I Was Naked Online and No One Died

Guest post by Alexandria LaRue. Alexandria is a Sex Worker Advocate from Dallas Texas. When she is not volunteering she is doing homework. Alex is a Journalism major in her final year of her undergraduate degree. She enjoys karaoke, reading a good book, or going for walks. She is currently working on a philanthropy media project called Mission Positive. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.

The author.

I can’t help but feel lucky. I look at my life, the company I choose to keep, and I feel vast amounts of what could be mistaken as fortune. Though it may look like life only handed me red Starbursts, I assure you that is not the case. I have been involved in the adult entertainment industry for the past 6 years. In other traditional occupations if one were to describe their line of work as "finance," it may be vague but it is an acceptable answer. When I say I’m in the adult entertainment industry suddenly people want details. They want details usually because they want to know the "gross" details of your work; it’s the same curiosity that brings people to watch pimple popping videos on YouTube. I happen to be quite fond of my work so I typically disclose what my latest project is. We live in a strange age that allows crop tops but frowns upon G-string bikinis. What I do for a living doesn’t harm bystanders, but it tends to make people feel a grimy sort of uncomfortable. 

I remember the first time I appeared naked on the internet. After years of putting it off, I finally submitted my first set to Suicide Girls. If you’re unfamiliar, Suicide Girls is an alternative modeling site and social networking hub. I had so much pride finally getting the set done, baring my soul and bottom on the beautiful glossy internet. Once the set was approved and public, there I was smiling back at myself from the front page of their website. I squealed with glee; I felt like a naked Amazon running through the jungle shooting arrows and eating raw meat from a stick. 

To my chagrin all my friends did not share in my excitement. I got some private messages concerned for the obvious damnation of my soul and others concerned with my future. I also received less reasonable messages containing really cute words (ex: slut, whore, disrespectful, etc.). As an adult woman I knew I could do whatever I wanted to and since I’m not married to a politician or a Pre-K teacher I didn’t see the danger. The simple fact is this: we only get so many trips around the sun and if we aren’t spending it doing things that we love we are wasting our time. Calling me a "slut" was not going to suddenly take the image of my “offensive nipple” from their memory bank,  it wasn’t going to convince me to wear a turtle neck until I’m in the ground, and it wasn’t going to do any good for humanity. In fact calling me "slut" only displayed how insecure they were with the human body. 

It saddens me, when these adults with all this power hold young men and women in such "high regard" that they think they can bully them in to conservatism. In some cases, they do. There are legions of repressed men and women afraid to be who they really are for fear of being called a "whore." I will tell you one thing, the whole wide world has access to photos of me naked and I am not ashamed. I have no regrets, no remorse, and no apologies. I have the people in my life that matter to me and that love me. They are all a little different, but they take me for exactly who I am. At the end of the day that’s all that really matters. None of them feel disparaged by my occupation, and the rest of the world will just have to be grumpy alone.

Planes kept flying, gasoline didn’t go up, my favorite football team went to the playoffs, no one was stricken with illness, blood didn’t rain from the sky, and no one died. No one died.

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