Strippers C4

Stereotypes? Of course, we get the avaricious black girl, the youthful innocent from the bad side of town and the jaded dancer trapped in the dance, but we also have the good minister down the street, and best of all a bunch of Scottish piss-pots who see a few hours in Baby Dolls as an opportunity to savour a semi so they can ball a fat girl later. I wonder if anybody is ever going to make a TV programme on the subject that doesn't confirm every stereotype in the book. All I was looking forward to was a dancer with a 'heart of gold' and Jon Bon Jovi to walk through the door and whisk her off her feet.
Of course the good thing and Channel 4's 'Strippers' on Tuesday nights is it confirms the stereotype that TV is stereotypical, that it is incredibly difficult to do or say anything that is actually interesting, ie: confirms that dancers might wear ordinary clothes for interviews (rather than their underwear) or hold interesting opinions or post doctorates. This one helps us behind the mask of TV, not behind the world of a titty bar. It's purpose is to be as titillating as the idea of a strip club.
Many interesting people other than me (world changing theoretical physicist Richard Feynman and world changing art critic Dave Hickey come to mind as having hung out perpetually in such establishments) do it and I don't think we do it to garner storming erections and threaten the general populace. Personally I know it's time to visit The White Horse in Shoreditch when I find myself muttering 'fucking wanker' when I walk past some unsuspecting stranger in the street and hope they haven't heard me. It's because I'm pissed off. That's when I know it's time to escape to a land where girls take off their clothes as if they enjoy it, for me, and that I don't have to be in direct communion with them to do it.
Why anybody thinks this behaviour is unusual beggars belief, it's the most normal thing in the world. And personally, I wouldn't mind if we called it sex work, in fact I would like it if people got more interested in defining sex work (because you'd soon realise everybody was doing it) instead of indulging in what is a whole raft of plain prejudice.
Photo: Julie Cook