Ladies of the oil boom

I've been working in the oilfields for more than a year, and my job now is to keep communication stable between the guys needing sand and the guys that haul the sand [used in hydraulic fracturing].

There have been very few surprises here about the attitudes of men. There are those that like me and those that love me. Some wives of the men here have trouble with me, since I'm one of very few women out here. They get very suspicious.

I do miss women. Sometimes I'll go into a truck stop and stand really close to women, and I don't even realize it. They look at me weird, and I'll say, `I'm sorry, you just smell so good!'

My first fight with a man was on a bus, when a guy threw a Gatorade bottle at me and blacked my eye. I didn't cry, I didn't flinch. But the minute I got off the bus I got into my own space and cried.

Your attitude makes a difference. If you're a sissy and whiny all the time and you get on the right crew, everyone will do all your work for you. But then why are you here? And then a couple of the women I know are very butch and they are very rough and tumble women -- they don't wear makeup and they are as big as most of the guys, so nobody gives them crap. I use humor.

My boss didn't want to hire me at first because the only facility he had was a man camp, but I said to him, 'For every one man running naked up the hall, there are five men who don't wanna see it either and will appreciate that there's a woman in camp so they can have an excuse to tell him to put his pants back on.' And my boss said, 'Great. I'm one of those five. You've got the job.'

My first man camp experience was with 40 guys in a trailer. I had friends already working there, and before I got there they bought a Disney princess comforter and fixed up my room and put a sign on the door saying `Welcome home, princess.' The first day I crossed out `Princess' and wrote `Queen'.

NEXT: Katy Helgeson