social media feels like sex work.| pistachio tea ep. 5

walking to get a bagel and talking about this new life of being recognized on the street

The transcript:

Ooh, the worst part about voluntarily dressing like a hotep's wife (other than, you know, the hoteps tryna holla) is that when I take on and off my mask off this like, Nefertiti ass head wrap, like I gotta take it all the way up, all the way over, all the way down, and bring it on back. It's terrible. Hi, good afternoon. Hey, how you doing? Good. Alrighty, y'all.

Welcome to Pistachio Tea, in which I talk to you about my life as a sex worker.

I still honestly, if I'm honest, I still feel like a sex worker because social media is a really similar game in terms of Beauty for Capital.

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That's why I don't shut up about like, Beauty and the things that it affords you. I understand that much of the reason that I am so— that I was so quick to grow in the first place, that I stay being viral is because I am very pretty. I know this because the videos where I really have like very pretty makeup on or a pretty head wrap or like colors that are gorgeous or what have you— the engagement on those videos is higher. The reach on those videos goes further. And it's 25% because of all these comments that are like, you're so pretty, you're so pretty, you're so pretty. Thank you. I know. Or what's hilarious, my favorite comments are, “do you know how pretty you are?” I promise I do. If you don't walk around with this face and this body and this voice as a literal Disney princess [LOL] and get to 25 years of age and not know. I promise I know. Well, welcome.

We're here walking back streets of Brooklyn. I'm getting a bagel because I'm having a hard time convincing myself to eat these days. Anytime I am in go, go, go, go, go mode, I do not sit down and eat good food. It makes me slow the hell down. It's a double shot kind of day. It's Negroes outside!

Ismatu to their neighbors: Afternoon. This is fun. Oh, it's gardening. Good afternoon. afternoon! good, thank you! how are you?

i'm friendly in real life, it's not just for show y'all. i like to know my neighbors. i would stop and chat if i had time to stop and chat but i got [in a sing-songy voice] i got things to do today! all right i came to you all because i am processing some new phenomena which include, but are not limited to the fact that my face is now public record. I think that I've been like, lightly talking about, slowly expanding on, contrasting on, pretending like I don't see the [to my neighbors] hey, hi [and back to you] level of whatnot that's been happening over the course of the last year and a half, in which I went from someone being, [to my neighbor] you want me to leave this open? Okay. [and back to you] in which I went from someone who was anonymous, living my little mouse life, eating my cookies, drinking my juice, minding my business… to someone who now walks around on the streets of Brooklyn and has people say, “oh my gosh, aren't you so and so?” It's not so and so, it's, oh my gosh, are you on internet? Oh my gosh, I think I watched your videos. I think I followed you on Instagram, I think I followed you on TikTok. Are you Ismatu? Are you Ismatu?” I'm like, yeah. That's confusing every time. People be blinking at me. I was walking down the street, somebody screamed on the phone. I was like, what the hell? Black lady screaming, I'm ready to run. And she's like, oh my God. And she like puts her friend on hold, right? She ends up hanging up on her friend. She's like, “I left you a comment. Look at that, I think I saw you outside my building. You said to say hi, so I'm saying hi. And I'm like, oh, hi. It's so good to see you.” This is so different than what I imagined this would be like.

I have been scared of fame my whole life. And I think even being scared of it, I called it towards me even more. You know, the stuff that you concentrate your mind on is the stuff that you tend to pluck from the ether. That's what happened, right? I was so scared, nervous. Like people are going to look at me, people are going to look at me. Oh my God. I'm so scared. I'm so scared. I'm so scared. That life continued to draw me into places where I had to face this fear. I am scared of what I can't control and I cannot control other people's perceptions of me. I can't control what people will think that I said. I can't control how people think that I look. I can't control my effects on others. I can only do my best to show up genuinely and hope people meet me well and with honesty and earnesty in that regard. And I... It's still scary, I'm still scared. It's just that I am so much more grateful than I once was.

