Although the candidates differed, the substance of the on-going dialogue remained the same: each interviewee spoke of themselves, of their strengths and favorable characteristics, of their experiences and history, while the receiver nodded in encouragement of the conversation. The energy permeating the space around the subjects was tense, as the contestants, in the uncomfortable silence that would befall the pair at the end of a brief, nervously awaited approval from their host. They feared rejection, humiliation, embarrassment, and this fear was present in the slight movements of their hands and legs, and the awkward inflections in the tones of their voices. They were selling themselves, placing themselves on the shelf marked ‘for sale’, elaborating on the benefits of that which they were offering.

We do it everyday, in every aspect of our lives. We sell ourselves as thin, fit, healthy, intelligent, witted, and funny. We buy what we value and pay for that from which we benefit.  It rules our civilized lives; we are constantly concerned with maintaining the well being of our bodies and our minds, decorating and educating ourselves so that we may one day be highly valued by our peers. We are conditioned by media and market, by economics and mainstream ideals to respond to the egoist impulse to strive and achieve, and we have fused the idea of happiness and success with knowledge and wealth, appraising those accomplished individuals for greater worth than those who have neither the brains nor the goods. A poorly valued individual is like an unattractive hooker: she struggles to survive in the business of life because she lacks that which makes her appealing to potential employers:  she may be disregarded, discounted, and placed in the half-off bin with other useless items and moral waste.

Although illegal in its most sexual application, the essence of prostitution is that upon which our modern day society is constructed, survived by the philosophy that if you have nothing to sell, you simply don’t get the job.