Letters to the Editor
-
There is only one reason to mix stripping and academia
There is essentially one reason to get a Ph.D.: to become a professional in your field. You must consider the effect that your relationships, personal and professional, will have on your career. If you are working as a stripper, I assure you that other academics will know about it. There is essentially no way to ensure that your cover won't be blown (no pun intended), and as it already has, you can assume that virtually all of your academic colleagues know or will know about it.
At this point, the only reason to mix stripping and academia is to accuse Lacrosse teams of sexual assault.
-
Tenure...
My step-mother has it. For thirty-three years I've been listening to her brag on how she worked through grad school as a dancer. So have plenty of her colleagues. She's retiring on 100,000- plus a year in 18 months. It was a good investment all around. God bless The University of California, and struggling, earnest souls everywhere.
-
Dancing Is Easy
The attention, the risk of discovery, the idea of the girl from the socially conservative and religious family doing something so deliciously naughty is thrilling. The money is good. The power is better. You are emphatically unashamed, proud even. That's good and more power to you.
But why can't you "sell" your lap dances? Why do you do this secret work so close to your real life?
I suggest that you visit your strip club during the day. Sit in the parking lot and observe the clientele and the bouncers. Observe the other dancers, especially the ones who have done this for a long time. Talk to them. Ask them what were their dreams before they started dancing. How many of the new dancers are students--or Ph.D. candidates?
Then visit your university. Sit on the quad or in the student union and observe the students and professors. Talk to them. Ask them what their dreams were. Talk to a university librarian. They're usually very interesting.
Compare your observations. Then ask yourself what you value more: a future in academia or the thrill, the power, the money of nude dancing. Consider the costs to your soul or sense of self or whatever when you make your comparisons.
Dancing is easy. You'll have enough money and be in great shape. There'll be a flood of letters here that will tell you that nude dancing is okay and is not actual sex work and is really empowering if you set proper boundaries and stick to them. They will give you strategies that will keep you from getting caught, and if you do get caught, what to say to your family or colleagues or students or to your friend's husband.
Okay. Maybe it could work. Maybe for you it doesn't have to be either/or. It could be both. I don't know. I've been a social worker for two decades and I end up serving the women for whom it doesn't work out. Some of them were students for a while. Some of them quit dancing but started again because their teaching jobs didn't make them enough money.
None of the people who will give you strategies to keep from getting caught will talk to you about the addictive nature of this type of work.
Being poor is hard. It comes with its own set of anxieties and issues about control, shame and childhood crap. Credit card debt sucks. As far as I know, you don't have to sell a lap dance to a credit card company. You might have to take a cheap dance class at the YWCA or turn up the music in your living room or just gain a few pounds.
But you'll have some really good stories about being a poor grad student that you'll actually be able to tell to someone.
-
save your soul from slavery
Notes from an old fart: Most of my medical school classmates were up to their eyeballs in debt by the time they graduated. There were no jobs like you have available. I worked as a substitute teacher, and skipped my morning lectures. Me, I always knew that debt = slavery. Poverty and scrimping is much better. So is nude dancing.
PS
-
RE: Why are you getting a Ph.D.?
Right on, PrettyLady!
Sad but true, academe is one of the worst pyramid schemes going these days. The university departments that continue to award humanities PhDs in quantities that outstrip (no pun intended) the jobs that will become available by a factor of 20 to 1 (conservative estimate) are some of the greatest exploiters of young talent out there.
Say what you want about the evil corporate law firms and investment banks; at least their young hotshots are selling their souls for the potential of economic freedom down the line. But a PhD in French, or history, or philosophy, or classics, or women's studies, is overwhelmingly likely to leave you poorer and more disenfranchised once you've completed it than you were while you were pursuing it!
As the daughter of academics myself, it breaks my heart to see this, but it is the coffee that every current and aspiring academic is going to need to wake up and smell sooner or later. To me, the important question isn't to strip or not to strip; it's to buy or not to buy into the myth of 21st century academe as a viable career and livelihood. Facing the realities there, and acting accordingly, will guide much better decisions than worrying about whether nude cell phone pics of you will end up on the Web -- which, btw, is the ONLY guarantee this path will provide you!
-
I wouldn't.
I'm also a Ph.D. student, and I think this could very much hurt your job chances. Plus, I haven't yet heard a good argument for stripping as empowerment. I'm as evolved as the next feminist humanities Ph.D. student, but I think there is a false empowerment aura around the capitalist circle of exploitation in stripping. If you are empowered because you're exploiting men, there's kind of a problem there. If you're exploited both because of your sexuality, despite your willingness and enthusiasm, and because of your subject position as a humanities student in a capitalist structure, then you're still not winning. In the end it's still an exchange of female body parts for money. You might be okay with that, and it's a legitimate form of labor in our society, but I'm not sure that future employers feel the same. Humanities folks are only open to something like this if you are actively pursuing the question as you would scholarship-- do you see what I mean? The act of analysis could be empowering, but to separate the stripping out from your dissertation and pretend that the two shall never meet is a false dichotomy. If you do it, do it for your work. I get the sense that you already do, almost. But my kneejerk advice would be to not do it at all.