Golden Girls: how Moscow strippers live. Striptease: from ancient times to modern burlesque We are heterosexual nymphomaniacs

[:RU]Men stare at them when they come to a nightclub to have fun. How fascinating it looks - an erotic dance performed by a sexy girl who gradually undresses, giving the audience the opportunity to react violently and fantasize. It is usually believed that striptease is done by empty-headed, depraved girls who know nothing more than to show their bodies. And how it really is. Let's look at the myths about strippers.

We make $1000 a night and live in luxury

Yes and no. In general, this is not true. It's 2014, and as far as I remember, the world has not yet recovered from the global crisis. Spending money on strippers is an unaffordable waste of money, and it's not a bill you have to pay. Dancers work much longer and go to work more often than ten years ago. On average, strippers probably earn $150-$400 per night, but there are no exact statistics. Of course, there are nights when we earn a lot, but this happens very rarely. You also need to take into account those cases when a dancer works the entire shift and leaves with 1000 small bills or nothing. We will return to this later. This happens quite often.

We didn't go to school and we don't have college degrees because strippers are STUPID

“Do you have a diploma? Where did you study? — the client smiles smugly. Well, in fact, how can strippers go to school, much less get a degree? If they actually had a degree, would they be doing this? Would they consider themselves “too smart” for the job? (I hear this quite often). Sometimes just accidentally uttering a word of scientific jargon can cause your clients' jaws to drop. Strippers are supposed to be ditzy, brainless beauties, but in reality this is far from the case.

We are drug addicts/alcoholics

In the 17 years I've been in the industry, I haven't seen strippers do drugs any more than the average person. Of course, there are strippers on the needle, but they don’t stay at the club for long, they either get fired or disappear somewhere. There are also such “home girls” in the club (they work as nurses in the club), they, as a rule, leave drunk every night. Strippers are unlikely to allow themselves to drink too much, since they need to control the situation, otherwise they will not earn the money they planned.

We are heterosexual nymphomaniacs

Yes of course.

We all suffer from the Electra complex.

Electra complex- a phenomenon akin to the Oedipus complex. But it manifests itself in girls. The complex consists of girls’ unconscious attraction, like Agamemnon’s daughter Electra (after whom the complex is named), to their own father and competition with their mother for his attention.

Why does everyone have such an opinion about strippers? Personally, I have a very trusting relationship with my father. He was there when I was growing up. Maybe some dancers really suffer from this, but...

I want to quote my mother, with whom I am very close. She once said, “No one leaves this life unscathed.” I don't believe that girls become strippers out of attraction to their father and rivalry with their mother, just as I don't believe in widespread alcoholism and drug addiction.

We have all suffered from sexual violence.

Here are a few interesting facts about a woman’s life, regardless of profession:

- one in three girls suffers from sexual harassment in everyday life
- one in four experienced sexual abuse before age 18
- one in six was a victim of rape

Thus, many women have been or are being sexually assaulted, regardless of their profession. Does this happen more often with strippers? We don't know, there is no official data on this matter.

As a rule, we are “unclean”

Do you even know how clean strippers are? You can’t even imagine how much time we spend on personal care: plucking hair, waxing, washing, shaving, creams, treating those places on the body that an ordinary girl doesn’t even worry about. We hear the comparison “clean as a stripper’s vagina” quite often. We are very clean. Why? Yes, because we are sellers, and we sell our own bodies. We cannot neglect hygiene. Think with your head, the one on your shoulders.

If a girl decided to become a stripper, she chose the easy way for herself.

Easy way? Is it really easy to go on stage in a room with a bunch of people, then take off your clothes, and still look confident, sexy and dance beautifully? Would you do that? And this is just the beginning. What about weird-smelling men who make bad jokes every now and then? Sometimes clients can say a lot of offensive things about your body, face, and appearance. Easily? No. Especially enduring the judgment or ridicule of family members and friends, sometimes this happens. Yes, very easy.

We hate our jobs and our lives

Some yes, most no. In my opinion, here we are no different from people in other professions, for example, a person who has worked in a factory all his life.

