Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

levite · 01-11-2010, 01:22 PM

I used to date a woman who'd been in an economic tight spot for a while, and had been a stripper to keep herself financially afloat when no other work was forthcoming. She told me some fascinating accounts of life in the world of strip clubs, but she and the couple of her ex-stripper friends that I met were all consistent about several key points. First, that nobody they knew chose right out the door that they wanted to be a stripper. The unlucky ones fell into it to support an addiction or a loser boyfriend. The more fortunate ones, like my ex, got into it because they couldn't make enough money any other way to make ends meet. Second, that it wasn't exceptionally fun. It also, they noted, wasn't particularly bad. It was pretty much like any other job: sometimes you had better days than others, and sometimes it sucked. Third, it was never, ever about sex. They were always aware of the guys as customers, from whom it was their job to extract as much money as possible. There was no hooking up with customers, except in a couple of situations they'd heard of, where a girl who was really down on her luck, and was in desperate straits to keep her little boy fed and clothed, made an arrangement with an older guy to go away with him for the weekend, for which he paid her several thousand dollars. But I was told such situations were very much the exception and not the rule: the girls who were into the idea of getting money for sex usually stopped stripping and started working in porn movies.

Anyway, that's some of what I was told. I don't judge strippers. I also have very little taste for the experience of going to strip clubs. I went twice in my life: once, in high school, because it was kind of a rite of passage. And once, after college, out of curiosity. I ended up getting a lap dance from a very nice girl who was a philosophy major at UCLA (stripping her way through school to supplement a Federal grant), and we had a surreal, but pleasant, discussion about the relative influence of Kierkegaard on modern Christianity, while she rubbed her boobs and butt on me. I felt slightly uncomfortable, and couldn't say I found anything worthwhile about paying a girl I didn't know at all $30 to make me sexually frustrated. Especially seeing as so many women I knew much better were apparently willing to do it for free. But if anything, my experience with the Nude Philosopher made me think that stripping is a weird phenomenon, and probably not particularly psycho-emotionally healthy in terms of sexual expression commingling with commerce in some very sharp and unapologetic ways, but I can't really call it unethical or immoral.

Frankly, my guess is that strippers would be few and far between if we had a better educational system in this country, and there were better employment, with more opportunities for women. But chances are, there would always be a few, and I just wish them well, and hope their luck turns up.

01-11-2010, 01:22 PM	#10 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	I used to date a woman who'd been in an economic tight spot for a while, and had been a stripper to keep herself financially afloat when no other work was forthcoming. She told me some fascinating accounts of life in the world of strip clubs, but she and the couple of her ex-stripper friends that I met were all consistent about several key points. First, that nobody they knew chose right out the door that they wanted to be a stripper. The unlucky ones fell into it to support an addiction or a loser boyfriend. The more fortunate ones, like my ex, got into it because they couldn't make enough money any other way to make ends meet. Second, that it wasn't exceptionally fun. It also, they noted, wasn't particularly bad. It was pretty much like any other job: sometimes you had better days than others, and sometimes it sucked. Third, it was never, ever about sex. They were always aware of the guys as customers, from whom it was their job to extract as much money as possible. There was no hooking up with customers, except in a couple of situations they'd heard of, where a girl who was really down on her luck, and was in desperate straits to keep her little boy fed and clothed, made an arrangement with an older guy to go away with him for the weekend, for which he paid her several thousand dollars. But I was told such situations were very much the exception and not the rule: the girls who were into the idea of getting money for sex usually stopped stripping and started working in porn movies. Anyway, that's some of what I was told. I don't judge strippers. I also have very little taste for the experience of going to strip clubs. I went twice in my life: once, in high school, because it was kind of a rite of passage. And once, after college, out of curiosity. I ended up getting a lap dance from a very nice girl who was a philosophy major at UCLA (stripping her way through school to supplement a Federal grant), and we had a surreal, but pleasant, discussion about the relative influence of Kierkegaard on modern Christianity, while she rubbed her boobs and butt on me. I felt slightly uncomfortable, and couldn't say I found anything worthwhile about paying a girl I didn't know at all $30 to make me sexually frustrated. Especially seeing as so many women I knew much better were apparently willing to do it for free. But if anything, my experience with the Nude Philosopher made me think that stripping is a weird phenomenon, and probably not particularly psycho-emotionally healthy in terms of sexual expression commingling with commerce in some very sharp and unapologetic ways, but I can't really call it unethical or immoral. Frankly, my guess is that strippers would be few and far between if we had a better educational system in this country, and there were better employment, with more opportunities for women. But chances are, there would always be a few, and I just wish them well, and hope their luck turns up. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)