So after reading about the whole “making stripping illegal” thing I decided I wanted to find out what strippers actually think about it.
I went to Studio Veena’s online forum (pole dancing website) and asked strippers to give their opinion on the matter, because even though a lot of pole dancers aren’t strippers, fact is many strippers are pole dancers so I figured I would be able to find some there. So far I have gotten 12 responses.
Pretty interesting stuff, so I have posted below some quotes:
“”in reply to the comment about people working grocery stores or other such things out of desperation – totally true! I’ve worked my fair share of minimum wage jobs at fast food and grocery stores, and I would choose stripping any day over have to do that kind of bullshit for so little money. If a politician told me I now had to work overtime at Walmart just to make ends-meet rather than making twice as much in half the time doing something I enjoy, I’d be like “Excuse me? You think this is for *my* benefit?””
“I retired from the adult biz of 5 years back in September. I loved it. I found it very liberating and I miss it. I never did anything that I wasn’t comfortable doing. I worked with some wonderful, highly educated and respectful people. It was the best times of my life.
Yes, some women get into biz for the wrong reasons and that’s unfortunate… I’ve met a few women in the biz for the wrong reasons (deperate for money, low self esteem, bad-drugs, alcohol, abuse, etc) and that makes their stripping career worse. The truth is if you want to be a happy, healthy, successful stripper, you gotta have your head screwed on straight and stay a head of the game and take care of yourself.”
“I just started stripping this past weekend, but I don’t at all feel like I’m being “objectified” or am there out of “desperation.” Granted, I got pretty damn excited over the amount of money I made, but I was like “omg, omg, look at how much I made! This is awesome!” Not like “god, I can’t believe I have to ‘shame’ myself to make this.”
Sure, there are some assholes at the club that don’t treat the girls very well, but most of the guys I’ve dealt with were very nice. And even the ones that couldn’t have cared about anything but getting a good lap dance didn’t make me feel like an object. It was my job – it was why I was there.”
“People need to actually talk to strippers and get the inside look because it’s really not something you can “just imagine” doing. And most of the girls I worked with didn’t seem depressed or jaded or bitter about how they “had to strip to make money.” They seemed pretty damn happy that they could capitalize well on just owning boobs lol I met maybe two women who seemed to be doing it because they were the “stereotypical single mom strippers who thought they couldn’t make enough money doing anything else.””
“I can make as much money in 6 minutes as I make for 3 hours at my other part-time job where I painstakingly stock a convenience store.” I told one of my guy friends, “All I have to do it shake around a little on a pole and I get guys like you to hand me hard earned money from jobs they hate. Who’s the one being exploited here?””
“Look, i am a HUGE feminist, but I guess im third-wave feminist, in that I believe women have won the right to self-determine their own lives, we’ve got the freedom to own our own bodies. So what we want to do with our bodies is totally our own business…,….It may be in the name of protecting women, but to my mind making it illegal for women to earn money for taking off their clothes or dancing in the nude is taking their rights of freedom of choice back away from them, its disempowering.”
“Stripping is not inherently evil or degrading. Its how the individual woman feels about it, how it makes her feel, the limits and values and principles she has, that determine wether its a good or bad thing for her. I found dancing on stage and getting nude for strangers to be strangely empowering, exhilirating, liberating. I felt like I was no longer being inhibited by social conventions, I felt proud of my own courage and daring, it taught me to be self-confident and appreciative of my body, what it looks like and what it can do. I think the human body is an incredible thing, and should be celebrated and appreciated whenever possible, not hidden away or covered for modesty or the law’s sake. But thas just me. As ******* said, it depends on the individual woman.”
“In my opinion, making stripping illegal won’t solve any problems, unionizing (to protect workers and customers) will. Things will just end up going underground where the real problems start. :(“
I will post more responses as they come in. Of course I expect there to be a underrepresentation of unhappy strippers that feel awful about their job, but the point is that there are loads of strippers who are perfectly happy in their job. It is as such not the work itself that makes people feel bad about themselves, but how they are as people when they enter the business. And as the chick behind the last quote says, making it illegal won’t solve any problems.
Shanghaied Sigrid 