Independent article on the human cost of lapdancing

Great piece appeared in the Indy today in lapdancing and how the stripclubs themselves are squeezing more money from us dancers than ever before.
You can find read it here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/human-cost-of-uks-300m-lapdancing-addiction-7637488.html#dsq-form-area
Basically the Independent - great paper in the UK btw, very non- partisan, interesting & informed journalists mostly - anyway, they've interviewed a bunch of lapdancers & gathered their thoughts to see if it supports a recent study by the University of Leeds. They also published a thought-provoking study last year that alleged that 1 in 3 lapdancers had a university degree. Great, so I'm not one of a kind - I'm a one in three kinda gal.
I was contacted by one if their researchers (nice intern job if you can get it!) and was really pleased to be asked such frank and sensible questions, rather than the usual crap - I wish people would just get over me being a career stripper. I gave up working in the city for this!!!
I'd highly recommend looking at the article on "the human cost of the UK's £300m lapdancing addiction" because it's pretty interesting reading and also is very sympathetic to the plight of lapdancers, which is a 'forgotten' and hush-hush stigmatized industry still, despite it's size & international reach. Here's the piece again http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/human-cost-of-uks-300m-lapdancing-addiction-7637488.html#dsq-form-area

Here is my posted disqus comments;
http://sassylapdancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/independent-article-on-human-cost-of.html?m=1

Review of 'Stripped; A Life of Strip & Tease in Clubland' by Samantha Bailey

A memoir that runs the full life cycle of lapdancing.  Samantha Bailey began as a champagne hostess and lapdancer in Denmark when she was only a sweetfaced 17 year old from Essex, then returned to the UK and worked in a succession of lapdancing clubs, first as a stripper, then as a house mum.  Unfortunately for the gossip mongerers she doesn't explicitly name any clubs other than Stringfellows, but I reckon I can recognise a few of the places - and people - she mentions.  Keeping my lips sealed for now tho! 

Seeing as we both write about the same territory, I was suprised to see that the experiences which stick out in my mind are completely different.  She talks about money and gangsters on almost every page, which could make some readers lose sympathy for the protagonist.  You see her naievity in the industry gradually dissapate, and replaced by a steely determination to get on top of her game.  However, over the ten year period, the game is changing - more clubs are opening up, stealing business, and a new breed of stripper, who will do anything for money, from dirty dancing to prostitution, emerge.  At first Sam combats this ill tide by switching clubs, but she feels that she cannot cope as the guareenteed money begins to dry up.  And Jesus, did this girl earn some money!!! She had a flotilla of regulars, guareenteeing several grand a week, and commission was so low in the beginning that it was practically non-existent.  Eventually though, the commission and house fees begin to increase, as the clubs realised that they can make money off the dancers as well as the customers.  She thinks she has a fresh start when she becomes a housemother, but the club, codenamed 'Liberty Steel', is taken over by a bunch of Americans who sound like a mealy-mouthed, hard-nosed contingent who make her life difficult.  She eventually quits in glorious fashion, presumably to go off and write this tell-all memoir - Stripped: A Life of Strip and Tease in Clubland

My favourite chapter explored the different types of customers; 'The Virgin', 'Mr Trapped', and hilariously 'The Homosocials'.  All in all, she divided the guys into six different personality and spending types, (see my stripclub stereotypes series for more in a similar vein), and I felt that she summed up the men really well. The Homosocials are described as men who come into impress other men ie: their clients. Or as she brilliantly puts it "It's a bizarre variation of the 'see how big my dick is' contest that men play all the time."

Stripped: A Life of Strip and Tease in Clubland
has only just come out last week, and it's doing really well in the charts, so I encourage you to click on the link and grab a copy before they all sell out.  Perfect holiday reading for when summer arrives!

