Strip Club Shenanigans: All about nipples

Almost every day I go into work, I hear:

"Can I borrow some latex?"

The city where I have worked is pretty strict about how the strippers dress. Among a few rules: pubic hairs cannot be showing, the ass crack needs to be covered, and most of the breast needs to be covered in a pasties. (Before almost the entire breast needing to be concealed, only the areola had to be covered.)

And what happens if a stripper doesn't adhere to these city ordinances? Well, both she and the manager are booked into jail. Hence why the women constantly ask about what they call "latex".

Because of a loophole in the city ordinance, women can get away with wearing, let's say, "liquid pasties", usually in the form of fabric paint. They usually prefer to wear flesh-colored paint so that it is not so obvious that they have to cover the breast. When I first went to a strip club in 2011, I definitely saw the latex covering their nipples, but I thought it was there for decorative purposes.

Gold is usually a popular color to go with.

Of course, sucking nipples is illegal to do at the clubs. But it still happens. I have to wonder which idiots think that doing so is such a good idea. Some are not even discreet about it, trying to grab women's nipples with their mouths while she is onstage. Is the latex not enough of a deterrent? (I think I have noticed that the more obvious the paint is - especially in color - the less likely a man will try to suck on the nipples.) Does it not cross the customers' minds that there have been men before them in the same day who have wanted to or actually have sucked on their nipples? Do they not consider how unhygienic it is? How creepy they are being by trying to bite a woman's nipples without their permission?

When customers ask me about VIP rooms, other than outright asking about if the strippers will perform obviously illegal acts for them, whether or not they can remove the pasties or bottoms. I can understand why this question is asked. In their minds, they are probably questioning whether or not the legal side of the dress code is only applicable towards the more public areas, making it so the more private areas (like a VIP room) allows strippers to show their...private areas. Unfortunately, the dress code applies everywhere there are customers.

There was one club I worked at for a short time where the strippers were required by the club to have their tops on at all times, although I heard that dancers could "tip the managers well" *coughbribecough* so that they would turn the other way if they took off their tops in the VIP rooms. Even with this mandate, the management still required the strippers to wear latex on their breasts. I guess in case they did remove their tops during private dances or had a nip slip. Weirdly enough, they had a slogan for their VIP rooms which said, "What happens in VIP, stays in VIP!" Other than being expected to have to adhere to the dress code, I felt that this created an awkward miscommunication between customer and dancers, that is, if the dancers were law-abiding.

At most of the clubs I worked at, I would see strippers removing their latex in a single way - by awkwardly peeling it off. However, at this one club, I guess someone had discovered that using duct tape to remove it worked very well. So at the end of the day and night shifts, I would see rolls of duct tape being passed from stripper to stripper. It seemed that the tape only hurt those who had sensitive skin or nipples. Otherwise, the removal was pretty pain-free and effortless.

I have to wonder if the fabric paint can cause any harm in the short-or-long-term. I haven't heard anything from the dancers, but the question still lingers in the back of my head. I also wonder: what would it take for these city ordinances to be repealed? Not only do they hurt business, but unnecessary and over-the-top force is exhibited for even minor infractions. Until major reform is passed, I guess strippers will be passing along bottles of fabric paint for time to come.

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Strip Club Shenanigans: Depending solely on your looks quickly gets you nowhere

In my last post in the series, I talked about what the women looked like, and shared how what is advertised is not what you get. (White? Blonde? Where do you think you are, Sweden?) The dancers (and waitresses) were of various sizes and ages, and especially in this sort of establishment, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I had also mentioned that I personally did not find many of the other women to be attractive, and some customers sure complained to me about that. However, many customers became "infatuated" (let's hope not really) with at least one dancer there. I remember I was taking a break and sitting with one man, and he was so dazzled by the beauty of all of the dancers. It was like he was in Heaven. The differences in reactions is very important to keep in mind if you want to work at a strip club, especially as a dancer.

