Face-Out

  I work as a face-out sex worker and I have a significant online presence. This means my face has a lot of reach - there are literally tens of thousands of people in the world who have seen my face, many of whom will have seen it enough times to remember it, a fewer number will have actually taken the time to see me in person and absolutely will recognise me when I’m out in the world living my life, regardless of how done up or dressed down I might be. There’s a vulnerability that comes with this exposure. I’m aware of it, I was aware of it before I made the choice about 3 or so years ago to become ‘face-out’.

So why did I do it? I think there’s a few reasons why it just started to make sense. Firstly, I was quite tattooed. I could have these amazing pictures done and have to blur half my body and my face - it didn’t leave much for people to see and aesthetically it looked messy. I eventually decided to unblur my tattoos, which was a big shift in my privacy, so that people could at least see my figure properly - something quite important for business, and so people could make up their own minds about my ink and whether it appealed to them or not. Removing the mystery around them helped business - people could see my ink was quality and not hate symbols or anything ridiculous.

Leaving New Zealand gave me some breathing room regarding my discretion. Part of me wanting discretion in those days was firstly to prevent my family finding out, which became a non-concern after I outted myself anyway and that actually turned out to be pretty fine. They’re all back home in another country so the chances of it being a problem for them is slim. Secondly, my ex wanted me to keep a lid on things because it could affect his custody, which was fair enough - things get a lot trickier when children and exes are a concern. I know of a sex worker whose job affected her custody outcome and that was never far from my mind - sex work is considered predatory unfortunately by too many people even under decriminalisation. But these concerns are now years and years behind me - I’m only accountable to myself now and I don’t really let people into my life who aren’t fully aware of my lifestyle and honestly, after the heartbreak of losing contact with my step child, I won’t be inviting people into my personal life with ‘custody concerns’ again in any kind of hurry. I helped raised a kid, I’ve done that, I’m done. And then there’s travel issues - facial recognition technology can make travel difficult for sex workers, but most of the countries that it affects are countries I’m unbothered about visiting personally - the US for example (I’m writing this on election night and honestly any country that can elect a Trump to it’s helm in the first place holds no interest to me at all).

So moving to Australia as a self-employed unattached person left me with only a couple of other concerns around discretion - being recognised in public and creeped on, and limiting future career moves. But significantly, I also now had INCENTIVE to show my face. Australia is considerably more competitive in a business sense, and I was coming up against clients who seemed a lot less trusting. Moving to Australia from New Zealand as someone who had been (I’m trying not to sound arrogant but) a reputed, relatively successful escort was incredibly humbling. I went from being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a massive pond - I was really struggling to find my place and compete against escorts who really could hold their own in other industries whether it be it marketing, business, creative direction, fashion… and then there’s me, the person who thought intuition and being good at blowjobs was enough to be successful in this industry. Sex work in New Zealand was much more working class, and a monopoly system of advertising made it relatively simple to stand out because it always felt like we were all on a level playing field, people even pretty much all charged the same and very few showed their face. Here, that wasn’t the situation at all. In this sink or swim situation that I’d put myself in, moving here with nothing and no-one to ask for advice, I was doing a fairly inelegant frantic doggy paddle to stay afloat.

With all this happening in the background, and me already stepping up my game to work on other aspects of my business, it turned out that the final decision to show my face happened actually fairly impulsively, after a couple of wines on a night where a client had stood me up. I’d been feeling a bit flat about business, and I’d been spending all this time on social media looking at my beautiful peers showing their faces, knowing that’s what I was up against. At that time I had huge double mirrors on my wardrobe in the bedroom, and I thought I looked great. The lighting was good, I felt sexy and ready for this booking that didn’t eventuate. I snapped a selfie and looked at it, and wanted to post it - but my face was my best feature in this photo. You couldn’t see a hint of any of the bogan stereotypes people throw at me for being tattooed (and kiwi, the weird anti-kiwi sentiment people have here is probably enough for me to rant about in a whole other blog so I’ll save it). So, impulsively, a couple of wines in, I posted it to Twitter, face and all. And that was that.

I received a couple of concerned texts pretty quickly, alerting me to the fact I had ‘forgotten’ to blur my face, as if I’m not a capable intelligent adult capable of doing deliberate things. But other than that, the sky didn’t fall down. People didn’t suddenly start running up to me in the street, and there was no awkward texts from my parents letting me know their neighbour/friend/distant cousin had found out I was a hooker overnight. My life just didn’t change that much. But business did.

