Strippers Are Doing It for Themselves
nytimes.com/2019/07/24/style/strip-clubs.html
By Valeriya Safronova July 23,
2019
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Around 10 most nights, Nikeisah Newton hops into her car for a 10-minute drive into
downtown Portland, Ore., so that she can deliver healthy meals that include ingredients like
massaged kale to strippers working the evening shift. “One of the best forms of activism is
feeding people,” Ms. Newton said. Her company is called Meals 4 Six Inch Heels, and it’s
intended to support a community that she feels has been shunned and taken advantage of
for too long.
Ms. Newton, whose ex-girlfriend is a former stripper, has joined a wave of dancers and their
allies across the nation who are fighting to reform labor practices; put an end to sexual
harassment and discrimination in their workplaces; and stifle the stigma around what they
believe is as legitimate a profession as any.
Members of this movement are sharing their experiences with the public through podcasts,
books and visual arts; using technology to spread information about their industry; and
protesting injustices in the streets. They are also finding ways to care for each other, with
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meal-delivery services, yoga classes, book clubs, clothing lines with slogans of solidarity,
financial planning lessons and comedy workshops.
When you use the word “platform” now in the stripping community, it’s as likely to refer to
social media as shoes.
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At V-Live in Los Angeles, guests are encouraged to use their phones to take videos and
photos of the dancers. On a recent evening, a photographer circled the dancers, taking
images that they could later buy to use on their Instagram accounts.
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Use of social media is encouraged at V-live, a club in Los Angeles, though Instagram has
shut down some strippers’ accounts.CreditSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York
Times
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V-live also indulges in time-honored traditions, like showering dancers with
bills. CreditSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times
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The water-cooler conversations in the 1980s and ’90s, with the mainstream movies
“Flashdance,” “Showgirls” and “Striptease,” may be coming back, as strippers return to the
big screen in September with “Hustlers,” about dancers who steal money from their rich
customers.
The film features the celebrities Jennifer Lopez, Lizzo and Constance Wu. Cardi B, a
megastar, takes pride in and has spoken positively about her experiences with stripping.
Beyoncé’s best-selling album, “Lemonade,” has a song called “6 Inch” about working as a
stripper. Magic City and other clubs in Atlanta are well known among hip-hop fans as places
where musicians test out new songs.
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And across America, the face of stripping, and its audience, is changing. No longer the
domain solely of finance bros and the like unwinding after hours, strip clubs these days are
also frequented by couples and friends.
“Our audiences in the last 10 years, specific to my home club, have become more diverse,
younger, more gender broad,” said Elle Stanger, 32, who has worked as a stripper for a
decade and lives in Portland. “It’s not just middle-aged white men anymore.”
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Marjorie Booker, seated left, came to the Kit Kat Club with her family. CreditRuth
Fremson/The New York Times
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Ariana McCue, whose stage name is Faye, performs at the Kit Kat Club in Portland,
Ore.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
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Hazel Greene prepares to spook customers at Kit Kat Club.CreditRuth Fremson/The New
York Times
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Clementine Darling freshens her makeup backstage between performances. CreditRuth
Fremson/The New York Times
On recent evenings in strip clubs in Los Angeles, Portland and New York, the audiences
contained a mix of men and women. Dancers in all three cities were unabashed in collecting
tips.
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After finishing a gravity-defying routine, an Amazonian dancer with strawberry blond hair
that reached past her hips knelt on the stage in Jumbo’s Clown Room in Los Angeles to
scoop up her cash. “Thank you, I love your money,” she said.
Later, as another dancer in a leather bustier and thigh-high boots landed on the floor in a
split, a number of women oohed and aahed, and made their way to the seats surrounding
the stage to throw bills her way.
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Winona Winters performs at Kit Kat Club.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
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Spank Sinatra encourages tipping.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
At Kit Kat Club in Portland, tips are requested with signage and by a dancer who walks
around the audience with a glowing bucket. At Pumps in New York, dancers come around to
each audience member seated by the stage between sets and stare until tips are handed
over.
“The entrepreneurship and the sense of owning oneself and one’s brand has blossomed,”
said Jacqueline Frances, 32, a stripper, comedian and artist in New York and a consultant on
“Hustlers.” “Nobody would amplify a sex worker’s voice before. I would not have this career I
have without social media. If I tried to go through the traditional routes, nobody would book
me.”
