Teacher/Former Porn Actress Fired

Here we go again.

The latest teacher to be fired for having a past—Stacie Halas.

According to the Huffington Post, “A Southern California science teacher was fired Wednesday night for performing in a pornographic video, school district officials said.”

Halas had performed as a porn actress before becoming a teacher, so I find it difficult o understand legally how this can impact her career as a teacher now.

The problem apparently stems from the fact that some students became aware of a video available online. 

Perhaps the problem lies with the students and the parents who were not more aware of what their children were doing on the Internet.

It seems we slide into dangerous territory when we begin deciding that a woman’s past occupation should determine her present situation. All accounts are that she was a good teacher.

Just because women were once employed in the adult entertainment business doesn’t mean they can’t go on to pursue other work.

You’d think that people would be happy to see that porn actresses and strippers can make something of themselves with their clothes on.

There should be no disgrace in our pasts.

And there should be no discrimination just because some of that past “work” can be found on the Internet.

Man and Woman Strip Down at Airport: One Gets Arrested; One Must be Mad

Thank you, Gothamist, for sharing the latest person willing to strip down in the name of, well, stripping down: Man Protests TSA Screening By Stripping Naked, Gets Arrested.

John Brennan took a stand against the TSA’s screening process by making it easier for the agents to see he meant no harm. Unfortunately for Brennan, his performance ended in his arrest for indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.

I find it interesting, as does Gothamist, that when a woman did the exact same thing last week at Denver International Airport, she was taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.

Brennan allegedly refused repeated orders to put his clothes on, and later told authorities he is a frequent flier who "disrobed as a form of protest against TSA screeners who he felt were harassing him." According to the Portland law enforcement report, "Mr. Brennan's actions caused two screening lanes to be closed and while some passengers covered their eyes and their children's eyes and moved away from the screening area, others stepped out of the screening lanes to look, laugh and take photos." 

So I’m just kind of curious what the differences were in these two strippers’ circumstances. Is it simply that a woman stripping down in public as a form of protest must be mad while a man doing the same must be a pervert?

And for all the hubbub about parents covering their children’s eyes I must ask—why? Haven’t kids seen plenty of naked humans before? It’s not like the naked people were involved in sexual acts. I would much rather my children see some naked protesters in real-life situations than airbrushed bikini models on magazine covers at the grocery store.

Weight Loss Extreme: The Nose Tube Diet Hits America

This article and video on Yahoo’s Shine answers the question—when will women go too far to lose weight? Brides’Extreme Wedding Preparations: The Nose Tube Diet.

Sarah B. Weir writes about what I seriously hope is not a coming trend.

Want to lose twenty pounds fast? Like in ten days fast? Just have a tube stuck down your nose and be fed through a bag and surprise, surprise! You’ll lose the weight.

Does this scare the living bajeezus out of anyone else? And it’s not cheap either—$1,500 for the ten-day program.

"People think I'm sick, I'm dying," Jessica Schnaider, 41, of Surfside Florida, told the Times referring to people's reaction to seeing her wearing a nasogastric feeding tube attached to a portable plastic bag of low-cal liquid nourishment. During the program, she skipped picking up her daughters at school because she didn't want to scare the other children.

But this does not deter her from her weight-loss plan.

What does she say to her children about why she has a tube down her nose? For vanity’s sake? Which is kind of humorous when you think about it; you have to look like you’re a seriously ill person to get to the desired end.

And, of course, as most people know by now, the weight loss will most likely be temporary and one might even gain back extra weight afterwards.

I was going to say—what will be next? Surgery to reduce body weight that is merely cosmetic? And then I was like, oh…yeah.

We’re already living in this beautiful new world.

NBC CT News Interview

I had a great interview Wednesday on NBC CT 11am news.

I was afraid I wouldn't make it that morning because I'd been so sick for days, but I somehow held it all together.

I have to admit, I really enjoyed being on camera again...

My Children Have More Troops

Happy Grilled Cheese Day!

I get so frustrated with myself when I lose my patience with my kids.

I remind myself that Cole is only three. Three. When I think about how short a time that is to be alive and to have soaked up the cultural mores of human beings I feel guilty.

He’s only trying to have fun and be with Mommy.

But, oh my goodness, when he just seems to have cotton balls in his ears and I have to repeat myself like twenty times, I want to run down the stairs, open the back door and run outside.

Then there’s Thomas screaming, I mean—SCREAMING—at the top of his lungs. 

And then Genny will turn and snap when I say no about something: Oh! Fine! What-EVER!

And I’m standing there asking myself, oh my goodness, why is this so tough? They are only three little children and I am one big, smart, strong adult.

And then there is my answer staring me in the face: they are a much larger army than I.

Stripper Baby Photo Seems Inevitable But Wrong

I opened this photo sent by a friend not knowing what I would find.


I’d like to say I was shocked, but rather I felt more of a sense of, yeah, I can see someone’s mind putting the pieces together and taking a photo of a baby on a lamp post as a stripper pole.

Perhaps the inevitability of this photo began back when stage mothers started dressing their young pageant daughters as strippers and fan dancers for the talent portion of beauty competitions.

The idea, the thought, of young girls dressed as strippers surrounds us in our culture. Until we then get a photo of a mother taking it just one step further. A mother completely sexualizing her baby in a stripper outfit with a pole to swing on.

Awkward moment to explain one day to this girl?

Is it funny? Cute? To me, no. To most mothers, I would think not.

Maybe some would say it’s no worse than dressing up one’s baby in a cheerleader outfit or a sports jersey with one’s favorite team. I mean, the baby doesn’t choose that either.

