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    A Stripper's Handbook: An Ethnographic Portrait of Seven Exotic Dancers
    A Stripper's Handbook: An Ethnographic Portrait of Seven Exotic Dancers
    A Stripper's Handbook: An Ethnographic Portrait of Seven Exotic Dancers
    Ebook153 pages2 hours

    A Stripper's Handbook: An Ethnographic Portrait of Seven Exotic Dancers

    By Siren d'Lore

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    About this ebook

    This book is a rare look into the lives of seven exotic dancers. It examines the taboo topic of female sexuality for sale. The author is a seasoned stripper who interviewed several of her colleagues, and compiled their stories into an ethnographic format. This is an honest and raw account on what it is that strippers do in their professional world and how this can affect them in their personal lives. This is an excellent read for women who are looking to get into the industry, have already been working in the adult entertainment industry, and for anyone curious about what it is that strippers really think about their job.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    ISBN9781483515571
    A Stripper's Handbook: An Ethnographic Portrait of Seven Exotic Dancers

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      Book preview

      A Stripper's Handbook - Siren d'Lore

      heart.

      The Setting: Dancing Divas

      Presently, there are a total of eight strip clubs and two peep shows in the city limits. I will refer to the city as Santa Maria. The difference between a strip club and a peep show is as follows. The peep show dancers are behind a glass wall on a stage. The peep show customer enters an individual size booth and places quarters in the motorized window to view the women dancing nude. It is common knowledge that these customers masturbate while enjoying the show. The peep show customer pays anywhere from twenty-five cents to a few dollars for this entertainment. The strip club is much more expensive. For the most part, masturbation is an unacceptable activity. The cover charge of most strip clubs in Santa Maria is $10-$20. If the customer wants more than eye candy (referring to the stage performance) they will spend, in addition to the cover charge, a minimum of $20 per lap dance. Tips are also given to the dancers on stage.

      To enter Dancing Divas one must climb up two long flights of stairs. At the top is the door person; sometimes this is a bored waitress and other times a young man dressed in a black suit and tie. On the street level, below the club, is a large sex shop with a peep show in the back.

      Once the high and steep stairs have been crested and the cover charge has been paid, entry is permitted. The entrance to the club is through a wide curtained doorway. The first visual one gets is the stage and whoever is performing on it. It is dark, and black lights ignite any white colors. The DJ puts on a light show for the dancer on stage. White strobe lights exaggerate the black light effect, as well as causing dizziness to the sensitive. Low red lighting is the dominant effect on the main floor. It takes most people a moment for their eyes to adjust when coming in from broad daylight. For the dancers, this happens every time they leave the floor and enter the well-lit dressing room. Some dancers simply dim the lights in the dressing room to lessen this harsh visual adjustment.

      There are anywhere from four to fifty dancers on the floor, depending on the day of the week and the shift. The weekend evening shifts host the highest number of dancers. There are two stages—one in the front of the house and one in the VIP Lounge, which is a separate room in the back of the club. The back stage is opened when the club is full and customers are standing around due to the unavailability of seating. This usually only happens on Friday and Saturday nights. When closed, the back stage is where dancers will stretch, practice pole work, and mingle.

      Each stage has the same setup: two poles—one on each front corner of the stage—and a mirror backing with a ballet bar that stretches across the mirror. There are three stairs going up to the stage and they encircle the entirety of the stage. The front rows of seats are flush up against the highest stair. This is called the tipping rail or bar. The customers sitting in the front row get direct contact with the dancers if they are tipping. Often a dancer will place the dollar being tipped, if the customer has not done so already, in the customer’s mouth. Then she puts her breasts in the customer’s face and grabs the dollar with them. Some dancers are agile enough to pick up the dollar with their butt cheeks from the customer’s leg. There are many ways to acquire the tip; this is left up to the creativity of the dancer. This type of contact with the customer while the dancer is partially nude or fully nude is illegal. Vice cops sometimes come into the club and ticket the dancers who participate in this activity. Of course, the vice cop has to receive such treatment as evidence before he can cite her for flashing, illegal touching, or accepting money for an illegal act.

