Learning how to strip? Interested in becoming a better stripper? Ready to learn about managing your stripper money? Looking to build community within the strip club industry? Please join me at my NEW SITE, as this one is clearly outdated. I leave it up here because the SEO is unbeatable with WordPress, but I think you’ll find more resources at the new site. Thanks for 10 years!
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In order to be a successful stripper, you need to have acute awareness of your body language and also pay attention to that of others. When your product is yourself, it’s important to be aware of what your body is saying to your customer and to be aware of what his body is saying to you. Work gets much easier when you get out of your own head and start using a formula to steer towards a sale and read when you’re getting close.
When you’re there, the customer is asking himself if your time is worth what you are charging for it. I think one thing that girls do when they’re first learning how to strip is slump their shoulders and act shy. Even veteran girls do this when they’re stressed, discouraged, or “over it.” This effects your wallet! Fake it til you make it!
Shoulders back, head up.
Dear Chase Kelly,
Looking for some advice/ help discussing the potential dangers of cosmetic procedures and plastic surgery with my 22 year daughter working in ” the industry” My concern is her young age, addiction to procedures, permanent changes or damage to her face/ body and how to help her discontinue the practice of lip fillers ( I’m starting to notice the ” work done” look) etc that she’s been utilizing.
Any advice on how to broach the subject, what to do or say would be very much appreciated.
Love,
A very concerned mom
Hey Mom,
What a ripe and beautiful age twenty two is. Your big girl is experiencing big changes that are being shaped by so many things. Your voice, which used to be gospel to her, is fading into the background and being overshadowed by culture, media, her social circle, and the people she is interested in dating and being friends with. If you want her to listen to you and come to you for advice, first she needs to know that no matter what, you respect her. This means that you not only respect her choices, but you trust her to make them for herself.
While there is a lot of shitty plastic surgery out there, none of it is SO bad that you need to stress about it and hurt your relationship with your daughter over it. It’s just a physical thing. The actual issue doesn’t seem to like your daughter is making decisions that will ruin her life forever, but that she’s making decisions that you don’t like. If she was shopping for wedding dresses or Ivy League grad schools, you probably wouldn’t have an issue (or maybe you would, depending on where your desire for control in the relationship ends.) You probably weren’t reading this site specifically because of her plastic surgery stuff, but because you want to know everything you can about her “lifestyle.” You don’t need to know those things. Prepare to read things you don’t like in this response, and trust that they will help you. Lip fillers and the “work done” look are not hurting her, her future, or her relationships, and if they are, they will teach her valuable lessons. The fillers will fade or she will have an actual issue, but it will be hers to deal with. Changing her physical appearance isn’t changing who she is inside or making her someone different. To be fair, our physical bodies are transient no matter how you slice it. Our appearance is not static, and playing with it can be undeniably freeing.
The best way to get your daughter to listen to you is to let go a little bit. She is clearly craving change and freedom to define herself. Part of having adult children means to allow and encourage that independence. You parented her already. Twenty two isn’t that young. She is a capable adult. If you disagree, that really is your problem. You can’t project a narrative onto a person you love that screams, “YOU SUCK AT DECISION MAKING.” That’s awful. The only way to actually solve your problem is to let go of micromanaging her decisions and learn to focus on yourself.
Maybe you’re saying, “A mother’s job is never done.” “She needs me!” “She can’t possibly know what’s right for her!” “I’m obviously right that she needs to stop this nonsense, and she is just a stubborn girl.” You’ve been literally obsessed with the development of this human since conception. You did all the jobs. If you progressed in a healthy manner, it looked like this:
0-4 years: Parent caters to each need, teaches basic ‘yes/no’ ‘right/wrong’
5-11 years: Parent encourages forward thinking, individualism, self esteem, teaches advanced moral development, judgement and decision making
12-18 years: Parent encourages emotional health and ‘supervised’ independence. Allows child to contemplate complex ethical issues and become an individual with own thoughts and values.
19-forever: Parent becomes a confidante, shares wisdom when asked, leads by example, and provides a safety net (but only when it’s healthy for both parties and does not come with a price tag.)