Behind the Curtain
There are nearly 4,000 strip clubs in the country, according to IBISWorld, a market research
firm. Some are glamorous and expensive, some are cheap and raunchy. Some have
performers who display acrobatic feats (at Jumbo’s Clown Room on a recent evening, a
woman clutched the pole and hovered several feet in the air, her entire body parallel to the
ground), and others offer simpler entertainment: dancers swaying their hips and crawling
seductively on the floor.
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The clubs are governed by laws that vary by state and city. In New Orleans, dancers are
required to maintain at least three feet of distance between the customer and themselves
and be at least 18 inches off the ground; in San Diego, that distance is six feet. In Portland,
nude dancers freely gyrate inches from customers’ faces.
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Bitcoin accepted here: the entrance to the club.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
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Some clubs require customers to buy tokens for a lap dance; others allow them to hand the
money directly to dancers. Some encourage the use of Venmo. Kit Kat Club, in Portland,
takes bitcoin. Customers are certainly spending money, no matter what method they
choose: IBISWorld estimates that the strip-club industry brought in $7 billion of revenue in
2018 and has seen continuous growth over the last three years.
One thing that appears to be almost universal is the cost of lap dances: $20 to $30. Dancers
report that the price has not changed since at least 1990 and argue that inflation should
have brought it to $40. “If you ask the customer to pay more than $20, they’ll look at you like
you have two heads,” said Zara Moon, 27, a stripper and artist in Los Angeles.
Ride-sharing drivers and others challenging the labor customs of the gig economy have
much to learn from strippers’ experiences. Beginning in the mid-80s, such dancers were
reclassified from employees to independent contractors in large numbers by clubs that
followed the lead of the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater in San Francisco, according to
Gregor Gall, a professor of industrial relations at the University of Leeds, who wrote “Sex
Worker Union Organising: An International Study.”
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In 1998, a group of San Francisco dancers won $2.85 million in a settlement with the
O’Farrell after suing for back wages. That was just the beginning.
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BJ McNaughty, a stripper-clown, counts her tips at the end of the night at Kit Kat
Club.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
“I think the strippers are the canary in the coal mine,” said Michael LeRoy, a law professor at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who studies labor and employment
relations, regarding the loss of various protections.
Most clubs classify dancers as independent contractors, and this allows them to not pay
employment taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, and to not offer workers’
compensation for injuries on the job or health benefits. Through this classification, the clubs
also do not have to pay minimum wage and overtime.
Clubs typically do not pay strippers a salary. And yet the clubs also tend to control dancers’
hours, outfits, performances and the amount they can charge for private dances. “As an
independent contractor, in my nine years, every single day there’s something they do that’s
against the contract,” Ms. Frances said.
For years, strippers have been filing lawsuits challenging their employment status, and in
most cases the courts have sided with them. Mr. LeRoy has found that in 93 percent of
rulings, the court agreed that the strippers had been misclassified. In some cases, the
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dancers won millions of dollars recovering wages and “stage rental fees.”
“I signed on to one lawsuit,” Ms. Frances said. “They paid out, and nothing changed.”
A recent ruling from the California Supreme Court, in a case brought against Dynamex, a
delivery service, would toughen the rules by which to assess whether someone is an
independent contractor and automatically classify strippers as employees. The ruling could
be codified as Assembly Bill 5, which passed in California’s assembly and is awaiting review
in the State Senate.
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Antonia Crane, a dancer, author and writing instructor at U.C.L.A. Extension, is hoping to
capitalize on the Dynamex decision. Ms. Crane, who did not want to share her age, is a
founder of Soldiers of Pole, a labor movement of strippers striving to become a union.
“Right now, the Supreme Court is saying, ‘You don’t even have to convince us,’” Ms. Crane
said. “‘You’re employees, you have rights and the ability to organize.’”
Strippers have tried to unionize before. In the early ’90s, about 30 women formed the Exotic
Dancers’ Alliance in San Francisco, touting slogans like “Stop looking for support in the
lingerie department” and “Like an orgy, it only works if there’s a lot of us.” A few years later,
strippers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco, including Ms. Crane, joined the Service
Employees International Union.