We are not capable of anything else, this is the only thing we can do

I don't have children, but I have a law degree. In fact, there were no terrible life circumstances in my life that would have forced me to become a stripper. I do it because I like it, like most dancers, I like it because it gives me freedom and money. With this kind of work, I can pay for almost all my needs, and, believe me, they are more than most of the readers. But at the same time, I save money for the future. This is my choice and I like it. A lot of girls who have children do this so that they can spend more time during the day with their children, and at the same time so that their children have everything they need. I don't see anything wrong with that, and if you think otherwise, I'd like to know why.

We can't have a permanent romantic relationship

As soon as your significant other understands that striptease is just work, everything will fall into place. I know a lot of married strippers.

We're all selling something "extra"

Maybe some people sell it, but not me. Some people actually do this, but there are few of them, at least among those I know. Although we are actually selling the body, we are selling it as a whole, not in pieces to satisfy primitive needs. A stripper is not a prostitute, so stop asking stupid questions. No, I won't go to your room.

We can all dance on a pole, and we make money right on stage

There are "scene" clubs and "dance" clubs. Some don't even have poles. In most of the clubs where I worked, they make money by dancing.

Everything we earn goes only to us

This is what hurts me the most. Did you know that strippers pay to dance? When getting a job, a stripper signs a contract where she “rents the club space.” We pay for every night we dance. This came to us from America, where it is a standard scheme. There are other people in these establishments who need to be paid: DJs, managers, assistants. Some even pay taxes. In general, the stripper receives only 60-70% of all earnings.

We only make money from rich daddy's boys

No. Every week an ordinary-looking manager comes to our club to watch me dance. He and I have been communicating as friends for a long time, although I am afraid that we will soon cross this line of friendship. He works all week, earns money, and comes to me on weekends. And yes, I like him, but I can’t stand daddy’s boys.

Being a stripper is humiliation

The last time I felt humiliated was when I worked in retail. There I received a salary that was impossible to live on. Now I can make as much in one night as I used to earn in a month. Humiliation is if a client drank all night, fell asleep at the table, and woke up to see a huge check, which he must report to his wife. This is truly humiliating.

Strippers have no morals

If you think strippers have no morals and all they want is to find a gold mine, there's something more wrong with you than with me. I don't remember that when I signed the contract, I sold my soul to the devil. I'm an ordinary girl, I love my family and my friends.

I will try to answer the question as fully as possible, based on personal experience: I ran a strip club myself, had long-term relationships with strippers and a webcam model. According to my observations and my own experience, for the “ordinary”, “normal” average man from the CIS, a relationship with a dancer is likely to become a strong test and a source of mental shock. Here are the factors that can add stress:

1. Pressure from the environment. There will probably be at least one or two people in your company with more “traditional” views, whose opinion will be important to you. You will be faced with a choice: hide or outright lie about your girlfriend’s profession, or speak openly, take blows and protect her. And there will be blows. Not only that a stripper is close to a “whore” in the average person’s mind, but also that you are a weak male, a cuckold, unable to dominate. You cannot provide for a lady at the proper level, and she has to accept the support of another, richer sugar daddy. You do not control what happens in the private room, whether your girl is only dancing, or whether she is forced/agreed to do something else for additional money. Of course, listening to this from significant people will be painful.
2. Compromises with conscience and ego. If you are a person who knows how to be honest with yourself, you will face many contradictions and moral dilemmas. If you don’t suppress stress with alcohol and the like, you will have to resolve it. You consider the girl to be yours, but you don’t want to share yours. If it’s not an option to force a girl who is used to quick money to leave her job, you will either break up with her yourself, or you will cave in and have to learn to live by new rules. Most likely, stress will accumulate and periodically result in swearing.

