After years of precarious work and low wages I decided to become a sex worker

Last episodeyyyyy (screamed!) Last episode of Secrets before the Summer break! Hurry up and read your confessions before diving into your well-deserved vacation!

There was a retro shout-out for this last summer episode of Segrets. I have to tell you that I am very excited, because in less than 72 hours I will be leaving for one of the trips I have been dreaming of doing for a long time: visit china! Twenty-three days to discover a land and a people about which the more I study, read and listen, the more I realize that I have always had a very limited idea made of stereotypes and banalities. I don’t know if you do as I do, but before leaving for an adventure I like to know better the place where I am going to fully enjoy the experience. And in the last few weeks, reading the guide, listening to the few podcasts available in Italian, moreover almost all on the thousand-year history of Chinese dynasties, and looking for all the possible documentaries on the subject of “China”, I realized that I have never “seen” with curious eyes and an open mind this pantagruelian slice of humanity. In the mechanics of the summary judgment of the other, from the depths of my ignorance, I limited myself to positively evaluating the beautiful things obvious to everyone, to give three banal examples, the beautiful phrases of Confucian philosophy, the particularity of their cuisine, the peculiarity of art and craftsmanship. And to issue ferocious verdicts on what is rightly considered terrible, such as, for example, some absolutely unmotivated cruel practices towards animals or the exploitation of labor. It’s normal, you’ll say, we can’t know everything about everything! TRUE! And in fact, on TikTok, informative clips like “The 5 things you didn’t think they ate in China” or “The 10 things to see if you go to Beijing” or “What if I told you that the Chinese invented spaghetti?” are very popular. Millions of voyeurs, like me, who appreciate travel tips, food tips but who are also passionate about bind eating of tiny oriental women who gobble up, suck, and pulp tons of half-alive mollusks, shrimp heads, octopus tentacles, and sweets of every kind, with the same elegance with which they apply mascara. So it is correct to say that we cannot perceive ourselves better than others when, while harboring a strong opinion on a subject, we use it in some way, however tiny or latent, when we feel like it!

I judge but I enjoy a little bit of it or I would like to enjoy it. A bit like what happens when you throw the thorny topic par excellence on the table: sex. And it is precisely about sex and what we do with it that our stories today are about. Two friends who propose that we observe the topic from two perspectives that have to do with the customer-supplier relationship. Curious, right? Then I’ll leave you to read avidly the latest stories of the season while I dedicate myself to finishing the luggage! Don’t worry, the room of Secrets will remain open also in August at the usual link (here), while I wait for you on my Instagram page @elenadicioccio where I will tell you about my Chinese adventure in the stories.

See you in September!

Many kisses.

Elena

Dear Elena,

With this column you have created a unique space in the Italian panorama where you can read many different stories, light, painful, funny, a little disturbing but none banal and since the quality of interactions is lacking, I give you many sincere compliments.
I’ll tell you about myself. I’m worn out, exhausted, worn out by years of economic hardship due to job insecurity and living in a very expensive city, Milan. Even though I work hard and have a degree and qualifications, I’ve never found a lucrative job, I’ve never gone over 1,500 euros. As I was saying, I’m tired of fighting, of going over budget at the slightest unforeseen event, of having to decide whether to go to the hairdresser or buy a dress, of not going on vacation. I recently met a person who, in addition to having a “regular” part-time job, is a “sex worker” and earns in three days what I earn in a month. For a long time I made it a moral issue, of not feeling suited to this kind of thing, without judging those who did it. Frankly, I confess that today, after all the tiredness of the situation, my hesitations have fallen to leave room only for practical doubts, such as what content I could ever create since it’s all new to me… And then, the damned fear/embarrassment of being discovered by someone I know. It’s hard to admit but with dignity and moralism you can’t pay the bills.
I hug you

