I Don't NEED Saving, Thank You

This article in Glamour is seriously warped:

“No one should have to be a stripper”

She spent years dancing naked for leering men clutching $5 bills. Now she’s trying to help other women escape the soul-killing triple-X life.

Now seriously, nobody HAS to be a stripper. Me, I could have taught school. I did that for one soul-killing year. Every day I faced a few dozen cocky, arrogant, misguided adolescents and attempted to teach them the pleasures of reading and learning and using their minds. And then they told me they hadn’t done their homework because they were too busy watching TV or getting laid.

I could have stayed in retail. I could have killed more than my soul managing a Radio Shack store, mandatory 54 hours a week on $25,000 salary, with abusive customers and a misogamistic district manager. I was seriously expected to tell customers “thank you, please visit us again” after they threw merchandise at me. It happened more than once, and let me tell you, getting beaned in the side of the head with a package of four D batteries, HURTS!

But no, I chose to give all that up for the sad and depressing work of dancing. I must admit, I feel SOOOOOOOO degraded when some moron grabs my ass, that I just have to turn around and smack him for it. (Smacking people who desperately dereve it is jsut so humiliating, don’t you think??) It is completely demoralizing to have people greet me warmly, buy me drinks, and give me compliments. I felt so much more respected when the great majority of people I met in a day would imply or even say outright, what do you know; you are only a woman (teacher)?

I really hate that, you know. Having people act happy to see me. I hate it more when they say how much they enjoy my company, or my dancing, or even looking at various parts of my body. I really mostly especially hate it when I know I have made somebody happy, really brightened their day. Absolutely disgusting.

And do you know what else I hate? (Ohhhhhh, I am on a roll now!) I hate not punching a time clock. I hate not being responsible for other people’s children or merchandise or money or property. I hate being able to stay home with my kid when he needs me and taking time off to help my mom. Making my own schedule really sucks. So does picking up an extra shift or two whenever I decide I want something.

And I really really f’ing despise making as much in 2 days as I used to make all week, attempting to put a little sense into the heads of other people’s insolent brats. Now I have no bloody choice but to spend some of my extra time and income with my own son, making sure he does not grow up to be the same kind of willfully ignorant, arrogant little cuss that I so enjoy beating my head against. Damn! That was one of my life’s ambitions, to be so busy providing for my kid that I didn’t have time to raise him. And I guess I have to spend the rest of my free time building up my couple of businesses and making my husband feel like the luckiest man alive. Man, that irks me!

Yo, sister! Over here! I need to be saved!