I Want the World to Know That I’m a Stripper
The most difficult part of my job isn’t dancing, it’s lying about it
I was at a bar with friends back in Seattle. There was a movie playing on a flat screen. My friends weren’t paying attention to it, but I have an unfortunate tendency to gravitate towards screens. What I saw was this: a young woman, naked except for sexy knee-high boots, dramatically splayed out on the ground in what seemed to be a hotel room. The camera lingered on her for a while, offering her to the viewer’s eye. In a second I knew two things about this woman: She was dead and she was a stripper. I asked the waiter what movie this was so that I could go online to read its synopsis. I found that I was right. The woman was a stripper who went back to a main character’s hotel room and then accidentally died during intercourse, which sets the movie — described as a “dark comedy” — in motion as a group of bumbling male friends try to hide their non-crime.
I knew this woman was a stripper because of the voyeuristic pleasure that was taken in showing her lifeless, naked body. What I saw I immediately recognized: a form of gleeful, cynical objectification. It was something that I understood because I am a stripper, too.