If you have a hangup somewhere you get stuck at one stage of the development process. Parents everywhere are relying on the techniques that once worked, but that aren’t healthy to enforce on an adult. Sometimes, if you stayed in one phase of development, you’ll want to sit down and lecture or at least lament about the blanks you left, feeling sad, guilty, robbed, or authoritarian. If you failed to move past one of the stages, it’s too late to try and get to the rest. You can’t go back in time. All you can do is move to where you’re supposed to be, and learn to lead by example. This will inadvertently teach the lessons you want to teach. You will have to learn to trust that your daughter is wise enough to make her own decisions, and that her lessons are hers to learn. From this point forward NOTHING SHE DOES IS A REFLECTION ON YOU, but a destination on her map towards self fulfillment. If you refuse to recognize this, you are stuck in codependency, and no one grows. You teach your daughter to be a rebellious jerk to everyone she loves. Starting or continuing this cycle renders you and every involved incapable of having a healthy relationship. This cycle gives everyone tiny martyr-like satisfactions from “wins” or the thrill of rebellion from “disobedience.” Just enough satisfaction to keep you coming back, no matter how much it depletes your soul and energy. Codepedency is an addiction in and of itself. It looks like this:
You need to let go of your habitual desire to control your daughter. You might be surprised at how much she actually follows your lead if you let go. Worst case scenario, if you focus on yourself instead of her, she will at least be led by example into learning RIGHT/WRONG, JUDGEMENT/DECISION MAKING, EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT, SELF ESTEEM, and all the other developmental things her inner child may be craving a role model for.
If she is stripping, she is a body language expert. Be careful not to let your tightening lips and tensing shoulders show her how harshly you’re judging her. This cuts her self esteem and gives her an opportunity to exploit an angsty teenage (underdeveloped) desire for rebellion. Every time you let your “small reactionary self” win, you lose an opportunity for real emotional development and connection. Move forward to the part of your development you’re meant to be in, and you will give her permission to do the same.
You certainly shouldn’t fuel or encourage her addiction at all, but you shouldn’t punish her for it either. If she is addicted to changing her appearance on the outside, I’d venture to say she is feeling small and invalid on the inside. Do not take any opportunity at all to encourage her self-doubt. REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE SITUATION. Don’t judge her, don’t parent her, don’t tell her what to do, don’t do ANYTHING that says, “I know what’s best for you, listen to me instead of yourself, because I am more capable than you.” If you love your daughter, don’t undermine her. It’s making her hate herself. Go to therapy. Get better as an individual. Detach, and allow her to learn to mother herself. That is when a girl becomes a woman. When she can trust her own voice. That is when you’ve become a successful mother. When she can make the right choices without your input. If you want her to recover from her addiction, if you want her to love herself, you need to end your enmeshed type of smothering love and learn to love while encouraging FREEDOM. You need to take the addiction out of your relationship.
You can’t tell her to stop getting work done, it isn’t your call, but you can tell her to upgrade. Since you will be spending top dollar for your emotional upgrades in therapy, you may be able to use your wisdom and explain that self improvement is worth spending top dollar on. If she is going to keep on going with it, ask her to see the best of the best. Maybe you can help her come up with a plan to budget so that she doesn’t go broke on her quest for beauty. Maybe you guys can get some facials together and just bond over wanting to feel pretty forever. Maybe you will come to the realization that she is trying to make herself look and feel less like the family she comes from. Maybe it will all hurt like hell, but maybe, you will all get to have healthy love if you face the music. What bigger thing are you running from when you worry needlessly about things that don’t really matter? If she is healthy and her soul is intact, a triple D and some botox really isn’t a problem. If she is miserable and suicidal, her collagen addiction isn’t the source. It’s a symptom.
Learn about addiction and what role you could be playing in hers. Addiction doesn’t just involve the addict, it involves everyone, especially the one googling about the other person’s behavior. You, Mom, are the codependent matriarch here. You learned this somewhere. You need to get to that core and work on it. Stop it. The cycle can end here.
By removing yourself from her scenario and focusing on your relationship with yourself, you become a better mother, friend, grandparent, partner, and human. You become more proactive and are a better confidante. You cannot love in a healthy way if you are codependent on someone else’s addiction. Whether it is a phase or a true addiction that your adult daughter is going through, if you want to guide her, you need to be centered and healthy yourself. You cannot control, only share yourself. The only thing more beautiful than a chick in a nest is a bird flying free.
