The second part of our series that takes an honest look behind the scenes into what actually happens within the confines of a strip club. In case you missed the first entry, it can be found here.
Today’s entry takes a look at the club from a manager’s perspective. This portion is lengthy, but is the one that I found most interesting.
-Lee
The Manager’s Role
As far as female employees in adult entertainment nightclubs, everyone you hire you treat as a potential dancer. It really doesn’t matter if she’s hired as a waitress, hostess, or even a bartender.
First, you must make the girl feel at home in an environment that is so abnormal that most people have to be made comfortable. In fact, you could almost say they have to be “hardened’ to the club life. This is easily accomplished by working there as many hours as possible and by having all of the staff treat them as if they were long lost friends. It’s important for the management to do this also.
Second, after a few weeks, because the girl is now your friend, as a manager you bring up how short you are on girls that night or how short the amateur contestants are. You ask them to please help, that they don’t need to take their clothes off, but the club just needs an extra body. Usually, they happily agree to do this. You then have them change into dancing attire, usually a skimpy dress, a teddy, g-string or a t-bar (which is a very small pair of panties). Often, the girls, having become used to the environment and having seen nudity daily are intoxicated with the sense of being on stage and are lured out of their clothing by the other girls, customers, and promises of large tips.
Now, at this point, the manager’s job just starts. But, if the girl has not taken her clothes off, the manager again has to start in on her about needing more help on the floor. Again, most of the girls will agree to help the manager out. At this time, you tell them that things are not that busy, and you take them out for dinner, “my treat.” Of course, the club lways writes this off! So, you go out, have some drinks and small talk with the girl. Returning to the club she now believes that you’re good friends, plus she is under the influence of alcohol. At this point, she easily disrobes at the customer’s request, with the other girls welcoming a new dancer into their ranks. The experienced dancers will then go on about how beautiful she is and how much money she’ll make.
Of course, even now, she still might have not disrobed. But, by this point, you are her friend and can make her feel guilty about not helping out more and ask her to please disrobe, as without her, you’ll not make much money that night. She is needed. People who need her and customers who tell her how beautiful she is surround her.
She now experiences a variety of emotions and, being human, needs to be needed. With this emotion fulfilled, she finds herself wanting to be complemented, which she is, and she wants to make money, which she can. You then play on the “what more can a girl want?” and the subject of self-worth never really comes up.
At this point, if she still has not disrobed, you let her know you no longer need her for her position, but dancing is open if she wishes to still work at the club. This does not work unless she has incurred debts and needs the money, or she actually enjoyed the experience and doesn’t want to lose her new friends. If she stays, the manager must start training her to be a professional. This means changing almost everything about her including her personality; she must now be a passive/aggressive if she is to survive. This means that she needs to learn to say whatever it takes to make money. She can never talk about her personal life to anyone as clients can hear this. What you try to do is get the girls programmed to have regular customers. A regular customer is a customer who believes that this girl actually cares for him, and now his fantasy world is complete. He comes in on a regular basis and she invites him back on certain days and times as not to interfere with other regular customers. This is usually set for the club’s slow times because when it’s busy she can make money without her regular clientele. Of course, with all of these girls having regular clients, the club is guaranteed a steady income and solid revenues. The club regulars are usually family men looking for an escape from the real world, and the girls are taught to prey upon them.
Mandatory meetings are set for all the girls. This time is really used for mostly programming of the girls and getting into their heads. You again let them know what you want and motivate them by whatever it takes. Soon the new dancer starts running around with the more hardened and seasoned girls, and they realize how much easier this job is being drunk, high or, more often than not, both. By now she’s working until 2 am in the morning, staying out all night partying after work, and then grabbing a breakfast with the girls. They wake up, go to work, and the cycle starts all over.
They have no time to go to the post office, the dentist, or any other “normal” things. They are deep into the club scene and on the road to hard times and even self-destruction. At this point, school, family, and friends have faded into a world that no longer exists for them.
As a manager, at this point, anything you say, ask or demand of the girl will gladly be done because the club is now their home. The girls don’t realize this is their only world, and the club manager now has total control over what’s going on in their lives. The girls will even put up with degradation, verbal and emotional abuse and everything else the manager wants to do.
