-
I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I was re-reading this book the other day, called "nickle and dimed". Basically a journalist wanted to know if it was possible to live on only 7 dollars an hour, which is what a ton of people in this country make. During the course of the book, she works as a cleaning lady, in a diner, and I forget what other jobs, but it really reminded me that some people have to work a whole week to make what we make in a bad night.
Yes, I *do* think we deserve to make lots of money for getting naked, and being a stripper isn't just "easy" money like people think. But lately, I've really been feeling grateful that I have the opportunity to make decent money and live comfortably, without even having my degree yet. There's nothing wrong with setting high money goals for ourselves and working to achieve them, but also we can remind ourselves when we have a "bad" night, that at least we have the opportunity to make that money, while some other people, don't.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
i read that book, and could totally relate because i worked in fast food, and lived alone for a year,
it's no joke to only make 800 a month, pay 400 in rent, and figure out how to pay phone, electric, credit cards with 500 dollar balances, and still be able to eat. not to mention car notes!
any social activities are out, clothes, and anything not vitally essential, out. it sucks, and yet many people options are that or illegal shit, and it sucks to barely scrap by each month. and i was a single person! imagine trying to raise kids on that. wow.
no emergency money, no health insurance, and if you work you are not eliglble for help from the government, so sol on medical bills.
sigh.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Yeah everything the OP said is true....
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Great book. She was a diner waitress, a hotel maid, and she worked at Wal-Mart, all in different cities. Wal-Mart was the only one that she just couldn't make work. She couldn't get an apartment, so she couldn't get anywhere to cook food and lived off the McDonald's dollar menu, so she got sick, and everything just snowballed until she had to bail and go home. Her waitress experience sounded a lot like mine, I related to that part very well. Still, somehow I managed to put myself through college with no debt doing that, and I'll never figure out how I did it. I doubt I could do it now.
As much as we bitch on this forum about low nights of $100 or less, that's still more than a lot of people are pulling down. We are blessed indeed.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
That sounds like a very interesting book; I'd like to read it.
What was the author's name?
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Great book though I do not recommend her other book, Bait & Switch... where she tries to expose the crappy job market for older white collar people... but she does a half-assed attempt and just complains for the whole book. Bleah! :P
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
and also credit plays a huge part because im not sure if she had good credit or not, but most poor people end up having to use credit cards to pay rent and bills, and never being able to pay them off, so that makes them ineligible for apartments, cars and good interest rates on anything. sucks.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Pretty good book. I was a waitress in college and somehow managed to pay my way and go to school. Not sure how I did it.
But yeah, to the title of this thread, I am very grateful for the opportunity to make good money in a short period of time, leaving me free to pursue other interests. I don't know how I would do what I do if I didn't have stripping to fall back on. When I'm in a bad mood and don't want to work, I make this one of my afirmations -- reminding myself how grateful I am for the opportunity.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I'll be checking this book out too sounds interesting.
I was thinking Saturday night how greatful we are for this job. I made a ton of money, met some interesting people, and came home almost thinking I was out at the real club having a good time.
I doubt people get home from Walmart feeling that way.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kikidejavu
and also credit plays a huge part because im not sure if she had good credit or not, but most poor people end up having to use credit cards to pay rent and bills, and never being able to pay them off, so that makes them ineligible for apartments, cars and good interest rates on anything. sucks.
That's what happened to me. I was working as a receptionist at a salon for 6.50$ an hour. This was in '01-'02 and here it is '08 and I am still paying shit off. I had a boyfriend that I lived with but he only made about the same or less. I used credit cards to pay for just about everything that my 450$ paycheck wouldn't cover. I brought in about 900-100 a month then.......I made 1200$ last week. In a week! What pissses me off is that alot of girls consider that an "o.k." week. I think making over a grand, especially when I only worked 20 hours (four 5-hour shifts) is more than "o.k."
