3 naked ladies talk about their view from the stages and laps of the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s and today.
For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men. Scheherazade. Minsky’s Burlesque. Cage dancing go-go girls in the psychedelic 60′s. Times Square strippers, pole dancers and lap dancers. Women dance….Men watch.
This entry was originally written and posted on September 9, 2009 at 9:00 am on the now defunct dirtygirldiaries.com
Jodi Sh. Doff: Lauri, you worked in the 90’s, by then there were house fees and implants were a big thing. The top shelf joints of the 90’s seemed like an Evening Gown Barbie factory. I know it’s a response to public demand, but some girls considered implants a reasonable work expense, like a uniform. I couldn’t have gone to those surgical extremes.
Lauri Shaw: I mostly avoided those evening gown clubs. I do not look like Barbie. I’d need more than just a boob job to look like Barbie. Among other things, I’d need to have my skull reshaped, and longer limbs sewn onto me like a Frankenstein monster, if I ever wanted to look like Barbie. I couldn’t relate. By contrast, the nude clubs were an easier environment. I went into Scores once, not to audition but with some guy, and the place just felt cold to me. Emotionally sterile.
Rachel Aimee: Most of the high end Manhattan clubs hire girls that all look the same: 90% white, 70% blond, always skinny and a lot of silicone. It’s possible to get hired at the semi-upscale clubs just by being reasonably attractive if you’re white, but women of color have to have really “perfect” bodies and be absolutely stunning. The divey places hire a more diverse mix and some of the outer borough clubs hire exclusively black or Latina dancers, depending on the neighborhood and clientele.
JshD: I felt the same about Scores but was also fully aware that there was a LOT more money there. It’d take me a week to make what they make in a night.
RA: There definitely is the possibility of making a LOT of money in those high end clubs, but you don’t just need to look the part, you need to hustle like crazy too. They schedule as many girls as possible every night because they want their house fees, so even if you did look like Barbie, you’d be competing with 60 other Barbies. Personally, I find it easier to make money at the more diverse clubs–there are always the guys who will like me by default just because I’m one of the few white girls.
LS: I auditioned for VIP once and it was incredibly humiliating. It felt like a cattle call — they had me put on a costume, strip down to my g-string, and stand in a line with three other hopefuls. The manager, or whoever he was, told me to turn around once, then he said “Okay, thanks. You can get dressed.” I said, “That’s it?” And he said, “We have too many girls,” which of course is code for, “You don’t have the right look.” I took it to mean, “Get the hell out of my club, you butt-ugly skank.” I went home and cried.
JshD: Ouch! An 80’s “audition” was the same strip and spin, but just to be sure you could be naked and not freak out! Clubs still had a generous idea of what a real woman should look like.
LS: There were middle-brow clubs too. Places like Private Eyes or Legz Diamond. Not everyone was drop-dead gorgeous, although most of the girls were attractive in some way or another. And all types of girls — black, white, Latina… not usually many Asian girls… but tall, short, chunky, and skinny girls, as old as forty-five and as young as eighteen. They would check ID. They were not fucking around with that.
JshD: The class system wasn’t around when I was working, that grew out of Cache Escorts & the Mayflower Madam. We had no high end/low end, no questions, no ID (I was 17 when I started) just real live girls in all their glory. I don’t recall any Asians and only one black dancer in ten years.
RA: Do you think the clubs were more segregated back then? I’ve gotten that impression from customers who have been going to strip clubs for years and say that back then all the girls were white. I wonder where the black girls used to dance, or if there were just fewer black girls in the industry in those days.
JshD: In the 70s, generally, black girls worked the streets, white girls worked the bars. We were Latina, white, occasionally transgendered (aka ’sex change’) and all shapes, like the Armour Hot Dog jingle? Big girls, lit-tle girls, girls who climb on rocks, fat girls, skin-ny girls, ev-en…well, even Grandma Peggy, probably only in her 40’s but her daughter danced too.
RA: I’ve definitely worked with women in their late forties, grandmothers and mothers who worked alongside their daughters, as well as women of all (or at least most) body types, although I’ve never come across a club that hired transgender women. I think the myth that all strippers should look like Barbie comes from the media focus on the upscale clubs. It makes the industry seem more glamorous than it really is.
LS: But if a Barbie girl goes slumming at a lower-tier club, she makes bank.
JshD: Some men are looking for a specific fantasy and status of the unattainable woman, they’re willing to pay high. Others want a “real” girl and frequent smaller clubs. People pay for what they want. That said, the mentality of the men who pay women to dance for/ drink with them is so much more complicated and convoluted than just one or two lines can cover.
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Posted September 9, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged strippers, Times Square.
