View Full Version : The stereotype that it's hard to get out of the life
charlie61
02-26-2010, 05:07 PM
You don't have to lie, exactly.
I'd say you had been doing sales work with high commissions, or had your own business selling stuff. It's true. And goddamn what's harder than walking up to a table of guys who might be total assholes and hustling them out of their money anyway. That's sheer sales ability right there. If they ask exactly what you were selling, say lingerie or something. Maybe wholesale goods, commodities, whatever. Something you know about and is worth money.
True, but it'd be sketchtastic to not have any references for that and not be able to describe what I actually do. Employer: "Oh, interesting! You owned your own sales business? What did that involve?" :-\
Like I said, everything's fine. I'm only 21 years old, still in college, and just landed an internship. I just have much more sympathy now for women who are trying to get out of the job and either can't because the transition is rough or because of their employment gap.
charlie61
02-26-2010, 05:08 PM
I'm young enough that it's more beneficial (and involves many fewer questions) to just say I've been in school.
jack0177057
02-26-2010, 05:26 PM
The other day I applied for scholarships that asked me what I'd been doing with myself, and I was like....mrh??
How about turning your stripping experience into a sociology or psychology senior thesis regarding society, pyschology and human sexuality... Then, you can say you've spent the past 3 years doing ethnographic research and collecting empirical data for your senior thesis on the motivation, negotiation of identity and self-verification of exotic dancers through subcultural ties... (or some other academic and arcane-sounding research project).
Like her --
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/education/13372744/detail.html
Some past academic research topics involving stripping:
A Study of the Work and Interactions of Exotic Dancers
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/Kilgore%20Elizabeth%20Ann.pdf?ohiou1040068806
EXOTIC DANCERS: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN SOCIETAL REACTION,
SUBCULTURAL TIES, AND CONVENTIONAL SUPPORT
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol10is1/bernard.pdf
Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?
http://www.unm.edu/~gfmiller/cycle_effects_on_tips.pdf
Identity Management, Interaction and Self-Verification among Rural Exotic Dancers
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/2/2/5/9/pages22596/p22596-1.php
Exotic Dancing and the Negotiation of Identity
http://jce.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/6/643
Exploring the Motivations and Fantasies of Strip Club Customers in Relation to Legal Regulations
http://www.springerlink.com/content/b03481h711050213/
Learning to strip: the socialization experiences of exotic dancers.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-20785419/learning-strip-socialization-experiences.html
Stripping, social class, and the strange carnalities of research
http://www.americanethnography.com/article_sql.php?id=68
The relationships and interactions between dancers and customers (Wood, 2000; Boles and Garbin, 1974; Petersen and Dressel, 1982; Enck and Preston, 1988; Ronae and Ellis, 1989)
The use of neutralization techniques by the dancers in order to justify their occupation and accept the stigmatizing components attached to the role of an exotic dancer (Peretti and O’Connor, 1989; Thompson and Harred, 1992; Reid, Epstein and Benson, 1994; Maticka-Tyndale et. al., 2000).
charlie61
02-26-2010, 05:41 PM
^ Uh, yeah. I appreciate the thought, but you try standing up in the world of academia and telling them that you've been stripping for four years. Sounds good in theory. But when you're a 21 year old innocent-looking girl, that's not what people want to hear. Anyway, I'm an English major.
^ Interestingly, my fav wants to continue dancing after she finishes her PhD. I guess she is a true believer. Her career course is English also...rhetoric I think.
FBR
jack0177057
02-26-2010, 08:21 PM
^ Uh, yeah. I appreciate the thought, but you try standing up in the world of academia and telling them that you've been stripping for four years.
Not stripping... ethnographic research and collection of empirical data for a journal article exposing the dynamics and psychological tensions in the female artistic expression of elements of male erotic fantasy.
Or maybe you can write a fiction novel about a dancer and say that you spent time researching the lives of exotic dancers and their customers to write your first novel.
OJenni!
02-26-2010, 09:02 PM
If I quit dancing and work as a lawyer straight out of school I will get approx $50k p/a for 5 days a week, averaging 8-10 hours a day.
I work 2-3 nights a week as a dancer and I make more than twice that and I have all the time in the world to go to the gym and whatever else I feel like doing.
To answer you're question yes giving this up will be exceptionally hard but not because I don't have any other options, because this gig is just too good and suits my lifestyle so well.
Totally agree. I graduated with a degree in psychology and did not land a job right away, but did eventually although one I did not like. If I wanted to go and be a social worker I would be making around 28 K p/a dealing with all type of people with whom most of society does not want to deal with. Working 8-10 hr days, shift work and little to no say in how I deal with clients.
For some people that type of work is rewarding, but I have tried my hand at it (for 10 months) and I certainly did not feel the same way. The shifts, menial pay... but what got to me most is how I was basically directed on what types of conversation I could be having with my disabled clients. I did not believe in talking down to them as if they were retards, but my employer did not agree with this. I handed in my resignation a week after having an "important meeting on how to deal with clients" with my employer.
Stripping and sex work make me feel free. I like it. I do not make as much money as you, but I do make more money then I would as a social worker.
KS_Stevia
02-26-2010, 10:13 PM
Charlie, ignore those guys..fuck them and their irrelevant opinion. Take it from me...you don't have to lie. Use your college education PLUS the internship. PLS do not put the stripping on a resume or mention is...completely forget about it. People do NOT understand and they will not understand in time for you to get job referrals.
