When 24-year-old Jane Doe walks into the club just after 7 p.m. she doesn’t notice the red lights bouncing all over the walls. She doesn’t keep her eyes to the ground or avoid eye contact. She walks straight up to the bouncer, where the two of them fist-bump like old friends and make conversation about the Hurricane’s loss over the weekend. Music pulses, and other dancers move across the room. Jane smiles at the bartender as she passes.
As she enters the locker room, Doe is greeted by a friend and fellow dancer, Mariah Harris, who introduced her to the world of exotic dancing two years ago. Doe was hesitant at first; her inability to dance being the foremost cause for her inhibitions. The gradual rise in cost of the college experience had been burdening Jane for a while and was only made worse after a car wreck that kept her from receiving her full scholarship for softball due to injury, but when she began to feel hopeless about her rising debt, she decided to give it a shot.
According to a study conducted by the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, 1 in 3 strippers are putting themselves through college.
“I actually hate it,” Jane said. “I think it’s very degrading to girls, but I think it’s smart that girls can use it to their advantage.”
Jane does just that. She puts on extra makeup, flips her hair deliberately, and uses her looks to pay for the medical bills that her parents can’t help with and the car payment she didn’t ask for. Jane Doe doesn’t just work as a dancer; she also works a full-time and another part-time job. She graduated last December with a degree in Exercise Science and wants to be in grad school right now, but her grades on the GRE just aren’t good enough. The cost is yet another barrier for Jane.
Harris introduces Jane to a new dancer, Emily Daniels, also 24. She’s a single mother trying to finish her degree; it’s her second night at the club.
“It’s not exactly what I want to be doing, but it works,” Daniels said. “It helps for now so that I can finish school.” Daniels is currently taking online classes and hopes to graduate in the spring.
The club is busy; the cooler months usually bring in more traffic. Hockey and football games often mean a slow night. A typical shift for Jane is six hours. She begins her approach with customers easily. She’s comfortable. Nobody is a stranger to Jane, just an opportunity.
Jane knows when to flirt and when to chat. She seems to know a few faces by name—at least she pretends she does. These are the ones she knows how to work the best. Jane sits and talks with a man for 15 minutes, but it’s not without a price tag. She walks away from the conversation with $50.
“It’s taught me how to hustle,” she said, colored lights bouncing across her face. “I’ve definitely learned how to read people.”
Jane has experienced the negative sides to exotic dancing as well. Over the last six months, she’s learned to keep her social media presence private and locked down after an over-interested customer began cyber-stalking her when she accidentally revealed her real name.
Harris approaches Jane two hours into the shift. She talks about her bills and the pile of homework she has to do when she gets off of work.
“He literally pays me to do my homework,” Harris tells Jane. “Like, we go upstairs and he helps me with it.” The man comes in once a week during the day and pays her $100 for an hour of her time. She met him at the club one night where they made conversation after a lap dance.
“We’re actually real people,” Jane said. “A lot of us are here for real reasons… there’s a lot of girls here that have a degree and are paying for school or they have kids but, like, nobody else is supporting them, and they don’t have a family and they’re trying to pay for that.”
At the end of the night, Jane reports her totals: $550 after tipping the bouncers and paying the house fee. She’s worked a full 8 hours at her full-time job, three at her part-time retail job, and another six at the club.
One more stop: Jane heads to the gym at 2:30 a.m. She needs to stay in shape.
A.B. Lee Writes 