I think being a face-out sex worker, as an alternative worker in Australia helped my business immensely. It countered any stereotypes or fears people wrongly have about being tattooed or being a hooker over the age of 25. People now trusted me, I was suddenly a very real person to them. And for someone trying to create a new life in a new country I think that was incredibly important for me, to prioritise business so I could financially prop myself up a bit after my divorce. I also don’t have potential career concerns, as someone who will ALWAYS be self employed, regardless of industry (though my intention is to stay around sex and relationships), my face isn’t ghoulish, I’m out already to the most important people and to date, I haven’t had too many issues with aggressive fanboys in the street. To date.

This gets me back to my point about how being face-out creates vulnerability. By becoming face out, I shifted the onus of my privacy away from myself, and onto others. I rely on people to essentially be good people - and in today’s world that’s a pretty big ask. I do believe that just because a sex worker makes the choice to be face out, or be in any other way immediately recognisable, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to expect a reasonable degree of privacy. 

We are not celebrities. Even if you are a follower, or a ‘fan’, we are not exactly film stars or public figures. We didn’t arrive in this industry looking for fame, we arrived here to have private dalliances in exchange for money. We work in a stigmatised, sometimes not even legal industry, and our whole job is built around a need for discretion - in fact you depend on it as clients. Our work is still underground and hush hush - a secret undercurrent below mainstream society. This is still true even if you’ve come to know us in a public space. It’s just an unfortunate side effect of the digital age, that there is pressure to be present, accessible and visible to potential customers, even if you’re in an industry where being visible is counter to the premise of the job. Social media is an integral part of my marketing, and it’s the part of marketing that I excel at. Quite simply, I sink without it. Curiosity around our industry and just a general attraction to our bodies and lifestyles means we can and do grow quite large followings and our reach can actually spread quite far, meaning we can be well known by our peers on the other side of the globe, their clients, but also ‘haters’, anti sex work activists, and nosey people in general. But it’s the business now, and sadly we have to rely on people to not be absolute shitheads to still be able to live a relatively normal life.

So if you approach an escort in public, even with what you feel is good intentions, you will make them deeply uncomfortable, and these messages I often receive that say they’ve seen me around, are creepy. Nobody, particularly women who work in a stigmatised industry and who are vulnerable to violence and stalking, wants to be informed that they’re being watched. I’m under no illusions that people will see me around - I’m fairly recognisable, but I don’t need to know you’ve been watching me - I can’t even fathom what that would achieve to let me know that. I don’t care for your opinion about how I looked at the time, it’s never going to be a compliment, it’s only ever going to create discomfort. I’m often out with my partners or friends and that time, is MY time, and not yours to intrude upon. It’s important to remember that in spite of our sexy online presence and our marketing, in reality we are all just normal people - going out to eat, shopping for vegetables, going on dates, going to the gym - and snapping us back into work mode, the work we are trying to keep hidden from the restauranteur, the personal trainer, the grocery assistant - is actually pretty unkind and indiscreet. In the same way I would never approach a client, because it’s my job to keep our secret - it’s also the job of clients and people who supposedly claim to support our work, to leave us alone. If I contacted a client with ‘I saw you out with your wife’, it would come across as threatening, and the same is true when someone does this to me. I wish we could abandon somehow the ‘fandom’ element of sex work, to abandon pedestals and awe, and go back to the days where naughty secrets, mysteries and discreet knowing nods were enjoyed rather than destroyed. 

Maybe you’re here because you enjoyed my writing, maybe you’re here because you like my face (or perhaps maybe in spite of it), or my tits or my sass. Maybe you’re here out of curiosity, an intention to book or an intention to learn - but while you’re here let me ask you to fall in love again with mystery and secrets - things that our society is slowly chipping away at. If you see an escort around, if you see me around, know that I showed you my face as a marketing tool and not an invitation into my identity. Your heart might skip a little with the excitement of seeing someone out in the world that you recognise, but contain yourselves, you aren’t witnessing a persona, a Petra, a brand, but a stranger in the wild just like you.

PETRA FOX

Twitter: @foxandthefeline

Instagram: @foxandthefeline

Web: petrafox.com.au