As I was doing my normal daily research on the weirdest things I could find about this season of planet Earth, I bumped into something quite fascinating.
June 2nd is International Whores’ Day, a day to celebrate the working women, the ladies of the night, the women keeping the oldest industry in existence alive.
The brilliantly named Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force, or SWEAT if you nasty, estimated that between 121 000 and 167 000 sex workers were active in the year 2013, while this number has likely ballooned since this stat, I found it necessary to bring up as I return to the topic of finding the weirdest things on the internet.
You see back during the pandemic, a particular website saw young ladies create a vehicle for generating massive wealth for themselves using only a cellphone and wifi, this website (which I won’t mention because they aren’t paying us at the 041 and I’m not paying them for their product, because who pays for porn?) resulted in a very interesting, television show where local women in the sex industry are followed and documented as they live their lives and attempt to either grow their brand in the sex world or pivot into new industries like local New Brighton girl, Bubbly Sodela former dancer at Candy’s and host of the “Izifebe eziCovid-free” parties. The pandemic was a wild time.
But the fact that everything I just wrote actually happened and is relatively easy to research and find is what is so interesting to me… This country is the most culturally diverse place in the world. We never had a fight for gay marriage because gays have pretty much always been able to marry and live their lives in peace for as long as black people have, but at the same time, 7de Laan had their first interracial kiss scene in 2019 and it resulted in death threats and collective white outrage. Let me not even get into the whole drama with Jason and Senzo on Generations and the collective black masculine joy of seeing Sibusiso (Senzo’s Zulu dad) beat them up so bad they were hospitalized in the next episode.
I say all this to say that in South Africa you can never really tell what the reaction to what you put out into the world will be. The cultural response to media and art can either elevate your product to another stratosphere or result in your decades-long tv show ending 4 years after the black doctor guy kissed some white hussie.
This brings me back to the weirdest things I’ve seen on the internet, and back to “This Body Works For Me” You see a former cast member of that show had recently left sex work behind, claiming it was unfulfilling and no longer her goal in life. She has since given her life to Jesus and people are for some reason upset by this. The internet is calling her “fake” or making fun of her choice which is an insane turn of events.
For context, Samke became a relatively well-known sex worker in the porn industry through what was in essence, revenge porn posted by a former lover, her story gets sadder as the show continues when you learn she is a mother of a young boy and even sadder when you come across Samke’s own mother recounting stories of the time Samke saw videos of her stepfather and mother having sex on her phone at the tender age of 12, further explaining Samke’s spiral into sex work herself. And while she was celebrated for becoming a victim of her circumstance, she was just as easily ridiculed and insulted for changing her own destiny and making choices that could be considered “better” by some.
This train of thought was brought about by one of those random memories you get when you wake up to go pee in the middle of the night and your brain is like “hey… remember that time you pee’d in your pants at the party and cried?” My pee-in-the-pants memory is a discussion I remember having at age 12. At this awkward age, me and maybe 3 or 4 other friends were having a conversation about our celebrity look alikes and someone in that conversation who i still love very much to this day suggested that mine might be P.Diddy… the Diddler himself.
I have always been terrified of Diddy since watching making the band where he forced two groups of masculine presenting men to compete in a “sing-off” in order to earn the right to a bed. I watched that episode as two groups of hungry men sang “End Of The Road” by Boyz II Men with an aggression and strength that didn’t match the song choice at all. All white Mr.Puff Daddy sat in his chair with a satisfied grin on his face… something about that scene, watching Puff gain satisfaction from seeing exactly how much power he had over these men just made me uncomfortable…
And i think that is the same feeling i get when i see multichoice put out this TV show about young sex workers trying to make a life for themselves, when i see Twitter user comments under that young lady’s church fit photo, showing her in various states of undress, pulling her back mentally into a place she apparently fought quite hard to work her way out of.
Maybe once the dust settles on the insane case of Puff Daddy I’ll do my job as the culture columnist and do a whole write-up and the history of Sean Combs, detailing all the moments where we should’ve been suspicious of him (because there are/were many) like if you remember the basketball scene with him and Shaq in the “Bad Boys For Life” music video, particularly the extras in that scene who aren’t Puff or Shaq… like its super deep. But I doubt it because this story doesn’t seem like it will have a humorous or light-hearted conclusion unless he gets the Jeff Ep treatment… but I digress.
I say all this to say that I don’t really look like Diddy and I’m willing to fight anyone who says I do!
Leave a Reply