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The youngest politician in an Australian parliament recalled the horrifying moment photos of her working as a stripper as a student leaked online.
Georgie Purcell, 30, a heavily tattooed Victorian Animal Justice Party MP, is the youngest woman in any Australian parliament and the second-youngest to be elected to the state Legislative Council.
Her path to parliament has been fraught with obstacles due to her ink and her former life as a stripper, which left her open to attacks from trolls and political enemies.
Ms Purcell told Daily Mail Australia she was just 19 and studying law at university when a photo of her working as a stripper leaked, and she thought her future dreams of working in law or politics were over.
Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, 30, recalled the horrifying moment photos of her working as a stripper leaked online.
Ms Purcell is the youngest woman in parliament and the second youngest ever to be elected to the Victorian Legislative Council.
Ms. Purcell began working as a topless waitress and stripper, also working at a post office, to try to make ends meet as she was living away from home while studying.
Despite doing her best to keep her work private from her personal life, everything changed when she was tagged in a Facebook post.
“I worked far from where I studied and grew up, so I wouldn’t know anyone I knew, and while I felt there was nothing wrong with that line of work, I knew many others would think otherwise,” he said.
“Then one day, I was sitting at the hair salon and when I logged into Facebook, I saw that I was tagged in a picture without my consent that showed me working as a stripper and there were tons of comments.
“I grew up in a small rural town in Geelong, so everyone knows everyone and it spread very quickly and brutally.”
After the image was shared, Ms Purcell said she felt her life was no longer worth living, and she thought her legal career was over as she would never be seen as a proper and proper person.
Trolls sent her messages to tell her she was disgusting and that she should be ashamed, many of them from people she went to college with.
The abuse saw her withdraw from on-campus learning just two years after her five-year degree.
Ms Purcell said she was made to feel like a bad person because of her choice of work, which led to her eventual diagnosis of PTSD amid regular bouts of anxiety.
But after being employed as chief of staff to former Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick, she decided to run for parliament herself, and decided to discover the skeleton in the closet before a political enemy could use it against her.
“Politics is so vicious and brutal that when you have political enemies, they find out anything about you,” Purcell said.
“So a couple of years ago, I shared my story and wrote an op-ed about what happened,” Purcell said.
“We all have a past and digital footprint and for younger politicians, it’s much easier to trace than the average politician, so after sharing my story I felt the weight lifted off my shoulders.
‘After doing it I became a new person. I gained self-confidence and because of my past I thought I could only be a spectator, not a participant, but now, two years later, as an elected representative, it has been a heady experience.’
Ms. Purcell also proudly records her achievements and beliefs on the many tattoos she has on her body.
He has a wombat tattoo after he helped pass laws banning recreational hunting of the animal, and another of a duck, the next animal he intends to protect from shooters.
Ms Purcell revealed in an Instagram video in December that she has continued to be targeted by cruel trolls because of her identity as a woman.
Another of his tattoos depicts a woman boxing along with the phrase “stand your ground.”
She has also given a nod to her past in the adult entertainment industry with a tattoo of a stripper on a pole with the words “real work.”
Ms Purcell revealed in an Instagram video in December that she has continued to be targeted by cruel trolls because of her identity as a woman.
‘Another brain-dead idiot covered in tattoos with no life experience and no idea what the really important issues are. This is going to be tax money well spent,” she would say.
Ms Purcell wrote: ’24 hours as an MP and this is just one of many similar comments I have received.
“I never thought parliament was a place for me because of guys like this.
‘I want other women, young people and those with colorful backgrounds to see that parliament is a place for them too.’
Ms Purcell wrote that it was a “truth” that women “usually have to work extra hard to be taken seriously.”
“And then when we get to where we want to be, we have to justify our ability to do the job, receive judgment on how we look and dress, and constantly recite our education and life experience,” he wrote.
I knew this would happen in public life, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay, and I want to make it clear that I won’t stand for it.
‘PS something tells me my old friend wouldn’t approve of some of my work experience x’.
Ms Purcell said young women regularly contact her for advice and says she likes to “show them they can do anything and there’s no shame in it.”
“The advice I give is that there is nothing shameful about working in sex work or adult work when it is consensual,” she said.
‘The ones who should be ashamed are those who want to bring that out and try to destroy you using it.
“The narrative is changing today as if what happened to me in 2012 happened in 2023, it would be handled so differently and it’s great to see how far we’ve come as a society and how women are viewed.”