Teaching Assistant Quits to Twerk, Makes Buckets and Buckets Of Money
Meet Jessica Vanessa, a 22-year-old Florida woman who loves life, having fun and making twerking videos on Vine. She used to be a kindergarten teaching assistant, but after advertisers found her, she’s taken to twerking full-time (which sounds kind of painful, if lucrative). (I tried twerking once and had to take a Vicodin because I threw out my back/like Vicodin.)
Jessica Vanessa won’t say exactly how much she’s making by dancing on the internet, but she’s got almost two million fans and says her paycheck is in the six figures. That means it’s over $100,000. At first I thought “huh, she makes 10k a year? That’s not s great,” but then I realized I don’t know how to math and started crying softly at the real number. I’m not jealous, okay? I just want to pay off my couch as quickly as possible.
Here’s a quote from Jessica:
“What I make in six seconds would take me four months to make as a teaching assistant.”
I can’t. Hold on, let me regain my composure.
While being a vine star does have its benefits, Jessica says she’s also had two major “breakdowns” over the mean comments she gets on her videos. In fact, at one point she wanted to give it all up because people were calling her names and referring to her as a whore, even though she says that her dancing isn’t about sex. Which: Awesome! Tell those people to STFU!
‘I’m not a celebrity but I do get a taste of what they have to go through – I have strangers calling me a whore, people calling me fat, people calling me ugly, people saying just about any mean thing you could say.’
‘People like to define you as a whore for twerking but it’s just a type of dance, that’s it, if people were open-minded they would understand that.’
Jessica’s not quitting, though. And she’s got the support of her family behind her. She says she can even show her grandma the Vines if she wants to, because there’s nothing offensive or embarrassing about them — and because she says her grandma might want to join in. The only person in her family who had a problem with her job, it seems, was her dad, and not because it was sexual or “wrong,” but because he wasn’t ready to accept that his daughter was now an adult. (But maybe she will also buy him a car and that will help? My parents always said they didn’t care what I did as long as I bought them a house to live in when they retire.) (But my parents also have no idea what a house costs these days because they live in a bomb-ass rent-controlled apartment, so…)
It’s great to see someone doing what she loves and also being able to have fun with her job. Jessica told The Daily Mail that she misses working with kids, but that she doesn’t miss the 9-5 grind. Can’t blame her! Twerk your way to millionairedom, Jessica Vanessa!
Also: I’m real happy for you and I’m going to let you finish but Julian Serrano is the best twerker of all time. Of all time!