Stripper Stories - guest post by Sheila Hageman

The strippping and blogging community makes a perfect match, and I love talking with my fellow dancers, call girls and bloggers.  Sheila Hageman is one of these inspirational women, and I'm happy to present a call to action from her! Here is her guest post, and please check out her fantastic books too!
It’s time for strippers to unite!



I’m not talking about creating a sex-workers union or anything like that. No, what I’m talking about is much more radical than that. It’s time for strippers to unite in their mission to tell their stories.



There are lots of stories told out there about us—just look at the movies, television shows, and magazine stories to see what people believe about strippers. But they are not our stories.



Okay, yes—there are some stripper memoirs out there. I mean, I’m one of those stripper memoirists having written Stripping Down
and The Pole Position: Is Stripping for You? (And How to Stay Healthy Doing It)
 I also blog about the life of an ex-stripper who became a mom and writer at Stripper Mom.



But do you know what the biggest message I’ve been receiving from readers is? I keep hearing—Oh, wow! It’s not just another stripper memoir!



True, Stripping Down deals with much more than just my stripping past. My story begins: at twelve years old, everything changed for me with the discovery of my estranged father’s porn collection. Found locked away in a corner of the basement, the glossy images ignite in me an unrelenting desire for attention and adoration. Now, reflections on my past as a stripper permeate my thoughts as I take on the new roles of mother, caregiver and wife. While helping my baby daughter take her first steps, I nurse my mother through the final stages of breast cancer.



Spiraling through memories and torn between the woman I am becoming and the woman I have been, I am continually Stripping Down.



Part of the problem about the stripper stories we hear is that often strippers are presented in just that one way; we become compartmentalized and shown to be just that and nothing else.



I propose that every thinking stripper out there get to writing and start representing!



Write about everything, not just your stripping life because you are more than just a stripper.



Journal about your everyday life, your past, even your imagined future. But don’t avoid your stripper story either. There is so much to delve into and explore.



Let’s share our stories with the world. Let’s show that we are not all alike. We are all unique and amazing women with our own stories to tell.



If you want to write but don’t know where to start just begin simply by journaling. We’re not talking old-school “Dear Diary” or anything, just grab a pen and pretty journal and carry it with you wherever you go.



Whenever you feel inspired or notice something around you, jot it down.



When you’re first starting out, don’t worry about making it perfect, just get some words down on the page. This is how you start. From the beginning. From right where you are.



Write about your surroundings, about what you see, hear, smell and taste.



And if you are feeling bold—start a blog! Share your words with the world.



What are you waiting for?



What is your story?







Sheila Hageman is a multi-tasking wife and mother of three who blogs for The Huffington Post. Her memoir, Stripping Down, February 2012, from Pink Fish Press, is a moving meditation on womanhood and body image. Also check out her Decision-Making Guide and Self-Discovery Journal, THE POLE POSITION: Is Stripping for You? (And How to Stay Healthy Doing It), by Every Day Create, December 2011, that helps women to further value their own identities through their quest to understand their motivations for stripping. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, CUNY, where she also graduated as valedictorian as an undergraduate. She is a Yoga instructor and teaches Writing at Housatonic Community College and Kaplan University. She has work in many anthologies and magazines like Salon, The Fertile Source, Prime Mincer, and Foliate Oak Literary Journal. To learn more about Sheila and everything she does, please visit SheilaHageman.com. Check out her blogs: Stripper Mom and Celebrity Momster.

'The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl' by Belle de Jour aka Dr. Brooke Magnanti.

Without a doubt Belle is a fantastic diarist, and one of my blogging hero's. In many ways she inspired me to start this blog as "Sassy Lapdancer", but not as a carrion call to 'look at me'! I'm inspired by her emotional honesty, and it really comes across in The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl
, which was her first book, evolving from her popular and award-winning blog.


As well as delving into explicit and intimate detail about her client's sexual peccadilloes, and the processes involved in getting ready for and meeting clients as a call girl in London, she writes about her love and home life. You feel sympathy for this woman, who often feels alone and alienated in the bustling strangeness of big city London. That she commits such intimate acts - perversions, blowjobs, girlfriend experiences, plus a whole host of sexual tricks, played out in various hotel rooms - but cannot find peace and love in her normal life - is a fantastic tale.

