Stripper Mom Spreads a Message of Change

http://www.dailyoffbeat.com/articles/3738/20141102/stripper-mom.htm

Here's an interview with me by Tony Sokol on Daily Offbeat.

"I really think my memoir can help other women to see the potential in facing their pasts and embracing who they are. Women need to embrace who they really are and stop judging themselves against others' expectations. I think I've barely begun reaching the women out there who can benefit from my memoir and my message. I am trying to do more speaking engagements because that's where I feel like change can really begin. The groups I have spoken for so far have given me a great response. Women have really connected to my story and my willingness to speak about it. I don't sugarcoat my past or act ashamed of my life either."

Meet-the-Author Event at Stratford Library

If you're going to be in the Fairfield County, CT, area next Wednesday, June 13th, stop by the Stratford Library for my meet-the-author event at 7 pm.

I'll be reading from Stripping Down: A Memoir and answering questions.

There will be books for purchase and autographs freely flowing!

I hope to see you there!

Guest Blog at Sassy Lapdancer

Check out my guest blog post about strippers uniting in their mission to tell their stories at Sassy Lapdancer.

Selling a Stripper Story

Most people assume that nowadays the way to make a splash with a memoir must be to have been a stripper.

But in my latest Huffington Post blog, Sarah Tressler: Marketing Genius or One Lucky Stripper? I discuss how difficult it actually is to be taken notice of if you were a stripper.

"Stripper stories" have been told a few times already, so, you know...they must be all alike.

True Stripper Stories Wanted

The story of Texas journalist Sarah Tressler began when rival newspaper Houston Press’s writer Richard Connelly detailed Tressler’s two seemingly disparate careers—writing for the Houston Chronicle’s society pages about ladies who lunch and writing as the “Angry Stripper” about ladies who strip.

Tresslar allegedly “flaunted” her stripper money around the newsroom angering other journalists for risking the newspaper’s reputation if the truth came out.

Perhaps someone spilled her secret to end Tresslar’s display of wealth; unfortunately, the story breaking may have had an opposite effect than intended. Now Tresslar’s popularity has spread and you can be sure she’ll be penning the story she’s clearly wanted to write—but what is her story?

It seems the news has already written her story for her—Struggling journalist who was fired for stripping. But we should hesitate before we tie her life into a neat package for her.

I’ve lived my entire adult life having my story told for me, until I decided to write the real story.

I was a stripper for half-a-dozen years—from some run-down go-go bars in Connecticut to New York City’s top gentlemen’s clubs like Scores. And yes, I’m a writer, too. And after I quit stripping, I went on to graduate as my college’s valedictorian.

Just because a woman chooses at some point in her life to strip does not mean that is all she is. And while I agree the world doesn’t need just another “stripper story” as I had countless agents tell me, there’s often much more to the story that a stripper has to tell.

Part of the misconception about strippers who write is that often we are presented in just that one way; we become compartmentalized and shown to be only able to write about the stripping world and nothing else. Perhaps this is part of the surprise about Tresslar also writing about high society—she’s a stripper! How could she write about other issues not related to g-strings and lap dances?

Imagine people’s surprise when they discover I was a stripper and I had a 4.0 GPA! That’s some major cognitive dissonance going on there.

And while my memoir Stripping Down deals with memories of what made me the woman I am and the woman I had been through reflections on my past as a stripper, there was a larger intent in the writing. I revisited my topless past to discover and make sense of my relationship to my body and to challenge the meanings and definitions I created for myself.

I stripped down to what really mattered—health, time, and family. I wrote as I took on the new roles of mother, caregiver and wife. While helping my baby daughter take her first steps, I nursed my mother through the final stages of breast cancer, which triggered an exploration of female identity and body image.

I propose that every thinking stripper out there get to writing and start representing the stories that lie beneath the surface of strip bars and stilettos. And not just strippers. Any woman who has ever felt her story was already written for her should explore the truth of what it is to be a woman and the different roles we play.

Let’s share our stories with the world. Show that we are not all alike and cannot be so easily categorized and blamed.

Stripping Down: A Memoir - Now Available

Stripping Down is now available on Amazon, for the Kindle and for the Nook.

“I feel the weight of the hammer from the dusty workbench in my sweaty palm and hit the padlock. My heart thumps in my bony chest. I listen for the humming sound of my mother’s car backing into the driveway. I hit again. I listen. The lock pops open.”

At twelve years old, everything changed for Sheila with the discovery of her estranged father’s porn collection. Found locked away in a corner of the basement, the glossy images ignite in her an unrelenting desire for attention and adoration. Now, reflections on her past as a stripper permeate her thoughts as she takes on the new roles of mother, caregiver and wife. While helping her baby daughter take her first steps, she nurses her mother through the final stages of breast cancer. This powerful and beautiful story is a moving meditation on a woman’s life through her body, motherhood and loss.

Spiraling through memories and torn between the woman she is becoming and the woman she has been, Sheila Hageman is continually Stripping Down.

Advance Praise for Stripping Down:

“It removes the varnish from the surface of one woman’s life to see what dances below. This is not a romanticized tale of easy redemption—e.g. unhappy girl stripper becomes happy woman, yogini, and mother; rather, it takes you on a sincere and complicated journey—a long drive to the self.”

--Elena Georgiou

“I admit I didn't expect what I found in Hageman's beautiful prose. This is not another stripper memoir. It's a powerful meditation on the body, on family, and ultimately on self-love.”

-- Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

“Stripping Down is more than a tale of an ex-stripper. It’s an author’s exploration of her relationships, insecurities and decisions—however unsavory. With complete candor, Hageman reveals how she danced naked for money and adoration, her infidelities, mixed feelings about motherhood, and the toll her mother’s battle with breast cancer took on her. Hageman's story is told without pretense or excuse, allowing for a vulnerability and honesty rarely seen, resulting in her most courageous act of all-an emotional stripping.”

--Corbin Lewars, author of Creating a Life: The memoir of a writer and mom in the making

“Sheila Hageman's Stripping Down is that brilliant, impossible, difficult, and intensely satisfying book that tells the truth about the body–an enterprise, according to Virginia Woolf, that is well-nigh impossible. The province of womanhood and daughterhood, wellness and illness, concealment and exposure are examined with an intensity and honesty that's truly rare. A necessary and important book.”

--Louise DeSalvo Author of Writing as a Way of Healing

Kendra Wilkinson: How I became Hef’s girlfriend

It is interesting to hear another ex-stripper's take on how she fell into the business.

It is obviously easy to judge others from a distance, but what can we learn from the stories we hear about how young women are lured into the adult business by older men?


What makes this woman a television star while other women who do the same thing (but on a smaller and less "famous" scale) are considered "whores"?

I think perhaps the lesson for all of us ex-stripper-writers is that if you want to get your book published, you'd better get a reality show first.