The work itself in striptease, although it seems like endless fun from the outside, is actually quite unhealthy. People cross social and moral principles and do not come here because of a good life. There is always a significant risk of harassment from management, groping from security guards, polite but irrefutable requests for a blowjob or something else from a rich, important regular customer for the club. There will inevitably be abuse and attempts to push the dancer into doing more than dancing. And, by and large, consent is a matter of price and pressure. Knowing this, the stripper's boyfriend is basically powerless to do anything about it. And this powerlessness will drill into your brain and confirm the words of your friends about your low rank as a male.
At the same time, I have nothing against working in adult, and I’m not saying that relationships with strippers are a bad idea without options, no. However, I personally know of only two cases of long-term relationships with a girl working in this field.

A businessman is building a strip club for his woman, the best dancer in the region. She brings her regulars to this club, attracts fresh young faces to the clients, and makes the club a cash register. He is involved in management and advertising.

3. The web model does a show on the Internet, while her boyfriend takes care of her social networks, brings clients to her chat, and edits custom-made photos and videos (which he sold himself).
   Thus, an erotic show is a family business, where both partners contribute to the enrichment of the team, and the man ceases to be a “patient”. However, this does not completely solve the problem of social environment and dominance, because friends, having ordered a private conversation with your girlfriend, will continue to tease you, and a rich client can give your wife a car with the condition of additional, for example, meetings in a more informal atmosphere. Life in general, and this area in particular, is full of pitfalls and troubles along the way. I suppose that Team work, aimed at team growth, and healthy relationships based on it are compatible with the constant work of one of the partners in the field of sex services. Or striptease will be a temporary measure. There are many options, but in any case it is vitally important to be able to negotiate.

Once in the famous Parisian cabaret Moulin Rouge, while dancing, the beautiful Mona took off all her clothes. The girl was arrested for indecent behavior and fined 100 francs, which caused protests and riots in France. It happened on February 9, 1893. At that time, both the cancan, which was later called the prototype of striptease, and striptease were considered extremely vulgar dances, and an equal sign was put between performers and prostitutes.

Over the years, striptease has become, if not an acceptable phenomenon in society, then at least permitted by law in many countries, and erotic dancing has become an integral part of culture. Moreover, recently a type of pole dance striptease - pole dancing - has been developing as an independent direction in the sport.

However, despite the fact that France is considered the birthplace of striptease after the “incident” at the Moulin Rouge, many historians are sure: naked dance appeared long before the 19th century in Egypt, but it was treated not as entertainment, but as a solemn ritual...

In fact, the origins of modern striptease could have been Egyptians, more precisely Egyptian. The tradition of being naked while listening to melodious singing was associated with Osiris, the god vitality and nature. It looked like this: the girls began their dance with a round dance, after which they took off their thin silk cloaks and other clothes. The ritual ended with prayer and sacrifice (interestingly, the “sacrifices” were, as a rule, fruits and bright flowers - according to the Egyptians, this should have endeared them to God).

Known for their passion for lovemaking ancient Greeks also contributed to the development of striptease. Residents of the ancient Greek city of Corinth were taught the “science of frank dance” in special schools, where they were taught this skill along with mathematics and music. Such girls were called hetaeras, reapers of the goddess of love Aphrodite, who, with the help of their dances, brought men to ecstasy. The secret of their skill was in their clothes: the fold on the chiton was positioned so that at the right moment the clothes quickly slipped off the body, and the reapers remained completely naked.

Harsh Middle Ages brought a lot of trouble to lovers of vicious dances and their performers. And the matter was not limited to paying a fine. The inquisitors continually accused the seductive dancers of witchcraft and applied the death penalty to them by burning at the stake. However, this did not stop naked beauties from staging erotic performances, and with the Renaissance, strip dancing became an integral part of any mass celebration, even if it took place at the papal court. However, with the decline of the Renaissance, such dances were declared prohibited, but this only fueled the general public interest in this art form. The forbidden fruit is sweet, where to go 🙂

Age of Enlightenment did not change the attitude of the masses towards striptease. Explicit dancing was still considered prohibited, and places where striptease was practiced practically disappeared from the streets of European cities. Only a select few could admire naked beauties. The luckiest of all, of course, were the artists of that time: on completely legal grounds, they invited young girls to their home under the pretext of creating masterpieces. Surprisingly, many of them actually created these same masterpieces, depicting young and sensual persons wearing only earrings and beads.