Let it be her idea to improve herself, Mom, and in the meantime, focus on you. If she thinks that physical perfection will bring her happiness, it’s you who can show her inner happiness takes work, time, discomfort, and the ability to take responsibility for our internal shortcomings. It means working on our weaknesses until we become strong in those areas instead. How can you show her? Start the process yourself.
By Dre Dee
The answer of course is that they are both important! You can be flexible without being strong and you can be strong without being flexible, however, both of these scenarios will set you up to get injured. It is important to find a balance of being flexible AND strong, especially in pole dance, which is one of the reasons I find it so challenging sometimes.
Honestly I feel a little weird writing this blog because as you can see in my pictures – I am not very flexible (yet)! It’s something I have always struggled with – even when I did dance when I was young I was never able to do the splits. As soon as I turned 18 I started doing strength training and cardio in gyms and have always been very strong. The stretching I did was pretty minimal – obesity runs in both sides of my family so my priority was always to get my weight training and cardio in to maintain a healthy weight. When I started doing yoga and then pole, I started realizing just how limited my flexibility is. Unfortunately I have a full time job so it’s still hard to find time to add flexibility training in when I am already spending so much time doing interval training, yoga, and pole, but I am working on developing some flexibility programs and workouts (check out my Yoga Shoulder Stretching Sequence) and scheduling them into my weekly workout routine more.
A lot of my knowledge about flexibility and strength training actually comes from my training as a therapist and years of working with many different types of patients. One of the areas I specialize in is strokes and brain injuries. When a person has a stroke or brain injury, muscle tone is often affected – the person may have decreased muscle tone, which makes the arm and/or leg limp and flaccid, or he or she may have increased tone, making it difficult or impossible for the muscles to relax. One of my many goals with this type of patient is to strengthen the arm if the muscle tone is weak or stretch the joint to increase range of motion if there is increased muscle tone. In Cleo the Hurricane‘s Rockin’ Legs N Abs (which is a GREAT hip flexibility program – I mean have you seen that woman’s splits??), she talks about PNF stretches. I was so excited when I heard her use this term because that’s a technique I’ve been using with my neurological patients for years. For some reason it never occurred to me to use it on myself.
There are many additional techniques to use as well. The more I learn and the different exercises I see, the more I realize that flexibility is just as much about strength as it is about stretching. One key technique is to strengthen the opposing muscles to whatever area you are tight in. For example, if your inner thighs are super tight in center splits, you want to strengthen the outer hip muscles as much as possible. Fast, active range of motion or resistance exercises are most effective (for example, to increase range of motion in front splits , when all fours put an ankle weight on one ankle and squeeze that heel towards ceiling to strengthen your glutes. This will help to increase flexibility in the hip flexor).
Here are some key points to remember when working flexibility.
1) Do not compare yourself to others. Flexibility depends on sooo many factors – your age, your natural flexibility level, muscle tone, what types of exercises you have done in your lifetime, and many other things. That being said, almost anyone can dramatically increase his or her flexibility level with proper training. The down side – usually the more strong and tight your joints are, the longer it will take and the more work you will need to do.
2) Stay consistent. Your muscle memory retains information from previous sessions and when you have too long in between sessions of working on that particular area, you can lose the hard earned progress that you have made. You should stretch whatever area you are working at least once or twice a week to see progress.
3) Warm up! It’s very important to be thoroughly warmed up in your joints before you try to stretch – especially if you tend to be pretty tight. Properly warming up maximizes the benefits of stretches and prevents injuries. You can check out my videos for warmup and stretching sequences for various body parts.
4) Flexibility takes time. Be patient with yourself. Don’t force it. Trying to force flexibility is a quick way to get injured which can set you back months or years in your progress. Not worth it!
5) Breathe. Using your breath is the best way to achieve maximum benefits from static stretches. Try to relax your muscles during the exhales. Take a deep breath and hang in there – it’s worth it in the end!
