Illuminating
accounts of how stripping and sex work informs writers’ experiences
of friendship, motherhood, teaching, working, creating art, and
activism.
No one knows more than strippers about being looked at: as objects
of desire, objects of curiosity, as angels or Jezebels or hookers
with hearts of gold. In this anthology, twenty-three dancers whose
careers span decades, geographies, and identities demand to be seen.
Through stories from first nights on the job to the day they hung up
their sky-high heels—or decided they never will—these writers
offer glimpses into lives of camaraderie and celebration, joy, pride,
despair, frustration, self-doubt, and fear.
Their unfiltered perspectives on their lives, onstage and off, are
a powerful counternarrative to the whorephobia that shrouds the
conventional portrayals of strippers in crime movies, TV shows, music
videos, newspaper articles, and legislative debates. Each of these
illuminating essays and interviews peels away tired myths and
salacious speculation and presents the naked truth: that sex work is
real work and strippers are real people.