Starfire, this was a great post. We do need to be appreciative of our money right now, especially with the way the economy is and how low-paying so many jobs are. I mean yeah, there still are bad nights where we want to pull our hair out, leaving with less than 100$ or so....but I think the idea is to look at our income as dancers as an average, monthly or weekly. I think we will find we are quite fortunate compared to most.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I often recommend this book to people who are convinced strippers enter the industry only because they were abused as children.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Starfire
I was re-reading this book the other day, called "nickle and dimed". Basically a journalist wanted to know if it was possible to live on only 7 dollars an hour, which is what a ton of people in this country make. During the course of the book, she works as a cleaning lady, in a diner, and I forget what other jobs, but it really reminded me that some people have to work a whole week to make what we make in a bad night.
Yes, I *do* think we deserve to make lots of money for getting naked, and being a stripper isn't just "easy" money like people think. But lately, I've really been feeling grateful that I have the opportunity to make decent money and live comfortably, without even having my degree yet. There's nothing wrong with setting high money goals for ourselves and working to achieve them, but also we can remind ourselves when we have a "bad" night, that at least we have the opportunity to make that money, while some other people, don't.
Yes I agree. My friend Revolution actually got me the book "Nickle and Dimed" only a few short months after I started dancing. During this time, I was in the process of transforming my financial status and lifestyle from penniless to pretty damn comfortable. I was able to thoroughly relate to the book because immediately prior to dancing, I was working menial $7/hr jobs(as I had been for nearly 10 yrs) and yes, it really was all that miserable. I was unable to survive or pay bills on those low wages. It's because of this miserable living situation, that I finally turned to dancing and it proved to be a saving grace. So yes, there were many many times that while reading that book, I kept thinking how thankful I was that I had the opportunity to make money dancing, unlike a girl who might be physically handicapped or obese or otherwise unable to dance.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kikidejavu
and also credit plays a huge part because im not sure if she had good credit or not, but most poor people end up having to use credit cards to pay rent and bills, and never being able to pay them off, so that makes them ineligible for apartments, cars and good interest rates on anything. sucks.
Yeah like CherryBomb, I can relate to this too. This is what I pretty much went through in the time following college. Some asshole in college screwed me over big-time by stealing a lot of money from me, and because I didn't make enough money at my $7/hr shit job to overcome this money loss and get back on track, this had a detrimental domino effect on my finances and credit. This domino effect, along with continuing to only find employment at low wage jobs despite trying really hard, kept me in the shitter for a few yrs and after college it just got worse. Being desperate and frantic, I ended up (stupidly) succombing to a debt consolidation agency thinking it would help me, but instead all it did was add monthly membership fees to the debts I already had, and 4 out of 5 credit cards' APRs did NOT get reduced as promised by the program, but in fact INCREASED to default rates. This agency also closed out all my credit cards in one swoop at the start of the program...you can only imagine the havoc this wrecked on my credit score. At this time, I was guilt-tripping my friends into letting me couchsurf at their places because I had nowhere else to go since even the privately owned $400/mo studio apartments were turning me down because of my credit and insufficient wages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yekhefah
Great book. She was a diner waitress, a hotel maid, and she worked at Wal-Mart, all in different cities. Wal-Mart was the only one that she just couldn't make work. She couldn't get an apartment, so she couldn't get anywhere to cook food and lived off the McDonald's dollar menu, so she got sick, and everything just snowballed until she had to bail and go home.
Yeah that's pretty much what happened to me, as I already explained above. :-\ I can even relate to the whole getting sick from eating off the dollar menu part...when I was in college, I was practically starving and got violently ill from eating nothing but one meal/day Ramen or eggs each day. I ended up missing all my final exams due to illness and I'm lucky that (most) of my professors gave me an extension instead of outright failing me.
Hmmm now I am wondering something. In the book when Barbara Ehrenreich struggles to make ends meet working at Wal-Mart and everything snowballs, she is able to easily "bail" and go home to her "real" career. However, what do you think happens to the people that are stuck there, whom do not have an alternate job or life? My answer: A lot of them probably end up homeless and giving up on life(thus becomming bums), and a few of them probably end up committing suicide too. What do you guys think?