ROOKIE STRIPPERS, HEAR ME OUT! Unless you are in a dire situation that you absolutely need to get out of, in my opinion, there is no reason to strip if you are under the age of twenty two. A beautiful sense of immortality often accompanies youth, and though there are many reasons teenagers shouldn’t strip, the “it can’t happen to me” attitude is number one. When we are young, we assume that everyone’s intentions are pure, we are blind to red flags. We learn how to be adults from falling on our faces, looking around and seeing these flags, strategically placed around the areas in our lives that we have hopelessly flubbed. In time, if we are perceptive, we stop falling on our faces because we learn to see the flags as our warning. If you haven’t learned what to look for yet, how can you keep yourself safe in the fast pace of the strip club world? The traps at strip clubs are worse than the traps in the normal world. If you haven’t learned how to keep your eyes open for super sketchy situations, take your time. Once you start red flags pop up around other people and especially around your own behaviour, that’s kind of a decent indicator that you will be able to keep yourself safe.
Starting stripping too young won’t make you grow up faster either, even though that’s what people who know nothing about it will tell you. Being a dancer can actually stunt your growth or stop it all together. I know strippers who are fifty years old who dance because they have no other choice, and I don’t mock them when I say that. There are of course some women who stay working into maturity because they like the work, or that it’s still lucrative and it is supplemental or funds their passions. Those are different stories. I am talking specifically about women who never learned another way of life and have been kept stripping or escorting for much longer than they wanted to be. In a normal setting, a person moves past that ‘whatever’ mentality as they mature. They get accolades and responsibilities that give them pride and purpose. You’ll never have that in a strip club. This industry enables and encourages irresponsibility and immaturity. There is a lot of money to be made off of young women in this world, and the longer you stay in, the better you get at making sales, even if you aren’t fresh and nineteen anymore. If you start working in an environment that encourages (and profits from) your recklessness before you learn your own personal limitations, it restricts you from making that adjustment into the life you want. Your goals at eighteen are so set in fantasy, you haven’t tried your hand at them yet. No matter what your age is, if you’re unsure, start by getting a different job at the strip club, like waitress, door girl, or bartender. Start having a little bit of contact with the girls and customers, but not too much. See how it makes you feel first, and take your time making the adjustment into dancing if you like it.
I Remember that I only speak from personal opinion and experience, and of course all things are objective, but I believe that most young dancers are unprepared to make such a life altering decision, even if they are emotionally mature. One of the recurring themes of this book is habit and pattern. The likelihood of building abnormal habits around love and sex are all too real if you spend the years that you are building a concept of normalcy in a strip club. Sex should be at least somewhat sacred, and when you put a dollar amount on it, that can be really confusing to a newcomer to the adult dating scene.
More unnerving than the weird things that can happen to your sex life based on habit is the negativity that can come from trauma in the line of duty. There are most certainly predators in this environment who consciously target young and inexperienced girls and prey on their naivety, and the outcome can be devastating. They aren’t always customers, either. Some of them work with you and are very good at hiding their snakelike intentions. To young people interested in the adult industry, I always say, “We’ll be here in five years.” I know many of you nineteen year olds are reading this and shrugging it off, but I can’t stress it enough. Sometimes I wish I had those extra five years of income, but I would have wasted the money anyway. Nineteen-year-old girls rarely invest in their retirement funds or spend their cash on tuition. If you’re young or unsure if you’re ready, I’ll tell you that I did fine as a waitress and bartender. It is most certainly generous wages and bottle service waitresses crush most strippers in annual income.
Lots of single moms strip. It’s not a new concept, we all know how expensive and exhausting it is to be a mother, and there are few jobs as flexible and lucrative as stripping to help you along the way if your sperm donor isn’t holding up his end (and even if he is.) It’s not a crime to dance and be a mom. It’s normal for lots of people, and really it’s better than exposing your children to poverty. Children shouldn’t have to handle that reality. There are other realities that come along with it that they shouldn’t have to handle either, frankly. I am not a mom, so I have been hesitant to post about motherhood and stripping, but a discussion I walked in on last week has backed me into a corner. I have to write this or my conscience won’t let me forget it. I hope it helps someone out there.
