By Nuni Snowden
There was a Black girl and a white girl on stage. The Black girl seemed scared when she looked at me; the white girl barely acknowledged my existence. Since my sister wasn’t auditioning like I was, she wasn’t allowed to come in with me for emotional support. We were 20 year old twins, and in Colorado, if you are under 21 you can only enter a strip club, or any nightclub for that matter, if you’re at least 18 and about to start your shift.
I could have used my sister. I have a tendency to fade into my own world and therefore miss details that could be helpful at a later date (“Where is the bathroom?” “It’s right here—under the sign—you just walked right past it”). In fact, it was my sister who told me that the white girl who walked me downstairs, the one with the shiny brown curls who greeted us at the entrance as she finished her cigarette, was wearing a wig. I had followed this woman, with her brown hair, clear heels, and painted fingers, down the stairs and into the basement of Nitro Circus—my first strip club.
The woman told me her name was Aspen and she said I should pick one for myself. I chose Amy. “Just leave your stuff here. We don’t have a house mom.” She saw my blank expression and smiled, “Just get changed and come into the office.” I did what I was told.
I was nervous and I mentioned this to one of the bouncers.
“Do girls usually get turned away?”
“Yes but… you look pretty good. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
I blushed.
“Thank you.”
I watched the two girls and waited. I didn’t know why the Black dancer looked scared. The white girl strutted around with confidence, although her silicone-filled breast didn’t move as she danced. She swayed, flirted, and made men’s lips graze the side of her heel before she accepted a tip. The Black dancer laughed too loudly at the men’s jokes, she didn’t take her dress completely off, and her face was heavily (and poorly) made up. Her eyelashes looked like they were about to fall off and when she looked at me, I could feel the fear even stronger in her eyes.
I noticed my body was more similar to the white girl’s than to the Black girl’s. We were both slender and young and I was happy to find my ass was fatter than hers. But my face—the curve of my lips and the tone of my skin—were closer to the Black dancer’s by a mile. The bouncer was right, I would fill a void and increase the offerings found at Nitro Circus. Although I can’t dance for shit and should pursue a doctorate in social awkwardness, the club offered me a contract. From then on, I was an independent contractor, an official stripper.
…
Very quickly, I learned why the other Black stripper seemed so afraid. Black female strippers are expendable. More so than non-white female strippers, or male strippers of any race, Black female strippers find themselves up against a club’s quota that limits how many of us there can be and inspires a crabs-in-a-barrel mentality. The Black stripper herself is held to a higher standard; she represents the caliber of her race, and ultimately, the club.
Being one of the club’s two Black strippers made it hard to keep a low profile, both in and outside of the club. Boulder is a small college town and I figured if I didn’t tell my friends about my new profession someone else would. So, I told a few friends and, eventually, some family. After the initial shock, the majority of them tolerated, if not accepted, my chosen method to live instead of just survive as a college student. In fact, it didn’t take long for people to start telling me how to do my job.
“Have you read Diablo Cody’s memoir? Oh you should! It’s sooo good and she really explains strippers. You know—what’s their deal.”
“You know, you guys should unionize! That way, the girls can make the rules!”
Never mind Diablo Cody was only a stripper for one year and basically danced so that she could write a book, or that unions don’t really work in an industry with a half-life of five years because no one wants to invest what that would take in a job they don’t see themselves in long term. Stripping is an industry some dancers openly despise and many others mildly tolerate because it allows them financial freedom otherwise out of their reach.
I had an itch to distance myself from my profession soon after I signed my first contract. At first, I made an effort to distance myself from the women I worked with too, regardless of their race. I told myself I wasn’t like them, I was no capitalist, I was a “normal” girl who just wanted to pay for school. Eventually I realized that every woman I worked with had dreams and goals.
It was downright anti-Black, anti-woman and anti-my income to act like I was the exception. When I actually began to make an effort to be friendly, my pay increased. The other dancers picked me when they needed an extra girl to entertain a client and DJs recommended me for lucrative “spotlight” performances.
I was the Black barbie doll, sexy, shiny, and new who everyone adored. But Isyss, the other Black stripper, seemed to have enjoyed being the token. The only time she made an effort to talk to me was to ask me how I liked the club and warn (or maybe inform) that Nitro wasn’t always appreciative of women of color.
“They can tell me I’m beautiful until they’re blue in the face but if they don’t spend money it means nothing,” Isyss would complain whenever I asked her how her night went.
The white girls assured me this wasn’t true.
“No, you have a monopoly here. If someone wants a Black girl, they come to you. Isyss looks terrible, that’s why she doesn’t make money.” Little did they know, I bristled when they called me “girl,” and Isyss used “trashy” as a gimmick, telling me if she didn’t look that way, she would make no money at all.