There was a point in time in which all of this felt, ahhhhhh “cursed” is strong. I would never quite say that. I know better than that. “Cursed” is strong. But, sorry, this is just the sounds of my afternoon. And they got construction going on outside. Let me close some windows. Courage is strong, I would never quite say that. It was just that— that didn't even help much, closing the windows. Lol. The weight of being recognizable is one that bears a lot of consideration on me. It's one that I have to contend with quite personally. And it's not an easy way to live life! especially in the club like… My excellence was relegated to a space where nobody knew me. You know, I could come in and put my shit on and pop my shit off and be excellent in that regard and be well known and be coveted and be desired and be respected for how I looked or how I talked and all those things. And then go home and I could enter back into my masked— and by mask, I mean, the mask I wear on my face and the way that I dress in my day to day life, cause it's not always titties and crop tops. It's usually like a male's cut shirt, men's sweatpants, a durag, and a mask. You can't tell what's going on with me in real life. And it's actually really nice to have that level of anonymity because I never get recognized when I dress like that. I'm only recognized when I'm like, you know, head wrap on, reading glasses, my stomach's out, what have you. That’s when some people that are like, oh my god, it’s Ismatu. When I'm out here in a durag and my old boyfriend sweats, don't nobody know it's me. And it's nice. The point is that I always imagined that, I think because the level of exposure and visibility that you have in the club is not loving, it's never loving, nothing about the club is loving, nothing about Beauty for Capital is loving. And social media feels really similar to sex work in that lots of the attention and the adoration that I get is in no small part due to the fact that I am gorgeous. and that people cannot help but consider me to be right or to be fair or to be benevolent even when I didn't necessarily do anything to earn that.

I was actually talking about that on live as some folks in this space were expressing their fears. Sorry about the wash my hands, you're going to hear the water again. Some fears and... Well, I want to turn on jazz music and then I'm going to wash my hands. Fears and concerns regarding... approaching community members or saying hi to people, they were like, well, how do I avoid the bad people? What if I live around scary people? And I was like, okay, so you're here with me in this space and we are strangers. What compels you to like and love me? Like what compels you to believe me? What compels you to be in this space? Why do you trust me even though we're strangers? And people had a mix of things, you know, because I agree with what you say on the internet or because I think you're pretty, which I enjoyed the honesty, or because I... I don't trust you, I'm just curious about what's going on here. And I said, okay, like this is a good and lovely mix of answers, right? There's nothing different about your neighbor than me. I'm just somebody that has been positioned to be at the front of the room. And that's what social media does, right? It positions me to being a speaker or a leader or a teacher in the front of the room. Whereas your neighbor is just your neighbor. Your neighbor could be... as lovely, as pretty, as useful, as curious to you as I am, if not more, because you'll actually have access to them in real life. None of these things are easy, they don't happen overnight. There's a reason that you hear me walking up and down the streets of Brooklyn saying good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon over and over again— because that's what you do when you're in community. You talk to each other like you see each other. There is an acknowledgement there. I see you, you see me.

I didn't expect this tenure of internet fame to come with such a sincere i see you, you see me. I thought that I was going to be interacting with fame in the same way that everybody always does… that they get locked inside of a prison that they can't escape. I was not looking forward to being inside a prison I couldn't escape. And the more that I saw these numbers go up, right— my metrics, my subscribers, the people that are willing to sit down and listen to me for one minute to three minutes to longer videos, 10 minutes, to podcast episodes, 40 minutes, 90 minutes. The more that I saw my reach, the more that I was scared of being put in this box that I couldn't get out of, where people regarded me as a resource but not a human. Or people regarded me as lovely, but ultimately inaccessible. When you start to covet things that you fundamentally don't ever think that you will actually have, it doesn't always result in you treating that particular thing all that well. And I was scared of what might happen to me or around me or to my life if I was well known enough to be coveted, but to... inaccessible to be in community with the people that wanted me.

[a medium strength Negro sigh]

Big fears, right? Reasonable fears. Fears that I never had, like navigating the club because the coveting something that was inaccessible to you was the name of the game. Like I'm know I'm never going to be accessible to you, duh. It's different here in this landscape. What I'm learning walking around Brooklyn and being recognized several times a week, sometimes more than once in the same day, depending where I am or what I'm doing… like basically, if I leave the house to go to any sort of function, what I'm noticing is when we do the oh my gosh let's follow each other on Instagram, one out of every three times that person already follows me. It's a really trippy fucking experience. Especially because I was... you know, sort of amassing this following of being really isolated from Black enclaves. I was in Chicago for a hot second and then I got surreptitiously moved, just unceremoniously ripped out of this life that I loved and this life that I had built… to go home and endure housing insecurity with my parents. So in the middle of bumfuck— no, not in the middle of nowhere, right? This is old people central. It’s where people old folks go to retire. That's where I am in Arizona. Ain't no cell service. Ain't no like, competent public libraries. It's a whole lot of racism. It's white men soliciting me for sex while I'm just standing on the street. I was like, this is!!—the level of absurdity for me to go from the club with old white men soliciting me for sex to go to my parents' house and still have old white men soliciting me for sex? I was like, this is just some big cosmic joke, right? So obviously nobody was recognizing me there. No one was like stopping me in Walmart being like, oh my God, I love your work, right?

