Buckle up, bitches. We’re taking a deep dive into a part of my life I’ve been wanting to talk about for a long time: my time working in the sex industry.

I was a stripper for 11 years, which is fucking crazy to me. Some days it feels like I was in it forever. On other days, it feels like I was only in it for a couple of years. And when I sat down to start thinking about what I wanted to share, there was so much I could have covered. I would’ve been talking forever. So I decided the best way to do it would be to take your questions on my Instagram!

Before we start, let me put a caveat here: I had an extremely varied experience in the sex industry, and every woman’s experience is different. Some women find working in the sex industry extremely empowering. Others find it extremely traumatic. I don’t speak for every stripper out there—I can only tell you what I went through in the sex industry, and how I feel about it now.

That said, there’s a whole heaping mess of stigma attached to the sex industry, and I’m here to try and dispel some of that stigma. So let’s talk about what I loved, what I didn’t love, and some of my favorite stories from my time as a stripper.

How did you get into stripping? How old were you when you first started? Did it feel like a good time in life to do it?

I was nineteen when I started stripping. And originally, I started because I had no fucking idea what I wanted to do with my life. Everyone was going to college or university, getting jobs, and I…didn’t know where I wanted to go. Here’s what I did know: I loved to dance. (I went to a performing arts high school and majored in ballet, actually—though it’s definitely a “grand jete” from being a prima ballerina to being up on the pole!) I knew I loved to be the center of attention (my Leo Rising will do that). I knew that I loved to drink and party. I knew I loved loud music, and I knew I loved the strip club because my friends and I would go on the weekends just to hang out. To me, it all looked so glamorous—the music, the dancing, all the attention the strippers were showered with. I’ve shared before about how addicted I was to external validation, so you can see how I would thrive in that environment, right? And as much as it might seem young, I did feel like it was a really good time to get into that work, because I was looking for something that I could do that I would really enjoy. And nineteen is all about self-discovery, right?

As for how I got into working in the sex industry, I literally just went to the club and said, “I want to work here.” I didn’t have to bring a resume or anything. As for an interview? The requirements were basically:

1. Do you have tits?
2. Are you a woman?
3. Are you mildly attractive?

If the answers were yes, yes, and yes? Great! You’re in. I don’t even think I had to do a police check!

However, you did have to audition. Where I started out in the sex industry, I had to audition by doing three songs on stage: the first song fully clothed, the second song topless, and the third song you would be fully naked. (This might not be the case for every club, but the one I started out in was a full-nude club.) Not gonna lie, that was pretty fucking terrifying!

Do you get taught routines/choreography, or do you make them up yourself?

Nope! We were left to come up with our own dances, and for the most part, we could pick our own music. For instance, I, after eleven years, cannot pole dance. I do not know any pole tricks. I pretty much used the pole for stability because I was drunk most of the time for the first several years working in the sex industry. (More on that later.) You’re basically thrown straight into the fucking deep end. When new girls would come in wearing hose sky-high stripper heels for the first time, it looked like Bambi on ice. The new ones are always really shaky—and I was right there with them when I first started!

Another thing new girls do all the time is that they dance really, really quickly. I did that as well when I first started out in the sex industry, and I looked like I had no idea what I was doing. But I got a lot better as I grew and spent more years in that industry, and I especially grew leaps and bounds after I started doing feminine embodiment. What happened then? I slowed the fuck down. When I started doing embodiment work, I would really make it about my own pleasure. I would close my eyes a lot, lay on the floor, writhe around, and just touch my body. And as counterintuitive as it might sound, once I got in tune with my own pleasure, men were completely captivated by me. Even more so than when I was doing the standard kind of stripper moves. So, side note: if you’re trying to do a lap dance for your partner or something, go much slower than you think you should.

What did you love about it outside of the money?

I’ll be honest with you: the money was the first thing that I loved about working in the sex industry! For years, I would have sworn up and down that I was only in it for the money. But the reality of it is that money wasn’t enough of a reason to stay in something for over a decade. What I really loved was the endless amounts of attention. I was constantly flooded with an endless amount of external validation. And beyond that, for the first eight years of working in the sex industry, I basically got paid to party, which was perfect for how I felt at the time. I didn’t want to feel my feelings. I just wanted to get drunk. And if you’ve been following along on my Instagram, then you know that I was addicted to drugs at one point—Tramadol, which is an opiate. Still, I never did recreational drugs until the year before I quit, which is when I started doing a lot of cocaine. It’s a bit off track to mention, but this is relevant to what can happen in the sex industry. Not always, but often.

