Why Smile: The Science of Stripper Sales

Dear Vacant-Stripper-Eyes, So-Hot-I’m-Bored, Jaded-Better-Than-You Entertainers-

You! The one up on the stage mouthing the words to that same Nickleback song we’ve heard a million times with your gaze blankly fixed on your own reflection. Yes, YOU, staring off into space thinking about your grocery list or studying the fat roll you get during your lapdances nowadays, you are killing your profits and numbing your soul with your inability to be present and mindful during your shift.  Cut it out!

Hello!  Are you here? Checked in? Available to comment? This is your savings account calling.  Please help!  I know it gets redundant but I really want your moneys!  Please start smiling more, so that I can grow!

-Smiling actually releases endorphins in your brain. Even a fake smile will make you happier, and being happy will make you money. Customers hate jaded strippers. The world in general thinks are jobs are easy (they’re wrong, but we indulge fantasy here) and they do not want to hear about how hard your day has been, and they DEFINITELY don’t want to read it on your face.

-A smile makes you approachable to men. Pretty women are really intimidating to most guys. In fact, inability to talk to them is what brings most money customers into a club, so make yourself as easy to speak to as possible by lowering your wall down.

-Smiling makes you more approachable by coworkers, too. The girls I work with love my positive attitude and that I never bitch that there is no money. I often ask girls what their plans to do with the GIANT STACKS they’re about to make and I like to tell jokes as often as possible to keep them giggling. The culture in your club is largely dictated by the individuals who work there. You are one of those; so contribute to the pack by being a nice girl with something good to say.

-Eye contact makes all the difference. Connection makes a sale, even from the stage. During private rooms, private dances, stage sets, and just sitting around waiting for my guy, I try to engage as many people into prolonged eye contact. Combined with a delayed smile, this is as good as ANY one liner, if not better. Entertainers must learn to SMIZE. Y’all fierce ass models, afterall!

-As cliche as it is, the eyes are the window to the soul.  Everyone loves a soulful performer more than a plain hot one.  Humans feed off of one another’s energy.  Tune in and experience this totally crazy life you’re living.  It’s (if nothing else) interesting as hell and worth paying attention to!

 

10 things you can do to fix your day

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Getting Unstuck

If you have become a stripper that really can’t handle life or responsibilities, it’s time to come clean with yourself.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with you if you want to be a stripper to help you get through a tough financial time, or if you want to be a stripper to help you achieve your goals, pay for school, start a company, etc.  There is not even anything wrong with being a stripper simply because you like it!  Often times, though, all being a stripper does for girls is support their dysfunction.  If you are one of these girls, it’s best that you at least admit the problem.  It may seem weird, awful, uncomfortable, and a huge affront to your self-esteem to admit that you simply cannot function in modern society, but truly, the first step in fixing a problem is identifying it.  Admitting that you are stuck doesn’t mean that you are doomed for life, it means that you are self-aware, that you have the clarity to admit you need some guidance, and that you at least are aware that your lifestyle could use some tweaking.  Admitting a problem means that you are not insane.  Ignoring it means that you are.

Have you ever met someone who is bat shit crazy and everyone knows it but the actual crazy person (Hi, Mom!)?  That is the result of self-denial.  That is what happens when there is a problem with your personality and you choose to ignore it, say, “It’s fine!” or joke about your bad life decisions.  Like cancer, early detection is the best cure for a diseased lifestyle.  If you catch it, you can change it.  If it goes ignored for too long, though, it spreads like wildfire and mental illness comes in and grabs you.  Let’s not pretend that the strip club will be around forever—eventually we will be too old for this shit.  Let’s also not pretend that crazy people are a scarcity in the industry.  And while we are at it, let’s not be so pompous to think it couldn’t happen to us.  Lifestyle dancing is dangerous because it is unrealistic.  Unless you LOVE the industry and plan to be in the adult industry for the rest of your life (eventually you will have to quit stripping, at which point it will be the cams, porn sites, escorting, or Dommeing) you need to be able to function outside of it.  If the only people who “get you” work in the club, it’s time to reassess.

Some of the problems I see most often are ones that I have myself struggled with from time to time.  Some girls are lazy, can’t get out of bed in the daytime, others literally have no idea what to do with authority-they lack the social skills to follow direction.  Rage issues, no “filter,” inability to maintain a schedule, inability to connect with people, no desire to do anything that doesn’t result in monetary gain, addiction, codependency, and battered women’s syndrome are just SOME of the  many things that strippers have to overcome.  You add a career that encourages your behavior, and managers that turn a blind eye, are completely oblivious, or simply don’t care what happens to you, a peer group that has adopted the “sink or swim” approach to life, and a shit ton of untaxed income, sexual assault and complete disregard for your humanity, and you have a recipe for disaster.  It’s no wonder most all dancers suffer from PTSD at some point.  You are not alone, but you will be if you don’t do something to change the direction of your actions.

Women have SO much more responsibility than men do when it comes to being emotionally stable, if only for one reason.  Most of us are already or will be mothers one day.  We will literally take on the responsibility of another human life at some point, and like many bad moms, those who end up totally crazy won’t even realize it.

I am asking you to take a look at yourself and do something about it if you are one of these girls.  Thinking about it is great, spend some time on that, but start making a plan as soon as you’re ready.  During your thinking process, take notes.  Your journal is your best friend when making life changes.  If your’re writing it down, you are making a commitment.  Do that!  Commitment is good, failure to commit is a really common stripper problem, so now is a great time to work on that.  Start small, do the things you know you SHOULD be doing, but don’t.  Something as simple as keeping your bed made when you aren’t in it, keeping an empty sink, or cleaning up after your pets will bolster your “I can do it!” esteem pretty much right away.  Taking care of the basics is essential to being able to take care of the extras.  The things you need to do to get the ball rolling vary from girl to girl, you know what you need to work on.  Start small, don’t give yourself a panic attack, instead reward yourself for your achievements, and counter some of your bad habits with good ones.  If you suffer from anxiety, this is seriously one of the best things you can do to alleviate some of that.  When “I can’t do it,” is constantly playing in your head, OF COURSE you have anxiety.  As of right now, you are broken up with “I can’t.” Your new mantra is, “I’ve got this!”

