What People Don’t Tell You About Stripping in the UK
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Did any of you see the 2019 movie “Hustlers” featuring the fountain of youth, Jennifer Lopez, and of course, our lord and saviour, Mrs Cardi B? It was a very glamorous and exciting portrayal of life as a sexy, money swindling, stripper in the US of A, baby! Well, stripping in the UK is literally nothing like that.
The amount of turmoil you actually have to undergo as any kind of sex worker is ridiculously undermined, but there seems to be a distinct lack of knowledge on what it is like to be an exotic dancer in the UK. No one talks about the nights that you leave the strip club £20 down because you had to pay your house fee, and there were no customers that night, or you got unlucky, or having your rent due in four days and needing to somehow magic up a solid £600 in that time.
Not to mention your social life being obliterated by working the most unsociable hours, being self-employed so essentially having no rights, men refusing to pay you, or trying to barter your financial worth, as well as travelling home at 5 am and hoping you don’t get attacked in the street - and these are just the issues that occur as a stripper at our place of work.
I know this because I worked at a *very* popular and well known ‘gentleman's’ club for around two years, and it is far from the Americanised clout stunting, trick turning dream, unless the thrill of watching a stripper devour a Pret a Manger chicken & lemon salad while simultaneously Facetiming her kids in six-inch pleasers gets you going.
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I hate to break it to you, but I am about to go full Wizard of Oz ‘big reveal’ on you all and demystify some of the most classic misconceptions people have about stripping in Great Britain.
Literally No One Is Throwing Money At Us, Ever.
I am starting small here with my mild annoyances, but every time I tell someone that I am a stripper, they ask me if I get money thrown at me. Perhaps this varies in different strip clubs, but in the majority of clubs, you won’t find dancers being doused in sterling coins, BUT you might see a dancer make her way around the room with a big ol’ beer jug, which you then put a pound or two in, before the dancer goes on stage to perform her regular act.
You may also occasionally encounter someone slipping a fiver or the likes on stage when a dancer is performing, which is appreciated of course, but nowhere near Hustlers levels of wads of cash.
Knowing Pole Tricks Isn’t Actually Essential As A Stripper
This does vary club to club, as some clubs have a more ‘stag-do’ vibe to them, whereas my club was more for the *cough* decaying man, and almost every single dancer did the same variation of GTA stripper movements on stage.
Other clubs expect a little more effort from their performers, and some dancers love to demonstrate their beautiful craft on stage, alas, I am not one of those dancers. Although as the resident goth stripper, I have a duty to tear up the stage whenever “Closer” by Nine inch Nails comes on - asides from that - you can catch me and my heightened sense of apathy twirling around the pole lifelessly, which leads me to my next point...
Not Every Stripper (Or Sex Worker For That Matter) Likes Their Fucking Job!
I have touched on this in my last column, but honestly, just because sex work is this mystical realm in civilian society does not make it particularly exciting. A job is a job, and believe me, waking up from my nap at 8pm, with just an hour to shower, put on a full face of makeup on, (sometimes) eat, and get the train to Leicester square in the dead of winter, just to walk around an empty club in painful shoes for 5 hours, is not particularly bedazzling or ground-breaking.
In fact, I’m sure it feels very similar to the early morning commute to the office, except you get a nice sit down when you arrive, whereas I have to go and flirt with men who make me grind my teeth in my sleep.
It’s important to note here that there are pros and cons to literally every job. Personally, I enjoy being a stripper because it allows me to earn way more than I would in a vanilla work environment, plus I can take time off when I need to as I study and suffer from mental health issues. In my previous employment, I have been fired when my mental health has flared up, so self-employment gives me more agency over my earnings.
High Stakes Create Toxic Environments
At times I have left my workplace indebted to them, because I couldn’t pay the £20 house fee, and I earnt a big fat nothing on shift. It’s the luck of the draw at the club - and although everyone at my club was lovely, and I made some friends for life there - the competition was fierce, as ultimately you are pitted against each other.
Money breeds a lot of toxicity in the strip club. For example, at my club you would have to stand in a line with a group of women, and men would essentially pick you by your look out of a line up. I saw women being tokenised for their race, or even rejected because of their race, in these line ups.
Women’s bodies were an open season for customers. I once got called “deformed” by a customer because I have a few tattoos. No overweight women worked at my club, and if you left for a significant period of time, they would ask you to re-audition when you return to essentially make sure you still met their beauty standard - which is incredibly outdated and just straight up gross.
I completely acknowledge that I had a massive privilege by being able to work in a club with those kinds of standards, but I also hated seeing women fight in the changing rooms over customers, or critiquing their bodies in the fluorescent mirrors - and most of all, I hated that I was supporting these beauty ideals simply by working there.
Most Strippers Are Sober At Work
There is such a misconception that all strippers tend to struggle with substance abuse and there is this image painted by film and telly of a troubled woman with money problems and a horrible partner, who uses stripping to escape her pain, which is honestly just a total sham.
The majority of my coworkers were extremely successful twenty to thirty somethings, who were mothers, landlords, some even had full time jobs as lawyers, and although I shouldn’t even have to try and justify any of this, the bottom line is that pretty much everyone there had their shit together. We didn’t party with customers, we threw our drinks away when men weren’t looking, and we were purely there to get our money and leave.
But to be honest, even if we were all ‘troubled’ or addicts, that wouldn’t make our work, or us as humans any less valid - it all comes down to suppressing a woman's ability to earn and live freely due to societal stigma.
The bottom line is that years of stigma and judgement have led the general public to have both a degrading yet glorified idea of who/what/how stripping and being a stripper is - when the reality is that women from all walks of life decide to strip, for various reasons. The most common being a need for extra money within a shorter span of time, and this glamorised ideal of a strip club environment continues to hurt young women, especially with the rise of ‘baby strippers'.
Baby strippers are typically US-based, and they use popular social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram to essentially document and sell their experiences in a strip club. They are usually fairly naïve (due to their lack of experience) and unfortunately tend to glamourise the material package of cute outfits, fruity body sprays, matching underwear, and lingerie. Now don’t get me wrong - I love all that shit, I love how femme I get to be at work - but with there always being such a heavy emphasis on the highlights of stripping, there needs to be more discussion around the bleaker aspects of the job, instead of a showreel for impressionable young women, who have no idea how emotionally and physically taxing it can be on the self.
Stripping has given me more freedom and excitement than any other job has ever given me, but it came with the sacrifice of constant late nights, the worsening of my body dysmorphia, no guaranteed paycheck, while working in a potentially triggering environment at times. Like any form of sex work, it needs to be respected, and should not ever be considered an ‘easy option’ - just because you are not performing any sexual acts does not mean that you have any moral high ground, and in practical terms, safety.
Do your research - and remember to always tip your strippers!
Words: Izzy Stokes | Illustrations: Kate Loxton