It's chock-full of very funny writing, done in a tongue-in-cheek way. It's a gripping series of anecdotes, which can make the narrative jump about a bit, but doesn't take from it's charm. She is extremely frank when describing sex and fantasies, but you are just as likely to laugh as to blush.

It's a great starter book for any erotic confessional collection.



The second book in the series The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl
continues in the same 'year in the life of...' vein, and see's a few of her boyfriends from the first book pop back into her life. I must admit that for a girl who deals with sex everyday, she also has a pretty raunchy stable of boyfriends, but then I guess I do too, if you condensed a whole years worth of sex into a novel.


There was also a FANTASTIC and highly addictive TV series and you can grab the DVD's here Secret Diary of a Call Girl - Series 1-4 Complete [DVD]
If you want a great box set to while away a rainy weekend (happens a lot in London), I'd get one sent over straightaway. It's like all the sexy bits of Sex & the City set in London, and has fabulous fashion to boot!

Hows the writing going?

It's the Spring Equinox today.  I was bursting with ideas for making my stripper blog as funny, honest and sexy as possible - especially over the weekend, where I pulled some really quiet boring shifts.  I did a measly FIVE lapdances last Saturday night, which has to be my worst stripping shift ever!!!  However, today I've been in a funk, moping around feeling sorry for myself as my shoulder is killing from yoga and drunken pole dancing.
So concentrating on possible blog posts related to lapdancing can really lift my spirits, as well as giving my tired feet a rest whilst I sit my arse in front of a computer screen for an afternoon.  I've been getting lots of emails recently from readers who say my blog posts on stripping are funny and humourous, which I think is flattering but I wish sometimes that life was as funny as you think it is.  Most of the time a lapdancers life is pretty boring - you're either waiting to start work, waiting for a customer, waiting to go on stage - you get the idea.  That's why I started this blog - I needed to write a funny stripper blog that describes the good times as well as the crap we have to deal with on an average night at a stripclub, as well as trying to explain it to the outside world.  The number of times I've been cornered at parties by 'interested' people who ask me a million questions on whats it like, what I wear, and how much do I earn.  I've felt like throwing the punchbowl at them, except that London parties don't have punchbowls, as a rule.  Maybe I should start a trend.....I could bring my own as a conversational starter/stopper to the next houseparty...?

No confidence today as sex-industry women do it better....

