14 Dec Isabella: The stripper that doesn’t care what you think of her
The sex industry is filled with stereotypes and misconceptions but Isabella couldn’t care less, I spoke to her about her time as a stripper and the art of not giving a fuck.
‘I think it’s empowering, people assume you’re not in charge but if you think about it women are going to be objectified no matter what, so why not make some money from it’.
I met Isabella at college around 3 years ago and we both got on straight away, she always finds new ways of surprising me, she always finds new ways to challenge society’s ideas of normality. I got to her house around 4 pm and sat and chatted with her as she got ready for a shift.
Isabella is a 20-year-old, freelance writer and student studying English and Media at Sussex university. She began stripping over the summer in 2018. She told me the story of what lead her to strip while working for a cinema she was barely making enough money to pay for the bare necessities and study. When a friend she’d met through modeling told her she was going to an audition to be a stripper at the world know ‘Stringfellows’ club in Covent Garden and asked if she wanted to come, she could not turn the opportunity down. ‘I had always wanted to try it at some point’ she laughed as she painted her lips with a dark shade of red lipstick.
When we began to discuss what the work environment was like, Isabella paused and then went on to describe the other ladies that worked with her saying they were European for the most part, that the women were nice but, there was always a certain level of competitiveness at the club. ‘The men that came to the club were usually from Dubai and if they liked you could spend thousands on you in one night’ so there was always competition to be the girl that would be picked by that customer.
To spend time with Isabella, once in the club a customer would be presented with 5 women and he would then have to pick one girl out of them, this was where the competitiveness stemmed from. A dance lasting three minutes (one song) cost £25 and an hour would cost £400. She told me that on average she would make around £4000 a month, but the club took half her wages so she’d get around £2000 and would be paid the next working day after a shift as they were not allowed to handle physical cash in the club.
Isabella’s long term boyfriend expressed that he never felt she was unsafe at Stringfellows and that he would worry most at the end of the night when she would make her journey home.
I asked her about her views and if they had changed since she began to strip and she replied ‘Well I’d say the most shocking thing was that in the UK there is no throwing of money’ ‘Everyone thinks if you are a stripper that automatically means you are also a prostitute but the club is a no hands clubs so no punter has ever touched me’.
