by Carol Lee

Created on: March 06, 2007   Last Updated: April 13, 2007

As a former "exotic dancer", I feel that I can relate to this topic and shed some light on some of the myths about the industry. It seems like everyone is biased either in complete support of it or completely against it, and like all things in life, there needs to be a middle ground. I danced for about 6 months, and although there were parts of it that I loved, there were just as many parts that I hated. Let me share a few of my views of it.

MYTH: All dancers are prostitutes.
FACT: I knew a couple dancers at the club that I worked at that were in fact prostitutes. They would find their customers at the club and meet up with them after they got off work, or work "full-service" at bachelor parties outside of the club. One girl in particular once had sex for money in the lap dance area. However, here I am speaking of maybe 3 girls, out of about 30 that worked there. That's about 10%, definitely a minority. Most of the girls I knew there would never even consider having sex for money. However, there were offers. Some guys (not all, very few in fact) come to a strip club expecting the dancers to be prostitutes, so they will make offers, but usually if it bothered us all we had to do was tell a bouncer and they would be escorted out. There is a stigma associated with dancing because many people make the assumption that we are all prostitutes but it is simply not true.

MYTH: All dancers are drug addicts or alcoholics.
FACT: There were some dancers that used drugs. I would say about half of them used marijuana, only a couple of them used other drugs like cocaine. But then again there are going to be some people that use drugs anywhere you go, in any industry. Drug abuse is a problem within society, not just within the exotic dancing industry. As far as drinking goes, yes, most of the girls drank. For one thing, all of the regular dancers that got paid by the club were required to sell a certain number of drinks per night (in other words, get guys to buy us drinks). However, since a few of us were underage, the bartenders would make us nonalcoholic drinks instead, and pretend they had alcohol so that the men believed they were getting us drunk. I occasionally drank at the club but never in excess. And the girls I knew that did drink heavily were at least smart about it and took cabs home.

MYTH: Strip clubs are dangerous places.
FACT: Like pretty much all strip clubs, the club I worked at had a strict "hands-off" policy. If a man was to touch one of us he would be escorted

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