Every Sunday night, Dispenser will take you to a tour inside the inner world of sex workers in suburbia-ville. No judgments, just real people trying to make a living. And their fascinating stories of unrequited love, secret passions and peculiar personalities.
Part 2 / Selina is an unusual marketing strategist. Without a university degree, she brands and sells something she knows best: her body on a webcam.
Selina gave up a marketing degree for a profession that, to some extent, allows her to brand, commodify and sell her body without the need of getting out of the house. She is a webcam girl.
“I’m not doing anything wrong, I mean, plus I decide my own schedule and get good money to spend on things I like.”
She is British and her parents sent her to London to study four years ago. She soon dropped out, “it was too intense and I was learning pretty much nothing,” she says. It started “for fun” and soon the Internet became her full-time employer.
“In these days with a webcam and a laptop you can do whatever you want.” Do her parents know about her new ‘marketing’ skills? “Oh, God, why would they?” she laughs. As far as they’re concerned, she’s out from college because she got hired as a marketing strategist, “which is not a complete lie, because if you want to succeed in what I’m doing, you have to be careful, make the right decisions and be professional otherwise you’re just another desperate girl on the web.”
And Selina is really precise. She sets her own boundaries, which she would never cross, and takes a systematic approach to what would otherwise be an unusual working day: “Four and a half hours a day per six days a week. I charge two pounds a minute so you make the math.” The result is roughly £3,250 a week. Not bad for a well mannered, 23 year-old English young lady.
“But it doesn’t come in cash only, otherwise I’d have problems with taxes and everything.” So Selina adopted a plan and to avoid troubles with the revenue service: she gets part of her income in vouchers and gifts. “I travelled to Paris for free because a guy once bought me an airplane ticket.”
Every day Selina switches on her webcam and the show starts. “No penetration, I just show parts of my body. I get to play with my feet a lot because that’s a fetish and sometimes I have to do some water sport [a fetish practice that involves urination on something or somebody] or lick my shoes. There are so many fetishists out there, you don’t even imagine.”
One day she’s dressed like a baby girl, the other like a boss, “it really varies from what I’m up to and what the trends of the day are on other cam chats. It’s more like acting than anything.”
The problem arose when some of her friends found out her real job. “They were mad because I lied to them and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m not proud of what I do, but I’m just trying to make a living I guess.”
Our Skype conversation ends and she’s almost in tears thinking about the people she has lost for her lies. “But I’m pretty sure they watch me on cam from time to time. That’s their way to show me their love.”
* Names have been changed to protect the identities of the interviewees.
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