I've been having a low day, a bad Friday.  Nothing in paticular has happened, I just feel awful.  I laid in bed and read a book or two, but the words just seem to wash over me.  I'm working tonight, and guess that I am going to have to buck up and get my head out of the sand.  I can't say that I am paticuarly looking forward to it, but I also know from experience that once I get into the club my smile will switch on and I will become a happy, flirty little automaton.
Working nights can be fun, hilarious even, and gives you the day to yourself.  I'm free to do whatever I want.  But sometimes those long hours seem to stretch out.  You wake up in your empty bed, sometimes in the morning, more usually around lunchtime, occassionally in the afternoon. You stare at the ceiling, perhaps open the curtains, look at the weather outside.  You know that there is no reason to venture outside the house right away, so you putter downstairs and make yourself a cup of tea.  Wipe smears of encrusted eyelash glue and sleepy eye from your puffy lids, and think about what you are going to have for breakfast.  Pick my nose. Scratch your bum.  Look at any fresh blisters on your toes and press them against the cold linoleum.  Then you check how many hours you have till your shift that evening and wonder what you are going to do with all that time.
If I'm feeling sprightly, I might go for a jog.  Hit the gym.  Do a few cat-like stretches and some yoga in the living room.
If I'm feeling numb and bored, I'll just slump back to bed.  Read a book. Open up the papers.  Jump on Twitter and see what the rest of the world is doing. Log on facebook.
Someone sent me a message today, that a new book on stripping was out.  I looked on Amazon.  There it was. A memoir of lapdancing in London.  "Stripped; A Life of Strip and Tease in Clubland" by Samantha Bailey. I recognised the author.  She looked happy and smiling in her promotional photo.  I felt a pang of jealousy, followed by a huge feeling of inadequacy.  Why wasn't it me in print? I've been faffing around with a novel for the best part of two years now, starting and stopping, changing the format. I started work on a memoir, but that seemed dull and formulaic, so I began on a novel.  A girl at university that becomes a stripper in London.  But that didn't seem to work, not properly, so I began again - condensing time, trying to fit an average night, an unusual week, the run-up to Christmas, into 20 chapters. I'm still fiddling, but the fiddling is going well. I feel like I am actually getting somewhere. Perhaps eventually I will see the publication of another girls memoirs as something exciting, and inspirational.  It certainly bodes well if there is a publishing precedent. 
I googled around a bit more, to see what other women in the sex industry were publishing.  Most interesting was Lorelei Lee, who has screenwritten a movie called 'Cherry', starrring the ridiculously gorgeous and talanted James Franco.  I felt a pang of jealousy at this too.  Here was a porn star whose writing prowess had landed her the opportunity to work with Hollywood's hottest talent.  The movie is still in post-production, and is on my must-see wish list.
Then there are the big-hitters - Diablo Cody, another stripper, this time American, who wrote the screenplay for Juno following the success of her stripping memoirs 'Candy Girl'.  Another girl who made it to Hollywood.  Belle de Jour, or Dr. Brooke Magnanti, is another British sex-industry worker done good, who is on her 3rd or 4th book already and had ITV turn her vice-girl memoirs into an awesome TV series.  Starring Billie Piper.  I remember Billie from when I was growing up, she was a teeny bopper pop music firehouse who was around my age and had grown up in London.  We were all jealous at my school and longed, secretly, that we were also prancing around with a record contract and the catchphrase 'coz we want too'!
I know that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that aspiring to be like others who have had success in a field similar to yours is a good thing.  But it is still dispiriting sometimes, especially when you wake up with bruised toes, in a hot bedroom, alone, with nothing but a few cups of tea and a computer screen to fill up the hours of a grey London day.  Sometimes I can't wait for dusk to fall.....

Stripped - too right there!

So I've been pouring over the recent book by `Jennifer Hayashi Dann & Sandrine Levique'
on the UK lapdancing industry- and its ties with the sex industry in the UK in general.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I was worried it may be harrowing stuff which put me off my profession, and you know what? It is.

Score of women have rolled up to give their two bob bit and I empathise with so many elements of their problems its scary. I'll be posting a review later this week, but so far? It's scarily food for thought....
I already feel worried enough turning up to strip - what if a manager or co-worker found out I had this blog? Would I be seen as a bad influence - a whistle blower? Would I get sacked? I don't know if I am prepared to lose my job for a few scribbled down words.  As regular readers will know, I don't shit-stir, I don't name-drop, I don't moan in explicit detail about my nights at work, the guys I get naked for, the girls I do it for or the managers I tip out each night.  I just generally try and use this as an outlet for my little pieces on the stripclub industry - hell, the sex industry in London in general - I am classed as a sex worker by the government after their ruling a few year back now - anyway, I just like to write on what it is like to be a stripper in London and my thoughts on London's sex industry.
Still, the book Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing
paints such a negative picture of exotic dancers and the attitudes that they are faced with that I am glad I have this blog, because in its own miniscule way I can be a voice for all the lap dancers out there who enjoy their jobs, who work in nice clubs, and feel that they are doing a service to mankind itself.
There, I've said it.  I'm a girl providing a service of full-blown, 5 star entertainment.  I'm a stripper. I get your rocks off.  For money. So there.
Just please, if you are my boss, don't figure out who I am and sack me.  I'm not a dancer with a malicious bone in her body - my bones are rather flexible, and tanned and trim at that.  I'm just a girl, who like anybody else, has days where she loves her profession pathway, days where she hates her job, but please don't get scared by my stripper diary.
It's as harmless as a single lapdance..... you can always have one... no1 will notice....