12 comments
karen 09.09.09
Like Rachel, I always found it easy to make money in the dive bars. I worked in one very fancy club in Paris and did terribly. My biggest money clubs were tiny shitholes in Tokyo and Philadelphia with broken chairs and makeshift lapdance areas. Loved them! (Though I’m no Barbie)
jshdoff Reply:
September 11th, 2009 at 2:51 am
I was always too chicken to step out of NY. There was a big surge in the 80s with the boom of the Alaska Pipeline. A lot of girls, dancers and hookers went out cause the money was crazy, but I kept seeing the horror stories of girls who went overseas and never came back, but I loved the NY dumps like Diamond Lils, Billys Topless, The Golden Dollar. Give me a shithole any day.
renegade evolution 09.09.09
Hey Ladies-
Just found you and have done some reading…this so should be a radio show!
I’ve never danced in NY, rather finding myself in places like NC, FL and DC, but your drift on how some clubs are very specific about a “look” is very true from what I’ve seen. I’ve actually always prefered agency work due to that- bachelor parties and such- besides the money is usually better from what I have seen. Heh, I may have the fake boobs, but tall, blonde and no tattoos? Forget it!
jshdoff Reply:
September 11th, 2009 at 2:51 am
Thanks for joining in Renegade and I agree, it would make a rocking radio show!!
zoe hansen 09.10.09
Hey Dirty Girls… after the last comment about radio,my mind is a buzzin’. Hell yeh! Hows about on Sirius Satellite/XM radio.. I can see it now, they have Maxim radio, Playboy, Howard.. etc… Dirty Girls is sooo next..(I got an in there)
zoe hansen 09.10.09
Responding to Laurie’s bad experience at VIP: My beautiful friend Ashley went to Scores in about 1995 she was a ho & we worked the hotels. She looked like Pamela Anderson, a real head turner, fake tits & all. She knew she’d get hired at Scores, thus raising her $ when whoring as a Scores girl. She went, I waited outside…30 mins later. She came out in shock. They said NO, she couldn’t understand how or why, we both didn’t. She knew she was beautiful & I followed in her shadow, which she preferred….. Only many years later did I realize maybe it was the armpit to wrist track marks that circled her arms… DUH!!!… She did steal a Scores baseball hat though!
lauri 09.11.09
Oh, that wasn’t why they didn’t hire me. I didn’t use needles. In fact, I had a friend just like yours who did get hired at VIP, track marks and all — she wore evening gloves.
rachel 09.12.09
Zoe – I’ve heard so much about Billy’s Topless from nostalgic dancers and customers who used to work/go there in the 90s that I almost feel like I worked there myself! A lot of that crowd migrated to my club when Billy’s closed and are still there today, always talking about how Billy’s was so much better!
Karen–I wish I’d known about the shithole club in Tokyo when I was there a few months ago. I really wanted to work while I was there but couldn’t get any insider info about the clubs and was scared to try without knowing what I was getting into in a country where I couldn’t speak the language so I didn’t bother in the end. Everything is makeshift and broken at my club and there’s currently a dead rat rotting somewhere under the bar so the whole place stinks even more than usual!
Kelly Reply:
September 16th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
^ If you go back, let me know!
zoe hansen 09.13.09
I started in the sex biz in 1985 & continued till 2002. I had a few friends who would work with me at the brothel & then would go to the Harmony or Baby Doll Lounge if they had had a slow night. I always looked up to my older stripper friends in awe, as tough street wise women, fearless is a better word. I visited most of the clubs around in the 1980s to early 90s. Well not clubs they were more of the ‘dive joint’ type establishments. Billy Topless comes to mind referring to ‘dive’. Ahh good memories. We would stop in for late night drinks and tip our friends, spreading the wealth so to say. I never did strip, I was a lazy whore, at the time preferring to work one trick at a time one room at a time. But I tell you, now its one of my big regrets while in the sex industry that I didn’t strip. I can live vicariously though you all.. thanx Zoe Hansen
(editor’s note: Zoe Hansen is a contributor to the popular new anthology by sex workers : Hos, Hookers, CallGirls & Rentboys, with her story “L.E.S.” )
lauri 09.16.09
When did Billy’s close? I never worked there, but I used to hear about that place all the time.
Last I heard, during the whole Giuliani “Quality of Life” witch hunts, Billy’s Topless became a bikini bar and management changed the name to “Billy Stopless.” If that’s true, I would think their days were numbered shortly afterwards.
dirtygirl 09.28.09
Editors Note: Additional reading on strippers and body image:
Portland Monthly: The last days of my left breast: Portland stripper and rocker Viva Las Vegas talks about discovering her breast cancer and reconstruction
The Rumpus: Antonia Crane interviews Viva Las Vegas about her new memoir, Magic Gardens
