Original subtitles

♪♪

Oh.

[ Chuckles ]

That's your own unique move.

Yeah, I'm putting my own spin on it.

♪♪

Karley: Have you noticed that everyone that's anyone right now

used to be a stripper?

You know, Cardi B, Channing Tatum, Stormy Daniels,

so literally everyone.

When I was little, I was taught that strippers

were just human furniture for rappers to snort coke off of,

but now they're multimillionaire pop stars,

Hollywood actors, and sort-of politicians.

Wait, has my whole life been a lie?

I can't help but wonder, "Are strippers the new it girls?"

♪♪

I feel like strip-club culture is everywhere these days.

You know, hip-hop videos, co-opted stripper style,

moms doing pole-dancing workouts,

the stripper who might save America,

and the stripper who is taking over America.

Ah!

Karley: But where does the average park person

stand on the art of the striptease?

When you hear the word "stripper," what do you think?

Poles, single dollar bills.

Entertainer.Shiny clothes.

You've decided to do something fun

versus sit at a desk, which sucks.

Make a few bucks, show a butt cheek.

Seriously, it just feels practical.

[ Both laugh ]

I used to associate it with, like, negativity.

It's, like, degrading to women. It's depressing, pretty miserable.

But now I just see it as someone that is working.

Man: Strippers don't get enough credit.

It's a lot to expose yourself like that.

It's just a way to make money. If I could do it, I probably would.

If you were a stripper,

what would your stripper name be?

How about Caramel?Magical Mari.

Majestic. Shadow, uh, Bear.

I'd say The Cuban Cigar.

Max Lidle.Sounds like an accountant name.

It really does.

Vanilla Gorilla.

Oh, my God.

You just had that one ready and waiting.

[ Laughs ]

Karley: So it seems like at least some people

are warming up to the art of erotic dance,

but are the strippers themselves feeling the love?

♪♪

To find out, I'm headed to Magic City,

one of the most famous strip clubs in America

and basically a national treasure.

♪♪

Secret Moneii: Booty muscle. Ooh!

Bounce it, bounce it, bounce it!

Yeah, you got to, like,

look back like that and, like, wink.

And it, like, scrambles their brain,

so they're not aware of how much money they're giving you.

There you go.Exactly.

And that's how you get the money.Woman: Yes!

Karley: Do you think that the perception

of strippers has changed over the years?

It used to be a secret.Strippers was the worst thing in the world.

Yeah.If they found out you was a stripper

or they just -- You're this, you're that.You're that.

It was always looked bad upon.But now it's finally accepted.

And now it's glorified.Yeah.

Everything is about strippers now, like,

and they not hiding it.

♪♪

At one point, if your mama found out you was a stripper,

she kicking you out the house. Yeah.

Now, your mama find out you a stripper,

"Where my money at?"Right.

Like, you know what I'm saying?

♪♪

Like, you know, other women in this world

just look at us and be like...

"I want to do that."..."I want to look like her."

Like, Nicki Minaj has never stripped a day in her life,

and she look just like Secret.

Like a stripper. Mm-hmm.

She probably looked at your Instagram and was like,

"I want that."[ Laughter ]

♪ I don't need no guest list

♪ When I pull up to the palace

♪ Smoke in every room

♪ Yeah, we smoking on this chalice ♪

♪ Red cup and we okay

♪ Red cup and we located

♪ At the back room where they do things ♪

Karley: How do you think those strippers who work here

are viewed in a wider culture kind of way?

Celebrities!

People look to them as they're the fun people,

popping bottles, making it rain, and just having a good time.

So it feels like the shame has largely faded.

Oh, definitely 'cause, honey, these girls,

they are loud and proud.

One of them has almost 500,000 followers.

So they dance here,

and then they grow their Instagram following.

Yep, definitely.Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Africa: Come here and...

See, that's how I make the majority of my money,

off of Instagram.

I post my videos, my photo shoots.

It's just, like, you meet here and stuff,

and then I get booked.

Karley: Honestly, fuck everyone who said

Instagramming my butt wasn't a good career move.

♪♪

Nowadays, strippers gain clout

by growing a big social-media following,

which is essentially the new American currency.

♪ Do do do do do do

♪ Do dodoo da da da

I want to meet one of these

Insta-famous stripper influencers,

so I'm going to meet No Foreign.

She's Lil Wayne's favorite dancer

and has over 500,000 follows on Instagram.

Before I started dancing, I worked at Chipotle.

I used to catch the bus.

Once I started dancing, I bought me a Mercedes Benz.

You have a Mercedes?

[ Laughing ] Yes.That's cool.

♪♪

You could look at the camera.

