‘I’ve Got A Degree. But I Choose To Strip.’

I started dancing during my first year at uni, anxious and apprehensive I went for an audition at a strip club, and gave my first lap-dance. The shift started at 8pm and the guys didn’t come in until 11 or 12pm, so for the first few hours the other girls practiced on the poles and taught me some simple dances. Then I did it for real. I gave a nervous-looking 18 year-old a lap dance in a private room. I don’t know who was more nervous – me or him. It must have gone alright, because the managers of the club watched my lap dance on CCTV and offered me a job straight away. That was seven years ago, and I’ve never looked back.

I didn’t start stripping because I needed the money (well, define ‘need’ - it certainly came in handy for nice holidays or expensive clothes) or because I didn’t have any options. I started stripping because it was fun, and an easy way to make money - and that’s why I’m still doing it now.

My childhood was great - I was the oldest of two children, and grew up in a pretty little cottage in Herts. It was a given that I’d go to university when I got older - and when I graduated from Liverpool University with a 2.1 in English Literature and Journalism my paramedic parents were both very proud.

Mum and dad were neither rich nor poor, but having left home at 18 to go to university and then London, I never felt like it was their ‘job’ to pay for my life choices; and my life choices don’t come cheap. I’ve been to Fiji, Korea, Portugal, South of France, Israel, Italy, Belgium, Monaco, Spain, New York and that’s only in the last few years. I’ve spent £1000 a term on a psychology course at one of London’s best private universities in my bid to become a psycho-sexual therapist. The money I’ve made from stripping has always allowed me to fund the lifestyle I want. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always perfect, but stripping has given me far more than it’s ever taken away.

I’m not the only one who thinks so, new research shows that stripping is an increasingly attractive career option for girls like myself. Almost a third of strip club dancers in big towns and cities are now university students, many from middle-class families. The study, by academics at the University of Leeds and reported in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, interviewed 200 dancers working in strip clubs in big towns and cities in Britain. Academics found that almost a third were students, who said they liked working at strip clubs because it was ‘easy money’, offered flexible working hours and was similar to getting dressed up for a night out.

I’m not sure what offends me more - the fact that so much scrutiny falls on strippers themselves, rather than the men who use strip clubs or the research team’s implied horror that middle-class, educated girls with options choose to use their sexuality for fun and their own gain. What’s with the preoccupation of the socio-economic background of the girls working in the club? Why are we also not including the background of the customers who keep theses clubs open, who fuel the demand, that attract these young middle class girls to the job?

It proves that we still expect strippers to be lower-class, exploited, sexually vulnerable women. Is this then more acceptable? Good girls don’t strip. Well here’s a shock, I’m smart and I’m from a good family and I love stripping because being sexy is fun, and I like making money.

I started stripping in my first year of university. A friend of mine was working as a waitress in a big strip club in London and was making an absolute fortune. When she heard I was looking for bar work to make some extra cash, she suggested I did the same – it was worth it for the extra tips.

Behind the bar, I’d watch the girls strip, noting that the ones who made the most money weren’t necessarily the girls with the best bodies, but the smart one’s with the best chat. I thought ‘why not see what life is like on the other side of the bar?’ Before I went for my first audition at a lap-dancing club in Manchester, I phoned my parents to let them know what I was doing. My mum was accepting and gave good advice – to be careful and to not be too greedy. My Dad was slightly less happy about it, but he had brought me up to be an individual and make up my own mind, so what could he say?

From then on, I would use the old cliché that I was ‘dancing to pay my way through uni’, and guys would buy it – they want to believe anything you say, including that your name is ‘Lolly’, or ‘SummerLuvin’, or ‘that your tan is real. Men in the clubs love to think that by being there, they’re helping to rescue us from a terrible life.

Yet this must help them to reconcile themselves as to why they are in there in the first place. I often get asked how a girl like me ended up in a place like this. But I haven’t ended up anywhere - I chose it, and I enjoy it. When I was at university I had a student loan and a grant, I didn’t actually need to strip. I did it for the thrill of dressing up and it paid a lot better than being a barmaid.

I’ve carried on stripping since I left uni and moved to London. People literally bought my act, so I didn’t see any reason to stop. I’ve danced for seven years and had boyfriends in that time and it’s never been a problem. I’m really a tomboy but with a bit of hair (well a lot of hair actually) make up and tan, I can transform into a ‘stripper’. Sometimes I’ve taken them to the clubs so they can see what it’s really like - and it’s so far removed from the rest of my life that it never seems to bother them. In fact, when I’ve tried to give my boyfriends lap dances ‘in real life’ I find it so embarrassing and silly that I’ve just burst out laughing.

My friends all think it’s bit of a joke but as open minded, educated people, they appreciate the value its adds to my life. They know that it’s not forever but for now, I like the job. I was never very comfortable around other women before I started stripping and it’s taught me what real women’s bodies are like and how to love my own. I also know why men need places like this to exist – it isn’t always the nudity, a lot of people are lonely and when you give a lonely person your undivided attention even for half an hour it’s nice. Sometimes it has felt like being a therapist and often men just want to talk. And 99 per cent of the time the guys are courteous and respectful because they know they’ll be kicked out if they misbehave. Men who cat-call me in the street are ruder than the guys are in the clubs.

But I don’t want to sugar coat this – stripping can be a really hard job and so boring at times. There really more girls getting into stripping now because it seems an attractive job for girls crippled by tuition fees and high rent, so there’s more competition than ever and it’s harder to make money. Yes, I’ve made up to £2000 on a (very) good night (and that was only down to the generosity of a ‘regular’), but on a bad night you can actually leave with less money than when you came in. It varies from club to club, but you have pay up to £60-80 house fee to ‘rent’ their pole, so if no guys come in that night you make no money and that leaves you feeling depressed. Some of the club owners – I hate to say it, but it’s usually the male owners – try and rip you off. They take advantage of girls desperate for cash and charge extortionate house fees and put 30 girls on the rosta on a Monday night so you have to squabble over men to make a pittance of money. It can be pretty bleak. It can make you consider breaking the rules (giving contact dances which aren’t allowed) to make enough money. Knowing that I’m expendable, I’ve sometimes had management talk to me like shit. The answer is more women need to be running the show as well as performing in it. Or we unionise stripping – an idea I am very enthusiastic about.

Nonetheless, too often we hear the ‘degrading’ or ‘empowering’ to describe my job, but these are buzzwords employed to reduce the complex experience of stripping. Most girls I know that ‘dance’ (and it is dancing by the way, pole dancing is an art… YouTube it, it’s pretty difficult) work hard and deserve what they have. Outmoded conceptions of what means to be a dancer or stripper don’t necessarily apply. We aren’t all victims of abuse, or easy, or have loose morals. We’re not degenerates or heartless sluts. One girl I knew was dancing in order to help fund a riding school she was setting up with her mother, another girl was applying for her second mortgage, another for her wedding, and some girls do it just for fun.

The girls I’ve worked with dancing have lived it, loved it, sometimes hated it, but are good, kind, fun intelligent girls who don’t conform. The point is I’m not the exception to the rule – I am closer to the reality of what a stripper is than the naïve and offensive stereotypes. We all have our reasons, but we are playing the rules of the game, set by others. Don’t hate the player…

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.