one. two. three. jump!

The other night, my boss’ recently-come-of-age son, B, was bellied up to my bar drinking margaritas, for lack of anything better to do. B is an odd bird. A very odd bird. And not in the cool, interesting, artsy way either. B has horrendous social skills and an ill sense of boundaries. He is also unaware of the physical space he consumes and when he invades the physical space of others. At 21, he still lives at home with “Ma” and “Pa” (yes, he really calls them that), works part-time at the family business and has no aspirations to do otherwise. In other words, he is a little on the green side and, while curious about the world in which he lives, there is a lot out there that he just doesn’t get.

While I already knew this about B, this became even more clear as he attempted to converse with me on the subject of strippers. Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I am very much in favor of the sex industry and firmly believe that women who make a living stripping and such are simply working a job and deserve not to be judged or labeled or presumed about. In my earlier days, I would frequent the neighborhood strip club for a beer after work before heading home. I don’t go so frequently now, but only because of time/money/school and not because of some sort of moral opposition.

Like most American males, B was taken, by his father, to a strip club on his 21st birthday. Naturally, he had a ball and proceeded to spend subsequent evenings at similar clubs. Pretty normal stuff. Imagine my surprise, then, when, upon telling me that his best friend used to strip for four years (this, I already knew), he tells me how much this saddens him because it’s so disturbing to imagine her stripping across the street from where he would shop at the Target with his grandparents. I told him that I wasn’t too clear on what was disturbing about that and asked him how it was any different from if she’d been working at the Burger King across the street (except that she would have made less money at the Burger King).

B proceeded to “explain” to me that women strip because they are “forced into it” and that they “come from bad families” and that if they could take a different job, they would. Wow. What a crock of shit. At this point, I wasn’t certain that this was a conversation I could/should have with him. How can he go into their bars and watch them dance and then regard them as second class citizens with all of these assumptions about their families and their job/intellectual skills? How quick I was to become the angry feminist!

I asked B if he ever considered that perhaps women strip for a living because they want to? Or that perhaps they are paying their own way through school and stripping enables them to make the most amount of money in the least amount of hours worked? Or that they simply enjoy it? I surmise that women strip for quite a variety of reasons, including some not so savory explanations (to attend to a fierce drug habit, because they come from a screwed up family). I just don’t understand the moral backlash against strippers, as I see them as merely doing a job like anyone else. Is it because they are seductive? And isn’t that part of “their job”? It is part of my job to be friendly to folks I might not otherwise give the time of day. And maybe sometimes I may use charm and flirtatiousness to increase my gratuities – does that make me morally bankrupt? Or just a savvy bartender/businesswoman? If I went to watch a stripper dance and she was being all surly and “just going through the motions,” I might conclude that she was not doing her job well (unless I found her surliness and robotic behavior to be appealing, entertaining or somehow engaging). I just long for a time when women will be able to do with their bodies as they see fit and not be judged or construed to be lacking morals, common sense, intellect, personal freedom or otherwise.