Fact vs. Fiction: The Big, Bad Dancers Are Out to Get You

            I've been at my club for less than a year but if I'm in trouble with a customer or another girl is picking a fight with me, the girls I've gotten to know step in for me. Same goes for them. We are all competition, but we do look out for our group.

            It's strange because when I first started dancing, I was warned not to talk to anyone. I was told that the other girls are vicious and will do whatever they can to take you down. This terrified me. It's true to a point, and you shouldn't talk to anyone when you first start working (see Tip #9 above), but it's not universal. After a while, I hadn't seen too much of that. There was some shit talking but nothing serious. Sometimes a perfume got stolen but that's about it.

            Now, I don't get out much. I moved to this city without knowing more than 3 people. To be frank about it, I don't have many friends down here. The closest people to me are Boyfriend and the girls I work with. But when I say we're close, I really mean that we care about each other. Many of the girls know each other outside of the club and hang out. Some even go on vacations together. I'm not there yet, I haven't been here that long, but I can see where it came from.

            For example, if my makeup isn't even or a tag is sticking out of my outfit, someone will tell me. If someone's hair isn't curled in the back because they can't reach it, another girl will do her hair for her. One time, I wore a wig to work but I hadn't put it on properly. My real hair underneath was making a bump. One of the girls took it off and showed me how to do it properly so it looked natural. I was told that these girls would do whatever they could to make it so I couldn't make money, and yet now these same girls are helping me look better. When a girl is feeling sick, other girls will help her out, find her Tylenol or something, call her a cab, or just sit with her until she's better.

            We share hair straighteners, makeup brushes and perfume. We have a designated locker in the changeroom that we all contribute things to for the group. There's body spray, nail polish, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, deodorant and even food. If there's a makeup sale at Rexal or Shoppers Drug Mart, someone will let everyone else know. Or maybe they found an awesome new nail salon or tanning salon in the area.

            One thing that really surprised me is the amount of trust between the girls at my club. Everyone has a locker at work to put all their stuff in, however hardly anyone ever locks them. I know I never lock mine. The only time I do is if I get a gift from a customer or I have something valuable I forgot to leave in the car.

            What really surprised me though was what girls do with their money. If someone is getting ready and they have to go to the washroom, she'll usually just ask someone else in the changeroom to watch her stuff while she's gone. This could be her makeup bag, her clothes, her shoes, and even her purse. This happens throughout the night too, when girls have hundreds of dollars in their purses. Now, if these girls are the supposedly vicious, out-to-get-you girls I was told they were, why on earth would you trust your money with them? Simply put, they're not all as bad as it seems. Perhaps I have encountered an anomaly in the stripper world, but it seems improbable. Could the one club I've actually spent a significant amount of time be the one-in-a-million? I'm wondering if this image of monstrous girls comes from the mass amounts of media on the USA stripper scene, as there isn't much literature on Canadian dancers.

            The moral of this story is not to believe everything you hear, especially from someone who hasn't been in that position personally.