You are doing just fine at age 21. Just use the sale experience as a learning experience, as you already have. You've done great honey, keep it up! Don't bother inventing an entire fake career...I've done that before and it doesn't help.
Trying to "write a book" or making up some bullshit disseration is just an extention of a fanstasy of men who have built their careers doing something else. Its hard enough for us being women in a professional field. If you want to build your resume and must work for someone else to do it..pls, keep mouth shut and pretend that the last page of advice DID NOT HAPPEN.
I will swear on the grave of my beloved mother...its only hurt me when I've admitted stripping to ANYONE I've been in professional hahoots with.
There's a reason stripping is a stigma, boys, don't kid yourselves.
Djoser
02-27-2010, 12:04 AM
Well I have had to lie about being a stripclub DJ a couple times when I was looking for 'civilian' work, and I'm glad I did. Because they sure as shit wouldn't have hired me if I hadn't. Same stigma, if not quite as bad.
I have also lied about being self-employed as an illustrator for more years than would have been appropriate in their minds, though that wasn't as urgent a requirement, to say the least--but I needed to decrease the emphasis on independent thinking in that case.
But I was a lot older than 21.
And no, I would never tell anyone in a job application or in academia about stripping. Very bad idea. You might find the occasional very exceptional case, as an ex of mine did, but that was just to get a thesis topic approved, and she had a very cool, progressive female prof. But most females in academia would react badly, and the males that didn't would be accepting of it for all the wrong reasons.
If I was a 29 year old dancer trying to break into the business world, I would sure as shit lie about it.
charlie61
02-27-2010, 01:50 AM
Charlie, ignore those guys..fuck them and their irrelevant opinion. Take it from me...you don't have to lie. Use your college education PLUS the internship. PLS do not put the stripping on a resume or mention is...completely forget about it. People do NOT understand and they will not understand in time for you to get job referrals.
You are doing just fine at age 21. Just use the sale experience as a learning experience, as you already have. You've done great honey, keep it up! Don't bother inventing an entire fake career...I've done that before and it doesn't help.
Trying to "write a book" or making up some bullshit disseration is just an extention of a fanstasy of men who have built their careers doing something else. Its hard enough for us being women in a professional field. If you want to build your resume and must work for someone else to do it..pls, keep mouth shut and pretend that the last page of advice DID NOT HAPPEN.
I will swear on the grave of my beloved mother...its only hurt me when I've admitted stripping to ANYONE I've been in professional hahoots with.
There's a reason stripping is a stigma, boys, don't kid yourselves.
Thank you x10 for this post. Maybe in some porno world I could stand in front of my boss, pout, and say "But I just...I just like taking my clothes off" and land a job. But this is the real world.
yoda57us
02-27-2010, 08:11 AM
Its hard enough for us being women in a professional field. If you want to build your resume and must work for someone else to do it..pls, keep mouth shut and pretend that the last page of advice DID NOT HAPPEN.
I will swear on the grave of my beloved mother...its only hurt me when I've admitted stripping to ANYONE I've been in professional hahoots with.
There's a reason stripping is a stigma, boys, don't kid yourselves.
Couldn't agree more. I know too many women who have had to move out of an apartment or quit a regular job that they loved because someone saw them dancing or found out that they used to. Pop culture has grabbed onto stripping and tried to turn it a mainstream topic. Thanks to rap video and tabloid TV strippers have become part of the vernacular. Don't kid yourself. The real world, the part of the world that hires people and writes morals clauses thinks that strippers are bad people.
...and now it's hookers! Thanks to Spitzer's folly and now Tiger Woods, Ashley Dupree and other escorts and madams are getting way more than their fifteen minutes of fame. Again, the media is sensationalizing what happens and glamorizing the whole act of sleeping with a guy for money just so they can milk the topic. In the real world Ashley and girls who do what she did will always be known as dirty hookers. Nothing more and nothing less.
Frankly I liked it a lot better when the sex business was all a bit more underground. Women involved in the sex industry are destined to be misjudged. I just liked it better when they where largely ignored by the ignorant masses.
Pretty_Penny
02-27-2010, 09:26 AM
Woa. Is there another thread where you talk about this? I want to discuss this further w/o threadjacking.
Not directly no, but I don't see why it's a "woah"...
Also, just for the record I do mean a Bachelor's and not a breast augmentation....lol....
since I just realized it could be seen that way.
Pretty_Penny
02-27-2010, 09:29 AM
PS. Hearing girls talk about how they jut can't walk away from all that awesome money makes me want to travel so bad.
thatguy6673
03-04-2010, 05:17 PM
I know at least one ex-exotic dancer at the firm where I am employed.
Nobody openly cares about her past job, since she is a dilgent and effective employee. Even if someone cared, other people at the firm would likely see raising the issue as petty and inappropriate. Plus, how do you 'out' an ex-exotic dancer and not look like a tool/hypocrite?
charlie61
03-04-2010, 07:06 PM
^ That's really cool, actually. But I think your firm must be extremely unusual. I mean, I can't even tell casual friends about my job without getting the O_O (back away slowly/act sleazy) reaction. People talk behind peoples' backs and whatnot. Even women who don't encounter overt discrimination typically endure other kinds.