Have you ever looked at your life and thought to yourself, "If this doesn't work out, I'll just become a stripper"? It almost seems like the easiest and most fun job in the world.
I mean, what could be better than getting to stand up on a podium all night and have men throw money at you? Aside from the impossibly tall high heels, there can't be too much effort required — right? According to Melbourne dancer Violet Kymber, I'm right about the fun side, but taking to the stage night after night is hardly an easy gig.
Each dancer had a fifteen minute "set" on the stage before they swapped with another girl and returned to the club floor. Hiiii I'm baaackkkk!
Violet had been let go from her job at a make-up counter a few months earlier. A struggle with untreated and undiagnosed mental health issues led to her having a "break down" in front of a customer, and a few months after the incident she was still unemployed and lacking confidence in her ability to ever work again.
But on a birthday night out with friends, she bumped in to another client from the make-up counter: this one, a dancer at a gentleman's club. Violet decided then and there that she would apply for a job at the same club, and that's how she found herself clinging on to the pole a few weeks later, realising that her new job maybe wasn't as easy as she had hoped. The money isn't in doing your minute stage sets, it's in approaching usually-intoxicated men who often aren't there to spend any money, and convincing them to buy a private dance with you," she said.
