#YesAStripper

The entry today is something I’ve been thinking about all week. The relationship that Americans have with the sex industry and why my book will make sure to try and change the stereotypes the industry has. This hashtag #YesAStripper came across my feed as a rant about pole dancers. The pole dance community has been trying to distinguish themselves from strippers by using the opposite hashtag #NotAStripper. It is this sad contradiction that shames sex workers and makes the pole dancers superior to the industry where their “pole art” came from.

            My take on all of this and what will be covered in my book as a retired dancer. The pole community would not exist without strippers. For working girls, the pole comes in handy when you are too drunk to work and have no choice but to go on stage. I have worked at clubs with stages that do not have poles and it is very hard to balance on stripper platforms and get down to the stage floor in a sexy way when going after patrons who come up to tip you. Pole tricks, when I started dancing in 2007, were a way for the more athletic dancers to show off their skills. The tricks and experienced dancers immediately fascinated me. Obviously, I wanted to learn how to do that so I could make more money and get noticed when it was busy. The girls with tricks would get tipped more, especially on slow nights. But dancers had to teach each other. This was before Iphones and Youtube couldn’t be broadcast at the touch of a screen. We would stay after shifts trying to practice, we would learn new tricks from dancers who had come into Austin from other cities and would share their skills with us. Mostly afterhours, half drunk with only bar backs to watch us make half naked fools of ourselves. This special time, a tradition passed down from one stripper to another was special. It empowered us to have some creative control over the performance aspect of our job. But bottom line, we made friends and made more money by learning pole tricks.

            Then the pole for home installation became mainstream along with the invention of the iPhone and the rest is history. It became easier to just look up a trick and try it at work on my own. I was completely self-taught and then stripper owned “studios” with installed poles started popping up offering classes to other dancers to hone their skills. Word spread that there was a pole studio and of course non-stripper people were interested, specifically females who are married or about to be and always had the fantasy of being a stripper or working the pole and wanted to try it.

            I never went to a pole studio to learn and didn’t understand why you would want to learn if you weren’t a stripper. As Youtube grew and videos showing off strippers turned into videos showing off women who just took pole class. Or athletes who tried some pole tricks and loved it, similarly to me except they didn’t have a money motivator to continue. As more studios were being opened and poles installed in homes, of course it would continue to grow. And that’s fine with me. It’s when the “pole art community” completely forgets their historical roots and bashes the sex industry by making and us vs. them hashtag. I get it you are an athlete but what is so wrong with being a stripper? Why must the two be distinguished?

            These days after retiring from the industry and working with the aerial community (which started from my expertise on the pole) I can’t even watch pole competitions. I tried to at first and could immediately tell the difference between a pole art dancer compared to an exotic dancer. Pole art dancers always look like they are faking their sexuality, choreographing the hell out of their acts so every “sensual” move is perfectly timed to their music. Exotic dancers are smooth with their hips without any choreography, take their time with moves, seduce the audience with their improvisational nature and have a relationship with the pole. It’s not just an apparatus to strippers but a friend on stage when you are having a bad night, a pole to help you balance drunk in front of 200 people and try to still help you look sexy, something that helped you earn money to keep your electric bill on.

            Pole art dancers know nothing about what the pole truly means and symbolizes to those who have used it long before the home installed pole, the Iphone, Youtube or Instagram. Where now failed Olympic hopefuls can try out pole, garner internet fame and then bash the industry from where their art came. Pole art dancers, none of us are fooled. Great athletes but truly compassionate minds? #notastripper is not compassionate or loving. It is creating a divide. I’m not saying all pole art dancers use this hashtag or have this perspective but enough do and it needs to stop. Strippers aren’t trying to compete with pole art dancers. Maybe if they got to know a stripper and how the pole works for their job, they could understand that.

            Now pole art acts have turned into acrobatics, with moves and tricks available only to contortionists and ex-gymnasts. If those athletes realized that their act would never be seen in a strip club, they wouldn’t feel the need to use the hashtag. If pole art dancers actually spent one night in the club, they could see that their act would never work during a night shift of stripping. It would take way too much physical energy and make trying to work the rest of the night exhausting. Everyone is drunk. It wouldn’t be safe to perform those types of intense acrobatics intoxicated. And the patrons are very drunk, who tip based on what you look like, pole tricks get you noticed but too many tricks and you can get ignored. Patrons don’t know what they are looking at with complicated tricks and they don’t care. Then you end up sweaty after stage rotation and have to go back into the dressing room, change outfits and fix your makeup. Totally not how strippers work at all, it would be way too time consuming. At least I never did work that way. In fact, I would try to skip stage whenever possible to spend more time with tables and only do tricks if I wasn’t getting tipped or bored just standing there. Typically, dancers have 7-8 hour shifts so we don’t want to spend all our energy on stage where we make the least amount of our money.

            So #YesAStripper for my strippies still dancing and putting their practices on Instagram. But “pole art dancers” can’t you find a more positive hashtag to describe yourselves and your relationship with the pole than #notastripper? Distinguish yourself from strippers, please do because we are nothing alike, but don’t bash us. We never started the hashtag #notapoleartist we respect your art and wish you would do the same for us.

Stop. The. Sterotypes.

Sex work is not shameful!