The customers had various preferences when it came to looks. Like with anything when it comes to trying to attract customers, it is best to fulfill a niche than to try (and fail) to appeal to everyone. Even then, when I observed dancers at the end of their shifts, the most attractive ones and the ones with novelty features (*sigh* I hate keep having to say this, but this topic does deserve a post of its own) did not make the most money.


Of those I saw, these were who did:


1) The Best Dancers

Not only were they sought out for lap dances (to be honest, I couldn't really tell a difference between the best dancers and the ones who weren't as good - then again, it's not like I stared), they actually made quite the buck onstage, which can't be said for everyone.

2) The Best Characters

I did see a lot of overlap with the best characters and best dancers. By character I mean those who had a distinct niche. Their costumes, tattoos and piercings, make-up, dancing style, and music they danced to all came together well. For example, a metalhead. Of what I noticed, no worker actually talked about "character". It probably was a branch off of who they already were. Also, characters didn't have to have distinct labels - you could look at a dancer and know what she was all about.

3) The "Therapists"

They understood why older men came in regularly. Not necessarily to feel something stir in their pants, but to relieve them of the loneliness they were feeling at home. Waitresses could capitalize on this really easily as well. As I am not chatty and prefer to listen, this came naturally to me. I would say that being attractive helped me here. (What more would a man want than to have someone listen to his problems, and have that someone be a pretty, young woman?)

4) The Hustlers

These ones worked hard to get an audience. They probably made more money earlier in the day than any other dancer. With all the fees and tips independent contractors pay out at the end of their shifts, hustlers made that pretty easily, which is especially useful at the beginning of the career when you don't really have the swing of things yet. This is another tactic waitresses could utilize. Not in the same way, but the whole, "Would you like to order anything else, sir?" or "plant" drink or meal ideas into their minds.


I found that the best dancers and characters naturally attracted more customers. The therapists and hustlers had to work harder to make big bucks. For the dancers that didn't fit these categories, they usually didn't go far enough, or were more social butterflies than anything else. You might think a social butterfly would do very well at a strip club, and sure, they can. It's just that they actually have to talk with customers. There were always menageries of dancers gossiping with each other in the dressing rooms or at the bar. Sometimes I'm not sure how they made money, as most of the time I saw them interacting with customers was when they had to be onstage. Nevertheless, somehow even the laziest of dancers made more money in one day than I'd see full-time workers in other industries make in a single week.

A dancer depending solely on her looks will ensure she does not make much, especially compared with the others, but being attractive or having novelty features can give a boost. Where I found it helps the most to be naturally attractive is when dancers first sign on. Many of them have to pay the tips/fees out-of-pocket because they did not make enough to cover those during their shift. What I think would help more in this case is going into it knowing what to expect. That's actually why many dancers first started off as waitresses. That way they can observe for hours on end.

My attractiveness hasn't helped me gain more patrons...but maybe my persistence will.

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Strip Club Shenanigans: What did the women look like?

In the introductory post of this series, I mentioned how it was a former friend who convinced me to work at a strip club. There were a couple of reasons why I was hesitant, and one of them was because I did not want to work for an industry that put forth a very specific image of what the "perfect" woman looked like: blonde (European descent, of course), lots of make-up, big breasts (thanks to plastic surgery), and whatever. From my observations and what I have been told, I feel comfortable saying that I am at least reasonably attractive. Over the years, I had learned to accept my face and body for what they are, so if I worked at a strip club, I figured I could get by. I was not worried that my self-esteem would plummet, but that by working at such a place, I would give credence to a very culturally subjective definition of what makes a woman attractive. The friend assured me that the women at strip clubs come in all shapes and sizes, and to prove a point, he brought me to one.

The city I worked in was, at least during the time I was there, one of the fastest growing cities in the United States. I have seen people online say that strip clubs are a good representation of what many women look like (as in they come in an array of body types), except for cities like Las Vegas where the dancers are expected to look a certain way. As I have never been in a strip club outside of Texas, I have no idea about the veracity of those kinds of statements. All I can say was that I was surprised with the variety of women who worked at the club I was at.

