Friday, July 10, 2015

Self-Esteem in Male and Female Strippers

Daily Mail reports in The science of Magic Mike: Researchers reveal why male strippers take their clothes off(and say its NOT for the money) that male strippers perform for their enhanced self-esteem.

Maren Scull at the University of Colorado Denver did a few years study where she concluded what I already know from experience—men and women experience objectification in different ways.


Women often have experienced objectification much more than men, and oftentimes in a more negative and even threatening or violent way, but when men are objectified, they perceive it in a much more positive way.

Men can actually enjoy the experience because it’s not in their everyday experience to be negatively objectified everywhere they look, so they are able to gain positive boosts to their self-esteem.

“'Initially women who dance for men may experience a boost in self-esteem, but after time they suffer from a diminished self-concept…Because stripping is a stigmatising occupation, it has the capacity to negatively affect exotic dancers' self-definitions,' Scull said.”

I would agree that I definitely had more positive self-esteem when I began as a stripper and the direct objectification was still new and somewhat thrilling. The longer I stayed in the profession though, the worse I felt about myself.


All the negatives added up and worked to demoralize me and dehumanize me.

Thank goodness, for the joy I was still able to feel at certain moments when my audience was civil, adoring, and throwing money. I became the dance; I became my sensuality and I burned. Unfortunately, a fire always burns itself out.

Thursday, July 09, 2015

Wear Whatever The Hell You Want To!

I’m curious. Which do you think is a bigger factor in why you wouldn’t wear a crop top?

Age or body type?


The magazine answered a “reader” question about whether she could “rock a crop top” by saying you should only wear one if you have a “flat stomach,” otherwise you should “layer” to keep your unflat stomach hidden.

Well, of course, people are going to call you out for body-shaming when you say something like that, but are we taking this anti-body-shaming trend a bit far when no one can say anything without being accused of it?

Lola the Stripper Goes Completely Off-Topic

Yes, we all know that we can wear whatever we want. But when answering a stupid question (Sorry! Why are we blaming the answer and not the questioner for even asking?!), you’re going to get a stupid answer.

Yes! Wear whatever you want! But when it comes to style, there are always going to be people who will say certain sizes and ages shouldn’t wear certain items.

Can you rock something that a lot of people will disagree with?! Of course! But don’t ask for permission. Just wear whatever the hell you want. Why, oh why, are we still asking these questions?

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

#AndIAmBeautiful

#bellybuttonchallenge 

#loveyourbody 

#bellybutton

#fuckit


#sexytummy 

#whocares 

#challenge 

#daily 

#fuckbellybuttonchallenge 

#bellychallenge

This is just a small sampling of the hashtags that go along with social media beauty challenges and the challenges meant to disrupt their hold on our attention.


The egg collarbone challenge
Social media beauty challenges have proliferated recently. From thigh gaps to coin or egg balancing in one’s collarbones to The Belly Button Challenge, which involves touching one’s belly button by reaching around one’s waist, these challenges are meant to highlight how thin someone is.

These challenges are everywhere, from Chinese beauty pageants to Instagram—the latest being “A new Instagramchallenge has thousands of teens posting dramatic videos of themselves 'lookingugly'.”
The latest social media challenge has teens smearing their faces with makeup in the name of body-positivity — but the videos are actually just insulting…The hashtag #DontJudgeChallenge was trending on Instagram earlier Monday where there are over 85,000 thousand posts using the hashtag.

Of course, just as we have all these negative social media body challenges, we also have lots of people challenging the challenges with some challenges actually worth doing.


Teens are actually showing their flaws and tagging them #BeautyInAllChallenge. They’re saying, this is me, pimples and all. And I am beautiful.

Today I’m starting a hashtag to encourage everyone to my #AndIAmBeautiful social media challenge:

Take a photo or video of yourself with one hand over your heart to represent the message coming from your heart and give a reason that has nothing to do with physical appearance about why you are beautiful, and label it #AndIAmBeautiful.

#AndIAmBeautiful because I care deeply about people...


Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Sexy is Funny

Female strippers are thought of usually as either hot, sexy, gorgeous women or skanky, slutty whores. 

Male strippers are thought of as what by the general public? Are there the same polar opposite opinions?

What about funny?

Channing Tatum’s co-star in Magic Mike XXL, Joe Manganiello said:
Male stripping is funny, it just is. You would have to work so hard to work around the comedy, the innate comedy of male stripping…
 It says a lot that we see men stripping as funnier much easier than we do women stripping.


I think that the humor for audiences comes from the awkwardness we may experience at seeing men do something that is seen as “womanly.” Being sexy has always been a female’s territory.

I think there is something inherently funny about public nakedness in general.

If I tried now to do what I did back then, I would not be able to keep a straight face. Trying to “be sexy” is quite funny.

One photo shoot I did for a foot fetish magazine was actually hysterical. The shoot took place in a real studio with photographers, lighting, and sets. I worked with two other models. We started dressed, eating grapes on a velvet couch. We ended nude, legs entwined, displaying our toes to the camera. My improvisation of feeding grapes to the others from my clenched toes was a hit. It was outrageously funny to me, but the other models really seemed into it. The blonde sucked on my toes and moaned. I did my fake head-back orgasm, but I think hers was real.


In some ways, it’s so simple as a stripper or model to put on that fake sexy face and pretend to be so hot and bothered. It was easy to make men think the look was real.

Perhaps that is also where part of the “funny” came from for me. What kept me going when the men were jerks was knowing that they were giving me money for pretending to feel and be something I wasn’t really experiencing or being.

We would laugh backstage at how easy it was to make men believe we were real.

Looking back now, I see I really was an actress playing a part most of the time.

It makes sense that I would be confused about who I really was after leaving my other life.

What was real and what was fake got all mixed up.

Monday, July 06, 2015

Team USA wins Women’s World Cup, but Loses in their Paychecks

Interesting factoid floating around on the Internet today is how much less female soccer players earn than their male counterparts.


…the National Women’s Soccer League salaries range from $6,000 to $30,000 and teams often have a salary cap of $200,000. The Men’s League Soccer league salary cap clocked in at $3.1 million last year, and the total payout for the women’s World Cup will be just $15 million compared to the men’s $576 million sum. 
The knowledge of gender pay inequality is obviously nothing new in any field, but with the victory of the women’s soccer team in the Women’s World Cup, it’s brought to the forefront again.


How is this wage gap allowed to still exist?

It seems fitting that the only area women consistently earn more money than men is in the modeling business.

One commenter on the Daily Mail was happy enough to explain the difference:
Easy...demand. That is the same reason WNBA players make a fraction of what NBA players do. I'd rather look at women in skimpy outfits and watch men play basketball instead of the other way around.
I guess that explains it.