I’m not a mom, but I had a mom. My mom did some sketchy shit, let me be really up front. Her dating life was weird and I was privy to more of it than I should have been, to be honest. The older I get, the easier it is to piece together all the weird things she got involved with that likely eclipsed the parts of her that I was aware of. As a kid though, everything in my life seemed normal. That’s really true for all of us. When you’re a child, you lack the range of experience to be able to compare yourself to what’s actually normal. This is the kind of thing that follows us throughout our lives. The stuff your mom let you be a part of molded you, and the stuff she excluded you from, if she was good enough at concealing it, hopefully didn’t infect your young mind and distort you. Ideally, your mom’s weirdness doesn’t become apparent until you are old enough to be able to digest it…in other words, until you have the scope you needed in order to determine if it’s right or wrong.
I was protected from a lot, thank god, but the stuff I wasn’t protected from has formed the core of my own personal struggle. Relationships were the weak spot my mom exposed me to, and now forming a healthy one has become greatest challenge. My mom tried to hide things from me, but of course, kids are SMART. Not everything was concealed as well as she thought it was. Nevertheless, her intentions were good: adult stuff was for Mom, and kid stuff was for me. I have my suspicions about what my mom did while raising me to supplement her income, but I have no proof at all. No part of my childhood includes memories of my mom as anything but my mom. Whatever she did for work was a blissful mystery to me.
In my fourteen years in the industry, though, I have seen some other approaches to parenthood. Some were bearable, although you do feel bad for the thirteen year old boy who knows his mom strips in the town they live in, but technically, not illegal, and definitely not the worst case. I have seen toddlers with Daddy playing in the parking lot at two thirty AM, waiting for Mommy to come home. I have seen babysitters storm into dressing rooms drunk, screaming, “Your kids in the car! He’s been in that bitch all night! Get your ass home!” and thought to myself, “Is this it? Is this when we call CPS?” (CPS stands for Child Protective Services, for those of you who don’t know.)
Last week, I walked in on a dressing room convo between two girls I don’t know at all. I was guesting at a club I don’t usually work at. I was touching up my face next to a couple girls talking about Seeking Arrangement, and my nosey ass opened my ears up for the convo. I’m going to name the girls Pink and Green for the colors they were wearing.
Pink: I didn’t really have a choice, I had no babysitter.
Green: You ALWAYS have a choice. Listen to me. Don’t EVER bring your kid on a date with a dude. Ever.
Pink: No it’s cool. She’s only two and a half, she don’t know what’s going on. She just sat and chilled while we ate. It’s not like we did anything, it was just lunch.
Green: Yo. Seriously, kids are smart. That’s not cool, don’t do that.
Pink: We weren’t fuckin or nothing. It was just a date to talk about maybe if it was gonna work, but that site is wack. It probably won’t be anything.
Green: You’re not really listening to me, so fuck it, do what you want, but listen. I’ve been a ho. I’ve been a two hundred dollar ho, and I’ve been a two thousand dollar ho, but none of it has had anything to do with a kid. I’m not judging you but you cannot bring your kid on dates with tricks. A trick is a trick, and you cannot involve your kid with any part of it.
[OK THIS SHIT IS RAW AND PINK LEGIT IS IGNORING HER. I interject because I can’t keep my mouth shut ever.]
Me: Listen to her, dude. She’s right, this girl is smart. You should thank her for taking the time to talk to you, she could save your kids life.
Green: Your daughter is smart and you are writing on her soul. You can’t undo that. She is a little girl. If you want to write on your daughters soul, that’s your choice, but she will live with what you teach her for the rest of her life.
I think it stuck with Pink. Really. It stuck with me. I hope it did, because what she shows her baby will certainly stick with her.
Your kids are only young once. You think they’re tough, you think they can handle reality, you think you’re doing your best all the time, and I hear that. Parenthood looks hard as hell and I commend every one of you who handle it like the bosses you are, but a little discretion goes a long way. It is your job as a parent to protect your child from things that might hurt him or her. Your job is most certainly one of those things. The more you do it, the more normal it becomes for you, but this line of work is not normal for most adults. Don’t poison your kid’s soul by making it normal for him or for her. Sex is for when we understand it. No two year old, five year old, or ten year old needs to know about it. In fact, when you DO start talking about sex, please make sure you’re doing it for him or for her, when he or she is ready. Your sex life does not have to be a part of your child’s life. To Ms. Green, thank you. You are the realest one. I wish we had gotten to know each other better.