But the years passed, and in Europe came times of freethinking. In many European cities, variety show establishments began to open, where girls entertained gentlemen with erotic dances. But the maximum that a visitor to such a variety show could see was a strip of naked skin between a nylon stocking and a vulgar skirt. But everything changed instantly in 1893 during the performance of Mona, who threw off all her clothes in front of the audience. In the same year, striptease appeared in Chicago, where a cabaret dancer exposed herself. And of course, we shouldn’t forget about the “merits” of Mata Hari - at the end of the number the dancer remained almost completely naked.

Gradually, striptease began to be perceived not as vulgarity, but as a form of frank art that could inspire a man to any feat. It was a sophisticated striptease on the verge of madness, when the word “stripper” was no longer considered a synonym for the word “prostitute.” And in during the First World War There are examples when sophisticated beauties appealed to soldiers to patriotism with the help of their dances of “languorous nudity.”

The golden dawn of the burlesque show came in 20s of the twentieth century. The heroines of burlesque began to move away from the traditional concept of this art, and their role in burlesque was completely reduced to striptease. The actresses paid great attention to the technique of striptease and its execution. Burlesque and striptease have become synonymous words.

Modern striptease- this is more than just a dance of naked beauties to music. This is a subtle combination of plastic and theater, beauty and choreography. In the modern world, the concept of “striptease” has ceased to be associated with something forbidden, and the emergence of various schools of strip dance has given a powerful impetus to the development of this art direction, which attracts the views of millions of men and women around the world.

The Golden Girls club opened the first campus for striptease dancers in Russia. “Gorod” visited there, met its owner and residents, and at the same time learned from the girls about the specifics of their profession.

What is the Golden Girls Club and who opened it

A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Railway Transport, Sergei Li began his career by working as a teller at Gusinsky’s Most Bank, after the liquidation of which Vneshtorgbank and Probusinessbank emerged. Things seemed to be going well, but after the 2008 crisis, the young financier decided that there are eternal values ​​in life - and so he ended up as a producer of a strip club. To be safe, I changed my name Seryozha to Lucky. “Lucky Lee will make you happy!” - this is the slogan that attracts new employees to Golden Girls, a relative of the once famous Golden Palace club.

An energetic manager of the Referendum, Non-Military Secret and Rosh Hashanah show programs, the former Seryozha last year released a pacifist calendar in support of Putin. Over the course of several years, he built up the image of the Korean Hugh Hefner - a benefactor, a lover of show arts and a connoisseur of beauty. At least that’s how it looks from the outside: the club has its own version of “Chicago” with remade immortals from the original musical (one of them sounds like “I’ll give anything for a striptease”) and heroine dancers instead of criminals. In one of the numbers, the girls talk about how Golden Girls made them happy. The stories of Lucky’s wards are the same, plus or minus: you are beautiful, you know how to dance well, you get a job in a club, and then you meet there a wealthy and caring man with whom you travel around the world and do not deny yourself anything. You give him your beauty and love, and he gives you comfort and care. In addition, the club boasts of free English classes for girls and seminars on personal growth. In a word, “Business Youth”, but with blackjack and - however, as stated, without the latter.

Why does a strip club need its own campus?

At the end of October, the striptease Golden Girls trumpeted that it was opening Russia’s first campus for dancers, a 10-minute walk from the club: it sounded like an opportunity to visit the first semi-legal brothel in Moscow. In fact, it is more of a hostel: a renovated communal apartment not far from Belorusskaya, where 12 girls, a cleaning lady and a concierge live. It is designed for dancers who moved to Moscow specifically to work in the Golden Girls and have not yet gotten the hang of it. The girls sleep in student bunk beds and can live in an apartment for 1,000 rubles a day, but no more than three months in a row. It is believed that during this time they should already achieve in Moscow the successes for which they came.

