Most Strippers Are Smarter Than Their Clients

Next time you’re getting a lap dance, be to sure to inquire into graph theory or perhaps even the origins of philosophical ethics; Jazzmine or Candy just might have some answers.

“The Independent” published some surprising information about lap dancers this morning. A study conducted by the University of Leeds shows that one in every four strippers has a college degree, and one in three are grinding up on nasty drunk dudes to fund their education.

Moreover, the girls aren’t taking the jobs because they’re drug addicts or being coerced by skeevey  club-owners; they’re seeking stripper employment on their own to earn a beautiful dollar in a shitty economy—many of them making $40,000 a year and controlling their own schedules.

I can’t tell if intelligent girls are going to waste, or our voyeristic, share-everything culture is outing getting naked as a legit way to get by. As weird (and nauseating) as the Montana Fishburn sex tape is, she’s certainly made a point to vocalize what she’s observed to be the truth: showing your pussy to the world is an act of ambition.

Pole dancing would have left me without the $50,000 student-loan debt that I’m currently straddling (metaphorically straddling– come on).

The study makes me cringe, but not for prudish reasons. I’m paying for my Sallie Mae bill working as a stylist and personal shopper, a career that in some ways is less degrading than exotic dancing—I don’t need body gaurds to protect my person, and I don’t really ever worry about being raped.

But in some ways my job is just as degrading as lap dancers’. I wear heels to work sometimes even though they fuck my back up. And my career most certainly benefits from flattering people who I think are overly sexualized idiots (usually PR girls), and feigning playfulness on days when my job is pure, painful physical labor.

Sometimes I think styling is even more degrading. I work for free with the hopes of future opportunities. Even the most driven strippers wouldn’t dream of that.

I’ve also experienced dry spells (metaphorical ones), especially in the last year and a half, that stretch out for weeks on end. Meanwhile, strippers have been working consistently this whole time.

I’m not going to quit styling and blogging and show up to audition at Crazy Girlz tomorrow. I just don’t have the balls (zing). And on top of that, I’m notoriously clutzy, my hips are really tight and my breast-reduction scars are painfully visible.

But not having stripping on my list of possible careers doesn’t stop me from peeking over at those girls with envy as opposed to pity.

Today’s stripper might be tomorrow’s CEO, or even more likely tomorrow’s writers, designers and producers as the majority of these girls have art degrees. Diablo Cody is the modern stripper, not that slutty girl with three bellybutton rings from your redneck high school.

When I think back to Ms. Fishburn, somehow exploiting human nature to win the role of “socialite” isn’t as cool to me as dancing naked to go to film school.

We went through the Great Depression, garnering a few bits of useful knowledge, one of them being that the entertainment industry is recession proof. But our current recession, which is coinciding with massive shifts in technology, is proving otherwise. It looks like the only thing that’s really recession proof is sexiness, and it’s getting harder to categorize the girls who capitalize on it as bimbos and sluts.

Levi Johnston, on the other hand, who posed for Playgirl is a bimbo and a slut. No question.