Since December,Soldiers of Pole has been hosting meetings where strippers can seek
advice from lawyers and other advocates. Dancers in California have reported that
managers will not allow them to take contracts home; that they are strongly encouraged to
sign away their employee rights; or that they are pressured into signing release of claims
contracts, in which they promise not to sue the club for any violations and to solve any
dispute through arbitration.
Ms. Moon said she has never been able to take a copy of a contract home. “If I asked for a
copy, it would be, ‘Don’t come back tomorrow,’” she said. “I was talking about contracts at a
club and talking about labor rights. I got texted by a manager saying, ‘We don’t want you to
come back anymore.’” Crissa Parker, 30, a dancer in Los Angeles and the creator of a club-
rating app called The Dancer’s Resource, said that once, when she asked for a copy of the
contract, the manager ripped it up in front of her face.
In New Orleans, some dancers organized into a group called Bourbon Alliance of
Responsible Entertainers, in response to raids on the clubs by the Alcohol and Tobacco
Commission in 2015. More raids followed in 2018, after which several clubs were closed for
weeks at a time.
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The police and the Alcohol and Tobacco Commission initially said that the purpose of the
raids was to weed out trafficking, but the itemized lists of violations enumerated instances
of individual dancers exposing their breasts or genitals, offering to sell undercover police
officers drugs, and soliciting undercover officers for prostitution.
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To reopen, several club owners signed consent judgments promising to, among other
things, use undercover “customers” to report on working conditions.
In response, dancers have protested and attended city-council meetings. One of the
members of the Bourbon Alliance of Responsible Entertainers has joined with a student at
Tulane University to conduct a study about the effects the raids had on dancers.
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Zach Thom, a security guard at Kit Kat Club, watches customers.CreditRuth Fremson/The
New York Times
Panic Buttons
The billboard went up in early February, about 200 feet away from Skin Gentlemen’s Club in
Los Angeles. “I’m Stephanie. I was raped by a guy like this in a place like that. I told the club
and the police, but no one did anything. So I painted this billboard,” the sign said. Next to
the words was an illustration of a woman holding a man’s severed head.
Stephanie Montgomery, 28, the billboard’s painter, said she was attacked while working in a
private room at Skin Gentlemen’s Club in June 2018 by a man who was a regular at the club.
Unhappy with how management responded when she reported the incident, and after
hearing that the man had been accused of assaulting another woman, Ms. Montgomery
took action. She reported her assault to the police in August; after several months, a
detective told Ms. Montgomery that the prosecutor’s office would not take her case, Ms.
Montgomery said.
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David Chew, who described himself as an executive of Skin Gentlemen’s Club in an emailed
statement to The New York Times, wrote: “The allegations made by Ms. Montgomery are
false. Sexual assault is something our organization does not take lightly We take numerous
security measures to ensure that the environment is safe for our dancers, and to make clear
to our patrons that this type is misconduct is not tolerated on our premises.”
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Of the billboard, Ms. Montgomery said that the man she said assaulted her “was telling me
my no didn’t mean anything, that my voice didn’t mean anything, that I didn’t mean
anything. For me to come back with such a strong visual voice, it’s the biggest clap-back I
can produce.”
A survey of several dozen dancers in Portland found that 84 percent had experienced
unwanted groping, rape, forced or coerced sexual acts on the job. Only 6 percent said they
received any resources from their employers, like access to therapy, to help them cope with
the trauma.
Ms. Moon, who has worked with Soldiers of Pole, also said she had been assaulted, while in
a private room with a customer at a club in Los Angeles. When she tried to tell the manager
on duty what had happened, she said, he told her that it looked as though she was soliciting
the customer for sex.
“I said, ‘I never asked him to do any of that,’” Ms. Moon said. “They fired me. They called me
dirty. ‘We hope you aren’t doing your dirty practices at the other clubs.’”
Before stripping, Ms. Moon earned a bachelor’s degree in performance art and worked as a
bartender, a delivery driver and a mechanic at a bowling alley. When she first began
stripping, Ms. Moon said that she felt liberated and that the money she earned gave her a
sense of independence after years of struggling to make ends meet on a minimum wage.
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But after the assault, she said, “I couldn’t go back to work. Every day that I had to go back to
work at that point, I was so upset and miserable and terrified.”
