Vanderpump Rules’ Billie Lee has spoken about her former sex work. (Getty Images)
Trans Vanderpump Rules star Billie Lee has revealed that she once turned to sex work after being denied work because of her gender identity.
The reality star was a guest on the Oldish podcast and recalled how when she first moved to Los Angeles and applied for work in hospitality, many venues hired based on appearance.
“They would love my resumé [CV] because I have all this serving experience from college,” she said. “Then they would see me and wouldn’t hire me. They were like: ‘No, we don’t know what the hell this is’.
Lee then revealed that she had taken to sex work to support herself.
“Because our unemployment rate is so high, it still is for trans people, a lot of you lean on sex work… because we are all so fetishised and over-sexualised,” she claimed.
A study in 2023 revealed that almost 42 per cent of trans women surveyed had reported being employed in some form of in sex work because either they were looking for “better pay” or “can’t get a job due to gender discrimination”.
Looking back, Lee said she found that work “very empowering now”, adding: “I’m a people pleaser, which is hard if someone’s mad at you, but I’m also just a pleaser in general. So, whenever I became a sex worker, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I can get off pleasing these men and get paid’.”
Now an author, podcast host and stand-up comedian, she went on to say: “The other day, I was charging my car and some guy was hitting on me. And if they notice I’m trans and I don’t accept, they’re like, ‘Oh, give me your Instagram or your phone number’.
“Then they’ll be like: ‘Well, how much?’ And the back of my head is like, ‘Oh, I could make some easy money right now’. There’s something empowering about wanting to lean back into it because that was kind of what we had as survival, and it just became a way of life for me.”
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