I’ll even admit I was guilty when my daughter was a baby when I dressed her in a pink bikini style bathing suit.

But for me, this photo just seems wrong on another level as it purposefully uses a child in a hyper-sexualized fashion.

I’m an ex-stripper and believe in the rights of women to make their own choices when it comes to their occupations. But I’m also a mother and just don’t see the humor in dressing a baby up as a stripper.

Were you surprised by this photo?

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.

Sarah Tressler Chases Tornados

Well played, Stripper/Reporter Woman, well played.

Sarah Tressler, the stripper/journalist fired by her Texas paper last week for moonlighting as a stripper, may not have to worry about peeling off her clothes anymore.

She’s landed herself a gig with Good Morning America covering the tornados in Texas.

Yes, you read that right.

At the moment, most are still unsure of the connection of being a high society reporter and a weather reporter, but hey—we all switch careers numerous times in our lives.

Pastor Mike Scruggs Appeals to the Stripper Inside of You

The UK’s Daily Mail reports on Pastor Mike Scuggs of White Oak, Ohio, who has some controversial ideas when it comes to preaching, like installing a stripper pole at the altar.

Religious people from all times and places have used theatrical approaches to get people into service and that’s what this preacher seems to be trying.

He’s not asking anyone to come up and try out the pole, rather he’s making a statement about what some men’s fantasies look like and what some women’s look like, too (hence the bed with roses and romantic thingies sprinkled across on the other side of the stage).

Of course, there are some people who have problems with Scruggs approach, but he did have a packed room last Friday night.

Oh, and he’s asking his flock to have sex every night for a week, too.

I like his direct approach about real life:

“We push the envelope, that's true,” he told WLWT.com. “Don't take it out of context. Some people say, "He's going to hell. He's wrong." We want to talk about it. We don't want them to guess at it, assume it's wrong. It's right. We want to talk about it.”

“We talk about sex. We talk about drugs. We talk about faith. We talk about relationships… things that people are dealing with on a day-to-day basis.”

It seems like bringing real life problems into the context of one’s religion makes sense.

What do you think about Scruggs’ controversial theatrics?

Strippers and Sensationalism

I'm getting a kick out of the slant the media plays with my story.

And hey, as an author, you know, you just live for that first "I'd hit it" comment.

Here's the latest headline from the UK's Daily Mail: Anorexia, sex addiction and failed marriages: Mother-of-three who led double life as a stripper lifts lid on her troubled past.

And just for the record, I quit stripping when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, not when she died.

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.

ABC News Interview

Check out the interview with me on ABC News!

Sarah Tressler's Story Spreads

It’s so interesting to watch a news story in its infancy and watch its roots spread everywhere.


Sarah Tressler, the journalist/stripper story has been picked up by all the news sites and she’ll even be appearing on Good Moring America tomorrow.

What I’m finding the most interesting are the comments left by readers on sites.

There are a large number of male respondents making all the typical stripper/whore jokes and then there are a large number of women saying—Umm...who cares?

And then there’s both sexes making comments like—Oh my God, a stripper who has taught at a college? My professors were all old fuddy-duddies! I would have shown up for HER class!

I don’t know what I was expecting. Strippers are easy targets. And hot news.

I can only hope when Tressler is interviewed they ask her more than just about Jeremy Piven’s bland oral sex job.

Sarah Tressler: Reporter by Day; Stripper by Night

The big stripper news today is Sarah Tressler, the 29-year-old society news reporter during the day who strips by night.

The reason anyone is taking notice is because she writes for a conservative Houston paper and then, you know, does something not-so-conservative at night.

According to The Job Mouse: “Richard Connelly, writing on behalf of the Houston Press, exposed the double life of Miss Tressler, reported the Daily Mail.

Connelly wrote that Miss Tressler keeps a Facebook, Twitter profile and blog using the pseudonym ‘Angry Stripper’.”

Perhaps the biggest issue being raised with this story is that Tressler didn’t do a good enough job of leading a double-life. Or, if it was her intent to be found out to create some media attention, then she did a perfect job.

My biggest question for her though is--Aren't you exhausted?!

Dance Moms' Burlesque Fan Dance...Fail!

So there’s this show called Dance Moms on Lifetime, which Gawker points out is the TV network that "celebrates, entertains, and supports women.”

Well, they just had their “Topless Showgirls” episode taken off the air.

Yup, for a dance routine, these 8- to 13-year-old girls pretended to be topless and do a burlesque performance.

Can anybody say ewww?

The show has already aired once, but after a less-than-stellar response, Lifetime has decided to make this episode unavailable—although you can see a clip at Gawker.

In "Topless Showgirls," Pittsburgh dance instructor Abby Lee Miller teaches her students a "classic" burlesque fan dance, which they are to perform in flesh-toned bras to create the "illusion of nudity." The dance must convey that the children are "hot," "mean," and that men "can't afford" them.

Though the girls wince at the prospect of appearing naked onstage and their mothers cringe at the skimpy costumes, the show goes on, and the girls perform at a children's dance competition. "I like to push the envelope," Miller says. "And this is taking it right to the limit."

I guess the idea of sexualizing little girls and the harm it can cause has not crossed the radar of these mothers or producers.

The worst part that can be seen in even this small video clip is that the girls themselves seem very uncomfortable with the whole idea. And even though their own mothers are cringing the whole time, they still send their daughters out on the stage.

At what price do we dress up our little girls and make them enter a grown-up world before they even have a need to wear a bra?