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
^^ I would not be surprised. I used to be one of those people that would look at homeless people on the street and think: 'They must be lazy and/or stupid to not just go get a job...' Well I certainly don't think like that anymore. I can see how people just like me and you can easily end up like that. Very underreported.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I'm so glad this post was made.
I come from a very poor background. As a kid I lived in ghettos, lived in motels, lived on/off welfare, lived off relatives, went to the food bank, etc. etc. At one point my mom and I were living in a one bedroom apartment under section 8 housing, and she supported us both making $4.25 an hour. You know you're ghetto when you don't donate to the salvation army, the salvation army donates to you!
I lived without and always dreamt of having more.
I've had jobs where I busted my ass 45+ hours a week for next to nothing. So it disgusts me when I hear girls complain about making 'only' X amount of $'s per shift, when that amount is what soooo many people don't make in a week. Theres too many stuck up bitches with prima donna attitudes and false senses of entitlement in this industry, and it makes me sick. Sure, getting naked for a living should be a high paying job. But the economy sucks right now, and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.
We're all damn lucky to be able to do this for a living. We have it better than a LOT of people do.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dollyrocker
I've had jobs where I busted my ass 45+ hours a week for next to nothing. So it disgusts me when I hear girls complain about making 'only' X amount of $'s per shift, when that amount is what soooo many people don't make in a week. Theres too many stuck up bitches with prima donna attitudes and false senses of entitlement in this industry, and it makes me sick. Sure, getting naked for a living should be a high paying job. But the economy sucks right now, and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.
We're all damn lucky to be able to do this for a living. We have it better than a LOT of people do.
Thank you, Dolly! This is so fuckin true. I have been averaging around 1000$ a week at my new club, which I am stoked about, but still there are those that I hear complaining about having a "bad week"....making more than I did!
This is one of the reasons I didn't like the big glamourous clubs in Vegas. People talking about having a "decent week" making 5 figures! At first it seemed cool then things just started to make me sick. Listening to girls talking about how "If you leave with any less than 3000$ here a night you are a loser" Talking about so-and-so there that make 25,000$ a week....Totally intimidating and unrealistic to me. I just wasn't cut out for it. I mean more power to those girls but I am happy with 1000$ a week and not having to live in Vegas. I want to go back to there eventually but I think this time I am going so try some smaller, less hyped up, not so much huge "high dollar" places.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dollyrocker
I've had jobs where I busted my ass 45+ hours a week for next to nothing. So it disgusts me when I hear girls complain about making 'only' X amount of $'s per shift, when that amount is what soooo many people don't make in a week. Theres too many stuck up bitches with prima donna attitudes and false senses of entitlement in this industry, and it makes me sick. Sure, getting naked for a living should be a high paying job. But the economy sucks right now, and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.
We're all damn lucky to be able to do this for a living. We have it better than a LOT of people do.
Quoted for truth. Even on my bad nights, I still go home thinking "Well I left with more than I came in with."
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
^ But on some nights, some dancers can't even do that. E.g., nights where you have to dip into the money you brought in with you, just to pay house fee and/or DJ...I think a few of these nights were written about in the "what's the smallest amount of money you made in a shift?" thread. But let's hope that a dancer doesn't have more "negative" nights than not, and if she does, let's hope she finds a different line of work.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Yeah. Nickle and Dimed is a great book especially these days. And yes phillydancer, it totally sucks to go home in the negative. Lately, it has been happening to me once a week, but I am still doing ok at the end of the week. I try really, really hard to just wait til the end of the week and add everything up instead of getting upset over one bad night.
I'm glad you girls agree with me. Like I said, we do deserve the money (I'll never understand the girls who are like, I feel guilty taking peoples money- that's crazy, we dance around naked and deserve it) but we're all blessed we can do this for a living and make good money.