Karley: What pictures do the best on your Instagram?

No Foreign: The ones when I'm half naked.

Like, they just get all the attention.

It just brings all the traffic to my page.

They're like, "Who is this? Why is she even naked?"

♪♪

I built my brand through Instagram, for sure.

I went from being the regular girl taking selfies

to now I'm... Look at my ass.

That's where I got a lot of followers from.

So people love your ass?

Like, that's what -- You know, I don't know.

That's just life. That's just life.

♪♪

What do you like about dancing?

When I'm up onstage, I got power.

I feel cute. I feel, like, fun.

I feel like a hustler.

I love it, though.

Stripping has actually built a whole new,

and it sounds crazy, but better life for me.

Like, it led me to meeting these great people

that actually have the power to put me in a position

that I think I actually want to be in.

Aside from dancing, what else are you doing at the moment?

I started rapping now about nine months ago.

Wait, why did you start rapping?

I was supposed to do this show on VH1,

and they asked me, "What else do you do?"

I was like, "Well, I started doing music. I rap."

We were on our way back home, and I told my manager,

I was like, "We don't have not one song.

We've never even been in the studio together.

What are we going to do?"

So you basically just lied

and said you were a rapper to have something to say?

I did lie. I did lie.

And then you had to make songs to go along with the lie.

Because we had to send them two records,

and we recorded my first song ever.

And now the people come in the club,

and they're like, "Yo, you do music, too, now, right?"

And I'm like, "Yeah, I rap," and they're like,

"Yeah, you need to come to the studio,"

or, "Oh, I got a song for you."

Fake it till you make it.

Fake it till you make it, for sure.

For sure.

Shit, not only is stripping a job in itself,

but it can also launch entirely new careers out of thin air.

Do you feel like dancing

has influenced the music that you make now?

Dancing and being in the club and living this lifestyle,

it just gives me so much to talk about.

No Foreign is a stripper-come-rapper,

full-time entrepreneur.

Respect.

But how did stripping go from being the job

that you omit from your résumé

to something you list under "special skills"?

♪♪

Woman: I am so much better at communicating with a toddler

because I deal with drunk, horny adults.

Oh, my God.

Man: I've literally seen her glasses steam up.

That's so dorky and embarrassing.

Oh, girl, you're doing it!I'm doing it?

Oh, you're so doing it.

♪♪

♪♪

Karley: So far, we've established that strippers

are definitely trending,

but I want to know what sparked all of this stripper love?

To find out, I'm going to talk to Michelle Hope,

a sexologist and sex educator.

Why do you think it is that the perception

around strip culture is changing?

I think it has to do with hip-hop music.

Because let's face it, hip-hop music

is now mainstream in everything

From, I don't know, what you hear on the radio

all the way to Sprite commercials. Yeah.

Like, to me, the lyrics in hip-hop are about, like,

the glorification of the stripper.

T-Pain said it best -- "I'm in love with a stripper

because she rock and she rolling."

Music and language play a lot of how we perceive things.

We start to hear it over and over and over again,

and then it starts to normalize the idea of,

"Oh, maybe this isn't such a bad thing."

Right.

And also, I think it has a lot to do with the individuals

who have maybe been dancers in the past

and now are huge stars.

Cardi B came out and said, "I'm a stripper and what?"

Okurrr, and we loved her, and Rhianna,

who had that amazing video a few years back

where she had the pole dancer,

and it just looked strong, right?

No longer is it, like,

the idea of a weak girl prancing about a stage.

You got to be strong to work that pole.

It really is so powerful for people

to be shame-free about stigmatized professions.

I think that there is still some stigma,

but the women's movement

is really continuing the dialogue

around a woman's right to choose for her body

and for her way she makes money

and whatever kind of thing she wants to do.

♪♪

So pop culture is changing our perception of strippers,

but who is going to strip clubs these days?

Is it still just crunk bachelor parties and creepy old dudes,

or is that changing, too?

I'm outside of Pumps in Brooklyn about to talk to a couple

who say they like to hang out in strip clubs together.

I want to ask them, what do they get out of it?

♪♪

♪♪

Can I awkwardly ask you some questions?

Yeah.

What is it like

to watch Allison get a dance, Matt?

I mean, it's pretty hot for me.

I've literally seen her glasses steam up

when she wears glasses and gets a dance before, like...

That's so dorky and embarrassing.

It's very endearing and kind of hot.

How long have you guys been together?

Five years? Yeah, almost.

Almost 5 years, yeah.

We just got married this year.

Cinco de Mayo. Yeah.

So you guys go to strip clubs together?

We do. Relatively often.

And how did you guys start going to strip clubs together?

