Doll Parts

For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men. Scheherazade. Minsky’s Burlesque. Cage dancing go-go girls in the psychedelic 60’s. Times Square strippers, pole dancers and lap dancers. Women dance. Men watch.

Three naked ladies talk about their view from the stages and laps in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today.

Naked Ladies get around! Look for the Three Naked Ladies and a new topic every Wednesday on thedirtygirldiaries.com and laurishaw.com.

Jodi Sh Doff: Lauri, you worked in the 90′s, by then there were house fees and implants were a big thing. The top shelf joints of the 90′s seemed like an Evening Gown Barbie factory. I know it’s a response to public demand, but some girls considered implants a reasonable work expense, like a uniform. I couldn’t have gone to those surgical extremes.

Lauri Shaw: I mostly avoided those evening gown clubs. I do not look like Barbie. I’d need more than just a boob job to look like Barbie. Among other things, I’d need to have my skull reshaped, and longer limbs sewn onto me like a Frankenstein monster, if I ever wanted to look like Barbie. I couldn’t relate. By contrast, the nude clubs were an easier environment. I went into Scores once, not to audition but with some guy, and the place just felt cold to me. Emotionally sterile.

Rachel Aimee: Most of the high end Manhattan clubs hire girls that all look the same: 90% white, 70% blond, always skinny and a lot of silicone. It’s possible to get hired at the semi-upscale clubs just by being reasonably attractive if you’re white, but women of color have to have really “perfect” bodies and be absolutely stunning. The divey places hire a more diverse mix and some of the outer borough clubs hire exclusively black or Latina dancers, depending on the neighborhood and clientele.

JshD: I felt the same about Scores but was also fully aware that there was a LOT more money there. It’d take me a week to make what they make in a night.

RA: There definitely is the possibility of making a LOT of money in those high end clubs, but you don’t just need to look the part, you need to hustle like crazy too. They schedule as many girls as possible every night because they want their house fees, so even if you did look like Barbie, you’d be competing with 60 other Barbies. Personally, I find it easier to make money at the more diverse clubs–there are always the guys who will like me by default just because I’m one of the few white girls.

LS: I auditioned for VIP once and it was incredibly humiliating. It felt like a cattle call — they had me put on a costume, strip down to my g-string, and stand in a line with three other hopefuls. The manager, or whoever he was, told me to turn around once, then he said “Okay, thanks. You can get dressed.” I said, “That’s it?” And he said, “We have too many girls,” which of course is code for, “You don’t have the right look.” I took it to mean, “Get the hell out of my club, you butt-ugly skank.” I went home and cried.

JshD: Ouch! An 80′s “audition” was the same strip and spin, but just to be sure you could be naked and not freak out! Clubs still had a generous idea of what a real woman should look like.

LS: There were middle-brow clubs too. Places like Private Eyes or Legz Diamond. Not everyone was drop-dead gorgeous, although most of the girls were attractive in some way or another. And all types of girls — black, white, Latina… not usually many Asian girls… but tall, short, chunky, and skinny girls, as old as forty-five and as young as eighteen. They would check ID. They were not fucking around with that.

JshD: The class system wasn’t around when I was working, that grew out of Cache Escorts & the Mayflower Madam. We had no high end/low end, no questions, no ID (I was 17 when I started) just real live girls in all their glory. I don’t recallany Asians and only one black dancer in ten years.

RA: Do you think the clubs were more segregated back then? I’ve gotten that impression from customers who have been going to strip clubs for years and say that back then all the girls were white. I wonder where the black girls used to dance, or if there were just fewer black girls in the industry in those days.

JshD: In the 70s, generally, black girls worked the streets, white girls worked the bars. We were Latina, white, occasionally transgendered (aka ‘sex change’) and all shapes, like the Armour Hot Dog jingle? Big girls, lit-tle girls, girls who climb on rocks, fat girls, skin-ny girls, ev-en…well, even Grandma Peggy, probably only in her 40′s but her daughter danced too.

RA: I’ve definitely worked with women in their late forties, grandmothers and mothers who worked alongside their daughters, as well as women of all (or at least most) body types, although I’ve never come across a club that hired transgender women. I think the myth that all strippers should look like Barbie comes from the media focus on the upscale clubs. It makes the industry seem more glamorous than it really is.

LS: But if a Barbie girl goes slumming at a lower-tier club, she makes bank.

JshD: Some men are looking for a specific fantasy and status of the unattainable woman, they’re willing to pay high. Others want a “real” girl and frequent smaller clubs. People pay for what they want. That said, the mentality of the men who pay women to dance for/ drink with them is so much more complicated and convoluted than just one or two lines can cover.

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