This article was really interesting to me for many different reasons. It was refreshing to read an op-ed piece and a piece that didn’t have to do with politics or the upcoming election. I love personal pieces and this one was really interesting because other then the occasional feature on a Law and Order episode, I do not know much about stripping or “exotic dancing.” The lines that really called me from the page were, “Relegated to the fringes of the workplace, in part because of stigmas surrounding sex work, we are invisible. Clubs force us to work as “independent contractors.” We have no health insurance, workers’ compensation or other benefits. We have zero security.” I had always thought of stripping as a job, not a career, that people fell into because they were out of options. I never thought of it as something that someone did for 23 years like the author of this piece. I was right in that, according to the author, “Various circumstances have led dancers to places like this: lack of education or work experience, singlemotherhood, no child support or college-bound kids. Alcoholism, abusive boyfriends, student loans and car payments.” However, she says places and not the career itself and that really had me wondering if the career itself was by choice or done for the reasons she mentioned or if it were the venues that were chosen for those motivations. I was really astonished to learn that these workers have no benefits whatsoever. From what I have learned stripping is not the safest or secure job, the author even mentioned an instance where they were filmed and worried their images may end up on the internet, and to be reporting to work with no guarantees of help if anything ever went wrong, like in the example she gave, just does not sound right. This example did inspire the change that was the case that led to “one of the first unions in this country to cover workers in the sex trade.” I was really struggling to understand this line of work as anything but a performance based line of work so I decided to compare it to being a professional back up dancer. According to some research I did, “Backup dancing is irregular work, with a median pay rate of around $13 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Keep in mind that this high-intensity, physical job doesn’t often include benefits like sick time or health insurance” (Starr 1). So similar to strippers, if a backup dancer were to be injured before a show, say they were on a concert tour preforming 4-5 nights a week, they would not be covered by the show, provided no sick days and not making money for the days they don’t preform. Although this example may seem weak, it helped me to understand a little better why this would be upsetting to a dancer of any kind. It should not matter what line of work you are in, sex trade or stock trade, you should be provided basic benefits and promised basic security when you show up for work. What I could not understand was that since that is not the case, If this line of work is indeed a last ditch option, then shouldn’t it serve is a placeholder to get back on your feet and find a new job with benefits? Why would you stay at an unsafe, unsavory job with no safety and security for 20 plus years?
Works Cited:
Starr, Gigi. “The Average Salary of Backup Dancers.” EHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.