It was my idea.

We had been dating for a few weeks,

and I wanted something fun for us to do.

And I kind of wanted to break him out of his shell a little bit.

So before you guys met, what was your perception of strip clubs?

Ungodly?

No, I grew up in a more rural,

conservative part of the country,

and so I didn't really go to clubs growing up

or even really in college much.

It was something shameful, I guess, was, like,

the vibe that was kind of attached to the dancers,

the establishments, the people who went there.

And have you changed your opinion?

Yes.

Yeah, I only flog myself a little

after we go to the clubs.

Do you think that going to strip clubs together

has been additive to your relationship

and to your sex life?

Definitely to our sex life, probably our relationship, too.

We're not pushing boundaries of, like, non-monogamy,

but we both are, like, very transparent with each other

about our attraction to other people

or our sexuality,

and so it's really a safe place for us to play

and figure that out with each other.

That makes sense.

♪♪

For me, I love seeing somebody else appreciate him,

and it kind of validates how hot I think he is.

And then it reinforces the trust that we have with each other

that we're able to kind of exercise in that environment

without it becoming a problem,

and I think that makes me love him more.

That makes sense to me, right, what you're saying.

You know, we want to bring in other people's sexual energy

but where there's, like, really strict boundaries.

Like, no one is going to go home with anyone.

Exactly.

We're not looking for, like, the girlfriend experience,

and we're looking for something very, very clear cut.

And that's, like you said, sexual energy to jive with ours

without having to worry about any strings attached.

So after you get a dance, what happens when you guys go home?

And go to bed. Oh.

So it seems that strip clubs have been normalized

to the point that now all types of people

can enjoy the erotic experiences they provide.

With all this normalizing going on,

do strippers now have the perfect gig?

A gentleman stuck his finger someplace

that it should not have gone.

People think it's okay to do that.

♪♪

♪♪

Karley: I'm in Portland, the capital of craft beer

and alternative everything.

Portland also has more strip clubs per capita

than any city in the United States -- random.

I've come to this enlightened stripper mecca

to talk to an outspoken dancer about the realities of her job.

Elle Stanger is a stripper, a mom, and an activist.

She hosts a successful podcast about sex workers' rights

and the more challenging aspects of the job of a dancer.

Welcome back to "Strange Bedfellows."

So, Jen, you've been a stripper for 20 years.

More like 22. [ Laughs ]

A really, really long time.

So what are some of the problems, you think,

that we -- that sex workers face in our communities?

I mean, it can be really hard to rent, honestly.

All the time, I see dancers, strippers, sex workers,

they say, "How do I fill out a rent application, a résumé,"

because if you list the work, it's not real work.

As soon as your genitals are involved, it's...

Yeah.Everything is bad.

PayPal, Square, Venmo, all those payment processors

refuse to work with adult entertainers.

What are some other problems?

People don't think they can assault us...

Right....especially at work.

They think it's not assault.

I mean, um, pretty recently,

I had, um, a gentleman sitting at my rack

um, who, out of nowhere,

stuck his finger someplace...

I'm sorry.

...yeah, that it should not have gone in front of...

Your ass or your vulva, vagina?Vulva.

In front of a whole room of people, and it was --

The most disconcerting thing about it

was all the dudes just kind of sipping their beer

like it's par for the course.Interesting.

Like, just taking in the atmosphere,

and I think that's such a common experience.

Elle: I feel that the climate

of strip-club culture has evolved,

but I would love to see more media

where we're talking about...

like, told from a stripper's perspective.

It's a tough job, and I --

it's definitely not for everyone.

But I thrive because of it.

I'm in the best shape of my life ever.

I've learned more about my beliefs,

my boundaries, my sexuality.

I've had people tell me I'm a healer.

I've had people tell me I'm better than a therapist.

There's also just, like, the amazing amount of people

who will thank me.

I had a client write me.

He is 60 years old.

He is lovely, and he said,

"My time with you has forever been imprinted on my soul."

Oh.

Yeah, that's something that people completely miss.

It's, like, you can have, like, genuine,

emotionally real interactions even in the sex industry.

Mm-hmm, especiallyin the sex industry.

♪ Instead, you're draggin' me down ♪

♪♪

Also, I am so much better

at communicating with a toddler/child

because I deal with drunk, horny adults. Oh, my God.

Girl: Do you have it changed?

Do you have what changed?

Now that you like grass better.

Yeah, I like the grass better.

Use a nice tone, keep it simple,

suggest what we're doing next.

Mommy, please don't take them out.

I'll put them back in the same spot

because I know you're particular.

And just people, working with people,

is all very connected,

so any job that you are building skills in,

you're just building skills for the world.

