Selling Myself

I took a walk today, along the water, with my hair back (and yet the wind was still in my hair). My coat was flapping behind me gloriously, like the mantle of a Queen. That rosy flush came to my cheeks.

Just kidding.

I am laughing because I did take a walk today, but I was looking for a better job. After filling out some applications and walking in-and-out of businesses, it suddenly hit me that I was actually walking right along the water and I heard these words:

"You should stroll along the water at Semiamu," Bill had said, to attract a "rich guy".

I hoped to God no one thought I was taking Bill's advice.

"Do you have experience?" she asked.
"No, not really. I've done a little for a caterer but that's about it."
"Oh, that's okay, we just want to know you can sell yourself," said one of the prospective employers. She worked behind the bar. They needed waitresses. I thought, when I was walking out, "Did I sell myself?"

I thought about women who sell their bodies. I can't relate, but I've prefered welfare and staying home with my son, barely getting by, to something I can't understand. "I could understand if some of these women were in positions like me and needed money for legal matters, or to get their kid back." But in my opinion, they are greedy, because they could choose other work and don't, and usually there's not an emergency at hand. Right? I mean, how many women become call girls or hookers because they don't want their grandmother to stay in a bad nursing home, or because they're getting their kids back and want the best lawyer money can buy? Yet look at what the stigma of welfare has done for me. Poverty and state assistance was wielded against me, like a weapon. Can I judge a woman for wanting to escape a similiar fate? for thinking, or knowing from past family experience, that money will improve their lives, no matter how it is earned? Is the state taking children away from mothers who work as higher end call girls? or only taking kids from the streetwalkers and lower end prostitutes?

When the state goes to the apartment of a call girl, who pays for everything for herself and her kids...Who has been used by senators, and lawyers, is she treated the same way a streetwalker is treated, who may use the same precautions, and has the same basic job, but lives in a project? Did CPS "rush in" to interview the call girls who were mothers as well, and check on the welfare of the children?

Or is it possible that the most stigmatizing thing a woman can do is to be on welfare.