I'm a nude dancer trying to finish my Ph.D.

I love being a grad student stripper but I'm worried about fallout from family and professors.

By Cary Tennis

Read more: Feminism, Advice, Strippers, Capitalism, College, Cary Tennis, Since You Asked, Life

Feb. 4, 2008 | Dear Cary,

I am a graduate student in a college town. When I was in college here, I worked as a full-nude dancer in a neighboring town (also a college town) in order to support myself and to work a few hours at a more compassionate, poorly paid job in the meantime. On a couple of occasions, people I knew showed up at the strip club, including a former instructor, and I laughed it off, telling them that anyone who knows me had better buy a lot of lap dances from me to make up for my embarrassment.

I need to study for my Ph.D. exams this summer and I won't get any funding. This means I will need to get a job, but the more hours I spend working, the less time I will be able to devote to studying. I have started to consider going back to this old job, where I could probably make enough money in three shifts a week to actually come out ahead this summer. (At my university, graduate students typically end the summer with credit card debt and have trouble paying September rent on time.) I have a job that I could work at a few hours a week (it is too difficult to work more than an hour or two per day) as my cover if people ask me how I make ends meet. And working as a dancer would be good for my physical health, as scholars spend a lot of time hunched over and I tend to get back and neck problems from studying.

I come from a very socially conservative religious background and decidedly gave it all up, which means I have few hang-ups about walking around scantily clad. The main unpleasantness of working that job is that I am not a very good salesperson, and I used to get fed up sometimes with trying to find people to buy lap dances. But I love dancing, and I enjoy having a stage to myself. This club lets the dancers bring in their own music, and it is possible to do something artsy and fun. I have worked a lot of other kinds of jobs, but this really seems like the best money for the least effort. I want to put as much as I can into studying for my exams.

So why am I writing you if I seem to be convinced already? There are few people I can ask for advice, since I do not discuss this with many. I want to keep it a secret, mainly from my family but also from my professors and my undergraduate students. I have been working as a T.A. and have had a few hundred students over the past years, and I am afraid that some of them might come into the club and recognize me. I am not ashamed of my naked body, nor of the fact that I would dare to do something like this in order to make ends meet and to keep the focus on my work (everyone should know that graduate students are poor!). But I am worried that other people's prejudices may hurt my standing with them when it counts. Would the faculty lose respect for me or find excuses for kicking me out of my program? Would the students take pictures of me with their cellphones (evading the various bodyguards somehow) and send them out to their peers? If people did find out, would it hurt my career or get back to my family somehow? I guess I'm wondering what the worst-case scenario for something like this is, and what my options would be if anything happened.

For what it's worth, I'm in the humanities, where stuff like this isn't supposed to be blamed on the dancer but on the social structure that puts her in that position ...

I hope that you will consider this letter for a response, as I think you are unlikely to be as judgmental as other advice columnists and I can't rely on a network of friends to discuss this one. You also seem familiar with the academic world, and you seem to have access to various legal and other experts.

Thank you very much.

Starving Student

Dear Starving Student,

First of all, let's just say that this is what you're doing, and work to mitigate the possible fallout. We can't predict what precise fallout might occur. But it makes economic sense to be a stripper. So do it and deal with what happens when it happens. It makes much more sense to do that than to try to figure out whether to do it based on stuff you don't even know will happen or not.

It sounds like you have already had an encounter that you managed to handle with wit and humor. So you have what it takes. Since you obviously are a thoughtful person, I suggest you devote extra time to mapping out and visualizing various responses to the people who might show up. Just shore up your natural capacities for humor and wit and self-confidence. Be an actor. Play the role. For it is theater, after all. It is bawdy theater. (Sounds like "body," doesn't it?) Keep in mind that whatever reactions people have, it is indeed the cultural forces of the world they have created that have made this a logical, nearly inescapable option.

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