Funny enough, many of the advertisements I looked at for this establishment showed the very kind of woman I expected them be full of. I would laugh to myself because there was not a single woman who worked there (of those I had seen) that looked like that. Because of the location, most everybody who worked at the club were Latina/Hispanic. There were a few black dancers. It wasn't very racially diverse. Ya know, I am not even sure if I knew of any white women who worked there - there were a few dancers and waitresses who were ethnically-ambiguous and could have been white, but I'm not sure.

Maybe they just took a white-passing dancer and threw this onto her head.

I have noticed that when traveling, strip clubs and escort services tend to display busty (from implants), white blonde women in their advertisements, but I wonder if that image is representative of their workers. From experiences of my own and from my friends', probably not.

Not only did looks vary at the club, but so did age. I guess I didn't expect (what I thought was) the average age to be so high for dancers - probably in the late-twenties. There was a woman who was probably in her forties (who worked there with her daughter) and was probably the best dancer in the entire joint. Personally, I did not think many of the workers were attractive, and I had some customers complain to me about that. Nevertheless, I didn't observe the more attractive dancers making more money than the lesser attractive ones. (This is a topic for a whole new post.)

One aspect I really liked about working at the strip club was that I got to see women of various body types owning their sexuality. Whether they were young and supple, had recently given birth, or "past" their physical prime, they worked with what they had. As an admirer of the human body, I really liked working somewhere that upheld tenets of body positivity. It wasn't like the cheesy graphics you see on social media, but real life, with real women using their bodies for practical purposes.

My work doesn't support itself! (But one day, I hope it does...)

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Strip Club Shenanigans: Introduction

Yeah, not an original title...let's move on.

For the past few years, I have been trying to convince a friend of mine to blog under a pseudonym about her sex work. (She is working on it.) Then I realized how hypocritical it is of me to give her the push while I "have" experience of my own - "have" as in I did not partake in the sexual stimulations, but worked as a waitress in a strip club in Texas. I posted on Facebook, asking who would be interested in reading my stories and observations from when I did that, and I received an overwhelming positive response. So here we go.

I am going to make this into a series on this blog, but I am not sure about how many posts I will end up making, or if the series will ever truly end. For the safety of the joint, customers, and workers, I am not going to publicly disclose the name of the place I worked. Remember that while I do have a unique experience, I am only one person in a sea full of people in the industry, and experiences will definitely vary by location as well as by individual. However, I do think with my BA in anthropology, my insights are worth looking at.

In 2011, a former friend convinced me to start working as a stripper before I went off to college. I knew that my family would not be accepting of this, so I decided to look into being a waitress. Depending on the days, waitresses can sometimes make more than the strippers, which is a positive. However, I liked the freedom that the strippers had of being independent contractors, a system that would work better for my situation anyhow, since I wanted to do this near the end of summer, nearing the time I had to fly into Washington for my first quarter. Luckily, I was able to work out a deal with the establishment where I could work as an independent contractor but as a waitress.

Just because I didn't work as a stripper doesn't mean I didn't play around on the poles with other waitresses when things were slow.

I do not remember how I ended up choosing that - maybe because it was the closest to where I lived? Despite only going to be working as a waitress, my parents were the opposite of thrilled. After a lot of arguing and crying, they begrudgingly "let" me work there. I was 19 at the time. Since I did not have a car of my own and had no license, I had to pay them $10 for gas money each day I worked.

We agreed that my first day of work would be on a Sunday. Little did we know that Sundays are actually (one of) the busiest days of the week there. I did not want to work night shifts for several reasons, so I would only do day shifts. Day shifts were from 11 am to 7 pm, and evening shifts from 7 pm to 2 am. I ended up working almost solely on Sundays, until I came back the next summer (and some other times) to work on Sundays and Fridays.

Overall, I enjoyed working at a strip club. I would recommend it for those interested working in any aspect of it, with a few caveats. I would consider working there again if I needed a lot of money (according to my standards) in short notice.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about my experience, or if you would like me to address a certain topic in a later post.

Whether as a writer or a waitress, I like it when people tip!

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