To Miss Pink, I hope you heard her. I hope you hold your baby close and keep her safe from all of it. If I were a mom, I wouldn’t even bring my shoes home, y’all. For real. My prayers to her and to you and to all of your babies. Keep them in their blissful youth for as long as you can, quit this job, and let them see you shine in whatever your dream job may be. Inspire those kids, man!
“I’m thinking about moving into a loft,” my nineteen year old stripper consult confessed in our session this week. “I have been making a lot more since we started [our consultations], and I feel like I deserve it. My boyfriends house is so nice and I always feel like I’m slumming it around him.”
I was quiet for a second. I’ve heard this before. I’ve said this before. I traced my thoughts back to a time when my best stripper friend and I decided to move into a loft ourselves, one that lasted the full six month lease and was quickly abandoned for another massive mistake of a rental. “Twenty six hundred dollars!” we reasoned, “that’s only one good night of work each!” and in fact, it was. The elation of getting approved for such an incredible place made us feel rich and fabulous. We had made it. We had been dreaming of living somewhere so magnificent all of our lives. We moved in without hesitation.
Our loft was gorgeous, two beautiful stories of warehouse heaven, and inside of it sat five whole pieces of furniture: one brown Pottery Barn couch against the back wall, two ikea stools (where we ate the zero meals we had at home,) one mattress (with headboard) on the floor in her room, and one mattress (with box spring, no headboard) on my floor. We considered buying furniture, really, but we set our sights on chandeliers (10 nights work for a $10,000 piece of lighting heaven, plus our friend Riot had one! If she could do it so could we. Maybe even a customer would buy it for us!), a giant movie poster for Metropolis (neither of us had seen it, but it just looked so great. It was only $1,500. Easy!), Design Within Reach couches (starting at fifteen k,) and hand made coffee tables off of etsy, because we wanted it to have a personal touch. We never bought any of those things, though. It seemed actually a lot more difficult to come up with ten grand than we had originally anticipated! We had clothes to buy, manicures to get, lip glosses to collect! Plus bills, and starbucks, and food every day (we never really cooked). It was kind of seeming like we’d never decorate our loft. Three months later the lease was halfway up anyway. “Next time, we should get a house. This is too hard to manage!” we said, but mostly we were stoned so we didn’t really care.
Looking back into the past, I tried to think about what I would say to Clarissa (my client) to explain to her the mistake I had made. It really didn’t sound so bad when I looked back, but I knew it was and I searched for the words to say it. Instead, I pulled out my calculator. $18,700 in six months. Almost twenty THOUSAND dollars we spent so we could feel like a couple of boss bitches.
“Clarissa, I did that once. You shouldn’t do it, you know? If you’re comparing yourself to your boyfriend in a way that makes you feel inferior because of what you spend on housing, he probably isn’t right for you. Dating and friendship shouldn’t feel like a competition,” and she told me I was right, but I knew in her heart, she was still thinking LOFT. “Even if it was a competition, though, would spending rich person money really make you feel like you won? You’re not a rich person. You could break an ankle tomorrow and be screwed, but your boyfriend has job security and a wealthy family and a retirement plan! He is winning even if you live in a mansion. I mean as of right now, you have barely enough money in your savings for a security deposit on a loft and you’re already trying to spend it?!” I was starting to feel kind of guilty. I love Clarissa, and I wanted her to have everything she had ever dreamt of. I knew living in a beautiful home would increase her self esteem and make her feel more powerful, but I also knew that in six months my friend and I spent over eighteen thousand dollars on rent in an apartment we couldn’t even afford to furnish. I didn’t want Clarissa to make the mistake we had. There is so much we could have done with that money that we never had a chance to do. We could have put a generous downpayment on a house with that much, or we could have started a savings that would turn into a future investment plan down the road. We could have lived for a few solid years in Thailand. We could have opened a yoga studio and lived a zen lifestyle with real happiness and not the hollow kind that comes from twenty thousand dollar couches.
