Why is pornography considered a degrading thing?

That is so my favorite thing. People are always looking down upon strippers as degrading themselves and yet the truth is they are in a position of power. They are taking money from men for basically just teasing them. They are, in reality, capitalizing on their sexual superiority and exercising that power to control them and get what they want from them (CA$H)

 

I guess you've never been up on a stage in a g-string, hoping the dopes in the audience will be enticed to get their lazy butts up out of their chairs and give you a few dollars, or will say yes when you ask if they want a table dance. They get to stay and watch whether they tip and buy dances or not. As long as they're drinking and not harassing anyone, they can't be made to leave.

Strippers who refuse to take it off because no one is tipping, on the other hand, get fired.

Hardly sounds like a "position of power" to me.

 

Well, TeeBee... there are many, many, many strippers that would disagree with you.

Like it or not, a lot of strippers like their job and feel it is a position of power.

It's funny how no one raises hell over ladies clubs where women go there, drink too much and holler at the wel built men.

TeeBee, if you were a dancer and had a bad experiance, than yeah, that's awful.

But if you were never a dancer... you fall into that category of women who feel obligated to tell other women how they should feel.

True, there are women who don't like it but do it for the money.

And then there are the women who do it for the money and like what they do.

 

Hmmm... porn as a way of being closer to god eh?

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

E_S

 

Hey, I say the lords name when I have sex

And I did thank him quite often after losing my virginity for like two weeks straight.

So porn can be seen as a one on one confessional... right?


Right?

 

[Chewbacca] A'umph! [/Chewie]

E_S

 

TeeBee, are you or have you ever been an exotic dancer?

 

Yes, I was. For five years.

And when I have more time later today, I will elaborate on my response.

 

Yeah, I remeber TeeBee sharing that story with us a few years back.

I knew there wa a JC member, but could not remember who for the life of me.

But yeah, your input is more than welcome TeeBee

But keep in mind, that your story is just that... yours. There are also women who strip that saw it differently than you.

 

You do have to remember that just sitting, drinking and gawking is within the rights of the people who did pay a cover charge just to get into the club. I do agree that a stageside seat should be tipping regularly. I usually make it a point to tip the waitresses very well since they are often overlooked, no pun intended, by patrons at a gentlemans club.

TeeBee, I would like to hear your whole story, the good the bad and the ugly. I was not trying to be judgemental in my asking what your experience on this matter was, I was simply attempting to give your opinion a point of reference. If you would prefer to you could PM me. Please let me know where you worked, not the name of the club but just where you were living at the time so we can compare apples to apples.

 

TeeBee, I recall reading your story way back when, but would like to see it again also.

E_S

 

Yeah. most solid and decent strip clubs, if you sit stageside... you have to tip and buy alcohol as a rule.

Btw... let me add something here.

I, as some know, like both sexes.

I have been to both female and male strip clubs.

That said... let me add that for the most part... at the male strip clubs... the ladies act worse than the men at female strip joints.

I mean... WORSE. The ladies are louder, wilder and more prone to grope the guys dancing.

Just my two cents

 

Oh, I know what you mean about the girls with the guys! But the guys can get pretty handsy too, and that was one reason I stopped going to such shows. Why am a paying a stranger money to grab me? Der.

Anyway guys, thanks for the interest. I have no problem talking with you all about my topless dancer days, because I do not consider such work degrading and for the most part I did enjoy it.

However, I must say Bruno-Fett, that you are not the first man I?ve heard say that strippers are in a "position of power". My boyfriend at the time I began dancing told me the same thing. After a few weeks of hustling table dances, I told him his perspective was a little skewed. I re-told the story many times to the other girls throughout the years and not one agreed with him. Of course, I can only speak from my perspective and what I learned from other girls, but I worked with thousands of dancers in my day and I think I had a pretty good cross-section of overall views of the work.

For some background, I worked in Phoenix from 1990 thru 1995. Mostly I worked in a small but classy club called the Excalibur. I also worked at Teasers (a dirty biker-ish bar, where I got my start - ugh!) Stephanie's Babes (classy) Centerfolds (classy/sleazy) Bandaids (very sleazy) and Cabaret USA (empty!). They were topless only, as were the vast majority of clubs in the greater Phoenix area (I would never dance nude anyway). Stage shows were highlighted, tipping the stage was encouraged but not mandatory, and table dances were to be non-contact and cost $5.00 per song. I worked day shift (11:00am ? 6:00pm, roughly), five days a week and averaged $80-100 per day, with some busy Friday?s occasionally racking up $150 or more. We were not paid hourly wages by the club owners, and neither were the waitresses. We were expected to tip the DJ 10% of our daily income, and a minimum of $5.00 to each bouncer and bartender, usually one of each except on Fridays when there were two or more. We did not have a cover charge during the day, and we had no drink minimum, altho we did put an end to giving ice-water for free unless you ordered a regular drink to go with it. (Water?.sheesh, how cheap can a guy in a *****-bar get?)

After five years of hustling table dances and smiling from the stage with the hopes that someone would give me a few dollars for my time, I learned that there is very little in a stripper?s work-a-day routing that they are in control of, and how much or little money they make is not one of them.

