately wanting to get out from under the house rules or for entertaining the idea of a career, however long, where the statistics for sexual assault, abuse, drugs and sex trafficking are so high.
The world is your oyster – no matter your age. When opportunity comes along, I’m a firm believer in grabbing the door handle, opening the door and saying, “HELLO!” So, normally I would end my posts with a question, but rather than continue to speculate upon what I feel are rash decisions by the young, I will take a more positive route.
What is an opportunity that came your way which you were unsure about that you took and now know it was a great idea?
Musings of the Amusing Muse 
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