I too have worked low paying jobs. *shudder* I used to work in a restaurant making about 250 a week for busting my ass for 30 hours.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
^ Ugh I can do you one(a few, actually LOL) better. When I was working full-time in retail, I made about $210/week working 35 hr weeks. This job involved driving my gas guzzler truck an hour round-trip to work each day, which also cut into my pay. *shudder* And to think of all the effort I put into that job, including working the 5:30am opening shifts two days in a row right after Thanksgiving, just to get fired at 8am that same day. >:(
Ugh a few yrs before that, I was working at a movie theater for a paltry $6.25/hr. They initially hired and trained me to simply work the ticket window as the ticket cashier, but (like most of my jobs) they soon moved me to the shittiest job that they knew nobody wanted to work(probably because I was too damn nice and compliant, and they knew they could take advantage of that). They made me sweep the floors of each theater after the movie, take out the garbage, and all kinds of dirty work. Oh and here I was, a college student working amongst a bunch of 14 yr old employees...didn't I feel mature. ::)
Even worse: Working as a restaurant hostess(they wouldn't let me start off as a server) making $5.15/hr and getting sent home after only an hour of work. I don't know why they even bothered to hire me...they were already overstaffed with like 4-5 hosts per shift. As a result, they would "cut" me 1-2 hours after I got there. It literally took longer to take 2 busses up into the suburbs for this job one-way, than I spent working once I finally got there!! On most nights, I would get to work at 5pm, get "cut" at 7pm, then walk over to Acme and sit around the deli cafe section for 4 hrs until he got off work and was able to give me a ride(because the only bus stopped running after 6:30pm, this was my only option). I was working 7hr weeks, which doesn't sound very rigorous but keep in mind that the long car-less commute up to this job in the lil' suburbs was rigorous enough!...as well as figuring out how the hell I would get home on days I got out of work after 6:30pm. Plus, I wanted tons of hours and they kept giving me empty promises. I would work 7hr weeks, get paid $4.50/hr but they never paid me my fair share of the tips, so they had to pay a "manager's compensation" to get me up to the barebones $5.15/hr fed min wage at the time. How big those $19 and $35 paychecks were. ::) It was absurd that I put up with all this shit, but hey...any job is supposed to = opportunity if you stick with it, right? (WRONG) Luckily the no-money job prompted me to start dancing, so I quit the shitty hostess job 2 days later.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Kudos for this thread. I read Nickel and Dimed in one day long before I ever stripped.
Can you imagine how shitty it feels to be unemployed for 2-3 months, just trying to find a basic min wage job? That was me after my parents stopped helping me and I applied probably to a couple dozen jobs. I had good job experience and all. By the time I finally got a job at a department store, I'd racked up debt and $7.95 an hour with very fickle hours wasn't going to cut it. I could live on it as I'm lucky to live in a low cost area, but pay off my debt and build savings? FORGET IT.
Hence I'm a stripper. I have had some very bad nights and my good nights are nothing to brag about it, but I'm still glad to be taking it home.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I can totally relate. Now that Im making shit dancing looks great. Now rather than I must make $1000 Im like - Ill be happy with $200-300! Thats 2 weeks worth of work!
Ill have to check that book out.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I ADORE that book... At retail jobs, the highest wage I ever got was $8.50, and they would only let me work part time at that... Now even on bad days, I always say to myself, "Okay, self, now it might have been a bad night here, but remember when you were making less than this in a week? You do? Oh, good. Now, self, I want you to shut up and quit whining about not making anything."
My inner child can get very loud sometimes. ;D
But seriously, dancing has improved my life both in quantifiable and immeasurable ways. I'm SO grateful for the opportunity.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
I'm grateful too, believe me...but I also refuse to allow myself to be completely satisfied with what I make on ANY night. Just b/c it's so easy to become complacent and let that slide into laziness. I never want to accept what I make as being "good enough"...I want to always be setting outrageously high goals and pushing myself HARD.
-
Re: I am grateful for all the money I make dancing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AudreyLeigh
I can totally relate. Now that Im making shit dancing looks great. Now rather than I must make $1000 Im like - Ill be happy with $200-300! Thats 2 weeks worth of work!
Ill have to check that book out.
That's exactly where I am now. I am thinking of checking out the book to help motivate me back to dance.