And you do.  You’ve got this.  Now get off the internet and go clean your kitchen.

Lots of love,
Chase Kelly

 

*Featured Image by Klaus Kampert

Stripping is not child’s play

If you have ever taken a basic psychology course or visited a therapist at some point in your life, you probably understand the term “conditioning.”  Conditioning is what happens to us when we make the assumption based on past experiences, that A+B will have an outcome of C.  For example, if every time you sold a lap dance, you got a lollipop along with your $20-40, you would come to expect the lollipop.  Up close, it’s easy to see the simple connections we make, “If I smile on stage I will make more money.”  If you know this works, it’s because you’ve tried it and you know it to be true.

If you take some time to reflect on your past, I’m sure you can see the patterns that have been set in your life based on your conditioning.  If your father treated your mother like shit, you probably have issues in your relationships, you have either started dating abusive people, become abusive yourself, or both.  If you had a lot of experiences traveling that made you feel free and weightless and amazing, you probably already have your next trip planned and are working on a way to achieve your travel goal.  While I think that it is imperative that we explore our pasts to figure out what we are going to make of life today,  what this post is really about is how what you do today greatly impacts the person you will be tomorrow.
Choosing to become an adult entertainer, you made a big decision.  I stress the word adult because you really did take on a very grown-up task.  Rest assured, stripping is not child’s play.  If you want to be an adult in an adult industry, it is really important that you take responsibility for how you are currently conditioning your future self.  If you have never seen a dancer in her 40’s or older who has nothing to show for her time in the club except for meth pocks and mental health issues, you know how real it is.  It is not the strip club that trapped them, it was their own minds, and often their drug addictions.  I hope you guys like bullet points as much as I do.  Here are some things you can do to keep your mind healthy and keep you from brainwashing yourself into believing that this is all you will ever be:

-Keep your goal list close.  It is important to remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing.

-Consistently put positive things into your brain.  Always have a project, something that you are reading, learning, working on, improving.  The strip club is pretty negative and being in the “work all night, sleep all day, party and bullshit every other second of my life” will really knock the wind out of your future.

-Hang pictures in your living room of things you really want in life.  I read this in a Feng Shui book once, the idea is that you spend the most time there and you will be burning the desires into your subconscious.

-Be aware of your subconscious mind.  When you “numb-out” like most of us do at the club, there is still some aspect that is creeping in.  Be aware of it, and find outlets to clear out this negativity.  Running, yoga, writing, being in nature, long periods of solitude, therapy, and reading are some of mine, but maybe you love painting and have always wanted to learn French.  Now is a great time.

-Pay attention to the people you are surrounding yourself with.  Do not become friends with people who you do not respect.  If your family is toxic, either keep them at a distance or start doing some ground work to improve the relationship.

-We share a collective consciousness that we cannot see or feel.  Take responsibility for your share.  Add only positivity to our shared thinkspace.

-Make a ritual of something you really love.  It can be anything that makes you smile, just commit to doing it once a day.

 

Showers on the inside

I had a discussion with a very fresh dancer whom I really like.  I sense that some things are pretty hard for her and she is sort of confused.  She is unbearably beautiful, dancing is quite lucrative for her and will continue to be, regardless of whether she plays her cards right—this is pretty much a guarantee.  What is not so sure, though, is what will happen to her.  Anyone who has been dancing more than a few years has seen exactly what I am talking about: sweet young girl tries her hand at dancing and ends up a suicidal mess in a pile of pain pills.  It kills me.

Tonight she told me that stripping makes her feel like she needs a “shower on the inside.” Just that phrase, wherever she came up with it, it seems so hopeless.  I have been thinking about it all night (girl, if you read this, please know I care, for real!) and I can’t quite shake it.  My advise to her is the same advise I have for all of us: build yourself an exit strategy from day 1.  Know what you need in the bank to be able to quit at the drop of a dime.  If something changes tomorrow to keep you from ever setting foot in the club again, be sure that you have the cushion you need to escape.  For someone like her, who has only been dancing 2 months, she simply needs $3,000 and a new job, but for girls like me, who have been dancing longer, we have a higher goal (mine is 1 year living expenses, a 1 month trip to Australia, a downpayment on a home, and 20k for my education—this is doable in just a couple of years with enough discipline!)  I think it’s a good idea to set that goal for yourself and start adding towards it, if even only $10 at a time.

The other thing I told her is that the club isn’t going anywhere.  Although I had waitressed, bar tended, and even managed a club before I ever got on stage, I waited until I was 24 to start dancing.  I knew I did not have the emotional maturity to handle it prior, so I fed my curiosity by working in other positions at the club.  I encourage you to tap into yourself and decide what’s right for you, ESPECIALLY if you’re new to the game; maybe you don’t need to be here yet, maybe you don’t need to be here at all.  If something feels totally wrong, get out.  If you have been with us for some time and have no emergency savings, you are in a serious crisis and you NEED to fix it!  Stop living your life as a series of reactions.  Take some control, and decide if this is really the job for you right now, and if it is, make a plan, so that if your “right now” changes, so can your occupation.  In order to avoid disaster, one must plan.  Disaster may still strike, but you will have tools to help you survive.  Money is power.  You have money, will you build yourself some power?