For a long time, I didn’t do recreational drugs. I only drank, even though I was offered drugs all the time. But then I started working privately, doing buck’s parties (bachelor parties, if you’re not familiar with the Australian term) and birthday parties and such. Because it was private, I wasn’t going to get in trouble for doing cocaine. There were no bouncers or anything. Eventually, though, it got to a point where I started looking for it, which is when I knew it was getting out of hand. It wasn’t fun for me anymore—in fact, it was actually the opposite. So I quit. I have not touched Tramadol or cocaine in several years, but that was part of why I loved working in the sex industry. I was paid to fucking party.

On a more positive note, another thing I loved was getting to connect with men on a deep level in the last one or two years of working in the sex industry. Once I was sober, it was a lot easier to really make a connection with the people I was working with. But it wasn’t always like that, which brings me to the next question…

While working in the sex industry, did you see a side of men that we don’t usually see?

Yeah, definitely. I teach about men now, and I think it’s really easy for people to assume that it’s easy for me to see the best in men. No, bitch. It ain’t. It is now, but it wasn’t then. In fact, I remember going to a workshop around loving men and loudly proclaiming how much I hated them. I hated them, I didn’t trust them, they were all manipulative and constantly taking, taking, taking. I had to do a lot of work to heal that. In the sex industry, I saw guys who were more than willing to cheat on their wives or girlfriends. I saw a lot of men who crossed my boundaries after I’d said no. I saw the worst of the worst. Like I said, there’s a lot of stigma around sex workers and the sex industry. Part of that is this attitude in men of wanting to treat you like shit, wanting to gain power over you just because they can, and that was really destructive to me. But once I committed to seeing the best in men, I saw another side of them. I saw beautiful, beautiful sides of men. I had men open up about their trauma. I had men ask my opinion on how to get their wives to love them again. I had men ask questions about how they could better satisfy and deeply love their partners. So while there were certainly bad experiences, there were also really wonderful experiences, too.

For instance, I remember an older man…probably around eighty years old…whom I gave a lap dance to. He was only touching my arms and my legs, and I was okay with that. That was within my boundaries. At the end, he thanked me and said, “My wife passed away about a decade ago, and it just feels nice to feel the touch of a woman again.” I don’t think we realize how starved men are for physical touch, and therefore it can come out in really shadowy ways. But that was such a beautiful moment.

I remember, too, a younger man who had a full energetic orgasm. I was not doing anything sexual. I was naked, because I was giving a lap dance, but he was fully clothed. He was not touching me sexually. I was not touching him sexually. But he still had an orgasmic experience, and afterwards, he started to cry. I asked him what was moving for him, and he said, “My wife passed away four weeks ago, and I feel like this experience has been really healing.” I remember that man. I remember him because he really cracked my heart open. I connected with these people.

People often look at women working in the sex industry like we’re only there to give a lap dance, or they look at the men and see them as seedy and gross. Those things do exist in the sex industry, but it can also be a deeply healing experience for someone. Both these things can be true at once. So I made it my mission to achieve emotional intimacy with someone I would meet for five minutes, and from what I saw, the capacity of men is not to be discounted. So yeah, I think I did get to see a side of men—several sides, really—that we don’t usually see.

Is working in the sex industry worth it?

Honestly? I can’t answer that question for you, babe. It was worth it for me. The sex industry was a huge part of me. It taught me to connect with my sexuality and connect with my sensuality and feel really comfortable in that space. Without that, I wouldn’t be doing the work that I do now. But like I said, every woman is different. Every sex industry experience is different. The only one who can judge whether it’s worth it or not is you.

Whew…that was a lot!

Thanks for coming along on that ride, loves. I’ve been wanting to share about this for a long time, and I’m so grateful all of you showed up to ask your questions and really commit to learning about the sex industry, and maybe unlearning some of your preconceived notions along the way. I’m so grateful you’re all here.

Be sure to connect with me over on Instagram. I’d love to hear what you thought of this post and what your major takeaways were. Or head over to my website to learn more about how we can work through your relationship journey together.