My Stripper blog's twin sister

Today I'm quiet excited.  I am off to visit a friend who promises me to use his geekerific magic and turn the ugly duckling of my blog, which I brutally disfigured a few days ago, into a fantastic swan.  It will be easier to read, easier to get around, more interactive and maybe even have a few photographs in there.  Lucky readers...
I've been doing some research into lap dancing blogs to see how other dancers do theres and found an interesting doppelganger - in blog format.  A ex-dancer in Australia must be as ditzy as me as she has produced a blog in the identical colour combo's and two bar look as mine - all black and pink.  I thank her for the compliment, and you can see it here
More lapdancing blogs like mine are springing up over the web all the time, and some of them make a great read.  Favourite lap dancing blogs of mine can be found on me links page of stripper blogs worth a tip which is basically a list of blogs from exotic dancers, stripclub industry blogs, escort blogs and lapdancing blogs, full of stripclub musings, and stripper thoughts.  I also love Peter Tips blog, who shows the lap dancing industry from a punters view.
For balance whilst I'm at it, here is a blog by a strip club researcher who is against lap dancing venues on her street.  Fair point I guess, unless they are in the town or city center, which are usually full of nightlife venues anyway.  To me, a nightlife venue is a nightlife venue, whether it does karaoke or go-go girls and boys. (There is actually a stripaoke night in the US run by one of my fave exotic dancing bloggers Rocket, see here)
Funny entries spring up on pole dancing especially - this article compares pole dancing to blogging, there are lots of websites on poledancing and poledancers, that sell instructional pole dancing videos and give pole dancing tips.

I'm always surfing the web to find lap dancing writings, or funny lap dancer stories - whether its an evening at a stripclub or the stripping industry in general. My favourite is Tits and Sass, which is written by sex workers.  It's beautiful, funny and when I see my computing genius pal later, I'll be using their site as inspiration!

ARGH! I've messed up my blogg

I'm really, really shite at computers - in fact, painfully so.

So I apologise for this NEW LOOK BLOG - I was messing around after a few reader comments to brighten up the damn thing, and I've royally fucked it.  I dunno how to get it back to how it was before, which is a big big shame.

I will try and get it back to its usual self asap, or I will sod it and get someone who knows what they are doing to make it look pretty again.

Its kinda like when you go to the hairdressers and are not happy with  the cut they give you, so you go home and try and try it yourself - except that it ends up TEN TIMES WORSE!!!

where's my copy?! 'Stripped; The Bare Reality of Lap dancing'

Ooohhh, there is a new book out on stripping, and I'm eager to get a copy. But damnnit! Amazon has sold out.  This means that it's probably massively popular already, which is great news for me as I'm currently scribbling away on a lapdancing novel of my own.  Ahhh, how I dream of a major retailer selling out of my own silly scribblings....
So, the new book out is;


'Stripped; The Bare reality of Lap Dancing' by Jennifer Hayashi Danns & Leveque Sandrine and here's an Amazon link


I first heard about it after a Twitter follower (thankyou honey!) alerted me to a review in the Guardian.  I read and reread the piece with some interest as the views purported seem to be the exact opposite of mine - Jennifer worked for two years as a lapdancer and she didn't like it.  At all.


The review said that she drank daily, daily meaning before, whilst prepping and during work.  Lots of girls took cocaine or drank-drived home.  I agree that a lot of women in the stripping profession turn to drink or drugs, but so do many women nowadays in their twenties - drinking and drugtaking are so normalised into social culture and practices that I am more suprised if somebody doesn't drink or dab in a little coke now and then.