Finding a way to prevent violence in strip clubs, especially in private rooms, was the goal of a
coalition of Seattle dancers, Strippers Are Workers, last year. In December, two of the
group’s members, Aaliyah Topps, 25, and Aubrey Watkins, 38, traveled to Olympia, Wash., to
speak with state legislators during a work session on labor standards.
“We talked about how we didn’t have working water sometimes,” Ms. Topps said. “About not
having toilets that flush, not having paper towels and soap. A lot of people have no clue
about our industry. They thought our main problems were us tripping over our shoes.”
Their efforts led legislators in Washington state to pass a bill in May that directed clubs to
install panic buttons in spaces where dancers could be alone with customers and to
maintain blacklists of customers who have been violent. The bill also mandates training for
dancers to learn about their rights, and established an advisory committee, half of whose
members must be current or former strippers.
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In an interview, Ms. Topps and Ms. Watkins said they were fired from the club where they
worked, Little Darlings, which is owned by Déjà Vu, a strip-club chain.
Ms. Topps and Ms. Watkins said they were told they had failed to pay their “back rent”: debt
that accumulates when dancers do not make enough money to pay their customary “stage
rental fee” for the night. Also referred to as the “house fee,”this can range from $10 to
several hundred dollars.
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But Ms. Topps and Ms. Watkins believe the true cause was that they had been
quietlyrecruiting other women to join Strippers Are Workers, which now has about 50
members.
Ms. Topps, who worked for Déjà Vu for four years, and Ms. Watkins, who had worked there
since 1998 in multiple capacities, including as a manager, said that they went to Déjà Vu’s
corporate offices to speak with someone about the money the club said they owed. “No one
would even talk to us,” Ms. Topps said.
“If someone hasn’t paid their rent, it is an avenue to say, ‘I don’t think you fit well here,’” said
Eric Forbes, who has managed all of the Déjà Vu clubs in Washington since 2010. “Every time
that’s used, there’s something else more going on than just back rent. We’re not in the
business of chasing entertainers away. We don’t have a business without them.”
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Fistful of dollars: At V-live, cash is incorporated into a costume.CreditSeptember Dawn
Bottoms for The New York Times
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Only collect: Chris Amazin’, the sweeper at V-live, collects money from the floor and
distributes it into plastic bags for each woman to get after closing time.CreditSeptember
Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times
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Called to the carpet: Dancers tally their earnings.CreditSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The
New York Times
House fees were first introduced to help owners pay for capital improvements to the club:
for example, to renovate the stage, install better lockers or repaint the walls. But many
dancers say they rarely see the money used for such purposes, that house fees are simply
an accepted way to make them pay to work and that they should be abolished.
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According to contracts and receipts provided to The Times, Déjà Vu charges house fees that
range from $140 to $180 per shift at several of its Seattle clubs. The contracts also state that
dancers must pay $140 if they miss one of their scheduled shifts without providing a week’s
notice.
Mr. Forbes said the clubs will periodically cancel debts or offer to reduce back rent by $140
if a dancer works on a slow night (during which she will still pay the $140 stage-rental fee).
Customers pay $20 to $22 to enter.
Shira Cole, 34, a member of Strippers Are Workers, said she constantly engaged in an
internal debate about whether going to work would have a payoff or whether she would
end up owing her club more money. “I would have panic attacks the whole day leading up to
work,” she said.
Mr. Forbes said: “This is a free country. Nobody is forcing anybody to work anywhere.”
‘Positive Affirmations’
In many clubs, strippers are required to pay not only house fees and additional fees for each
private dance, but also a portion of their earnings to other employees at the club, including
the D.J., the manager on duty, the bartenders and the security guards.
This allows club owners to shift the cost of the operation from themselves to their workers,
said Mr. LeRoy, the law professor. “You have one worker’s wages cannibalized to support
another worker’s wages,” Mr. LeRoy said.
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BJ McNaughty shows off her tattoo.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
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Elle Stanger prepares backstage. Ms. Stanger has a popular podcast about sex work, politics
and self-help.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
“The percentages that venues will take destroys morale, and creates unhealthy competition
between the workers, which the customers can sense,” said Ms. Stanger, the Portland-based
stripper and creator of “Strange Bedfellows,” a “self-help sex and politics” podcast with more
than 62,000 subscribers, on which she and her co-host talk about sex work, financial
planning and childhood trauma, among other topics.
