CHICAGO - As a bartender and trainer at a national restaurant chain, Rebecca Brown earned a couple thousand dollars in a really good week. Now, as a dancer at Chicago's Pink Monkey gentleman's club, she makes almost that much in one good night.
The tough job market is prompting a growing number of women across the country to dance in strip clubs, appear in adult movies or pose for magazines like Hustler.
Employers across the adult entertainment industry say they're seeing an influx of applications from women who, like Brown, are attracted by the promise of flexible schedules and fast cash. Many have college degrees and held white-collar jobs until the economy soured.
"You're seeing a lot more beautiful women who are eligible to do so many other things," said Gus Poulos, general manager of New York City's Sin City gentleman's club. He said he got 85 responses in just one day to a recent job posting on Craigslist.
They say that prostitution thrives on sexual slavery, that it needs sex slaves in order to meet the demand, but that's no more true than saying that the alcohol industry needs Russian mafia smugglers to cheaply distribute Vodka in immigrant neighborhoods. As the economy is showing, there are plenty of women who, for the right price, will sell themselves as anything from strippers to prostitutes, if the price is right. The dark sides of the vice trades are nothing more than unethical price competition.
Color me unsympathetic to the argument that these women are victims of exploitation when they often make more in one day than most of us make in a week. Exploitation never paid so incredibly well. I'm sure many of these women are crying themselves to sleep every night over their lot in life, as they pay down mortgages, buy new cars and live far better than they once did.
As Iran's example shows, there will always be a decent number of ambitious, college-educated women who are willing to whore themselves out to get ahead. Culture barriers are superficial on issues like this. In fact, the more expensive that college gets, and the less opportunities that women have to make the big bucks in "honest jobs," the more that this trend will grow.
History and times once again bear witness that savers are winners. Those of us who saved a large portion of our income every month won't have to sell our bodies in case of sudden unemployment, and have the werewithal to purchase the services of desperate college blonde beauties.
I kid, of course. Mostly.
The sad part here is that the fembots will try to say that it is the women who are being exploited in the skin trade.
Whenever I hear women demand to be taken seriously as an equal, I think of crap like this and just chuckle.
If you sell access to your body to titillate lonely men, you are not my equal. You are pathetic, you are evil. And you are beneath me.
College degree, funded by prostitution. Ah feminism, when will you die.
How can women expect to be treated as equals when they think they have a right to whore? Good point EW.