According to Lucky Lee, the idea of ​​housing for strippers has been brewing for a long time. Initially, he just wanted to rent an apartment, but he encountered the puritanism of Moscow rentiers: as soon as they found out who would live in the apartment, they immediately refused. Therefore, Lucky decided to make a very broad gesture and purchased a seven-room apartment. He invited his mother, Rimma Ivanovna, to decorate the interior, and she actively supports her son in all his endeavors. Soon they promise to install a special booth in the corridor for Skype conversations. It is not specified who they will talk to. “The City” went to the Golden Girls Club and decided to ask the girls living on campus why they needed it.

Who works at Golden Girls

Erika

“I came to Lucky Lee by accident. I was at a friend’s birthday party, with whom I previously worked at another club. A friend told me that this club is radically different from the ones where we worked before. I was just looking for a job, so, after thinking a little, I went to the casting.

I've been doing striptease for a year. A hostess came to work at the first club. Six months later I realized that I wanted to change my profile. When you work in this atmosphere, you begin to look at the girls on stage with some envy. You like the way they move, the way everyone looks at them. You want to be able to do this yourself.

As a child, I studied ballroom dancing, then I devoted eight years to professional cheerleading. From there I had good physical training, so I learned striptease easily. I've always had a penchant for dancing in a sexy, campy way. I could move on my own, but a personal trainer taught me the tricks. During your first performances, you naturally feel squeezed; it’s unusual for you that everyone is looking at you. Then you get used to it, relax and begin to behave completely differently on stage. It’s no longer scary that everyone is looking at you - you’re starting to like it.”

Energy

“I was born in Izhevsk and always wanted to do striptease, but I didn’t have money for courses. At some point, when I was in college, I had the opportunity to get a job at a club where they taught dancing for free. I studied to become a lawyer during the day and danced at night. Now I am receiving higher education, although only by correspondence. I don't want to sacrifice my nocturnal lifestyle. Dancing gave me a lot, I visited eight countries, met a lot interesting people. I spent the last six months in Thailand - working under a contract.

I've only been in Moscow for two months. Over the years of working in striptease, I have seen a lot. Everyone has their own ideas about striptease, so I changed a lot of establishments. I always left where I didn’t like. When I got here, I immediately realized: this is not the usual strip club, it’s something much more. Here they treat striptease the same way I do - as art.

Our working night begins at 18.00–19.00. You come to the club, they paint you and dress you up. Then we have a general meeting, where Lucky Lee gives us his instructions, encourages us, and charges us with energy. The performance starts at 22.00. Some perform on stage, others in private. The audience here is very pleasant, there are many interesting interlocutors. We finish work around 5.00. Now we have a campus, so we will be there with our family.”

Fox

“The competition for dancers here is quite high. Usually several girls come to the casting. I walked through it alone and in turmoil: at that moment they were filming some kind of program here, there were a lot of people - and they didn’t even have time to turn on the music for me. I have been dancing since childhood, I have a lot of experience, so I was not surprised that they took me: so to speak, the best deserves the best. I have always danced, at the age of 11 I watched the movie “Showgirls” - this determined my destiny. At the age of 13, my peers wanted to become astronauts and police officers, and I wanted to be a stripper. I could barely wait to come of age.

For several years I came up with my own dances, at that time half-dance jumped forward a lot - I did new and new tricks. I still perform some of them. There are many opportunities here: we are taught, developed, and we ourselves have a great time. If we go to the cinema, for example, we definitely wish all viewers a pleasant viewing. Some people are wary of us at first, but then they understand that we say all this sincerely. Who doesn’t like it when a bunch of pretty girls cheer you up?”

Veronica

“I did striptease for three years. I got into this business by accident - a friend offered me a part-time job. I tried it and liked it. Golden Girls has a cool atmosphere. Lucky’s attitude towards us as artists is absolutely amazing: he cares about us. It is very comfortable here in this regard.

We often travel abroad on a competitive basis. Both in America and in Europe - there we go to local shows, watch, learn. You really feel happy in this team because they do everything for us. Here we feel like princesses."

Zhenya

“I am half Moldovan and half Russian. Only my mother knows about my work. She is a simple person, she understands everything, she says: dance while there is beauty, make money with it. I’m not going to tell my father, he won’t understand it.