At Lucky Devil Lounge in Portland, where she works, Ms. Stanger pays a $5 or $10 stage fee
and gives at least $10 or 10 percent each to the D.J., bouncer and bartender. There are only
a few dancers per night, which keeps the competition for customers to a minimum, and a
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schedule is created based on dancers’ preferences, Ms. Stanger said.
“A lot of us stay there because we’re very happy,” she said. But, she added, “everybody who
wants to work there is not getting booked. We’re a small club.”
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Kaya Jenkins throws dollar bills on stage during a performance.CreditSeptember Dawn
Bottoms for The New York Times
On a Saturday in May, about 300 people filed into a warehouse in Los Angeles that had
been converted into a pop-up club called Thicc Strip. It was created by Alison Stevenson, 30,
Elizabeth Flores, 28, and Linda Douglas, 27, and the idea was to provide an opportunity for
women of all sizes to take their clothes off and dance in front of a crowd.
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“There are fat strippers out there, but it’s much harder to break out there when you’re not
the size they think they want,” Ms. Stevenson said.
Ms. Douglas said, “Who is picking these girls and why do they have to be this cookie-cutter
style?,” referring to the typical look that managers opt for when hiring strippers.
Aspiring Thicc strippers had to join a four-week workshop with a pole instructor and a
performance coach who kept tabs on their psychological states. The creators wanted to
foster a sense of unity rather than competition among the dancers. “You have to root for
each other in the class,” Ms. Stevenson said. “You have to give positive affirmations.”
Part of the motivation for the creators was to counter the popular narrative that being thin
is good. “To gain confidence, I’ve been told that the solution is always, lose weight,” Ms.
Stevenson said. “My whole life I was told that losing weight is —— ”
“Is a cure-all,” Ms. Flores said.
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A carpet of money at V-live.CreditSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times
But that was before the growth of the body-positivity movement, which is directly connected
to the sex-positivity movement. “I don’t think Thicc Strip could have existed 10 years ago,”
Ms. Flores said. “The platform for larger bodies is fairly new. It would have been a straight
fetish event 10 years ago.”
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There has long been a perception that the preferred type of dancer is thin, white and young.
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Etiquette is spelled out for newcomers to Kit Kat Club.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York
Times
In a 2010 study about strip clubs, Siobhan Brooks, an associate professor of African-
American studies at California State University, Fullerton, found that black women routinely
complained of being inappropriately touched and having customers attempt to haggle.
Though Dr. Brooks believes there is now more representation of strippers in media,
particularly black strippers, the stories that are told about them are the same as a decade
ago, she said. These are narratives that say they are “cheap, accessible, you don’t have to
pay a lot for them, you don’t have to protect them,” she said.
Ms. Frances, the “Hustlers” consultant, said, “We need Savage by Fenty strip clubs,” referring
to Rihanna’s lingerie brand, which has been lauded for inclusivity.
Frustrated with clubs that discriminate against dancers who do not fit the standard mold,
Ms. Parker, of Los Angeles, created The Dancer’s Resource app, a cross between Yelp and
Glassdoor for strippers.
Users are able to search clubs by name or location, receive a breakdown of the club’s
payment structure and scheduling requirements and read other dancers’ reviews or see the
ratings they have left for various categories, including how the club treats black and Hispanic
dancers, how the management is and how staff is. For $4.99, users can access the Dressing
Room, a private chat room where dancers ask each other questions and share experiences.
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“Clubs have never been held accountable on a collective level,” Ms. Parker said. “I wanted to
create an official resource for dancers everywhere, where they could meet and rate and
review clubs.”
Since the app was introduced two years ago, its monthly impressions have grown to
100,000, said Ms. Parker, who also maintains an Instagram account where she posts
information that dancers around the country send her.
“This is going to be a force,” Ms. Parker said. “I’m not playing anymore with these clubs.” She
added: “There’s a big change coming.”
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On all platforms: Hazel Greene takes a break at Kit Kat Club. CreditRuth Fremson/The New
York Times
Alain Delaqueriere contributed research.
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