I'm thinking about getting into dancing but I found this article published in an English newspaper and it's made me think a lot harder...
http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/arlapd.htm
What do you guys think? The last paragraph really gave me shivers.
I'm thinking about getting into dancing but I found this article published in an English newspaper and it's made me think a lot harder...
http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/arlapd.htm
What do you guys think? The last paragraph really gave me shivers.
Very odd.
First off, my own experiences contrasted with the last paragraph:
Work sometimes feels quite alien to me when I first walk in. It is a far finer bar than I would usually find myself in, and the clientele and staff are far far more nicely dressed than at any of the clubs I frequent. Sometimes I enjoy going out to a similarly nice place with friends (attentive waitstaff, plush chairs, art on the walls and tropical plants in the corners), but until recently I felt like an interloper, a cleaned-up bum pretending to be posh. Given my usual habit of ordering a cola (non-alcoholic), tipping the server the price of the soda, then getting nothing else but water all night, that's not far from the truth. I've spent long enough as a poor college student that the idea of spending $8 on a drink is absolutely vile to me.
At the club, I certainly put on a personna. I can't get away with being that flirty and devil-may-care in real life, not even when I do go out and drink, and I'm very rarely that free with discussions of my sexual preferences and who in the club I find attractive (roughly 20% of the girls most nights, in all truthfulness).
But do I try to distance myself from it? No, no more than my day job. I have to put on a different personna for my day job (more socially conservative, less anarchist, less chatty than the self I am around friends) in order to work well with my bosses and coworkers, but I don't think this is necessarily "not me" or false. I simply choose to tone down those aspects of my personality that make my coworkers actively uncomfortable and emphasize those aspects that make it easier for me to contribute to the lab and be productive.
When I walk into either job after a period of time off (anywhere from a week to a month), the surreality of it can hit me very hard. In one, I work with strange chemicals, fire, and pathogenic microbes -- dude, I'm a mad scientist! In the other, I am admired and paid (paid!) for being charming and beautiful -- dude, I'm a goddess!
The commerciality of my life as a stripper is far more obvious than the commerciality of my life in the lab; one I am handed cash regularly, whereas in the other money is deposited directly into my checking account without me having to dirty my hands with it. This doesn't change the fact that if I hated either of my jobs, I would be selling my happiness for them. How many times have you heard somebody bitch and bitch about their job, only to end with "at least it pays the bills"? All people are for sale to one extent or another. Some will sell themselves for money, some for fame, some for approval, some for power, and a very few will only sell themselves to their ideals. For the vast majority of us, some part of us, be it our talents, happiness, and/or bodies, is for sale simply for the right amount of money.
In short? It may be more in your face that strippers are for sale, to an extent, but many of us are no more "for sale" than the unhappy office-worker who trades 40 hours of misery in a cubicle for a nice paycheck. The young lady speaking in that last paragraph isn't doing well by herself by working as a stripper. I'm certain she's not alone in putting up with a good deal of psychological hurt for the sake of the money, but it just isn't healthy. If you don't have the mindset to work as a stripper and not harm yourself, you either shouldn't do it at all, or you shouldn't do it until you have confronted your problems with it and dealt with it.
I have a couple issues that I have to deal with, such as fear of how a few of my more conservative friends and my parents will react when/if they find out, but I have done myself no harm by choosing this profession, and I have learned a great deal of skills
[end pseudo-academic discussion while on cold pills -- whee!]