Of course, some girls' parents don't know about their work. For example, my friend’s mother is a school teacher, and her father is a military man. They have a very strict family that doesn’t understand all this. In general, now is a time when many mothers have a normal attitude towards striptease, but they usually don’t tell fathers. I've never been embarrassed about being a stripper. Not every girl can undress in public - and even do it beautifully.”

Ellen

“It always seemed to me that a woman should be able to seduce a man through dance. I worked as a photographer for a long time. From time to time, strippers were filmed in our studio for competitions. I became wildly interested: their outfits, poses, plasticity. They looked incredibly sexy. Then I decided to start dancing and signed up for half-dancing.

Some time later, I met an old friend of mine who said that his friend was opening a cool strip club. This friend turned out to be Lucky Lee. That's how I ended up here. I never had the idea of ​​going to castings, looking for work through an advertisement, etc.”

Do you want to know what kind of girls go to work as strippers? Well, not everyone will go! Not even in every class, if you look through the girls in their desks, you will find such a “special one.” The well-known “Glasha - three rubles and ours” would suit all the boys - but they won’t necessarily take it. He plays sports, but... without inspiration.

You need to be able to move around the pole. Look great. But if you look around among the girls throughout the parallel, there will certainly be SUCH. And he dances, and his gait is alluring. Heels for sure. And if you look into your eyes once and dive into a deep lake, you will forget about everything. Even about his faithful friend - together since the fourth grade - his desk neighbor. This one is different. At all. To the point of dizziness!

“It’s amazing how complete the illusion that beauty is good can be.”

Leo Tolstoy was right. This bright meaning in our time is perfectly illustrated by the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan.

What is good? Beauty? This is a property of the soul, that is, the psyche. There are only eight groups of innate properties, desires, and abilities assigned to each person from birth. These groups are called vectors. Depending on the level of development and realization of a person, they set not only our reactions and states, but also life scenarios. A vector in which there is a predilection for kindness is called visual.

The whole problem is that what is given by nature does not mean that it is guaranteed. A visual person is very emotional. The amplitude of the swings of his states is incredibly huge. From fear of death to compassion, empathy, deepest empathy. Only visual people are given the ability to create emotional connections with others. We usually call it “love”.

If you correctly develop the visual vector - empathy, compassion - a person grows up who will never pass by human grief. He will forget about himself in a difficult moment - he will help to experience stress and grief, share it, take some of it upon himself and thereby reduce the severity of the burden. But if development and upbringing are incorrect, then this may result in fixation on fears. Instead of kindness - callousness of heart. It is precisely such a “selfish woman” who will begin to drain everyone’s energy – demand increased attention and love for her person, and throw demonstrative hysterics.

Benefit in everything

There are people created by nature in order to always benefit from everything whenever possible. These are carriers of the skin vector. They are breadwinners, hunters. Slender, athletic, always in shape. Only they have logical thinking. By receiving the “correct” development, which is organic for them, they become the best engineers, lawyers, military men, and athletes. They are created by nature to limit (law), save (resources) - for all humanity. The most sensitive area is the skin - delicate, it picks up the slightest vibrations and rhythms of the world outside.

The main encouragement for people with the skin vector is of a material nature. And for a boy this is quite acceptable, but with girls the situation is somewhat different. If a skinny girl is “encouraged” financially - with gifts, especially money - with age she begins to perceive her body as an asset. As something that can be used profitably. So there was a direct path to... yes, and to prostitutes too, due to an unfortunate set of circumstances.

Who goes to strippers?

Girls with a cutaneous-visual ligament of vectors go to dance a striptease. The visual vector wants to be in sight, to expose the body, and the skin vector is guided by profit.

Such women look great, always wear heels, and have been dancing since childhood. The plasticity and sense of rhythm are natural. Rarely give birth to children - the desire to be a mother is not given. There is a desire to swing in emotions. Depending on the skills acquired, they can create magnificent shows at the pole. The higher the level of development of the visual vector, the greater the response the stripper will receive from the audience.

You can learn more about the features of the development of vectors at the free online training on system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan. Registration -