« Bloody cunt, bad aura | Main | Warts and all »
...but I play one on TV
August 27, 2005
Yesterday on a train into the city, I ran into an ex-boyfriend’s uncle’s ex-wife and did some quality catching up. I used to see her at Christmases and whatnot, but it’s been at least three years since our paths have crossed. It was good to see her and hear all about what has happened in her life since we last saw each other. She’s been in a horrific car accident that has ended her previous career, so now she’s working as a receptionist at an actor’s rep agency here in NYC, which has led to her doing some bit parts in a variety of TV shows. She marveled about the fact that she - being mid-thirties and frumpy to average looking at best - could make money in the entertainment business. Truly, there is room for everyone if you find your niche.
Although at first she was reticent about describing exactly what kind of roles she’s been taking, when she let me have a look at her resume, I discovered that she seems to have been type cast across the board as either a dead hooker or an arrested hooker. Nice. After I looked at her resume, she got a great idea: “You should go to auditions! You’d be great!”
“Uh, well, I do already do some… modeling.”
I sort of vaguely described the modeling work I do, but then all of a sudden she was crestfallen: “You don’t really look like a prostitute.”
“What?” I asked, not really sure what the hell she was talking about or how that thought was relevant to my modeling career.
“I mean, I play prostitutes, but you couldn’t, because you don’t look like one.”
Ah, the ironies of life - here is this woman who would never consider sex work as a line of work, but plays a hooker on TV, telling me, who has been a sex worker in real life, what a real prostitute looks like.
“Well,” I said, smiling slowly, “You shouldn’t believe everything you see on TV.”
Posted by Dacia at August 27, 2005 05:35 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wakingvixen.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/361
Comments
How in the WORLD did you keep a straight face? That is just TOO funny.
-G
Posted by: Garrison Steelle at August 28, 2005 10:34 AM
Ahh, the stuff of life. I fucking love it.
Posted by: layla_x at August 29, 2005 08:28 AM
Pre-conceptions are the structure that keeps our world from crashing down around our ears. One of the things I detested about “Gangs of NY” was the implication that poor women of the era behaved like slatterns and whores. In fact, the woman who designed the costumes did not base them on historical research, but on gypsies!
So it is with prostitutes: we have a fixed idea what they look like, and can’t imagine things any other way.
Posted by: w. s. cross at August 30, 2005 09:09 PM
::snort:: ah, life is full of awesome unintentional moments of hilarity.
Posted by: Lioness at August 31, 2005 06:11 PM
Care killed the cat… Watkin
Posted by: Watkin at November 24, 2006 05:50 AM
All asses wag their ears… Dorothy
Posted by: Dorothy at November 24, 2006 05:54 AM