My dear, I hug you very tightly too! Your letter is beautiful, I really appreciated its sincerity but above all its lucid composure, as well as the compliments that are never taken for granted! Let’s try to team up with everyone’s experiences in the best possible way. Each decade has had its own way of saying, its totem to represent the despair of reality and shout to the world: “You know what? I can’t stand these conditions! This is no life! If I have to work so hard, if I have to work so hard to have just a few things, from a piece of paper, to a house, to a family, and make do as best I can to make ends meet, then I might as well make a drastic, unpopular choice that at least allows me to enjoy life a little.” In the 80s it was said, I’m giving up everything and going to live in the countryside, where our grandparents came from. In the 90s the countryside was too close and we gave up everything to “go around the world”, so I disappear and they don’t find me anymore. In the 2000s it was the turn of “I’m giving up everything and opening a Ciringuito in South America”: I still work hard, but at least I’m in a fantastic, uncontaminated place and then life there is cheap. Today in the roaring 20s of the new millennium the mantra is: “I’m not giving up anything but I’m opening a channel on Onlyfans! And I understand it since there are few uncontaminated places left and those few are in the cold. The countryside has become a luxury “experience” where we can revisit by blending it, even a plate of polenta (I swear!) and the places with a sea view where you spend little, are on the edge of an absurd, inexplicable, unjust poverty, indigestible next to the palm tree of the siesta. We can no longer even disappear into thin air because we are tied hand and foot to the technology that engulfs us all in the same virtual limbo. So there is not much left for us to imagine, if not dream of making less effort where we are with what is there without caring what others think. “Onlyfans” therefore becomes a possibility. I adopt Julia Roberts’s policy in Pretty Woman “I say who, I say how and I say how much”, I model it according to my needs and abilities and I sell at my own free will some piece of skin that in the virtual abyss could even be worth a lot. If I’m lucky, I pay for my studies, my house, my start up. If I’m unlucky, I will have wasted my time. I knowingly use myself to invest in myself and it is not even a crime (the exploitation of third parties is a crime). I don’t see anything wrong with it. Did you know that the English term “Sex worker” was conceived as a “non-stigmatizing term”?adopted to give dignity to sex workers all over the world? I agree with the modern hypothesis of conveying the idea of ​​a professionalism of sexual or erotic work, virtual and otherwise, against the valorization carried out by a large part of society. I think that the bigotry linked to “sex working” is out of place when we accept everything! Smoking kills, but no one moralizes those who sell tobacco. Junk food kills, but no one moralizes those who produce it. In addition to the fact that we have become impotent and deaf to corruption, exploitation of resources, wars, inequalities To impose a moral judgment we should first ensure the same conditions for everyone. “Sex” is still a worse dirty word than “budget deficit”. You can send an entire sector into deficit, putting families and businesses in difficulty, while remaining a “respectable” person, but if you lower your underwear in front of or behind the camera you are a reject of society. I personally do not accept that. To conclude, even if I could fill thousands of pages with tirades on the personal freedom to earn money by dipping your feet in pineapple pizza in your underwear in front of the camera, I will make it short by telling you that your letter perfectly embodies the contradiction of this time that goes far beyond the old “to be and to have”, but is closer to something like “To what extent can I emotionally support the consequences of my choices?”. If there are those who pay to have virtual fun, someone must earn money, right? The choice is ours.

I hug you very tightly. Elena

Hi Elena, I wanted to tell you that I really like your column and I always read it. But I was wondering why you never talk about one of the biggest secrets that everyone has, always: they watch porn. Nobody says it, everyone does it, and me too. Why is it still a taboo? Ok, it’s not something to flaunt, but it seemed very strange to me that there were never any secrets about that and so I wonder if maybe you censor them… Isn’t it true that they didn’t write to you?

Hello beautiful, thank you so much for your appreciation! First of all, I want to be clear that nothing is censored here. And secondly, I have been written to very often about “using porn” but never as a main secret. Usually, porn is mentioned in letters as a solution, side dish or consequence for other dynamics defined as “Secrets” such as single or couple sexual anorexia, such as having fantasies that the respective partner would die if he or she found out, or how to live double lives between saints at home and sinners in the world. I think it’s more because using porn can be seen in two ways: either we do it naturally, both alone and in company, and therefore we experience it with enthusiasm and fun, or we face it with compulsion and a sense of guilt that causes us so much shame that we “forget” about it as soon as the practice is over. Often we don’t even realize that we bury in denial some things that we do secretly to compensate for shortcomings and not have to face them. In 2022, Italy was in the top ten of the global ranking of porn use, so it is clear that we watch porn, and I also include myself among occasional consumers. The reasons why we like it are many, varied, exactly as complex and varied is the sexuality of human beings, who express themselves or parts of themselves through sex. For direct pleasure, for desire, to learn, to peek or to sublimate something that perhaps excites us in the mind but that in real life perhaps we would never even do or maybe we tried but it was not as we imagined. Speaking of this, the African-American comedian Kevin Hart (you may have seen him in the film Jumaji alongside Dwayne Johnson), in his stand-up show “Irresponsible” tells in an irresistibly funny way, how crazy it is to think of being able to do “like in porn”. Reiterating that porn actors and actresses are professionals, who do it for a living, who know how to give/take/receive, get dressed and then go home to their family. “Not us!” comments Hart, “It would be like seeing a karate move on TV, like a roundhouse kick, and then going out and fighting thinking you could do it!” And this ties us to the letter of the friend above you, who asks “am I capable? What content could I propose?”. The “erotic” content can be of any type as long as it does not harm another living being, just think that in this column we also hosted a very funny balloon fetishist (reread the story here.. https://www.vanityfair.it/article/elena-di-cioccio-giochi-erotici-palloncino-sesta-puntata-segreti)! And so if we do not harm anyone, let’s enjoy our bodies as we please because it is our sacrosanct right to feel pleasure! See you soon dear friend, I hope you can continue to have fun in freedom and joy, and maybe come back to tell us about it. Kisses.