I think that it was very long. Some true parts, some seemed to be a bit exagerrated.
IDK, in my club a lot of the girls become jaded after a while, true, but even so, if you can stick up for yourself and have a strong mental composition (can handle creeps, slobs, jerks, getting turned down 20 times in a row, told you're ugly, etc) then you'll be fine.
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good luck!
Well said ChloeTheRed!!
I would like to add that I believe that men will sell themselves out for sexual gratification. Men will go to great lengths to earn big money, or even compromise thier principals just for the chance at sex. I'm sure you've all see the man acting like idiots because some woman he has a crush on insists that he act that way if he wants to get in her pants??
I'm sure it is all in degrees, though. One man will dutifully buy gifts for the woman he loves while another man may attempt murder to please a lady. In anycase his actions are to gain sexual gratification. Strippers are merely looking for financial gain.
Promote yourself and earn more money! This is a business that is owned by strippers for strippers. Let's make that money!
I wonder about this sometimes too. I'm not yet a stripper, but I probably will be come summertime.
I've got a couple thoughts on this. One of them is about empowerment. If you are comfortable with your body (which we all should be, but society won't let us), then nudity shouldn't be a big deal. Personally, I love my body (most of the time), and to me, dancing is a wonderful activity. Therefore, in this way, if I could dance nearly naked and get paid nicely by some loser to watch, I'm completely fine with it. As long as no one's being extremely disrespectful.
On the other hand... I don't like it when you hear about some of the custy's attitudes, like they think that the dancers are there strictly for the custys' pleasures, and that the dancers aren't real people. The feminist side of me goes against stripping because it kind of does seem like women are for sale. And it seems that the only way women can make money equivalent to men is if they invoke their sexuality. I have a problem with people being disrespectful. I'll have to learn not to be so easily affected by jerks and assholes when I start stripping.
Well, I guess they all need some fluff topic to practice on before they learn that phrases like "caustic efficiency" and "exfoliated genitalia" aren't good journalism...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]



i don't sell myself, but rather rent out what i don't mind and keep to myself what i do.
"The herd walks off the cliff because the herd are not a group of individuals - the herd is a mass of followers and followers follow the path of cowardice."
Alot of people view working for someone other than yourself as selling ones self.



The question is, what's being sold? By the dictionary definition of sellingOriginally Posted by redvelvetrose
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sell
you're definitely not selling your body; you're taking it home, along with the money.
So you could just say you're selling your dancing, your time and your attention. Or you could say that with your very first strip, you sell the opportunity to truthfully claim that you would never do such a thing, which means you move from one side to the other of the madonna/whore dichotomy (if you believe in such a dichotomy).
There are many more ways to make money; dancing has a law of diminishing returns, based partly on age and partly on the fact that guys will be able to tell they can't charm you so easily (you "get hard"). I think it's one thing to choose dancing because you want the flexibility or need the immediate income, and another to choose it because you think it's one of the only ways women can make more money than men. I'm not sure that's true, in the long run.
There is, every night, someone extremely disrepectful in a strip joint, as well as in just about any other place where alcohol is freely served.
I don't mean to discourage you. I didn't feel that the article was nearly as insightful as the author seemed to think it was. But it wasn't entirely inaccurate, either. I think stripping CAN be an empowering job, in exactly the way you say, in and lots of other ways, too. I'm really grateful that I've had it. But it's a bar job, a service job, for the most part. I can't glamorize that. It's not twenty minutes onstage, it's eight long hours in a bar full of drinking people (with the obvious exceptions such as juice bars and cabarets).
Blog:
Burlesque classes and info:





Stripping: Affirming womens right's to dance nekkid for money even if our culture doesn't like it?
Stripping: Reinforcing the value (sacredness?) of feminine sexuality?
Stripping: Reminding us that women DO own our own bodies and can do what we want with them?
or Stripping: Confirming that women are for sale?
Your experience is really up to you.
[QUOTE=Jo Weldon] You could say that with your very first strip, you sell the opportunity to truthfully claim that you would never do such a thing [QUOTE]
The only thing stopping me from stripping at the moment is the fear of the reactions of my family and people at college if they found out. I'm one of those people with a wipe-clean conscience - if nobody knows about it, I don't feel guilty.
So by not stripping, I'm passing up potentially hundreds of dollars a night to ensure other people's opinions of me stay high. Doesn't that mean I'm selling my squeaky-clean image to those around me (many of whom I couldn't give a flying horse's butt about)?



