All entries for Tuesday 14 March 2006

Jobs and Values

I took a day off to make some money working as an interpreter. The job started at 9.30am this morning and I came back home at exactly 9.30pm in the evening.
For the 12 hours of intensive brain-raping I got paid 150USD, something around £85.
If I worked for 12 hours in Café Rouge in Leamington as a waitress, I’d make 12 times £4.50 (£54) plus around £40 worth of tips (a huge bundle of one pound coins one could kill someone with).
If I worked for 12 hours as a farmer in China, cultivating the most essential crops for the mankind, I’d most probably not be able to afford a full bowl of rice for myself at the end of day.
However, if I spent the same amount of time working as an escort, I’d get my ego boosted, my wallet fattened and my faith in humanity regained.

What’s the use in trying to eliminate prostitution by marking it to be illegal or more – amoral? It’s physical work, as much as crops growing. It requires knowledge and experience, as much as doctors and technicians do. People pay prostitutes a ridiculous amount of money largely because they are led to believe that they are engaging in something forbidden, ‘amoral’ and rare. If prostitution was estimated according to the efforts people put in, it’d not cost much.

I could not possibly comprehend the degree of underestimation of farmers’ labour. Their work is truly hard and at the same time extremely vital. I think every single person on earth has had a piece of bread at some point in their lives. Most of us probably take Hovis for granted, rarely thinking about the chores people have to do in order to grow the crops. If we estimated the work of the farmers by the same criteria, farming would become one of the most popular occupations, and maybe then we will have a better chance of saving the people in Africa from starving to death.

I don’t know how much waiters should be paid. I don’t know how much interpreters should get. I just think it’s unfair that my vagina costs more than my brains.

Lu Yang : 14 Mar 2006 20:06 |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem