Chapter 4
She shakes her breasts in my face and twirls around in the pink-striped dressing room. “Ohmygod, this fits so much better! Look at my rack!” she says.
After a full day of irritable customers making demands for out-of-stock items as they douse themselves in half-bottles of passionfruit eau de toilette, I needed this reminder of one of the benefits of working at Victoria’s Secret: helping women feel better about themselves.
It doesn’t take much. Sometimes just a well-fitting bra.
Yank those tits up and the self-worth comes with it.
“Uh, once you make a purchase, there’s a website at the bottom of the receipt. You can go to that and fill it out. Or not. No pressure.”
“No pressure? Please, hon. Don’t go selling yourself short with the ‘No pressure.’ You hear me? I don’t like when women sell themselves short, bugs the crap outta me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t go apologizing now, makes it worse. Selling yourself even shorter,” she says. “Lemme ask you this, do you know your worth?”
The question takes me off guard, especially coming from a woman who’s standing in front of me topless with fried ends and poor boundaries.
Also, I don’t know the answer. Or even the question really.
What does it mean? How does one know their worth?
What constitutes worth? I’m seventeen with bad grades.
I live in a nine-hundred-square-foot apartment with a single mom.
Most of the things I ingest are sold in a 7-Eleven.
And I know people say worth is a thing you’re born with, a thing you just intrinsically have by nature of being a human being, but I’m not so sure.
People are too precious about what it means to be human.
We’re just people. We’re just gross little people who shit and fart and fuck.
Who eat too much dairy and search for meaning in our iPhones and carry at least one undiagnosed mental illness.
People who, maybe, aren’t worth much at all.
But that all feels like too much to tell her, so I just nod my head and say, “Yeah, I think I do.”