February 25, 2004

• i had an ex-husband who was addicted to dancers. then a friend who was a clinical psychologist (male) who i used to meet once a month at a peeler bar for lunch....bacon wrapped filet, mushrooms, potatoes and salad for $5.00.... together we would compare our assessments of both dancers and the front row junkies. so i actually spent quite a bit of time watching these shows and always remained bemused and bebaffled by it all. i could never accept it as harmless for either sex. it was easy to pick out the 'pro's' from those enterprising students, but i had always hoped they were really doing it for a quick buck and a quick exit. seems not. it reminds me of the old saying...women use sex for love and men use love for sex. and no one can figure out what went wrong! what is with sex anyway?
• and i also see i didn't post this quite right...i'll do better next time.
• Yeah, but people getting the RSS feed will have a better time of it :)
• well, not that I would know from personal experience or anything, but I must say I find this article to be a bit biased towards the "doom-n-gloom" end of the spectrum. How many thousands of women (& lets not forget the men) in north america have stripped at some point in their lives?? are we really ready to believe that these generalizations apply to all of them?
• My sister-in-law was a stripper in Houston during the 1990s, so this hits close to home. She did make a ton of money, but apparently herself and virtually everyone she worked with had an addiction problem going... coke was the item of choice. The money was like liquid. Eventually she ended up in rehabs, abusive relationships, and unable to get any more work (too old, late 20s). Her life is finally turning around though... she's held down a receptionist job for over a year and is left only with an alcohol problem. I'm not sure that the stripper lifestyle is bad in itself, but I think the culture of addiction and big money surrounding the job are destructive.
• Elizabeth Wurtzel (author of Prozac Nation, Bitch and More, Now, Again) wrote in one of her books that she has attended AA meetings all over the U.S. and they were always full of former strippers who say they bottomed out doing exotic dance. (Wurtzel is herself a erratically woven basket case, but that's neither here nor there.) As Medusa says, there are thousands of women stripping so who knows what percentage off all strippers wind up in AA meetings - is it higher than that of accountants or plumbers, say? It may be as much due to the culture of money and drugs as to the act of stripping as timmus argues - but it is worrisome. For an interesting and well-written first-hand account of one stipper's career, I recommend Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America, by Lily Burana.
• generalizations will never apply to everybody, by definition. i do think it is rather shocking that students are being actively recruited into this trade, enticed by so called rewarding profits and goals, through a superficially legitimate business. virtually all dancers in canada are controlled by bikers...either directly or by proxy. they have the 'licences' for the parlours. and of course, the perks that go with the trade. i've been in washrooms used by these women and beat hasty retreats....drug paraphenalia, used condoms, used menstrual devices...YECH! even the supposedly high class set ups fare little better behind the stage. i've also worked professionally with many and know their stories. and i have seen them without their make-up and in daylight....quite a difference! i continue to find it all sad, but acknowledge that dancing, for the opposite sex for profit, is a time-honoured profession....although there seems no other honour i can attribute to it.
• ak!! ok, I am going to come out here (nervous pause) I forgot to add the sarcasm indicators on my earlier post...I was a stripper for 5 years. I did not then nor have I ever had a substance abuse problem; altho I definitely did it for the money I also liked the work & did not need or want to alter my state to deal with it. yes, many women in that industry have some serious issues, but it was my observation that these women were messed up already and went into dancing because that was something they could do as a messed up person. of course for someone who is already facing personal difficulties that is a VERY dangerous environment. I was mature and had some self-esteem and particular goals when I started dancing, ie I wasnt in a self-destructive cycle or devoid of other options (as some may be). of the women I worked with over the years, they spanned the gamut from serious "career girls" like me to the worse sort of tragic stereotype (drugs, abusive boyfriends, bad grammar...)
• *shrug* If we're going to get our knickers in a knot about strippers, why not go after professional sports. We know that use of illegal performance enhancing drugs is commonplace, and often starts in amatuer ranks. We know that a team losing will be accompanied by increased domestic violence in the area it comes from. We can see rioting. We can see players involved in rape and murder. And, unlike strippers, kids are encouraged to look up to professional athletes as role models and to participate in sports.
• Thanks for coming out, Medusa. Another diverse monkeyvoice.
• good for you medusa...it pleases me no end to hear of someone that did get in and out of the trade intact. on that basis alone, it is nothing to be shy about. i suppose i lurked in all the wrong places..*blush* ...and i hope i didn't tarnish you personally by my generalizations.....it's like democracy, which reduces everything to the common denominator. and rodgerd, when peeling has the mass social approval that professional sports do, then it may be more appropriate to draw a comparison....as you point out, no one encourages their children to look at parlour dancers as role models....if they did then perhaps the trade would become a formally acknowledged art form and some standards would improve. personally, i almost wish things would take that route....but as long as sex is the main 'selling point', i doubt it will become prominently accepted in most societies.