Strip Club Exodus
With an increasingly affordable and accessible online porn-scape, Strip Clubs in Los Angeles reported one of their slowest seasons yet— and while customers may be lacking, dancers are not.
Friday nights are always the easiest nights to make money as a dancer at PlayPen Gentlemen's Club in DTLA. Naturally, there's lots of superstition that will dictate whether or not a stripper is going to make money at all— if the dancer lets her money bag touch the floor she should prepare to go home with it empty. Regardless, one thing a Friday night should guarantee is paying customers, leaving the paycheck completely dependent on the dancer’s hustle and her bag never getting close to the carpet.
It’s been months since that has been a guarantee, though. And the problem does not seem to be only at the PlayPen Gentlemen’s Club. Los Angeles’ strippers have taken to online forums to discuss an especially slow season. Dancers’ concerns over slowing customer flow, closures of some of LA’s oldest clubs such as The Godfather, and continuous legislative battles are warning signs pointing to the seemingly unstable foundation of their livelihoods.
The pandemic forcefully moved many businesses from their storefronts into online, non-contagious realms. Strip clubs, which rely on patrons' entrance fees and workers being especially close to their customers, were one of the few businesses which could not institute a curbside pick up option nor a social distancing mandate. As lap dances changed to “air dances,” one thing remained certain: sex will always sell.
Unlike most pandemic strippers, dancers who had the ability to move their work online during the shut downs were not stripped of their income entirely. Subsequently, online platforms from OnlyFans to TikTok became congested with exotic traffic and self advertising. A report from The Guardian revealed the number of OnlyFans users grew from 7.5 million in 2019 to 85 million by December of 2020. On the other hand, owner of the PlayPen gentlemens club Abner Pajounia noticed profits skyrocketing during the club’s reopening in 2020. But now that the post-pandemic excitement for going out and spending is dying down, it's possible that Gentleman's clubs are dying too.
Gina, a veteran dancer at PlayPen, said, “ten years ago we made way more money, there was no social media or webcams… if someone had the fantasy to see naked women they went to a club.” PlayPen, she notes, has not adjusted their prices since 2016. As a full nude club, PlayPen cannot legally sell alcohol meaning that dancers make all of their money from stage tips and their cut off lap dance costs. Thus, the club relies explicitly on entrance fees and their 20% cut of lap dances to not only keep the stage lights on, but to profit. Until recently, this mode of operation worked very well.
The fixed price of lap dances since 2016, despite a close to 18% increase in average prices of US goods in the past seven years, begs the question of the strip club’s ability to survive an increasingly online, affordable sex-scape.
Jasmine, dancer at PlayPen gentlemen’s club and up-and-coming fashion influencer, is one of the many post-pandemic strippers who were inspired by online content to try out the industry. Wearing her Kardashian Skims athletic wear in the garden patio of SoHo House, a notoriously classy membership to possess, Jasmine reflects on how she started dancing.
“I had made an OnlyFans in 2019 also under the name Jasmine right before COVID. I was always interested in sex work and I knew there was money in it, but I never even posted on OnlyFans because theres no way to actually be anonymous and successful on there.” She continued, “I didn’t really get what stripping entailed until I started. It really only took me a day to get comfortable with the work. But I watched a lot of vlogs before starting like Christina Villegas and the difference between what was advertised to me was really different than what it actually is. I guess as far as sex work goes the reason stripping works for me is because it can truly be anonymous.”
Christina Villegas, a youtuber with 1.75 million subscribers, makes videos that range from mukbang content to “10 Stripper Hygiene Tips.” In her video from 2019, “Day in the Life as a Stripper,” Villegas says, “Today at work was pretty slow… I made $781 and worked four hours.” One viewer under the name @pinkystinkr commented, “Mom, I want to be a stripper.”
There is no question that the destigmatization of sex work is a necessary step in harm reduction for workers. Whether its decreasing barriers to health care resources, reducing intimate violence, or undoing the carceral nature of sex work, destigmatizing the profession increases the wellbeing of consenting sex workers. But the narrative has largely shifted in the last decade from advocacy to PR, not to say sex work stigma no longer exists. Now, sex work has become a brand, and its selling.
“I think it became a cool or fashionable thing to be a stripper,” Gina said. “I’ve seen a lot of girls who don’t really need to strip because they have money or support from home still want to be a stripper just because it’s cool. The work is different now too, you take it home with you. Lots of dancers are experiencing pressure to be online or have two social media accounts—one for themselves and one for customers so they can keep entertaining them outside the club to keep them coming back.”
There have always been newer, younger girls coming into strip clubs— similar to competitive sports, a “good stripper always knows she has limited time,” Gina concludes. But after the popularization of the ‘stripper lifestyle,’ or sex work brand, they’re coming in droves and their secondary online accounts are coming with them. Dancers who refuse to branch into the online landscape are at risk of losing regular customers. At the same time, the popularization of the industry has led to an oversaturation of dancers, changing the ratio of customers to workers.
As for the ceaselessly slow Friday nights in recent months, strip club regulars have been offered a far more affordable experience which has inverted who is actually anonymous in the transactional sex exchange. As opposed to the $300 thirty minute “VIP” lap dance, a $5 a month online subscription can often allot a consumer intimate conversation or specialized content. Of course, they’re very different experiences. But in an increasingly personalized, safely anonymous, and absurdly accessible digital pornscape— strip club’s such as PlayPen Gentlemen’s club might be unable to compete.