Palina Rojinski and My Complete Professional Crisis

"Blogger" has never appeared on any list of prestigious occupations, and I’ve made my peace with that. My family still isn’t entirely sure what I do for a living—something involving the internet, apparently, which places it somewhere between lottery ticket and lifestyle choice in their estimation. You work from home. Without a boss. Like some kind of bum.

There is, admittedly, a grinding quality to it. No real downtime, income that arrives in irregular intervals and then immediately evaporates into taxes and health insurance and whatever fresh legal threat some lawyer has decided to send this week. But I was broadly okay with the life I’d chosen. I had picked this over something more respectable and I stood by it.

Then Palina Rojinski—German-Russian actress and presenter, built an entire career on being impossibly beautiful and funnier than people expect—posted that video. The one where someone, job title unknown, presumably employed by a production or makeup department, spends an extended and frankly enviable amount of time rubbing lotion into her chest. Professionally. For money.

"Breast massager" is not, I assume, an official HR category. The makeup department probably handles it under some blander heading. That knowledge has done nothing to quiet the part of my brain that has been reconsidering every professional decision I have ever made.