That loft was six years ago, and I still shake my head at my foolishness. I didn’t need to keep up with my rich friends. I didn’t need to prove that stripping was the right choice by flossing out of control. I needed to chill the fuck out. I needed to spend half that money and live in a cute apartment with my friend and decorate from thrift stores and cook at home. I needed to let myself be a kid. Instead, I made myself hard to relate to by my non-stripper friends, set myself back financially, and ended up ashamed of selling my sexuality for such a temporary thing. Women and children are literally sold at auction for a tiny fraction of that amount into sex slavery for their entire lives, and here I was spending it on six months of rent. I was not Paris Hilton, and I didn’t need to live like her.
“Clarissa.” I said sternly. “I know you are agreeing with me but still you have your heart set on that Miami Beach luxury lifestyle, but I need you to listen to me. This is serious. Please don’t strip so that you can impress people with all the shit you have. Be better than that. Stop caring what your boyfriend thinks. If he thinks you are anything less than a brilliant, beautiful young woman with a great head on her shoulders, he doesn’t deserve you. No one worth their salt would value a person who spends frivolously what they don’t actually have than one who saves and plans and lives beautifully within their means. Spend money on creating sanctuary in your home no matter the size. Spend money on giving what you can afford to charity and save the rest to support yourself or your family through sickness and tough times that inevitably impact all human lives. It won’t cost but a few hundred dollars to decorate with things that make you feel strong and proud. Flossing when you live a fast cash lifestyle is nothing less than stupid, and if your boyfriend knows anything about life on the planet, he knows that only a fool would give money away rather than paying ones self first.”
Even if you are a really great stripper and a really great person, there will be a time in your stripping career that it seems like every person you work with hates you. It’s a thing, I think, that happens to most every woman at some point, whether you’re a stripper or not. Girls do this community thing that can be really beautiful, but the dark side shows when you are the one on the outside of the clique. Sex work is alienating enough, so when you combine the discomfort of being naked for strangers with feeling unwelcome at the club, it can send you into an emotional whirlwind. Being the lone soldier can feel stifling, but you aren’t stifled. You’re good, girl. There are healthy ways to deal with this kind of stuff that actually work in your favor. There are also very unhealthy ways to deal with it that will leave you broke and questioning every choice you’ve ever made. No matter which direction you focus your energy, a domino effect is bound to happen.
When we do something positive in one aspect of our lives, it tends to have a positive impact on other parts. In these scenarios, when you’re feeling totally alone and depressed, there are things you can focus on that will make you feel better which will in turn make you a better person and in turn will make you more money. You don’t have to turn self conscious, you don’t have to let it ruin your money, and you don’t have to deal with it at all, really. You can control your emotions and your actions to get the results that you want from your life, and like 50 said, “If they hate then let em hate and watch the money pile up.”
The simple answer, obviously, is to find another club. Unless you live somewhere that you are at the only nearby club, you could just go somewhere else where you don’t know anyone. Eventually, people will find someone else to pick on and you could go back to your old club, but who knows, by then maybe you’ll love the new club more. Maybe you love your club or have no other options, though! Maybe you have regulars, feel safe, comfortable, and happy! It’s probably the case, actually, because no one picks on the girl who isn’t a threat. That’s the simple solution, but life isn’t as simple as it should be, really.
Being the new girl is always a bread winner, and it’s good to feel uncomfortable at a strip club. The feeling of “home” keeps us from working. If you’ve been at your club for more than a year, you know you are guilty of putting your feet up and gossiping in the dressing room instead of working. You know sometimes you straight up ignore customers so you can finish your conversation. Don’t kid yourself! You could be making more money and dealing with fewer haters. People aren’t always welcoming to the “new girl” but best believe they don’t have any dirt on you!
Maybe switching clubs isn’t an option, though. Maybe it’s not appealing to you at all and you’re staying put no matter what. Cool! I applaud your resilience. You have no choice but to be on top of your game. You have to look great and let the haters be your motivation…this should be your truest test of how great of a dancer you are. If you can smile the warmest smile to that fifty year old finance exec in the Prada loafers and look through your enemies as though they aren’t even there, you have officially made it. There is no reason to bring up people’s distaste of you unless the customer notices it and brings it to your attention. At that point, laugh it off and drop it! “Yeah, girls can get a little jealous sometimes, but they’re all nice enough girls. Im just gonna stay with you until they find someone else to pick on!” ::wink wink::
Don’t fuel the fire. Don’t talk about it at all. Let their anger hurt their money, but don’t let someone else’s negativity take cash from your hand! No one has control over you. You came to work to work, and you aren’t letting a bunch of girls who don’t pay your bills determine your income. Girl, you’re doing it. You should be top earner every night you are the most hated. If not, stay home. Find another club. Figure out why everyone hates you and fix it.
