Vanderpump Rules’ Billie Lee Recalls Turning to Sex Work After Feeling “[Beat] Up” as a Transgender Woman, Admits It Was “Scary” at Times

Billie Lee opened up about her decision to turn to sex work after feeling “[beat] up” by society as a transgender woman.

As she looked back on her time in the looks-based restaurant industry in Los Angeles, the 41-year-old Vanderpump Rules alum recalled feeling empowered by sex work as she shared how it boosted her sometimes low confidence and admitted to having fears about her paid encounters.

“They would love my resume because I have all this serving experience from college,” she explained of L.A. restaurants on the May 12 episode of Oldish, via 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.’”

“Even when I worked at SUR on [Pump Rules], it was about being attractive, being sexy, wearing sexy clothes,” she added.

After hosts Brian Austin Green, 51, and Sharna Burgess, 39, questioned Billie about how she was able to support herself financially amid her job struggles, she explained turning to sex work in her 20s and confirmed she was “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, because we are all so fetishized and over-sexualized,” she revealed. “I find it very empowering now. 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.’”

Although Billie doesn’t do sex work anymore, she looks back on her time fondly.

“The other day, I was charging my car and some guy was hitting on me, 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 stated. “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.”

According to Billie, being transgender can feel like “society is beating you up,” but having sex with men who treated her well gave her confidence. That said, she acknowledged “scary” moments.

“I have to say, I was pretty blessed when I came to sex work,” she noted. “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, I was in hotels in Beverly Hills, you know, so I wasn’t on the street, which a lot of my sisters are,” she added.

Billie Lee was featured on the sixth and seventh seasons of Vanderpump Rules.