At this time the girl may feel fed up and leave, going to a new club thinking to herself that she finally made a decision on her own and things will be better. But she is really just fooling herself. The manager at the new club does the same things except now she has no friends to talk to and the manager knows that most of the time she cannot return to the old club so he abuses her even worse than the first manager. Of course, she then drinks more and gets high more than ever hoping it will go away. It will only get worse for her now.
All purchases of our Scarlet Hope shirt go directly towards giving these men and women a chance to be free from the entrapment of the sex industry.
We are all about educating the wearers of our shirts (and anyone else who cares) as to what they are actually supporting by buying our apparel.
Attached below is the beginning of a multi part series that for better or worse, gives you a much closer look into the adult entertainment industry.
The following document was written by David Sherman, a former manager at one of the largest adult entertainment chains in the country.
Some of these entries may be a bit lengthy, but we truly believe they are worth the read.
-Lee
Part 1 – The Dancers Experience
Right from the start, drug and alcohol use is rampant. The dancers call it “partying” but what they don’t realize is that they are actually medicating themselves in order to do the work they do. The abortion rate is extremely high due to the fact that they could never take the chance on flawing the body from carrying a child. On top of this, the dancers also feel that they have no way to support the baby without dancing, and can’t quit to have it. Basically, they are caught in a very real, painful catch-22.
The girls, if they have never danced, are extremely against it and most of the times are hired as waitresses, even though waitresses are not needed. This makes the atmosphere become part of their life. At this point, they see it as a job, not as stripping and easily are converted to dancing. Once dancing, they get used to being objectified. It becomes as important to them to hear how beautiful they are 200 times a day as it is the money they make from the dancing itself.
Between the use of drugs to medicate themselves to do what they do, and after hearing how beautiful they are all the time, they soon develop what I call “BDA” – Basic Dancer Attitude.“ This is when the dancer thinks that no matter what friends, children, husband and families think about them, they can all be replaced because all of the patrons around them find them attractive, beautiful and idolized. All that was close, in terms of family and friends can be replaced. Now they are truly caught in the adult scene. With friends and family gone from their lives, they solely exist in this dark subculture of sex, drugs, alcohol and prostitution. All of this perverse living, to the dancer, is now just part of their normal lifestyle.
After a couple of years at this level, they then realize they are getting older and attempt to fit back into society.
They try boyfriends, school or really anything to cling to that is “normal.” Realizing that they cannot live in both worlds, they return to the subculture of the adult business, actually despising the real world. This leads to more dependency on drugs and alcohol, which now makes them 100% lost to this life. The dancers will continue living like this until they realize they can no longer stay at their “current level,” and keep making money and getting the compliments. Once they realize this, they begin to master more perverse things to make cash to make up from fading looks and dancer burnout.
The cycle then becomes even more vicious, with depression, drugs, alcohol and body mutilation to stay thin. Finally, they realize they can no longer keep up with the new and younger girls and leave, going to one of five places.
1. They go to a very filthy, dirty nasty club that’s full of girls in their position. Here they perform and do some of the mostvile and filthy acts you can imagine to make money.
2. Prostitution – meeting customers outside of the club, their job now becomes a place for them to meet new “clients.”
3. Marriage – they’ll do this just to be able to still survive. But, the addiction to drugs and alcohol normally shatters and destroys these relationships.
4. Some actually do break away and go to school to become productive citizens. But, this frequency is around 1 of 50.
5. They become society’s throwaway people – used up, degraded, abused and even sold by the people who own these establishments.
Sadly, these young ladies over time, little by little, become manipulated, controlled and finally destroyed by a world that our communities have closed their eyes to. It has been just as much our fault as theirs for letting these places do this to our children, daughters, nieces, granddaughters, and yes, even mothers. For they were every bit as innocent as we.
Tomorrow we will taking a look at this same situation from the managers perspective.
All purchases of our Scarlet Hope shirt go directly towards giving these men and women a chance to be free from the entrapment of the sex industry.
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