[Place: a well-known Madrid nightclub. Time: between two and three in the morning.]

I've been on 4-inch heels for two hours in a dress that would shock every single nun at my school along with three of my classmates. We work as image hostesses in a promotional action for a beer brand, exchanging drinks for bottles of thirds and holding draws for double tickets for a festival.

All kinds of people enter through the door: rebounds from the Oktoberfest at the Palacio de los Deportes, foreigners, 40-year-olds, indie music lovers... and sometimes, all together.

We find people in every possible drunken state: from the most friendly to those who stare at us with a fish face while reeling. We have no choice but to be patient and eager, to show the proactivity that we boast so much about in our resumes.

In one of these, one of my colleagues speaks to me (when I say “talk” I mean to speak loudly, the only way to communicate in a nightclub). One of the club's clients has told him that if we work as image hostesses it's because we're only good for that. She looks at me hurt and I recognize in her the face that I have sometimes put on when they have dropped comments like that when I was working on other occasions.

I ask her what she answered and she tells me that she laughed and let it go. She hurts me but I understand her. There is no other way, we are working, we do not represent ourselves, but we represent the brand that has paid the agency that night and we cannot take the liberty of reacting as we would outside and leave our bosses with clients.

“For another, tell her that we are working and that if they disrespect you you will have to call security” I tell her as I grab her shoulder to comfort her. She nods and leaves with her head down while my blood boils inside not only for her but only for the fact that we have to put up with this and other types of insults without losing our smile. Like when we're working they ask us for our phone number and if you say you don't give it, it's, according to some, "because you're being interesting by saying that you're during working hours." It seems that at this point, many still do not understand that a "No" is a "No". And they even take out the phone and tell you to secretly dictate the numbers to them. No no and no.

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Another comes up to me and asks what I do besides being a stewardess. "I'm a journalist" she affirmed convinced. I work as a stewardess but that's not what defines me, because saying that we're only good for being an image in a nightclub is like saying that a garbage can is only good for cleaning up shit.

In all the years that I have been working in this way, I have not met any stewardess who was not clear that it was a temporary job. Something that manages you for a few years because of how easy it is to combine it with university life. But if we have something clear, it is that it is not a profession that you can live in the long term. At least not for a long time unless you end up in a transport company, so we all have some studies or other jobs at the same time that we work as hostesses.

Apart from the fact that it is something we do at a specific moment in our lives, I have met beautiful women, but really beautiful ones. But not only beautiful on the outside, but inside and also, some of them, brilliant. One of my dearest friends, whom I met working as a stewardess for a soccer team, spent six months in New York on a volunteer job building houses, the same one who, in addition to being an outstanding architect, reads Stephen Hawking's books lightly . And she is just one example.

I have shared a uniform with future doctors, engineers, publicists, teachers, designers, activists... Strong, kind, educated, cheerful women, and each and every one of them has seemed to me to be worth something more than to make a microphone pass or deliver gifts at an event.

I want to think that many still get carried away by easy clichés, by “pretty girls are dumb” and “if she wears glasses she is smart”, because judging an appearance is and will be easier and faster than bothering to get to know the person we have. in front of.

And if they don't want to meet her, fine. They are within their rights, but for another, they should not be disrespectful, because at the end of the day, while they are enjoying their leisure time, we are in our working hours.

Tags: self-esteem, stewardess, beauty, hostess, image, work | Filed under: beauty