Preying, Selling, Slanging

Sales prayssay.

Swear to God, the last 6 years has completely blown my categories for how to live my life. How to live life. What to espouse. What to esteem. Where sustenance comes from.

We using stereotypes to sell, stigmas to slang and psychoanalysis to prey.

My God. Is this the cost of promotion? Is this the cost to sustain my life?

Can’t be.

That career, vacated. The plan to make some money—the hustle—rang in the play. I picked up. Damn, you mean to tell me I gotta prove myself to work, still? (sarcasm).

Yeah you do. You gotta over-prove yourself to earn money, to work. The meritocracy certainly permeates the whorearchy too. I mean the fact that the word whorearchy exists and must persist¹ is a whole other mindfuck of economic proportions. The harder hierarchy beneath the way I am socialized and socializing is class, race, being and imperialism.(If I keep saying this, lawd, maybe they’ll get it). Empire is whopppping our assssesssss.

“A good communicator can tell a story and, generally, everyone is able to listen and walk away with something” I’m paraphrasing what I heard recently while streaming. Immediately after hearing it I said, “Damn. am I not a good communicator? Is that why I’m better at selling my looks, than selling classes?” Cause when I’m selling my looks, what’s understood don’t need no explaining. Posting up and selling, even, the appeal of sex — let alone the arousal— I mean I’m not explaining shit. I’m not proving no value. (Non)negotiating, setting boundaries around value, at times— yeah. But having to give a MF three power words— Nah. But those encounters are another type of psychological clusterfuck, whose injuries have been extensively written, spoken and communicated.

What I— what I’m recognizing (and attempting to un-read) is the injury of selling myself to work, more than I’m actually creating. Selling myself for production rather than selling the creations. I am making a definite distinction between the meaning of production and the meaning of creation. Oh because when I’m able to keep it mostly, purely visual— what’s understood don’t have to be explained. I don’t have to CV my pussy. I don’t have to CV my sex appeal. I don’t have to CV my artistry. But you telling me, you wanna see my qualifications, accomplishments and experience to decide whether or not my $50 class is worth it?

Awe dawg. Miss me with that bullshit. Because that’s fake.

No what you really are using to size up my sell is what it looks like. How it’s gonna make you look. How does it directly benefit you, socially. So then the pressure is on me to explain, to show, to fit into those visual stereotypes, so you can be codified into the brand and identity of human you espouse to be rather than just revealing the person you actually are and finding out that, socially you’re different. You aint got the best technique. You aint fluid. You fine but you awkward. You funky. You less than desirable. You actually a broke, Black bitch. You actually pretentious AF. You know what? you know too much. Maybe you don’t know not it all but you act like it. You make people feel small cause you take up so much space. You Black bitch. You un-human, I can’t relate, you unrelatable. You don’t ever chop yourself down.

You can’t relate?

My nigga I wear this bussdown to manage my hair, so I’m spending less time on combing and more time creating. You ever kinked up so much, it took you more than a day to comb through to manage? My nigga I wear this bussdown to manage they perceptions too. Do you know how much easier it is to sell as a approachable, desired beauty when your skin is this dark? My nigga I wear this bussdown to embody the way that I feel inside. Bitch my hair don’t naturally grow long and for me self-augmentation is a tool a working. For better or worse. Bitch I wear this bussdown cause I ain’t proving my pan-africanism to no motherfuckin body, as if there is no African ancestry with less kinky hair.

You can’t relate to contorting yourself to carry your weight? You can’t relate to tricking these people to make a wage? You can’t relate? They aint buying what I’m selling.

1. Dolan, Eric W. “New Research Provides the First Scientific Evidence for the “Whorearchy”” PsyPost - Psychology News, 11 Apr. 2024, www.psypost.org/new-research-provides-the-first-scientific-evidence-for-the-whorearchy.