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

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....

Lap Dancing jobs - are they really proper employment?

"So what do you do for your day job?"
One of the most common questions I get asked - or a variation thereof;

"What are you going to do in the future? After this? When you can't do this anymore?"
"What field do you work in when you are not here?"
"You can't be a stripper forever you know..."

I'm sorry. You ask me that question, night after night, and quite frankly, I find it insulting.  Lap dancing is proper employment.  I have to pull an 8 hour shift - its a full 9 to 5, give or take the clocking in times, and I am potentially rostered to work every day of the week in many of the big London clubs - thats right, Monday thru to Sunday, ad infinitum.  What other industries have the crazy working hours that a stripper can? Frontline frickin services matey.... Lap dancing venues are often open seven days a week, from lunchtime till the early hours of the morning - Secrets is open till an eyeball bursting 6am! If you are ever desperate for naked women in the middle of the night, they have venues all over goddamn town (see here)

I got asked this today, when I was soooo tired - and thats just from doing a weeks work at my strip club. I've worked every night apart from Sunday and the Strike action yesterday till the sun came up.  yeah, so some nights I've been home by 4am, but mostly I have shut my eyes as the birds were crowing and the traffic was building.
I've been reading that book that was published recently by Danns and Sandrine, and its full of women complaining that their hard work and long hours are not recognised as valid by society, even though 'raunch culture' is encouraged (you can see a really interesting review of it here by a feminist book reviewer)

Well look everybody.  Whilst I might say to your face that I am studying/caring/being a PA - that being an exotic dancer is just a stepping stone to new and bigger things -  I'm telling you now, I'm in this for the long term.  As I've said a million times boefore, I like my job, I like lapdancing, I think it is a great profession if you approach it with the right attitude.  No job is perfect, and neither are there perfect customers. Besides, with the economy as it is, the job market sluggish, and youth and graduate un-employment rising, why not capitalise on my strong sales skills and good looks by providing a second to none service?

Besides, if my contemporaries can't get a job, wouldn't it be greedy of me to take up two or more???

Are Strippers Self-Employed? Landmark Court Case

Stripping has been in the news again this week, with more publicity highlighting that its not always a glamorous and rosy picture after all.  A former stripper is in the process of suing Stringfellows after she was 'unfairly dismissed'.  According to reports if she wins it could set a legal precedent for dancers in the adult entertainment industry, and give the dancing girls of Britain legal rights.  Our rights as lapdancers are pretty murky, even though the obligations that we have to the club are set in stone, and we are often fined, suspended or sacked if we break them.
The Guardian did a great piece on the case in their legal section, find it here.  If you prefer a more sensationalist tabloid view, the Daily Mail wrote about it here and the Sun here.
At the moment lapdancing is pretty one sided - heavily weighted in the clubs favour.  There will always be more girls willing to take a dancers place after all, especially in these desperate times.  A girl can be here today, gone tomorrow, even if she has been at the club for 6 months - even 6 years!  It's a real pack your bags and F**k off mentality, and whilst some clubs operate a three strikes and your out system, with a written record of any misdemeanours, quite often its a case of bullying, personality clashes and a show of power.
If she wins, the Guardian's legal affairs correspondant says that we could get the same legal rights as other employees.  I'm a bit unsure what else it could mean for us lapdancers as, unsurprisingly, all the articles focus on the kind of questions I get endlessly asked myself - How much did she earn, what was her biggest night, who did she dance for, did she get naked etc. 
But I'm going to keep an eye on this breaking news story because if she wins, I know by experience that it will probably result in two things; all the dancers will be called in for a house meeting, compulsory attendance or get fined (I've had to pay £50 before!), and the management will probably use it as an excuse to deduct more from our wages, ie: if you miss a shift you will get fined, house fee price will rise, some glorified bouncer with nil team management skills will devise a new shift/fine system with out consulting any lapdancers to see what would work.  You may read this and think I'm complaining, but I'm not - generally speaking exotic dancers get treated by the management and clubs the same way motorists often are - as cash cows, with a myriad range of deductions and heavy penalties levied on them.  So I'll be watching this, and will make space in my diary for the inevitable meeting and deductions to follow....

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. 

i spin around a pole and break my nose

I love my job, i really do......

but there are certain things, and certain nights, that really really get on my tits

like customers with haliotosis
like the security guys that become managers
like the skinnier girls
like the commission for just breathing, let alone taking my clothes off
like the ones that don't spend money on my hard - yes hrad - put the hours in work
like the ones that argue about the money like it should be a gift
like the times i can't have pudding because i have to watch my weight
or my skin
or my hair
or whatever piece of crap people fancy today

Today I span around the pole about a million times, then just when i was leaving for the changing room, some dumb idiot of a girl didn't hold the door open and it slammed into mine and our managers face. Yes. Very dumb.
But she didn't even say sorry, she just walked.
And it didn't hit the manager, just me. Right in the bridge. Big red lump.

Great, thats another few days of sitting at home unpaid for me then.....

and no, I don't have savings, I don't earn more than you, and I'm not blessed...
I get it when I can, I spend it when I can, and it infringes on every physical and emotional part of my being....

why do I do it?
Hell I dunno, why do you do your job, huh?