AUGUST 2021
Meet August’s Angel of the Month: Venus
What’s your name? Venus! It's been my name since I first hit the poles and it's slowly becoming my 'real' name by accident lol
How did you get started in the industry? Well it was early 2018 and I wasn't getting hired anywhere for months. I desperately needed to leave an abusive home situation at the time but nothing was working out for me. When I finally did get a vanilla job, they'd never pay me on time or accurately so I started camming — but it definitely takes a while to build a consistent audience and it didn't work out. That's when a good friend of mine at the time told me she's been wanting to try stripping, so I took the leap with her and never looked back since.
What is a goal you’re proud you were able to reach while doing and because of SW? I've definitely reached goals in terms of more physical things like business, but honestly I'm most proud of reaching my self-care goals. With sex work, I don't have to work all the time and could a month off at any time I needed to, just to breathe and heal wounds that I haven't tended to in years.
What is your best tip for making money at work? When I started (in the clubs), I tried too hard to be a guy's wildest sex fantasy. Bought a lot of stripper courses and used all the tips in them all the time. It worked at times, but I make wayyy more money now just being myself, as funny as it sounds! Of course every customer is different and you have to adjust yourself accordingly, but I've met a lot of men in recent years that started paying me a lot more because I felt more tangible to them.
Sw is exhausting physically, mentally, and emotionally- How do you decompress and engage in self care in the face of that? It definitely took me a *long* time to learn how to transmute that mix of exhaustion into rejuvenation and healing. I believe the process started when I began my stripper documentary project. It helped me begin to learn how to return to myself, because for the longest time I was so burnt out from this line of work I didn't even have energy to create anything of substance. And creating has always been my body and mind's form of self care.
We all have a story about a babe in the industry who we loved and were inspired by from the moment we met her- tell us about her/them: Selena! I met her in the first few weeks I started dancing under the red lights. She's definitely tall and beautiful physically so you can't miss her to begin with, but what drew me to talking to her (despite my baby stripper anxiety) was her welcoming and secure energy! She was the only woman there who was 100% about her money without ever feeling threatened by anyone else, and you could definitely feel that when you talked to her. I wanted to carry that same dedication to my hustle and myself in my walk just like her, and it inspired me to stay focused. Plus, knowing her made me feel safe in a club full of some really catty girls haha.
What do you wish people knew about us (SWers), and about you personally as a SWer? That we are your neighbors, your friends, your sisters, your daughters, mothers, and more importantly — that we are multifaceted human beings deserving of respect and rights just like civs (non-SWers).
There is a lot of talk nowadays about sex work being “empowering.” Is this true for you and why or why not? I think anything can be empowering depending on the person and if they feel like that thing pushes them to be freer and better than they were yesterday. For me personally, sex work isn't empowering. It is not nearly all glitters and gold as people naïvely believe, and when the 6" heels come off at the end of the night you can spend a lot of time feeling lost trying to decompress from it all. Sex work is simply a bridge for me to reach the things that actually empower me, and at least for that I'm definitely grateful.
What is something you wish you’d known when you started in the industry? That saving is so important and the money flow *will* have it's inconsistencies sometimes no matter what you do! You will most likely not be in the industry forever because of one reason or another, so it's smart to save and invest all the money you can when it's really good.
Where can we find you? My instagrams are @healerheels and @heelers.world, and you can find me on twitter @venusheels (:
