One of the things I always consider when writing this blog is trying to maintain the anonymity of some the subject dancers. While I tend to have a fairly softball delivery with my criticisms, they are criticisms none the less. While I always try to be an accurate as possible with my post I will occasionally leave out details or make subtle changes to make it more difficult to figure out who I’m talking about. Dancers are public figures with both safety concerns and an image to maintain.
In my previous post I was griping about some unattractive jewelry. While I had my tongue firmly planted in my cheek when I wrote about wanting a distraction, but it could easily be taken out of context. “Hey Sparkle, I just read on the internet that some guy would rather see a building get blown up than see you dance”. Not exactly what I meant. I am leveling some criticisms about a girl’s attire. When your job is dependent on your looks, you’ll probably be sensitive to comments about them. My job is dependent on my understanding of optics and electronics. I could careless what people think of what I look like, but I’d really upset if they thought I was clueless about my technical skills.
Her jewelry selection was definitely distinctive, but not unique. To make it harder to figure out whom I’m talking about, I’ll usually leave out or change certain details. The easiest thing to change is the day I went in. Most girls are pretty up to date about what girls work when, just by changing the day slightly you can effectively disguise who I’m talking about. It’s a little disingenuous of me but it doesn’t change the point I’m making and hopefully sparing somebody’s feelings.
I also keep in mind that things I write could get back to management and be used to fire a dancer. Susan Wayward recently wrote a blog about this. A dancer had probably gotten fired over something she had written in a blog. After reading her blog I don’t think the blog posting was the only issue that got her fired, more likely she had irritated management to point of getting fired, the blog posting was the last straw.
An unintended side effect is people will think I’m talking about somebody else. I often get messages from people asking for confirmation about who I’m talking about. More often then not, they are wrong. The problem with this is that if it becomes part of the dressing room gossip that Todd was talking about Epiphany when I was talking about Sparkle, it has the same effect. Epiphany doesn’t know I wasn’t talking about her, and if she feels that she’s been slighted it doesn’t matter whether she was the subject or not. The result is the same. A lot of people take their performances seriously. I have to do trainings and presentations. Most of the times I’ll get reviewed and a report of how I did sent back to me. Hung over salesmen are a very nasty audience. I’ve gotten some really viscous comments about what I present.
Many of the blogs I read seem to be an outlet for people to express feeling and issues they can’t normally do. I don’t know a single dancer who wanted to completely tell off a customer and bash his skull in with a brick, but instead bit their lip and smiled. I’m not immune to this either. One of my early blog posting was a relatively lengthy rant about how the club was being operated. I’d like to think my comments were well founded and supported, but it also emotional. At the time nobody read my blog so I had security through obscurity. I don’t have this luxury anymore.
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