It's a really different experience. Being in a black enclave full of people that want to think and want to engage and want to engage in community! and being well-known here does not feel like a prison. It feels like... strangers loving me? and I didn't know that would feel so... brilliant.

I had no clue.

I'm really grateful for this life. I'm grateful for everybody that can hear this. And for the last year and a half, I've been trying to figure out— because this is all above me. If you can't tell by now, I'm pretty spiritual woo-woo, right? So I got given these platforms out of nowhere and I remember going to God et al. That's what we're going to call it. Whatever you fill in with God, source, universe, even if you're agnostic or whatever. Whateverrrrrrr it is. Just fill in. I say God et al, as in like, you know, academic papers when they have like a bajillion authors. So it's just like the first author and then everybody else. That's what I'm saying. I was like, God et al, I don't fucking want to be here. And they said, “that's too damn bad. You gonna keep digging.” I was like, what do I do?

So like the first couple months. was really just me doing what I felt like I was supposed to do. Talking about what I felt like I was supposed to talk about. Going through the motions that I felt like I was supposed to go through. And I watched that be so effective and so changing and so meaningful to all these people. I didn't know that I had the social capital to instill change in my real life world until we bought a tractor from my tribe. But that's like a thing that I really did. Like I… really did that shit. And now I'm... coming back down to start building infrastructure so I don't ever have to kill myself getting something done like that ever again. So I'm here in this space where I'm sort of building from the ground up the online worlds and that I wish to see because I got big dreams, big big dreams. I got big things coming down the pipe right now. And this is just the stuff that I can conceive of! I'm working with the me that I understand. I can't even imagine what I will be able to produce and what I'll be able to bloom with the me's that exist in, I don't know, [BEEP BEEP BEEP] my bagel's halfway done. It's telling me I gotta flip shit because I'm cooking it in the toaster oven.

Um... I can't even imagine what I'm going to be able to do with the me's that I don't have the inventory for yet. With the person I'm going to be in one year, in three years, in five years. I am so excited to see what it is that I'm able to bring in this world. The more that I begin to commit to myself… I feel aliferous. I feel like I have wings.

So I'm just... You're gonna get sick of me. You're gonna get soOOOO sick of me, but I'm so grateful for everybody in this space that is paying to help me materialize these things that I've really wanted for all this time. All this time I've just been in such desperate want for community and now I feel like it's blooming right in front of me. And all this time that I've been on the internet, I've been just sweaty, snot-nosed, terrified (!!!!) of being known by all of these people. that I'll never know and thinking about how much freedom I was going to have to give up to be public record!— to belong to people that aren't me, to have my face and my voice be recognizable and inextricable from the work that I do. That's quite a lot. That's quite a lot to trade. You know what I mean? I loved my life in anonymity. So I'm realizing that the trade not only was worth it, it's so much better than I could have imagined. that fame doesn't have to be about adoration. It doesn't have to be about being exalted. It doesn't have to be about a pedestal if I don't want it to be. It can be about the genuine nature of human connection, even if it's different than the human connection that I've previously known. I'm so grateful. I didn't know this was possible and I'm grateful to be living a life where what is possible and what is plausible and what's acceptable and beautiful and blooming to me is rewritten every fucking week. I've been so afraid to bloom properly because it was like I was giving people crumbs and folks was eating that shit up. I was like… y'all so impressed by some damn bread. What happens if I really put my shit on? What happens if I really start to allow myself to really grapple, to really learn in public, to really do it, you know? I didn't know what was possible. And I'm happy to say, honestly, I still don't even know for sure, for real, what's possible. And I'm really excited to find out with you all. And I'm happy to finally have transcriptions on these. Thank you so much for listening.

My bagel is about to be done. I'll catch you in the next one.

ismatu g.