But I really emphasised with her stories, collected from various dancers in conjunction with a campaigning co-author, Leveque Sandrine.  God, they make them sound so nasty - and I suppose a lot of them are.  Guys making you feel like shit, whether it's through the levying of pointless fines by a misogynistic management or customers making degrading comments, which get increasingly tiring as they stack up though the night.


The books main thrust, as far as I can tell from the review, is that lapdancing is psychologically damaging.  (I'm really hoping that this isn't true, as I've been in the business for so long now, and would hate to turn out as a crackpot)  But seriously, I think that stripping is harmful for many girls.  In my experiences, their ability to deal with it centers on just a few aspects; the average customers attitude, the level of contact, and how strong a base the dancer has herself.  A girl away from home for the first time at university may find it very difficult.  A journeying dancer - a stripper on tour - in a different bedsit/friends couch/club every week, may find that she gets more worn out and snappy, more introspective.  A girl who is falling in and out of love shouldn't be working till she becomes steady Eddie once more.  A girl who has failed to budget properly, and then work turns quiet, and she doesn't get that windfall she was counting on, well they always say that desperation leads to drink and drugs and ruin.


Yeah, we all have bad days at work.  But if you are a lapdancer without a strong mental barrier to block it all out a bad shift or comment can linger and fester, as Dann notes;  
"While you are dancing you don't talk about it – because if you are not going to stop, what possible value is there in letting [those thoughts] fester? That's why I would question research which only talks to people who are still working."


The book is clearly written with an agenda - a moralistic, anti-stripping one.  I'm a bit scared actually that it will be so full of depressing stories which strike a chord with me that I will go slightly loopy. I started this blog as a way to filter out a lot of the bad comments and soul-destroying evenings - writing has always been a cleansing and cathartic experience for me.  My first blog, the stripper bride, was often written when I was in a bad place, and many of my shifts did make me unhappy.  Even more petrifying is the knowledge that many of their arguments will be heavily researched, and coming from all directions - political, psychological and sociological - directions which I have studied myself.  What if through reading, I am turned away from my profession; "Danns hopes her book will persuade others that this industry harms men and women alike. "There's something uncomfortable and unbalanced in a fully clothed man paying a woman to strip naked."


Anyways, I'm not going to form a valid opinion until I read the book, which I will probably read with a good bottle of red, just to make the nasty truth medicine go down a little better. 

Brand new page of all my favourite blog posts!

Bonjour readers, I just finished going through my blog posts to find my favourites - the funniest, the rudest, the nastiest!
I've uploaded them all onto a spanking and sparkling new page which can be found here.

I hope you read and enjoy them - feel free to comment and moan all you like - although I want the sexy moan - not the nagging kind.  Mwah!

I've just enjoyed the last Bank Holiday of the so-called english summer, and have a few stories to tell which I'll be writing up and posting tomorrow.  Until then, I've got a bottle of red wine to finish off and a sofa which is calling me.

Ciao!

Stripper blogs - why do we do it?

After reading 'Belle de Jour' many years ago, I thought, "I can do that!"

No, not that - blogging.  (you think I meant sex for money? ha!)

I really enjoy taking my clothes off for a living, and writing about it is pretty fun as well.  It's very cathartic to blog as a lapdancer, as stripping can be soul-destroying sometimes.  By writing a blog on my life as a lapdancer, I am able to vent out any frustrations that the previous nights antics have brought out in me.  It allows me to take time and review the idiot customer, the bitchy girl, the stubborn management, and instead of bottling up the feelings inside, I put it in my lapdancing blog.  I don't think I could work in this industry without a stripper blog!

Of course, I'm not alone.  There are lots of blogs and sites written by women in the sex industry, and you can find my favourites here.  I find it fascinating to see how women in similar industries, often living on the other side of the world to me, cope with their situation.

I see my blog as an ever-expanding resource, and if nothing else, if I have had a hard night stripping, I can look over past entries in my lapdancer blog and realise I've had worse!