      The dancers cruise the floor in their skimpy costumes enticing customers to get lap dances. The dancers are on a rotating list for the stage. Each stage performance consists of two songs. The management expects the dancer to be topless by the end of the first song and bottomless by the end of the second song. Each dancer has her own style in costume, dance performance, and customer relation skills. Some are better than others, but this does not insure that a better dancer will make more money. The dancers pay a stage fee to the club of $130 per shift. We are independent contractors, not employees, and we pay the club for each shift we are scheduled. This means the dancer is negative $130 as soon as she signs in to work. If a dancer does not show up and does not call in for a scheduled shift she can be charged the $130—and she is expected to pay this back to the club. This is known as back rent. Sometimes, if the manager has a lot of dancers call in for a Friday or Saturday night shift, the manager will back rent the dancers even though they called the club to inform management that they would not be making their scheduled shift. If a dancer works a shift and does not make enough money to pay the house fee, she can be back rented this way too. More often than not, Dancing Divas will accept half of what the dancer made from her shift as full payment for her stage fee. This is generous compared to how Rudy’s Cabaret ran things. At Rudy’s Cabaret, the dancer was responsible for paying the entire $130 stage fee, regardless of whether she made $2 or $200. Either way, the house always gets paid in full. Rudy’s Cabaret is where I began my career as a stripper.

      Because the dancers are independent contractors they are responsible for their own taxes. Any financial planning for retirement is left up to their own means. All of this puts a tremendous amount of financial pressure on the women contracted at strip clubs. We have the potential to make hundreds of dollars in a few hours, but often we are standing around waiting for business to walk through the door. If a dancer is not feeling up to par, this waiting period has the potential to intensify her bad mood, so that when business does pick up she is unable to hustle accordingly. A dancer’s hustle is how she persuades customers to get lap dances. Once the customer is getting dances, her hustle becomes how to keep the customer spending money on her.

      Stripping can be strenuous, and if a dancer’s body is not able to perform then she is out of a job. I knew of a dancer from Rudy’s Cabaret, who had to go down to a couple shifts a month because she was having chronic issues with her knees from dancing in heels. I see us more like professional athletes, but with little to no physical therapy support. Each dancer has to be proactive in regards to maintaining her physical health. This means providing medical care for herself, because the clubs offer no health insurance. Keeping the dancers as independent contractors is the clubs’ way of deferring any sort of legal or financial responsibility to the dancers. On the bright side, as independent contractors the sky is the limit as far as how much money a dancer could make in one shift. Being an independent contractor is awesome as long as the stripper is consistently making good money.

      Realistically, a stripper’s career has an expiration date. Retirement for a dancer usually means having to find another source of income, and many dancers are not making the necessary steps to prepare for their futures. Dancers who have been in the industry for many years with no other form of employment can end up stuck in the profession because of the lack of work experience to put on a job application or resume. Success in this industry is based solely on money management and future planning. Without these things it is far too easy for the industry to use and discard the women rather than for the women to use the strip club for financial gain. One of the things Annie Sprinkle touches on in her essay is to maintain other sources of income as a means to fend off SWBS. Getting burned out can happen to anyone in the workforce, but as Sprinkle puts it, Although many of our problems are similar to those of women in other professions, the nature and stigma of sex work make ours uniquely challenging (Nagle, 1997).

      Self-care, asserting one’s self-worth, firm setting of personal boundaries, money management, and diversifying sources of income all help to prevent SWBS. Prevention is key. Understanding that stripping is a business is also important. Just because society does not take our profession seriously does not mean that we shouldn’t. The adult entertainment industry is simply that—a business. The owners of the clubs know this, but not all dancers treat it as such. What the dancers must remember is that the strip clubs would not exist without the strippers. We are the ones holding the power. And for this power to be exercised, each dancer must be aware of the important role that she plays. We are the clubs' best paying customers. Know this.

      The Dancers

      I took special care in choosing whom I interviewed. My intention was to interview dancers at different stages in their careers—dancers with children, pregnant dancers, dancers preparing for retirement, dancers who may have a drug dependency, older and younger dancers, and dancers with varying sexual orientations. Not all of the interviews made it into the book. I also interviewed women that I have worked with in different clubs over the years. My research stands out in the way that I didn’t become a dancer to pursue this research project. I had already been dancing for many years before I realized that this project was something I needed to

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