You, the sex working masses, have spoken! Here are the top three most hated work aspects for strippers, escorts, and fetish providers. Choose one from the list/s that apply to you, and wait on the edge of your seat for the inauspicious winners to be crowned on Monday, October 28th. Voting is open until 11:59pm PST Sunday, October 27th, but why wait for the last minute to vent your rage? DO IT NOW.
Editors’ Note: Today’s Dear Tits and Sass is unexpectedly timely considering recent events in Washington, D.C. Anonymous tweeter @NatSecWonk was outed as White House employee Jofi Joseph and summarily fired. But he didn’t have just one anonymous Twitter handle; it looks as though he is also behind @dchobbyist, the epitome of the worst kind of client, one who seeks to rank women numerically on TER while describing every perceived flaw in detail and considers haggling over price to be a point of pride. It seems only right that the kind of hubris it would take to think you could get away with an anon account from the White House would come from a “hobbyist.” So! On to our own national security questions.
Dear Tits and Sass,
Could you do a post expanding on a topic brought up by one of the articles you included in the Week in Links for September 27, about whether sex work (in that case, stripping) can keep someone from getting a security clearance? The article was great, but it leaves me with some questions especially because of the fact that stripping is legal, but other kinds of sex work are not. In general I’d love to hear any additional perspective that you guys can dig up.
I’m sure I’m not the only one out there worrying about this, but there are very few places that this kind of question can be asked, so I thank you sincerely for considering this as a post topic.
Best,
A
The following is an excerpt from the first volume of dancer JA Sapphire’s self-published memoir, Sapphire: Escape. At this point in the book, it’s 1996 and Sapphire has just decided to work as an exotic dancer for the first time. She has escaped from an abusive background and moved to Atlanta from the Eastern Seaboard, and worked a series of jobs, but found herself unable to pay rent, so she made her way to Magic City and has been taken to the dressing room by one of the managers, Nick.
I watch Nick close the door behind him as I place my bag on the table to search for something to wear. I don’t have much. I pull out something that I think is very sexy, something that I bought from the lingerie place in the Phipps Plaza. It’s black, full-lace with thick lace embroidery that covers the real important parts. It has two snaps at the bottom of the crotch, the neck comes up like a turtleneck, and the shoulders are ruffled. I take out a small red pencil and light the tip with a lighter to line my eyelids. I use the black mascara to extend my lashes. I use the black gel called Ampro to smooth my hair’s edges. With curl activator I bring up the waves in my hair. My hair is still cut into a boy-like fade. I pull out some lipstick that cost me about two dollars and paint my lips. I look at my reflection thinking I look great.
I start rubbing my body down with lotion when I notice a medium light-skinned girl with broad shoulders walk in. She’s dressed very conservatively in a white turtleneck, jeans and bootheels. She places her bag on a chair and glances at me but doesn’t speak. She goes in front of the mirror and stares at herself. She has blunt-cut bangs. She untangles the scarf from around her neck and the back of her jet-black hair. I feel that it’s impolite that neither one of us is speaking; therefore, I walk up to her with an extended hand to introduce myself to her.
“Hello,” I say happily. “I am Janel. I’m new here.”
She looks at me disdainfully up and down, then walks out the room. I hear her mumbling to Nick, then laughing. She returns but never says a word. “Excuse me,” I interrupt. “About how much money do you make in here?” She cuts her eyes, looks at me angrily and remains silent. “Excuse me,” I repeat myself. “Do you hear me?”
If there’s one thing we love here at Tits and Sass (besides vagina pageants and corny films about sex work, that is) it’s complaining. And it’s our dedication to this fine art that led us to conceive of a poll where you, our dear readers, could weigh in on the worst things about your jobs. We excluded the most obvious and serious options (the stigma; the illegality; the cops) and focused instead on some of the more precise sources of annoyance, usually client based. Voting will be open until Wednesday at 11:59pm PST, after which we’ll have another vote on Friday to rank the top three responses in each field. Leave out anything we missed in the comments and please, feel free to rant.
Another day, another strip club in a music video that’s too good to be true. Then again, unlike Rihanna’s “Pour It Up,” this one is actually too bad to be true. Today, we bring you Bruno Mars’s video for his new single, “Gorilla.” Apparently Mars and the director, Cameron Duddy, did an “exhaustive amount of research,” and determined that regular strip clubs are just too boring. Duddy said, on record, that they would visit a club and have “one drink and leave.”
Gee, thanks guys.