February 14th, 2004
    
     
     

 

someone asked in the feminist lj community if you can be a feminist and go to a strip club. this is what i replied:

i like strip clubs where they actually dance.
i like the female body, i like dancing, i love costumes.
i like burlesque.
i was a stripper once. it was a very interesting experience. some of it was great, some of it was vile.

i'm not fond of the "pay the woman so you can stare like an idiot at her crotch" thing. but i guess i felt it was more like a biology lesson for them. better for people to see the real thing and get it demystifed more than for people to think they look like the airbrushed pussies in playboy.

i wish my experience had been more about dancing. i wish that burlesque had been cool and more available when i was a stripper. i would have done that. i was also a stripper before the lap dance became popular, so i am glad i didn't have to do that.
lap dances creep me out.

although once i did get a lap dance just to see what it was like.
and it is very nice on the receiving end. but i wouldn't want to give a strange man a lap dance.

it's all very complex and not very black and white to me.
for some women, stripping is a terrible degrading experience...the reasons and intents and motives they do it might be harmful to themselves.
for other women, it is an empowering experience and they are very much in control. not to mention the money is FANTASTIC!

to strip for some men felt really icky. and to strip for others felt very fun, playful, and harmless.

i have to say, before i was a stripper i made 3.50 cents an hour working retail. i worked 40 hours a week and lived way under the poverty level. if i ever felt "used" and "prostituted" it was working for so little money and giving HOURS and HOURS of my life away doing something totally meaningless. i made $500 bucks a month, tops.

when i was a stripper, i made $75 to $150 dollars a day. lots of strippers could make even 300 a day. finally i was able to record an album that i had been meaning to record for years. and had so much money. i took cabs and ate well. i saw a way out of poverty.
lots of strippers were putting themselves through college and/or supporting their families.
others supported their coke habits.

i'd much rather "prostitute" myself for $150 a day than for $20 a day. and i felt it was more honest. everything was in the open.
prices were negotiated. the cards were on the table , so to speak.
i felt way more used working for $2.75 a day after taxes.

anyone who works "for the man" in a job is just prostituting themselves. we all pick which is more of an acceptable way for us to sell a little piece of ourselves. whether it's hours of our life, our brains, our hands to type, a piece of a body to look at.
the work force, in general, everywhere and anywhere, can be pretty fuct up. we've all had bosses who felt they owned us and we bit our lip because we couldn't afford to get fired.

but in stripping, if a man ever gave me shit, i NEVER let him get away with it. i made SURE he knew i was a living breathing human being with feelings. if anything, i felt like i was an educator to the mentally handicapped :)

so anyway, i occasionally like to go to a strip club.
i think, in theory, they could be a very good thing.
and sometimes they are a good thing.
and sometimes they are absolutely not.
it's just not very black and white.

6:44pm

money spent:

sominex- 3.69
dramamine- 1.39
campbell's chunky soup 2.69
raspberry sorbet- 3.49
3 vanilla cokes at 1.19 a piece
2 bananas at .39 each
dog food- 6.99
1 women who rock magazine- 4.99
1 salad- 2.79
1 salad- 2.29
tax=1.42
total: 33.71

5:02pm

i had such a great time with carolyn and renee last night :)
we talked about evrything and there is still much more than everything to still talk about next time we see each other!
i love those 2 so much :) they are simply the coolest people i know :)