Let me back up and list the things I thought of during lunch today. Hold on, this one got a little wordy.

Things a stripper is in control of during her work-a-day routine are:
-What she will wear.
-How she will do her hair and make-up
-Possibly what songs she will get to dance to for her stage routine.
-Possibly, depending on what time of day her shift is, where she will sit in the dressing room. Girls tend to stake out their territory, and woe to the one who has encroached on another's "spot".

Things she has no control over:
-She has no control over how many girls show up for work - too few is as bad as too many. Too few, and the girls get worn out from the constant stage turnaround, while the guys get bored seeing the same faces (and rear-ends) over and over. Too many, and the competition for table dances gets fiercely personal, and the money spread so thin that no one goes home with a good take.

-She has no control over whether or not the DJ is paying attention to what is going on up on stage or down on the floor - it's part of their job to promote each girl fairly and encourage the guys to tip generously and buy dances. An inattentive or favorites-playing DJ can make or break whether or not a girl makes money on stage. Trust me, no one likes to waste their time on stage for not even one stinking dollar. Even worse when no one is buying dances and the DJ doesn't encourage them to.

-She has no control over how the other girls are behaving with the guys, ie: doing rule-breaking things that w

 

I think any room with a group of women together could attract that label.

Is stripping considered pornography?

 

Bottom line, don't move to Phoenix to become a stripper. Even 10-15 years ago, 150 bucks on a good day? You have got to be kidding me, thats all you would take home?

For the record, I never heard that stripping was empowering until I heard it from women in the industry themselves. Which brings up another point I am not working in the industry. I have a lot of friends who have and are, and that is where I gathered most of my information on the subject. Oh and I do not consider some working girl who sat and chewed the fat after a lap dance a friend. I am talking people, male and female who I have met mostly out at other clubs or through other friends, etc. I have heard horror stories and ocassionally a story of cheap guys, but never had them talk so vehemently about how cheap the patrons were. Maybe its a Phoenix thing?

 

Well, each girl has a different experiance.

TeeBee had one, which was not so well

And yeah, this is the second time I've heard her story and it's unfortunate her negative experiance.

But as they say, results always vary.

Yeah, guys can get handsy... but I still think the ladies get much worse with the guy strippers.

It also doesn't help that if get handsy, we get our asses kicked. If a girl gets handsy... management usually looks the other way

 

TeeBee...I prolly saw you dance at Teasers, as I didn't get sober til '92. Imagine that, Teasers...

In fact, my last drunk was at The Fox Den. The sleasiest, dirtiest strip club in town at the time.

 

I once considered doing the male dancing thing as a part time job...

 

What stopped you?

I never thought of it that way. To me, porn is something you can buy and reuse, like a movie, a picture or a magazine. Dancing is entertainment that cannot be taken home in a brown bag unless it's made into a movie or a picture. (I actually have some video of myself on stage, so I guess I have some TeeBee porn! It's fun to watch once in a while and remember the good times...I loved dancing on that stage.)

Hey, they don?t call it the ?right to work? state for nothing! Everything there is cheaper?.housing, land, wages, table dances, guys in *****-bars?

Seriously, guys used to say to me all the time (often after a no-dollar stage?a-duh?) ?Gee, you must make like $500 a day here!!? I?d tell them to do the math: There?d be approximately 72 songs played during my shift (back before it became common to cut all songs down to 3 minutes or less). Even if I got a table dance for every single one, I?d make $360. Of that, I?d have to give over $30 to the DJ, and another $10-30 to other employees. Of course, it was impossible to dance every single song. I think the best day I ever had was $275, and that was because a regular customer gave me one of my very few ever $100 table dances. (He eventually turned out to be a psycho nutball and I had to start blowing him off. I never liked cultivating ?regulars?, in the end they always wanted more than just a dance).

I guess perhaps the girls you know who think such work is empowering are fortunate enough to be working in clubs where all they have to do is smile at a patron and he throws her a $20 bill, and I'm glad for them. But the job is still hustling and luck. There is no consistency and no guarantees. I enjoyed the challenge of that at first, but got tired of it as more and more clubs opened, dancers became a dime a dozen, lap dancing became the norm, and the money got very thin. I believe now in Phoenix most clubs have table dances set at $7 or $8 minimum, and some of the higher end places like Tiffany?s and Bourbon Street might have them set at $10, but yeah?Phoenix is nowhere near other places I?ve heard of as far as dance prices go. But then again, I didn?t have to wiggle around in any strangers' laps for my money, and if a single girl can?t survive on an average of $400 a week take-home, she needs to re-tool her budget. Or sell the Ferrari. I didn't become a stripper to buy jewels and cars, I did it to pay the rent and take care of myself without worry. I'm thrifty by nature, and walking out of a club with $100 in my hand didn't change that. I was often amazed at girls who were making as much or more money than me who were constantly broke. 'Course, they were also usually the ones with the idiot boyfriends...

Too true, my friend. But hell, I once had to have a customer thrown out for squirting me in the face with a water pistol while I was on stage. WTF? What a jerk.

