Making Her Way In The World

Way back in her past,  Alyssa Lyes, used to be a cam girl.  For about three years of her life, she lived a fictional life of her own creation before the camera, keeping her true identity of herself and her family separate.  This was because she never wanted anyone to know what she did for a living.  In fact, she never saw this as a career, but a job, a means of making money and a sustainable living for herself and her family.  She started the gig because at the time reliable personal transportation wasn’t always available for her and this afforded her the convenience of working from home.

Alyssa said that she always felt comfortable with her body while she performed this job, which she states that although she performed a lot of what she deems as ‘sex stuff’, she never masturbated.  Most of the time, she admits laughingly, she watched Netflix on silent while men ‘threw money at her’.  It allowed her a flexible schedule and it made good money.

Nowadays she doesn’t talk about this time of her life or job much, adding that only her closest friends and husband know of this part of her past, because they do not cast any shadow of judgment towards her.  One time, she mentioned that she had worked as an art model at the college, and was called a "whore" by a cast member of a show she was in at the time.  A highly religious in-law she recalls attacked her for revealing just a hint of a corset underneath one of her shirts in a photograph.  That same photo, she explains, was later used as a headshot for a theatre award.  The few times she's been nude in film work have been treated as 'bad gossip' in the theatre world of which she works as an actor, but she never feels overly harshly judged for her it within that circle.  Once she did a Facebook friendly photo shoot of which she found herself the target of hate, being called 'whore', leading her to block and unfriend many.  This is why she never talks about her past as a cam-girl, because that job is seen as 'sexual con artist'. 

However she does see rays of hope for society as a whole.  In the true crime world, murder victims are no longer referred to as "hookers" or even "prostitutes", but as sex workers.  So, this gives her hope for her own value of self and for her sisters, as well as the next generation.