It doesn't matter what you do.

In recent years, strip-club culture

has become a lot more "mainstream."

Does that have any impact on your actual life and job?

There are a lot more people coming in,

but crowds don't mean money.

Here's a great example.

A bunch of girls come in and shout "whoo" at me

and then try to take a selfie in the hallway,

that is not supporting me, you know?

Tip the dancer, you know?

A "whoo" does not pay my bills.

Sex work is real work.

It canbe fun, but it's like any other job.

Let's see. So we got this question, and I just love it.

"How can I be more supportive of sex workers

when I see people tearing them down on social media or TV?"

Stop making dead-stripper and dead-hooker jokes.

Yeah.It's not funny.

Right.

People can stop saying the word "ho,"

if they're not a full-service sex worker.

Like, 16-year-old girls calling each other hos,

you guys aren't hos.

Like, you're not -- You've never taken money in an envelope

and then put a condom on someone's dick

before you suck them off

and listen to them talk about their wife and their boat.

I think that standing up for people is important.

Like, when you hear -- When you see someone online

calling -- calling someone a ho, calling someone a whore

and using language like that,

just step in and don't justify it by saying,

"Hey, they're someone's daughter,"

or, "They're somebody's mother,"

because we have -- I don't know.

Sex workers have value as people on their own right,

not just in their relationships to other people.

I mean, the best thing to hear when you are,

like, "I'm a sex worker," "I'm a stripper,"

is someone be like, "Oh, cool. It's just a job."

Certainly."Just a job."

Karley: It's clear that while we've made progress

when it comes to the stigma of stripping,

in terms of basic job safety and respect,

there's still a long way to go.

Stripping might seem like a shortcut to cash

and a bajillion followers,

but it's hard work emotionally and physically.

Okay.

♪♪

Karley: Something that's often overlooked about stripping

is that the job isn't just about

showing drunk strangers your boobs.

It's actually basically an Olympic-level sport,

but the slutty version.

So I'm meeting up with a dancer named Toxic

to see if I'm a natural.

My only dance experience is, like, very drunk at a wedding.

Okay.

Well, um, I'm going to show you

different dance moves that you can do.

Perfect. Just feel yourself.

Feel the music.The boob bounce, right?

Oh, yes, definitely do a bounce.

♪♪

I can do that. Yes.

That. And then...

Oh, and then you can have a conversation like this.

Ready? Yeah.

Oh, my God.

What? Yeah.

So you're going to just focus

on just doing one at a time.

Oh, girl, you're doing it.Am I doing it?

Oh, you're so doing it.

This took me months to learn...

Really?...staring in a mirror.

Aside from physical moves,

I feel like being naked in front of an audience

is such a major feat in and of itself.

Is there a way that you psych yourself up for that?

I think just knowing that these people came to see you,

you are a star in their eyes.

Even on your worst day, someone is going to love you.

Just know to love yourself, go do your best,

and just leave it all at the door.

Whoa.

Yeah, that seems like not a beginner move.

And then... Oh, my God.

Do you do that naked? Yes, queen.

That's intense.

Show me, like, what you can do.

[ Grunts ]

Okay. That's better

than a lot of people...Really?

...who get on a pole for the first time.

Your dominant hand up, your other hand below,

and what you're going to do is you're going to bring

your legs up into, like, a tuck position.

Mm-hmm.

And then you're going to lean back a little,

and just open your legs and slide down slowly.

Oh, my God. That's hot.

It can be very, very sexy.

It canbe. [ Laughs ]

Okay. I'm going to try this.

Okay. For better or for worse.

♪♪

Oop. Try it leaning a little back

when you start opening your legs.

Uh-huh. And it will help with it all,

I promise. [ Chuckles ]

Ah. You got to trust yourself.

I got to lean back more.

Yeah.

Ooh! [ Groans ]

You got to believe.

Okay.

I'm channeling stripper energy everywhere.

That's good. Yes.

Oh. That's a new move.

That's your own unique move.

Yeah, I'm putting my own spin on it.

Dominant hand, other hand, lift...

And slide.

Is there a name for that?

I just call it the thing.

The thing? Okay.

I'm going to try the thing.

♪♪

Oh, yes!I, like, actually...

Girl, you are......actually am a professional.

That was actually good.

It feltgood.

For a long time, we've been force-fed the idea

that being a stripper is degrading,

but for many women, erotic dancing

isn't just a way to make a living,

it's a celebration of the female body

and a symbol of a new era of female sexual freedom,

and TBH, it's just badass to monetize your butt.

[ Cash register dings ]

Tip you later, sluts.

[ Ding! ]

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