[QUOTE=bite][QUOTE=Jo Weldon] You could say that with your very first strip, you sell the opportunity to truthfully claim that you would never do such a thingIt isn't just about "other people's opinions." (Even if it was, other people's opinions are often what help you get jobs and financing and justice, in this country. Other people's opinions are no small thing, that's why it's not necessarily foolish, and definitely not shallow, to consider them.) It's about whether they will be genuinely hurt and upset when they find out, and find out is what they might do, or just be judgemental and unfair about it.
The only thing stopping me from stripping at the moment is the fear of the reactions of my family and people at college if they found out. I'm one of those people with a wipe-clean conscience - if nobody knows about it, I don't feel guilty.
So by not stripping, I'm passing up potentially hundreds of dollars a night to ensure other people's opinions of me stay high. Doesn't that mean I'm selling my squeaky-clean image to those around me (many of whom I couldn't give a flying horse's butt about)?
I know I sound really discouraging, and remember, I'm not talking about the job itself, but about its repercussions outside of work. You might think you can control those repercussions by being discreet, but you may not be able to. That's my only real point. People may be less judgemental about it than they were when I was doing it, or they may be more so--I couldn't say, and I certainly couldn't say what your family and friends are like.
I have gotten an amazing life out of it. But it hasn't been a smooth ride, and I definitely got a whole lot more than I was expecting!
Blog:
Burlesque classes and info:


Damn straight! To sell something carries the implication that you are no longer in possession of it. Which is sort of interesting, because it delves into a whole new issue (and not an easy one to answer) of division of the body and the conscious 'self'.Originally Posted by pissymissy
It makes me think of the 'pound of flesh' issue in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice"
Effectively, if you were to sell your body, would this imply that the 'owner' had access to every function of his(or her, let's be PC) new possession? Would they then be entitled to sleep with you? *mind keeps travelling on a huge tangent*
And if you were to sell your body and not your will, or conscious self, would you then find yourself in a dichotomy of slave/master?![]()
So I prefer to think of it as sampling![]()
rock on gold dust woman,
take your silver spoon,
and dig your grave...


And another thing. DAMN that madonna/whore dichotomy. It is SOOOOO dated! When are people going to realise that things are rarely so simple?Originally Posted by Jo Weldon
rock on gold dust woman,
take your silver spoon,
and dig your grave...
My thoughts on this may be over your heads(not that anyone is a dolt) but it deals with the true way things are. A bunch of huksters, politicains, got together alon long time ago and made the society framework for what is good and bad.
Unfortunately they show they are hypocrites and liars by how they coduct themselves. Killing is the best example I can think of. They say not to kill but more people have been killed in the name of religion than any other way.
My thoughts may be to heavy for this discussion but I live my life by my rules not someone elses who are phonies. Live your life that makes you happy and don't care what the other programed people have to say.
They are robots following a script given to them by who? The same socities that say sex is evil will turn around and say it's okay to kill for war.
So their rules are frauds and so are they. Thiis is an over simplified version of things but there are lots of dancers who just dance and do damn well at it.





I think stripping is just a form of entertainment. I love to see a very good looking man infront me dancing taking off his clothes. My point is Men can strip and nobody care! But as soon as a woman show any sexual expression in public it is a promblem!
If you want the present to be differant from the past, study the past.
Baruch Spindza
It is what it is, not what you want it to become, that's important -- at least for now. Today, remember that things worth having are worth waiting for!
The Stars
Minds are like parachutes: They only function when open.
Thomas Dewar
Dont throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
Swedish Proverb




I just always say that it's better to sell or rent than to be giving it away for free... These days you can go to regular clubs or bars and have girls be getting drunk and naked while dancing. At least I'm getting paid.
Male strippers aren't exactly any higher up on the social ladder than female strippers.Originally Posted by leilanicandy
Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
The truth lies in a man's dreams... perhaps in this unhappy world of ours whose madness is better than a foolish sanity.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616)





Originally Posted by Eques
But you do not see people rant and raving about them entertaining women. Men has always been able to do certain things. Never be judge or curse by the public for them! Women I think people judge more than men. I really do not here much about men strippers in the news.
If you want the present to be differant from the past, study the past.
Baruch Spindza
It is what it is, not what you want it to become, that's important -- at least for now. Today, remember that things worth having are worth waiting for!
The Stars
Minds are like parachutes: They only function when open.
Thomas Dewar
Dont throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
Swedish Proverb
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