But Isyss never tried to help me gain clients or sell lap dances. Some of the white girls and the Asian girls did because, ultimately, I was not their competition. In their eyes, I was a co-worker and not someone who could put their job in jeopardy just by existing, but through no fault of Isyss’, this wasn’t the case with us. She quit, a few months after I started.
…
Regardless of what a so-called ally will tell you, all of the experienced strippers I’ve ever come across know one thing: we’re in it for the money. No kumbaya sisterhood bullshit, no body-positive self-love, no sticking it to the patriarchy in the name of female empowerment—strippers want cold hard cash. The only people I’ve ever heard mention differently are white girls who want attention. No one can claim moral superiority in a capitalist industry based almost entirely on one’s appearance.
I know that there is hardly any ethical work under the inherently exploitative system of capitalism, especially when profitability is entirely reliant on winning the genetic lottery. Even still, the racism and colorism were hard to ignore because of how consistently they affected me.
Even given my pessimism about the industry, I couldn’t comprehend how blatantly racist the hiring practices were—the bullshit excuses given to Black and darker skinned Latinas as to why they were not hired when they ostensibly fit the archetype or “look” the club was going for. Black and Latina dancers made the club just as much money as white dancers, so every thinly veiled rejection felt personal, a critique of my race that made no financial sense.
“You look beautiful on stage, but I can’t hire you with that gap in your teeth. Try Platinum 84—they play a lot of hip-hop and R&B there.”
I was curious to try “Black” strip clubs when I moved to New York City. Ownership notwithstanding, at the very least they catered to Black beauty like mine—or so I believed until I actually entered one. The rumors were true, the Black women were all light-skinned and the darker Black women were probably Latina. Eventually, I cut my dreadlocks and found another club where the patrons are mostly white and the dancers are mostly non-Black. There I found dancers who look like me, Black dancers who’ve known the game just a little shorter than I’ve drawn breath, and they actually tell me what I need to know.
“You can’t wear your hair natural, not in the city. Braid it back and get a wig.”
“Baby, you’re too sweet. You can’t go in a club smiling and shit, they’ll take advantage of you.”
“Go on a Tuesday, during the day shift. The manager for that slot likes Black women.”
Of course, the strip club industry isn’t the only businesses that views dark skin as non-economic. One need only look at book covers or Hollywood movies for evidence that this is only a microcosm of larger societal issues. Even as I looked for articles about the clubs Black women could work in and how much we could expect to make, I found that they were mostly bullshit stories about white girls in upscale clubs or Black girls in hood clubs, none of which applied to me.
All of the information that was useful to me came from the Black and non-white strippers I knew, women who the industry set up to be in competition with me.
White girls didn’t know a Black woman’s natural hair bars her from most clubs in Manhattan. They didn’t understand the consequences of the fact that in this industry white equals upscale and Black equals ghetto—they didn’t know, they couldn’t know, because I didn’t know until a Black stripper told me. Yet most every story I find, every Vice and Rolling Stone article are written by and for white people. White people with limited experience often trying to use allyship as a platform or a vehicle to make themselves more interesting. Someone who becomes a stripper to write a book or lies about working as a prostitute to gain favor with other escorts. A condiment to make their bland lives flavorful.
Who can blame them for utilizing their privilege to profit off their sexuality? They’re allowed. Miley Cryus can embarrass herself without embarrassing her race. For every Rihanna there are five Kardashians and everyone’s trying to be the next Kim—never mind that she’s imitating Black Chyna.
So, what can we do besides support each other? I don’t mean through a union, I mean a grassroots, constant effort to change our approach to one another. Scarcity is the mindset that makes veteran Black dancers nervous when they see new Black dancers enter the club.
How do we begin believing in abundance, combining our resources to identify good customers and clubs that are appreciative of all types of beauty, and how can others support us in doing so?
When we collaborate and share ideas with one another, we add to the collective power of women in our industry. By sharing our stories even when mainstream publications won’t, we break down the myth of exceptionalism and prove Black women shouldn’t have to transcend our race to do well. It’s true, strippers will always be in competition with one another and Black strippers are especially expendable. But we’re also resilient. We’ve never needed a guidebook to tell us where to go and how to look, we only needed each other.
Suggested Reading/Viewing:
Zachary Shwartz, “Twenty Hours in a New York Strip Club” Vice, 2015
Ariel Hernandez, “Poles and Politics: Stripper and Activist Gizelle Marie’s Fight for Sex Workers’ Dignity“, The Press Magazine, 2018
Jubilee, “Do All Strippers Think The Same?“, YouTube, 2019
Tiffany B., “DAY IN THE LIFE OF A STRIPPER! | HOW MUCH MONEY DO I MAKE?? Ft: Nadula Hair” YouTube, 2019
