Just trying to pay tuition? Liar!

That is my favorite line from Pitbull’s Go Girl, a ridiculously flat and meaningless song about picking up legitimate prostitutes at a bar (or, in Mr. Bull’s words, “bagging that off of Myspace”). I hear it on the radio so many times on the way to school, but I’d always just roll my eyes at the patheticism (that is a real word form now on) and baseness of the rap.

Well, turns out the Bull wasn’t off base at all. “More women needing cash go from jobless to topless,” reads the headline of a recent news article from the Associated Press. Gentleman’s clubs like Pink Monkey and Sin City are rolling in the dough as college-degreed, previously white-collar-jobbed girls are rolling out the goodies.

Exactly what kind of numbers are we talking about? A “dancer” will earn a couple thousand dollars on a good night. This translates to $100,000-$300,000 a year. The club isn’t the only venue girls are turning to – adult movies and porno magazines are getting more and more responses to job listings as the economy continues flushing itself down the toilet.

The transition to the nightclub scene isn't always a smooth one — from learning to dance in five-inch heels to dealing with the jeers of some customers. "It is like giving a speech, but instead of imagining everyone naked, you're the one who's naked," Rebecca Brown, 29, said.

First of all, dancing in five-inch heels is not a learned skill, it’s a talent. Take it from someone who wore these to photograph a fashion show on a three-step ladder barely wide enough to balance me barefooted. Not only was it the first time I wore them, they were ½ size too big. It’s a gene specific to the double X chromosome pairing, and in the words of Mary Lewis, ‘if you don’t got it, you in trouble’.

Second, well gee, maybe you should have thought of the uh-oh-naked-awkwardness thing before you sent your bra flying onto a bald sweaty head in the front row. Though this time, imagining everyone naked will actually help you, since you’d feel more like you belong. The only problem with that is that once you start feeling more comfortable in a room of naked horny bastards, something’s wrong.

I guess the main question here is whether it’s justifiable. “[In this economy,] desperate measures are becoming far more acceptable," said Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist who's had “adult” clients. That may be true, but how desperate are you going to get before you’re hovering over a middle-aged fat man with boobs saying Me love you long time? (In case you didn’t know, the phrase is a stereotype of Vietnamese prostitutes who’ve been shipped to the US as young girls who couldn’t really speak English).

Personally, I’d rather earn half of what they do but at a respectable job. A lot of girls may like to get freaky and fool around every once in a while, but I’d never choose that as a career. But hey, the one thing ethics class taught me is that morality is subjective – everyone has their own set of rules. Perhaps these women plan to find mommy-friendly jobs after the economy improves. Until then, they can hang out with guys like Pitbull – after all, he is just “that that raw”.

But where are the jobs?

As a second semester senior with almost nothing to do (that’s right, I succumbed to senioritis and gave up on doing homework, I’m a disgrace to the Harker community yada yada), I had the bright idea to find a job before heading off into the real world. My pick went to a Starbucks within a walking distance away from my house. Sure I heard about the recent job shortage caused by the financial crisis, but come on – among the emo stoners and other losers already working there, I would surely be the gem in a mountain of pebbles.

Instead of a job offer, reality slapped me in the face. Hard. According to Christopher Rugaber, an Associated Press economics writer, the number of unemployed Americans has soared to 12.5 million just in the last month. What does that mean for hapless coffee shop workers? Less hours and a cutback on raises. What does that mean for me? Spending my next three or so months in Starbucks on the customers’ side of the counter.

This will not stop my senior year, either. Financial advisors say that while the worst is yet to come – unemployment rates should reach an all-time low in 2010 since the Great Depression – the economy is so weak that it will take as much as five years to return to its pre-recession state.

Seems it would be wise to choose a major that will be a hot topic in the decade to come. Question is, Rugaber, is there one?

“Broadly, jobs are being added in education, health care and the federal government, the Labor Department said, with the government adding 9,000 new jobs last month alone. Some places that are hiring, such as companies that make nuclear power equipment, haven't been hit that hard by the recession. Others, such as discount retailers, are actually benefiting from the downturn as shoppers turn thriftier.”

So keep in mind, underclassmen, when you start to think about what you want to do with the rest of your life. It’s one thing to pursue your dreams and another to be practical – like it or not, we live in a completely materialistic world, and you can’t get anywhere without the green.

Like the Comcast commercial goes, everyone loves Money.

What can you do now? As Rugaber points out, retail is fervently grabbing teenagers and twenty-something college students by their blue collars. My friend, already happily working at Starbucks, got a second job at Abercrombie & Fitch. Maybe it’s not exactly discount retail, it’s still $8 an hour.

Goshdarnit. I guess that L'Oréal mascara won’t end up in my makeup bin anytime soon.


You can read the full article here.