Working as a stripper has always come with its challenges: stigma, long hours, no wages, fines, walking and dancing in 9-inch heels for 8 hours at time, and you know, being naked in front of a room full of people. But increasing competitiveness in the industry has added a new challenge to that list: inaccessibility.
Getting a job is not as simple as it once was and even women with years of experience are finding it difficult to secure work.
When I first entered the industry over two years ago, the process of getting a job was fairly straightforward. I applied online and the next day had a 10-minute interview where the rules and laws were explained to me. About 30 minutes later my eyes were almost closed shut from the weight of my fake lashes and I was tottering around the club, a bit unsure of what to actually do.
The whole process was simple, fast (almost too fast), and more or less what I’d expected. After all, pretty much anyone can be a stripper right?
It looked exactly like this.
Well, not really. The reality is, two years on, the industry is completely different.
Sophie Martin had been working as a dancer in strip clubs in Sydney for almost a year when she decided to make the move to Melbourne to dance. She’s experienced first-hand how competitive the Melbourne stripping scene is.
“I’ve now been unemployed for two months,” she says. “I’ve been turned down from every single club in the city, no reason given. Every time they told me they’d contact me to let me know when I can work, but never did. I had one manager who was interviewing me tell me they’ve had a lot of people apply to start dancing.”
I hope I get it!
Sophie’s experience is not isolated. Many dancers from interstate move to Melbourne in the hopes of finding more lucrative working environments, but find themselves out of work instead. Even if can you secure a job at a Melbourne strip club, your job is hardly stable as each week you face the possibility of being ‘full rostered’.
Xiomara has been dancing since 2003 in Melbourne and the US. “Full-rostering is currently the only existing method to end a contractual agreement with a stripper,” she explains. “In short, that’s how the club can ‘fire” you.”
Being ‘full rostered’ is essentially being fired with no notice, no reasoning and no chance of getting your job back. Some weeks are worse than others, and a single club may ‘full roster’ up to five dancers in one week.
Xiomara says although she has only been full-rostered once, it is still something she worries about each week before her shifts are confirmed.
“I never received a warning. I was simply sent a text reply to my roster message stating that ‘unfortunately the roster is full’. I tried, albeit in hindsight foolishly, to follow it up. Phone calls, text messages, and Facebook messages were all ignored. It took about a month before I realised that the roster being full every week meant I was actually fired.”
Ellie March has been dancing for two years in Victoria, South Australia and overseas. Ellie says after she moved from South Australia to Melbourne she went through a rigorous process of applying at several clubs. After a slew of on-stage auditions and interviews she finally landed a job in a Melbourne club, only to be full-rostered almost immediately.
“I received a text message that they couldn’t put me on as they had too many girls for the week. I was given no warning. I haven’t worked at a new club since. I have been trying to get work in Melbourne for a very long time.”
So what’s changed and made the scene so competitive?
Sophie attributes the influx of new dancers to legislative changes in the US – a pair of ostensibly anti-trafficking bills known as FOSTA/SESTA that made hosting even legal and consensual sex work advertising too risky for many online platforms.
“[FOSTA SESTA] probably forced a lot of sex workers doing online private work to start looking for work at establishments, out of fear of going out of work,” says Sophie. “Consequently, the stripping industry has definitely become oversaturated, as sex workers’ means of getting work have become even more limited.”
Ellie thinks the reasons behind the lack of job stability are more superficial. She says the clubs’ actions are because they are trying to achieve a certain aesthetic. “The strip club industry continues to put unrealistic standards on us. If we can’t reach them they dispose of us. Any sign of fat is an instant full rostering.
“There is nothing wrong with doing what you like with your body and getting whatever procedures you desire, but when it is expected for you to look a certain way when it’s just not you, it is damaging to your mental and in some cases physical health. It is not enough to just rock the ‘girl next door’ aesthetic anymore.”
Xiomara agrees that clubs have an increasingly narrow focus when it comes to what is an acceptable ‘look’ and that this is disadvantaging minority dancers.
“I think it is definitely becoming harder for many women trying to get into this industry—particularly those that may be older, women of colour, English as a New Language learners, women from lower socio-economic backgrounds, women with alternative looks, and women that are larger than a size 6-8,” she says.
“This I find incredibly unfortunate; as it’s the diversity of looks and appearances that really make a club more profitable. Unfortunately, it seems that many women will feel the effects of the increased competitiveness; and it will be to everyone’s disadvantage.”
One safeguard against the ominous ‘full roster’ is to market yourself as an ‘Instafamous’ stripper. Accrue a large following online and you become less disposable to a club. When you hear ‘Instafamous strippers’, most people think of Cardi B and Amber Rose – but Melbourne strip clubs are currently full of dancers whose Instagram accounts are businesses in themselves, with follower counts ranging from 100,000 to over a million.
Ellie says she thinks this form of marketing may also be the key to keeping a job in Melbourne, “Women are seen as desirable if they have a large following on Instagram, and therefore an asset to the club. I have known girls to be let go in Adelaide with huge followings but haven’t heard of this happening in Melbourne.”
But it’s a double-edged sword. The saturation of strippers on Instagram not only feeds into the notion that only a certain aesthetic is desirable, but has also begun to romanticise the industry, making it potentially responsible for the surge in new dancers.
As a result of this influx of new women entering the industry, clubs now hold a huge amount of power – making the workers who drive the clubs easily replaceable and essentially disposable.
And while there is no simple solution to the problems facing the industry, it’s probably time that stripping as a career option stops becoming your throwaway punchline in the office. Because let’s face it, you probably wouldn’t get a job anyway.