
Originally Posted by
Melonie
This was the major reason that I retired from live dancing 4 years ago ... when it became crystal clear to me that the 'old' strip club paradigm ... where dancers were considered to be 'performers' rather than 'sex workers', when 'top shelf' but clean dancers were treated with at least some element of respect by clubowners and club customers alike, and where 'average' club customers could still afford to spend a fair amount of money at a strip club without short-changing their mortgage payment and/or car payment and/or grocery and utility bills ... was not going to come back into existence within the practical 'lifetime' of my dancing career !!!
Granted that it was financially possible for me to 'walk away' from live dancing without too much lifestyle disruption, a situation which isn't the case for lots of younger dancers who didn't have the benefit of being able to cray 'bank' during the 90's tech boom and early 00's real estate boom. However, even though some younger dancers 'need' the elevated level of earnings potential that dancing used to be able to provide, wishful thinking is not going to increase the amount of money in club customer paychecks, nor reduce the amount of money club customers must pay in taxes, utility bills, rent / mortgage, groceries, tuition / student loans, and other 'essential' items, to increase the net amount of money available for strip club spending. And, unfortunately, I really don't see anything on the economic horizon that is likely to increase the amount of after-tax, after 'necessities' money which would allow 'middle class' strip club customers to afford to spend the same amount of money in suburban / neighborhood strip clubs that they used to.
As stated multiple times in earlier posts, IMHO younger dancers basically have two remaining options to still be able to earn significant amounts of money from dancing these days. One option is to get comfortable with the fact that a large number of customers that are actually willing to spend money in strip clubs these days expect to receive 'extras'. Another option is to relocate to a big city which is capable of supporting an upscale strip club, a city which also has a significant number of guys living / working in that city that fall in the 'top 10%' of all American earners to still make high spending in that upscale strip club possible.
Obviously a fair number of younger dancers are not going to be comfortable offering 'extras', and are also going to be unwilling or unable to pull up stakes and move to a big city and also get hired by an upscale strip club. For better or worse, younger dancers that can't or won't explore these two options are most likely going to experience a continuing 'downhill' trend. And, undoubtedly, at some point, those younger dancers' 'downhill' trend will reach the point where they begin to question the wisdom of continuing to work at a strip club where they are treated increasingly poorly and earning increasingly less money.
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