Letters to the Editor
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Use it!
The way I see it (and I, too, have a Ph.D. in the humanities) is that you have an interesting opportunity to do both of the things you need to do.
At my school, 90% of the dissertations that were written about literature & cultural production were, ultimately, about sex. The kinkier, the better. Mine certainly was. It was also about race because I lived in a racially-charged atmosphere and it informed my work. Some of the best work happens when you begin with what you see in your life and then trace it backwards (or forwards) and connect it to some cultural production.
Once, would-be professors hid their sexuality because academia is conservative. Now there are Queer Studies departments. Why should you hide what you're doing? You know about it so incorporate it into your research and be on the cusp of a new Sex Workers & Erotic Professional Studies movement. You didn't just climb down from the Ivory Tower, you danced seductively around it and you know what you're talking about (unlike that guy with leather patches on the elbows of his jacket who published 8 articles about Emma Bovary's relationship with her vagina).
Annie Sprinkle has a Ph.D. for cri yi yi! Hold your head up and tell them it wasn't just empowering and profitable, it was field research. Don't apply for a job at Orel Roberts University or Ole Miss and don't let the man get you down.
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Dilemma
A few thoughts....
If you keep stripping, you might be "found out" and it may or not have implications on your life.
If you don't do it, you might not be able to finish your studies.
In a world where people do the most horrific things imaginable I would say that stripping is practically saintly.
If it wasn't so expensive to get an education in this country students wouldn't have to strip on the side.
When I look at Match.com and see ugly pictures of ugly men I am grateful to the women who do porn and stripping to take the pressure off the blue balls crowd, possibly stopping these will-never-get-laid-in-a-million-years men from going out and raping or just plain bothering women like me.
Harsh? Check out Match.com for yourself.
I have to agree with Cary. In a country where even the "good" jobs pay shitty wages, it is no wonder that people turn to alternative forms of income like stripping. It's better than robbing banks.
You say you're not ashamed of being near-naked on a stage. If you're attractive, you shouldn't be. If men wish to pay to look at you then what's the big deal. You're not having sex with them. You make money, they get a little eye candy and fantasy material for later when they go home and jerk off.
A corrupt politican, a sell-out artist and a stripper: who is the "bad guy" I ask you.
And if we truly want to talk of bad guys: how about the sharks who sold subprime loans to naive and/or stupid homebuyers?
You're not the devil in a blue dress - you're just a girl in heels on a stage do a strip tease for lonesome losers.
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two things...
ok, three.
1. seen once as a stripper, seen always as a stripper. i'm not saying it's right, or fair, or even that it should dissuade you from being one. it's just that you'll go from the phd candidate to the stripper phd candidate and no amount of time or success will change it.
2. check your school's code of conduct. you might be surprised at what can get you bounced these days. i seem to recall a story about a girl going to school in california that was suspended/expelled for working as an exotic dancer. i believe she was involved in one of the school's sporting teams, which may have been a factor, but still...
3. as for anonymous at 08:19 PM and her crack about the blue-balled men on match: honey, have a look at the women sometime - there's a lid for every trashcan. here's hoping you've found yours.
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Yet another
academic here. I've lived in a couple of, still live in a, Big 10 town. What has been said here about the hopeless narrow-mindedness of your petty-bourgeois peers and teachers is so-- but probably not the problem, because you might skate beneath their notice with a short profitable run, and because you can give them reason to think of you in a different way, and because you are at least partly protected by their reflexive "liberalism." But those darn undergraduates-- they might make your life hell in ways that will triangulate with your department folks. So, the bad guys win again. Unless you make this whole problem the subject of your studies.
But the advice to do this a distance away-- that might work.
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Why are you getting a Ph.D.?
In humanities, no less? Do you not realize that academia itself has become a pyramid scheme which makes sharecropping look like a Benevolent Society? Do you not realize that you are going into massive debt for a degree which is funnelling you up a progressively attenuated dead-end alley? What are you hoping to accomplish by investing in a career which will not earn you a decent living, which will not help you cope with the realities of the modern world, which trains you to focus your mind on the arcane, the impractical and the totally irrelevant, and to communicate in tortuous sentences with a few dusty minds in a venue deservedly unheeded by the vast majority of society? What are you thinking???
Before you tie your soul in knots to jump through other people's hoops, please consider what is at the end of those hoops.
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Danced to make her dreams come true...and did
My ex, whom I still wish all the best in the world, worked as a full nude dancer as well for years. I've had plenty of friends who were to.
There are two types of nude dancers. Those who do it as a job and those who do it as a vehicle to elsewhere. I've met doctoral students and white trash going nowhere dancing the next set. Trust me I know the world well. The only poor side effect of doing it as a profession is you can get a real warped sense of men.
To finish the story though. I beam with pride as my former partner in life danced all the way through, got her doctorate and made her dreams come true. She now works for NASA and has done stunning research in Biochemistry.
Don't let America's silly fear of all things sex stop you from achieving your dreams...ever.