Hehe?that would be funny if you did. Remember any young greenhorn chick wearing aviator-framed glasses, going by the name of Kenda? That be me!

Fox Den?.of all the clubs I remember back then, THAT particular one is not really ringing a bell, but I?m thinking it was a nudie club. Do you remember where it was? I thought the Dancing Sunshines was the dirtiest?or maybe it was the fattest. Those things tended to go hand-in-hand a lot of the time.

 

Fox Den?.of all the clubs I remember back then, THAT particular one is not really ringing a bell, but I?m thinking it was a nudie club.

Nope, it wasn't a nudie bar. They can't serve booze. I wouldn't go to those places.

Do you remember where it was?

Yup. Scottdale Road and McDowell. North of the Los Arcos mall that is no longer there. LOL I used to call it The Dog Den. Cheapest booze and girls in town.

I thought the Dancing Sunshines was the dirtiest?or maybe it was the fattest. Those things tended to go hand-in-hand a lot of the time.

Holy Crap! I forgot about that one! Used to go there too. But I can't remember where that was.

 

Scottsdale and McDowell? Hmmmm... Babe's was in that area, but we can't be talking about the same place. I'm vaguely remembering the name now that I've thought about it, but I'm sure I've never been there.

Dancing Sunshines was around 32nd Street and McDowell, I believe. I remember the building being purple in color.

I can't believe that hole Teasers is STILL open, and as far as I know the same bartender still works there! Dave, I think his name was. My old boyfriend that got me into dancing (who is actually still a good friend of mine) stops by once there in a while for a beer. Man oh man, some things never change.

 

Scottsdale and McDowell? Hmmmm... Babe's was in that area

Yes it is in that area. Nice, classy joint.

The Fox Den is just south of that. I believe it is now called Diamond Girls. But I've not been there.

 

Who exactly would claim porn is moral? raised_brow Anyone? raised_brow

Thought not.

hey, wait! i was away from the intarnets! no fair!

yes, i would claim that porn is moral. it provides an outlet for sexual exploration and enjoyment that makes people happy. that's moral in my book.

Yeah. most solid and decent strip clubs, if you sit stageside... you have to tip and buy alcohol as a rule.

i've never been to a club where men who were sitting around and watching but not tipping weren't "spoken to" by large scary men.

We did not have a cover charge during the day, and we had no drink minimum, altho we did put an end to giving ice-water for free unless you ordered a regular drink to go with it.

wow. that's the laxest strip club i've ever heard of. most have a cover, a drink minimum, or both, plus the aforementioned bouncer interventions with non-tippers.

And, with that in mind she ultimately has no control over how little or how much money she makes. The work consists of hustling for dollars, and the stark reality of the situation is that when all is said and done, your income depends entirely on the generosity of strangers. Sometimes no matter how pretty you are, no matter how much you smile or how friendly you are, or how persistent you are, you can get told "no" repeatedly, and it was entirely possible to spend a whole shift scrambling for dances only to leave with what amounted to minimum wage.

i've known a good number of strippers in my life, and while i totally grant you that it's a hard job, and that strippers work like longshoreman in terms of the physicality alone (just the dancing and such), as far as i've ever seen it's all about the hustle. girls who work hard and learn how to put on the sales pressure with men make bank, and ones that either don't or can't work that hard or aren't good at parting men from their money make zilch. every girl i've known who was successful has made minimum $200-300 net per shift. the one girl i know who wasn't successful was just not a very good dancer and gave too much away for free - sitting there flirting all night with the same tightwad.

Bottom line, don't move to Phoenix to become a stripper. Even 10-15 years ago, 150 bucks on a good day? You have got to be kidding me, thats all you would take home?

that's what i was thinking. Phoenix must suck.

Thereâ??d be approximately 72 songs played during my shift (back before it became common to cut all songs down to 3 minutes or less). Even if I got a table dance for every single one, Iâ??d make $360.

wait, what?!? that's only five dollars per dance! are you kidding? whoa!

every strip club i've ever been to has had a standard $20 per lap dance. that's one of those constants of nightlife, like $20 for a hit of E. plus you're usually expected to tip a little extra on top of that if you're not going to be a jerk. i've blown $100 on a single session of two or three songs in a row.

that explains the difference, i suppose.

what's the deal with Phoenix? you've said it was topless only, so how do table dances work?

 

A table dance was a song danced on the floor, topless, standing roughly between the customer's knees. You were allowed to put your hands on his shoulders and lean close to him, or put your hands on his knees if you were crouched down in front of him, but this was theoretically the only contact between dancer and customer allowed. You could usually get away with putting one knee up on his thigh, or your foot upon his shoulder (if you were flexy enough) and leaning in a lot closer than the Liquor Control Board mandated 6 inches.

At the same time, many clubs turned a blind eye to lap dancing, which was called "dirty dancing" back then. I personally couldn't understand how any girl could grind her body against a stranger for $5.00. Yuk. Even in the sleazier clubs I worked in where I had to learn to get a lot closer than I was comfortable with, I couldn't do it. This situation got much worse towards the end of my dancing days, and was another big reason I quit. I do not know what the standards out there are now, as I have not been in a *****-bar for several years.