Trying to #BeReal

I love being a purveyor of beauty – not just your common or garden variety beauty (I mean, sure, flowers and nature and sunset skies have their place and all…) but beauty of a calibre which can bring rich princes to their knees with keen aesthetic desire (and more) and satiate every pang of their incredible hunger for gorgeousness – and yes, it pays too, so there’s always that reward to go with the more inherent aspects of my role.

Take today, for instance: the culmination of several months of hard graft, negotiations and…well, okay, a certain amount of ‘taking’, but really, whenever I take, it’s because I know that someone, somewhere is going to want my produce FAR more than whoever it was wasted on before I took it – I sent the latest set by airplane to my guy, who will do the actual selling, and then I’ll get my cut.

The thing is, it takes unimaginable amounts of effort to do what I do, and because of the shady nature of the beast, I tend to not tell anyone…this is kind of a big deal for me to even say anything, but believe me – I’m GOOD! And however it is that I obtain my produce, I always see to it that they never mind: beautiful young things, kept off their faces on whatever cocktails combinations of drugs and booze will keep them quiet and acquiescent (and if it doesn’t work, I get to involve myself in the ‘persuasion’, which is a total added bonus and something I rather enjoy (though my clients prefer if I go gently – they like to think they’re the first ones ‘there’, if ya know what I mean…)) and their time with me tends to pass peacefully enough – come on, these beauties are my meal ticket; I’d be MAD to treat them with anything less than kindness, care, and the odd indulgent moment for me when their proximity and gorgeous physiques just get too much.

Fuel costs are rising, though, and every time I send a set, I feel the pinch – I’m shipping them at a ridiculously huge amount of money per pound – even though I know I’ll be handsomely reimbursed, and it just makes me so relieved that most of my clients like the thinner ones, because the fatties are a particular brand of taste I always resent paying to assuage.

When the bank transfers come in, though, I KNOW I’ve done well – especially if there’s a tip (the handsomer the better) – and I can begin planning my next grouping, wondering which markets haven’t been played for a while, and where I should next start sourcing for perfection – those gorgeous little rainmakers.

This week’s prompt was POUND, and I got to thinking about the effort so many of my friends make to proliferate and nurture a culture where women aren’t reduced to the sum of their parts…which puddle-jumped my brain into thinking about girls (and presumably, boys) who seriously ARE reduced to the sum of their parts and sold, that others might enjoy them,

Very few things make me angrier than reading about people being sold into sex-slavery. Which still, somehow, AWFULLY, happens, and it tears me to pieces. I know that’s the far-end of extreme, in terms of people’s worth being reduced to their looks, but we *do* live in a culture which does this, and even in small doses it’s damaging, because it becomes the norm and sets expectations of certain behaviours, body types, or revealings, in order to be ‘acceptable’.

Thus endeth the lesson. Nearly. Because every time I read about sex trafficking, the more incensed I get that it seems to be something SO much more prevalent than I knew, and quite possibly something I’ve all contributed to the culture of, for the sake of a bunch of ‘likes’.

Today, to combat a new hashtag meme which is doing the rounds and encouraging people to reduce themselves to the sum of their parts for social media attention, my darling friend Hasty (@hastywords on Instagram and Twitter) came up with the perfect thing to combat it – an invitation to post a picture exactly as you are rightnow, and tag it #BeReal; because that’s all we should ever need to be, to be accepted.

WILL YOU JOIN ME? (you can double-whammy with Beth’s #BeARebel, from her amazing post last week)