You see the world through the prism of your past
experiences. How I’ve come to view
dancers has changed dramatically since I first started hanging out in strip
clubs. I’ve probably changed more than I realize. It’s difficult to really see
yourself, everybody has blind spots. I’d probably shock myself if I could go
back and time and interview me after my first time visiting a strip club. I
recently reread some of my older personal journal posts that reflected some of
my early misconceptions. I don’t keep a formal journal, but I often write about
things. The process of writing forces me to look at things differently. It’s
harder to lie to myself when I’m writing. I’ll usually delete the entry after
I’m done writing it, but I’ve kept a few of them in my personal files. Here are
a few of the misconceptions I’ve hard about dancers over the years that I saw
in those early posts.
Strippers are stupid
Obviously nobody would get up on stage and take their
clothes off in front of a bunch of drunken strangers if they had a real
education. Right? Wrong. Of all my misconceptions this was the one that was
dispelled the quickest. I tend to listen a lot more than I talk. It didn’t take
long to realize a lot of dancers are very, very smart, in both scholastic and
practical ways. I think a lot of folks can’t get past their preconceptions of
dancers. They want to believe dancers are dumb. I’m not sure if it’s to build
them selves up or to reinforce their stereotype. I’ve experienced intellectual prejudice.
I worked as a gas station attendant while in college. People assume if you’re
filling up cars to make a living you are probably just slightly smarter than the
gas pump you’re standing next too. People
can be really condescending. I was told a few times “What do you know? You work
at a gas station”. And they were sober. I
can’t imagine what drunken insanity dancers deal with.
Strippers are heartless
I used to assume all dancers had utter disdain for their
customers. Customers were just walking wallets to be harvested. This may be
true for some dancers, but not for a lot of them. I think it’s easier for me as
a customer to feel this way as well. If I say or do something rude to a dancer
it can just write it off as “it doesn’t matter, she only wanted my money”. For
either dancer or customer point of view it can be pretty dehumanizing. When I
fainted at a strip club and ended up in the emergency room I was really
surprised to find out a dancer had spent her Saturday night in the waiting room
to see if I was OK. That really floored me. I never expected a dancer to do
that. I figured once I was rolled out the back door they’d go back to business
as usual. I don’t go into clubs assuming that every dancer is going to be my
friend. But I don’t expect them to all be heartless vultures either.
Strippers have no ambition
A girl becomes a stripper because she doesn’t want anything
better for herself. The logic of that sentence is hopelessly twisted and
flawed. I’m not sure why I even had that idea. This is mostly me imposing my
own social preconceptions on somebody else. I’ve met dancers will all sorts of
different levels of ambition. Some are the cliché dancer who only works enough
to cover her next set of bills to other dancers who accomplish more things a
month than I do in a year. It makes me tired just following them on twitter.
This is true in any profession. I know engineers who only do enough to keep
from getting fired, others who are trying to reinvent the world. It’s people
not the profession that make the difference.
Strippers have no morality
Again this is me projecting my Iron Age witch burning puritan
Anglo-Saxon ethics I was raised with on somebody else. I was raised in a
society where public nudity is bad. Playboy was a “dirty” magazine, kept hidden
behind special racks at the store. You had to be 17 to see an R rated movie.
Taking your clothes off for money was not what moral people did. This fallacy
really faded quickly when I came to grips with the fact there wouldn’t be
strippers without strip club customers (me). The fundamental hypocrisy of that
idea is painful. Am I that blind to my own imperfections? I’m as integral to
the strip club world as the strippers. Without guys spending money dancers are
just broke naked women standing alone on a stage. Talk about throwing stones in
glass houses. The larger issues is exactly what about stripping is bad?
Most of this post stems from conversations I had with a
spokes model at a CES show a few years ago. She was hired to present the
products I was supporting at our booth. We were staying at the same hotel and
had the same schedule. We hit it off and I sort of became her older brother.
She was strikingly beautiful. And she was constantly hit on by conventioneers,
I mean constantly. I calculated she was propositioned once every fifteen minutes.
When I was around it at least slowed guys down some.
One day at lunch she was telling me about her trip to a
strip club one night. It was the usual stranger in a strange land kind of
experience. She just couldn’t believe a woman could do that for money. We got
into a lengthy discussion about how her job compares to stripping. I’m pretty
sure I changed her opinion of dancers for the better. I at least convinced her
that not all dancers are train wrecks.
Her (and my) misconceptions are really are just really
different as aspects of a larger one. The misconception stripping is bad and if
somebody is doing it they must have failed somewhere. This is just patently false.
If you described a typical a person as in young, self employed, making enough
money to comfortable you’d probably be impressed. Most people that age are
struggling to make ends meet and probably still living with their parents. You
add the word “stripper” to that same description and everything changes yet
nothing has changed. They are still the same person.
I’ve think there are four categories dancers fall into when
it comes to why they are dancing. Obviously they are dancing to make money but
they’re larger situation is much different. Most girls are dancing not because
they are morally bankrupt its their situation that determines it. This is a
breakdown as I perceive it. Most dancers don’t fit exactly into a category but
they generally fall into one.
The Professional Stripper
This is what she does for a living. She isn’t going to school
or waiting for something better to come along. She is happy to strip for a
living. Most professional strippers I know are college educated. She chose to
do this as a living.
The Lifestyle Stripper
This dancer loves everything about stripping except stripping.
It would be a great job except for the customers, the sleazy management, and
other strippers. They like the money and the huge flexibility the job gives
them. The like working in a bar, the late nights, and their friends they work
with. However, they really don’t like the stripping itself. It’s just a
necessary evil they have to put with to get the other perks. Stripping isn’t the
perfect job but it is close enough to keep doing.
The Best Option Stripper
The girls dance because it’s their best option at the moment.
The job provides enough income and flexibility to accomplish what they want in
life like going to school or raising their kids. Most would quit stripping in a
heartbeat if they could find another job with that let them accomplish the same
things. Unfortunately most of society doesn’t see stripping as a best option.
The Only Option Stripper
These are the train wreck girls who strip because it’s they
only thing they can do. Whether its drugs or personal problems they can’t
function at most jobs. One perk about stripping (at least in Portland )
is it’s virtually impossible to get fired. Even if you do get ‘fired’ you can
go work at another club down the road. These are the cliché strippers you
typically see in the media. They make for entertaining reading. Sadly, they end
up representing what most people think strippers are like even though they are,
in my opinion, the smallest percentage of dancers.
I think most folks would find this odd, but I’ve probably
grown as a person from hanging out at a strip club. I’ve had to confront some
of my deep seated biases about other people. We all have blind spots when it
comes to ourselves. I hope I always have the desire and courage to try and find
mine.