Images of young girls accompanied by the words “Fuck it, I’ll be a stripper” have been littered all over the internet as of late. Our generation has adopted a belief system that says that women are too weak, stupid, unmotivated, or damaged to assimilate to modern society. The strip club offers a lucrative alternative in which financial planning isn’t necessary to immediate survival, so it’s expected that girls who have an underdeveloped sense of self-esteem, body issues, or a history of trauma will just “give up” and become strippers. They don’t know what else to do. Although these women actually exist, there is a serious imbalance between the “stripper princess” and “lowlife stripper” ideals that are being portrayed in the media, and it’s up to us to set them straight. They are BOTH inaccurate.
For me, being a stripper does not mean giving up on life, but I also know that being pretty and getting paid for it doesn’t make me royalty. This industry is full of amazing, powerful women, many of whom have been soldiers from the day they sashayed out of the womb, all pink, bubbly, and ready to take on the world. They have done everything but given up, they have found a new model for success. However, despite the fact that being a dancer will not make you weak, pathetic, addicted, or ‘slutty,’ in large part, making this decision requires awareness that other people will see you in a negative light when they find out what you do, and if you are running the risk of becoming the girl who dances because she can’t do anything else; it’s time to change that.
The reality is that a lot of dancers do start to embody awful things, because they fail to plan, prepare, or take responsibility for their lives. Dancing is a cop out for a lot of people who can’t figure it out any other way. You need to make sure that it isn’t you who turns out badly, all while dealing with the fact that some people will always confuse you for those strippers who really can’t get it together.
Perhaps you are thinking, “I have already been labeled my entire life, I really don’t care if people think I’m a stripper whore or not,” and that is a realistic sentiment. Chances are, if you are beautiful, you have already been labeled a ‘slut’ or a ‘bitch’ for your entire existence, whether or not you’ve promiscuous or rude. You have learned to live with being judged, and in your short life you have grown accustomed and calloused to being hollered at, coveted, objectified, targeted, and dumbed down. It’s your right to do what ya wanna, and I hold the ability to customize my lifestyle very near and dear to my heart. I just wanted to remind you all that you are in charge of yours, and no matter what anyone thinks, if you’re setting proper goals and hitting them, it’s of no consequence what anyone else thinks.
Strippers deserve good customers, and today I received an email from a strip club regular asking what he can do to enhance his experience as well as yours. While I am going to answer him personally, I also wanted to open up the comments section so you all can weigh in as well. Below is the email I received from John. You can view my response and leave your own in the comments.
Hi Chase;
I wandered in here through looking at strip club ettiquette because I quite enjoy it even if I don’t make enough to partake very often. I found Mounting and Counting blog and then came here. I like that you bring a healthy but safe veiw of stripping. I share your thoughts that it shouldn’t be something to be embarrassed, insulted, or demonized. I also appreciate that you take it realistically since it will affect ones position in society, no matter how wrong society’s position is.
After reading your post with the rape warning, I definately want to be as respectful as possible next time I go. I didn’t see post with eittiqutte for guys so I’m asking here. I’ve got the don’t stalk, ask them to come home with you, or calling out insults.
I’ve thought that maybe slacks would be politer to wear than jeans since the preformer will be rubbing against me. Do you have a prefered outfit for your clients? Slacks and polo for casual nice, but suit to indicate that one is there to spend lavishly and be treated the same?
Are there ways to know if your dancer is ok with touching or should I specifically wait for her to say so?
Do you have any other advice that would make the night more enjoyable for both parties?
Thanks!
John
Dre Dee
River Stark
Chase Kelly Dre Dee River Stark Chase Kelly
SURVIVETHECLUB: A STRIPPER BLOG 