How Becoming a Working Girl Improved My Body Image

Posted by Amber Adams on August 25, 2017

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I consider myself a person of high self esteem with a very positive body image. I love my curvaceous figure and my soft, supple skin. I am an athletic, healthy, and shapely young woman with a great attitude, a lust for life, and an eagerness to explore what the future has to offer. Also, I'm sexy as hell and I know how to work my voluptuous body to amply and utterly please my numerous lovers.

However, I didn't always feel this way about myself and my body. As an average, middle class girl growing up in the Western United States, I was subjected to the usual trials and tribulations of an American teenager. Being a little on the curvy side, I quickly noticed that I looked very different from the vast majority of girls portrayed on television, online, and in fashion magazines. I remember being in my early teens and picking up an issue of Teen Vogue with a picture of Emma Watson on the cover and a headline that said something like "Tips on what to wear if you're curvy, short, thin, etc." I remember paging through the magazine and getting very depressed because I realized that I wanted to be the lithe, slender Emma Watson type that's pretty enough for the cover of the magazine and not the full-figured model in the middle of the book showing off the merits of fit and flare dresses.

Like many young women, I became obsessed with my appearance and I spent more time than I should've looking at myself in front of a mirror and obsessing over every bulge and valley of my body — to the point where my "flaws" became exaggerated in my mind, and began to affect the way I perceived myself. When you're young and susceptible to the pressures of society, a negative body image can make you feel as if you're less than worthy of certain things because you can't see yourself in empowering roles that are almost always portrayed in the media by women that don't look like you. I began to have thoughts like, "Well, I should settle for this unfulfilling relationship or this crappy part-time job — after all, what more should a girl like me expect out of life." I could never be "the star," because women that look like me are the supporting characters.

Of course, you would never know that I had these hangups if you met me in high school. I had a bubbly personality, I received decent grades, I had healthy friendships, I dated, and I had the usual amount of moderately enjoyable sex. But there was always a barrier, an invisible and imaginary limitation that I put on myself no matter what I did in life. Like too many teenaged women on the cusp of adulthood, these negative thoughts about my body eventually got situated into my subconscious and became a part of me that was always present but barely perceptible, limiting my potential in every aspect of my life.

After high school I moved to the Pacific Northwest and I had my first taste of independence, which meant that I was dead broke and had to find a job to pay the bills ASAP. Although being a barista in several of the the seemingly unlimited coffee shops Seattle has to offer was a lot of fun and a great way to make new friends, it wasn't long before I realized that I needed to get a higher paying job if I wanted to stay on my feet and save some money.

Several of the women I met at the coffee shop were sex workers of one sort or another, and they suggested I get involved in adult entertainment. At first I thought that this was something I could never do. I mean, I could never be a sex symbol. That role was for the girls who were on the magazine's cover, not the fit and flare dress girls.

Fortunately, the need for cash superseded my personal hangups and I got involved with exotic dancing and adult videos. As I experimented more and delved deeper into the world of adult entertainment, something began to happen. People began to treat me like I was something extraordinary. I began to make more and more money and I received sexual offers from men and women alike. I was desired — someone to be exalted and revered. Someone that people would pay to experience an evening with. People wanted me — wanted my body. Slowly but steadily, the barriers that were preventing me from seeing myself as a beautiful, amazing, and absolutely worthy person were beginning to crumble.

By the time I decided to become a legal working girl at Dennis Hof's Sagebrush Ranch in Nevada, so that I could offer intimacy and sensuality to my newfound suitors, the wall impeding me from loving myself was all but shattered. Through my work as a licensed courtesan, I learned that people lust after and crave a variety of body types — and I learned that what people see in magazines and