Psychological Effects of Stripping
Hi bohos! Not hoes but you know what I mean. ;) Welcome back to the blog where I share all my secrets about the exotic dancing industry and how I survived. Today’s topic is something that I hold near and dear to my heart: mental health.
Even though mental health month isn’t until May I wanted to cover this today because it’s a question I get asked frequently when I talk about my old dancing days. I have run the gamete on mental health issues, most of mine have stemmed from anxiety and depression. I am happy to say that right now it’s in a manageable place. Thankfully after five years of retirement I don’t have any detrimental or lasting effects from working in the club.
However, when I was dancing and shortly after I quit, I did have some issues and it did affect my mental health, my psyche and overall my outlook on the world. So here it is, I have asked a couple of my old dancer friends to help out with this post as well and we compiled a list of things to be aware of while dancing. Best of all we also included safe guards to help you stay sane, keep yourself mentally healthy and aware of these issues even after you leave the club.
- Not trusting men: For me this was the first thing that I noticed when working. It only takes one or two times of your boundaries being violated or not being paid to get your radar up on men. The unfortunate thing is that this can transfer outside of the club and into your regular life. You may avoid being around men in general. You may have a cynical view of men being nice to you. You may not even want to deal with them at all and think they always have ulterior motives when they talk to you.
- Losing trust in other women: This one is probably one of the hardest to deal with. Some of the clubs, the girls are veterans, ruthless and focused on their hustle. I have had other women steal from me, try to take clients, lie to management, lie to other dancers about me, gossip behind my back, and even threaten my safety. After this happens to you in the club it can definitely affect how you view and associate with women outside of the club.
- Isolating outside of the club: Due to both of the things above you may start to isolate yourself after working in the club for some time. The over-stimulus of the club itself causes dancers to just want to stay home away from everything on days off. Then when we are burned by clients and people we work with it’s hard for us to want to go out and be social.
- Laziness/No Drive: This one can go unnoticed and then you end up feeling like “where did a year of my life go?” Since dancers work late hours into the night and then don’t want to deal with anything the next day it can be hard to find motivation to focus on anything else outside of the club. This is why it’s important to keep goals in mind and use the club as a means to an end. Even if they are small goals, keep your accountability and don’t give up.
- Social Anxiety: Since going to the club itself can cause anxiety, this can transfer over to going anywhere. Eventually you can start questioning why you want or should go anywhere at all. Once you are there you can become hyper aware and use drugs/alcohol to make it through the night just like you would at the club. The bad habits picked up at the club can transfer over to just regular social situations. When you find yourself day drinking everywhere you go and avoiding talking to people when you go out this could be why.
- Feeling Objectified Everywhere: This can lead to just wearing pajamas everywhere! But seriously, since your job requires that you look a certain way and then looked at for sex basically it’s hard to not to think that people everywhere are sexualizing you. Especially men. And since you have already lost trust in men in general this can lead to thinking they are only interacting with you for one reason. Since you don’t want to feel like people are looking at you when you go out this can lead to only get “dressed up” when going to work and being super casual everywhere else.
- Judgement of Others: Here we are talking about you. Since the club = judgement 24/7 you can start judging other people when you go out. Without even knowing them at all. You can make your own little judgements because it’s being done to you on a daily basis. Not only is this unhealthy but it takes up a lot of headspace. It can make you appear snobby or standoffish but really you’ve just been conditioned because you are under the microscope at work.
- Feeling Disconnected from Society: Unfortunately, this is what happens when all the above things combined culminate in just an overall feeling of disconnect. You don’t live a traditional lifestyle and while sometimes this can feel like a positive. The truth is that you do have a cool job that can make lots of money and this is fucking awesome. But it doesn’t necessarily match up with the rest of the world which can be disconnecting. Try keeping a close friend circle or having a hobby that you enjoy doing outside of the club.
- Hard time finding romance: This one we are going to extensively cover in another post soon but it can be hard to open up your heart while working in this industry. All the negative effects of dancing listed above can really make it hard to trust someone enough, get out to meet people, and mingle in the right circles in order to get romantically involved.
- Money Motivated Only: Maybe this is just me, but I would literally get bored if I was somewhere, listening to someone and thinking that I’m not getting paid to be there. It’s easy to make money in the club and that perspective can trickle into everyday life. When talking to someone you don’t know, listening to a lecture, or even just dealing with every day chatter it’s hard to focus or really care if you’re not getting paid to do so.
- Jaded Outlook on Life: This is probably one of the worse ones and usually only affects those that have in the industry awhile. Once you have seen it all, presumably done it all, lived a rock star life, made a lot of money, had a blast doing it. The rest of life can seem very boring. This is especially true right after retiring from the club. Again, this is why it’s super important to have other goals in sight that you are working towards. The jaded feeling will still come up from time to time and it may even affect your social life while still working in the club. But with achieving goals and time away from the club you will be able to begin to not feel so jaded and enjoy the little things in life again.
I know this list is not all sunshine and rainbows but if you are thinking about getting into the industry these are definitely some issues that you will need to be aware of. If you are working in the club and finding that you are unhappy some of these psychological effects could be why. And if you’re newly retired, these issues are probably coming up regularly.
Don’t get discouraged. Trust me after being retired for five years some of these issues come up occasionally but they have gotten much better. I don’t feel like the club had any serious lasting effects on my overall psyche and view of the world. Being in the industry can be really rough and it’s important to take a mental inventory frequently. Especially, if you have been dancing awhile. Just know that these psychological effects will diminish to some extent after you leave the club. If you keep close friends, goals in mind, and maintain healthy lifestyle it’s easy to combat any of these problems while you are working. Keep your head up and stay positive!
Love and glitter - BW
