'Vanderpump Rules' star Billie Lee on turning to 'empowering' sex work when she was broke

Vanderpump Rules alum Billie Lee is getting candid about turning to sex work when money was in short supply.

On a recent appearance on the Oldish podcast, the former reality TV star opened up about how she had trouble finding a job as a trans woman when she first moved to Los Angeles. She had plenty of experience as a server, but she was still being turned down by all of the restaurants she applied to.

“They would love my resume because I have all this serving experience from college,” she told hosts Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess, according to People. “And then they would see me and then be like, they wouldn't hire me. They were just like, ‘No, we don't know what the hell this is.’”

She said when she worked at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant while she was briefly on season 6 of the hit reality TV show, sex appeal was valued above all else. “Even when I worked at SUR on Vanderpump, it was about being attractive, being sexy, wearing sexy clothes.”

When the co-hosts asked what she did for money if she couldn’t land a job, Lee revealed that she supported herself by getting “paid to do sexual things.”

“Because our unemployment rate is so high — it still is — for trans people, a lot of us do lean on sex work,” she admitted. “Because we are all so fetishized and over-sexualized.”

But Lee isn’t ashamed of being a former sex worker; in fact, she takes pride in it.

“I find it very empowering now,” she said. “I'm a pleaser — I'm a people pleaser, which is hard if someone's mad at you — but I'm also just a pleaser in general. So whenever I became a sex worker, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I can get off pleasing these men and also get paid.’”

Since then, Lee has moved on from sex work and is now a published author, a podcast host, and a stand-up comedian, but admits to sometimes being tempted to take men up on their offers when they approach her.

“Like, the other day, I was charging my car and some guy was hitting on me,” she remembered. “And if they notice that I'm trans and I don't accept, they're like, ‘Oh, give me your Instagram or your phone number.’ Then they'll be like, ‘Well, how much?’ And the back of my head is like, ‘Oh, I could make some easy money right now.’ ”

She continued, “There’s something empowering about wanting to lean back into it because that was kind of what we had as survival, and it just became a way of life for me.”

Lee explained that as a trans woman it often feels like “society is beating you up,” and that she has struggled with not always feeling confident in her own body, but although sex work could be “scary,” having sex with a man who treated her like a “queen” would give her a welcome boost of confidence.

“I have to say, I was pretty blessed when I came to sex work,” she said. “There were times when I would first enter a hotel room, you do certain things that you learn. Like, I would check-in to make sure that the front desk saw me. And I would check and make sure where the cameras were, security cameras. And then I would have a pocket knife up in my coat, like, in my coat sleeve. I would do a check throughout the entire room, like in any cabinets in the bathroom, and stuff like that, before I would get on the bed. So you do like little things to protect yourself in that way.”

“But I had really amazing clients who like treated me with respect and wine and dined me,” Lee explained. “I was in hotels in Beverly Hills, you know, so I wasn't on the street, which a lot of my sisters are.”