A ‘spanking model’ from Kent insists that her chosen career as a sex worker has made her ‘happy and rich’ without a single ‘dangerous or traumatic’ experience
Everything you thought you knew about sex work is wrong, says a raunchy ‘spanking model’.
Melissa Todd from Broadstairs in Kent is 49 and claims she always knew she wanted to be a sex worker – and she’s yet to have a moment’s regret.
“I’m often asked how I ‘got into this’ – ‘this’ being sex work,” she says.
“I find the question irksome, because it seems to contain an implication that there’s something wrong with my choice: that a nice, clever, stable girl would never follow such a career path, and sex workers must be abused, trafficked, druggies, and probably thick with it. I am patently none of these things.”
So why aim for a career in vice?
“The short answer? I like money, wine, attention, sequins: I was never going to be an accountant.
“But here’s the long answer. You know how feminists claim no little girl ever dreams of becoming a sex worker? Well, I did. I would beg my mum to take me round Soho to look at the girls standing in doorways, the handwritten ‘Models’ signs in the window.”
At primary school, when the kids were told to make a collage of the future they wanted, her picture already stood out. “The other girls cut out pictures of babies and layettes from catalogues. I chose lacy basques and thigh-high boots.”
She never liked school, she explains.
“I couldn’t see the point. I hate being told what to do. Hockey, sewing, art class, get stuffed. I liked sitting exams, because they felt rather like gentle bondage, being forced to sit still, in silence, for three hours, and I was good at them, not that it matters.”
Her ‘lucky break’ came when she answered an advertisement for table dancers when she was 19.
“When I walked into the club, cliche though it be, it felt like I’d come home,” she said. “After four months of joyous wiggling, I got spotted at the strip club by a model scout, started making stills and videos, and quickly found I’d a talent for it.”
She got a special buzz in front of a camera. “I love being filmed: it soothes and gratifies my attention junkie self,” she says.
“I combined it with stripping for yonks, but decided to quit the lap dancer life when I turned 30,” she says. “I didn’t want to become ridiculous. And you can carry on making porn until you’re 90, if you want. There’s no age discrimination.”
Spanking then opened up a promising career opportunity. “I gravitated towards spanking early. I’m kinky, I can talk posh and I know what to say, although only when you point a camera at me.
“Combine this with legs that suit stockings and you have a career.”
Soon she found she was making “proper money, the kind that doesn’t just dissipate and dissolve through your fingers the moment you grasp it: money you can rely on, invest, wallow in.”
Driving her success all along was her tough start in life.
“I’m from poverty, and could hardly ignore a chance to exploit wits to claw my way free,” she says.
“Many of the spanking models I worked with offered domination sessions too, and made them sound a well-paid lark, so I thought I’d try myself.
“It’s a treat to provide people with the kinkiest version of their wildest dreams, then revel in their gratitude and awe.”
Her clients have also, so far, proved far safer than the people her friends encounter in the care sector.
“Men come to my house, or I to theirs, and I’ve yet to endure a dangerous or traumatic experience,” she says.
“No one can ever believe that, but it’s absolutely true.
“Unlike my friends who work in the care sector, who are regularly violently assaulted, and yet never have to answer idiotic questions about why they are risking their safety.
“I suspect people don’t want to believe you can break all the rules, never rise early, nor do any proper work, and yet not suffer any consequences, beyond being happy and rich.
“I regret nothing, except perhaps not starting sooner. And I’ll carry on until my dying breath.”
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