Her name was April.
She was a cute girl with trendy glasses and a mouth like a sailor.
She was a pretty heavy drinker, didn’t take any crap from anyone, and had a tattoo of an angel situated in the most pleasant of places. Similar in style and position of the tattoo that movie actor Asia Argento is showing off in this old Rolling Stone cover.
April and I dated for a few months in the summer of 2002, and during that time I learned quite a bit about the life of a sex worker. April, you see, was a stripper.
A Ridiculous Amount of Money
I suppose it suited her, given her rebellious attitude, desire for nice things, and her God-given attributes that made most men drool like the savages we are.
Now April wasn’t trying to save up for college, nor was she in some kind of dire financial situation where she needed to raise a lot of money in a short amount of time. She didn’t come from a broken home, she wasn’t abused by a former jealous boyfriend and she wasn’t supporting a dangerous drug habit.
No, April worked as a stripper because she was able to make a ridiculous amount of money. She made no apologies for it, and I suppose it was that attitude that made me like her so much.
April also lived well. She pulled in about $70,000 a year and had few responsibilities beyond taking care of her incredibly docile pet pit bull named Daisy. So most of the money she made she used to buy nice things, take long vacations and eat out at fancy restaurants.
All in all, she had no complaints. Sure, there were the occasional run-ins with patrons who couldn’t control their urges or words. But mostly she just brushed those guys off. She used to tell me that it was no different than dealing with an annoying customer when she used to work as a customer service representative for an auto parts supplier.
I have to hand it to her. She took most things in stride. The only time she would really lose her cool was when tax time rolled around and she would have to declare her tips. She used to tell me that as much as she hated paying taxes, she reluctantly did it because she knew too many strippers like her that had been audited. She didn’t want the hassle.
I thought about this conversation this morning after reading about a new ruling in Nevada that mandates dancers at Las Vegas strip clubs to be paid as employees guaranteed a minimum wage and not as independent contractors.
Minimum Wage Strippers
Under the new law, strippers are guaranteed to make at least the minimum wage. But I’m not exactly sure how this really helps strippers.
Minimum wage in Nevada is $8.25/hr. In the world of stripping, $8.25 can be less than a tip for a lap dance. If a stripper works 6 hours, that’s $49.50 – before taxes. And there’s the magic word.
Do you really think any government official cares whether or not a stripper is guaranteed a minimum wage?
I don’t buy for a second that this decision was made in the best interest of strippers. It was made because the government wants to wet its beak. So with a mandatory minimum wage, the government gets a piece of that action, too.
Dancer Fees and Expensive Drinks
The truth is, no one gets into stripping to get a regular paycheck. They get into stripping for the tips.
At the club in which April worked, there was a cover charge and extremely expensive drinks. That’s where the club made its money. She had to pay out some kind of “dancer fee” to the club every night – which she hated, by the way. But certainly it was never enough to dissuade her from going to work.
Of course, I’ve never worked as a stripper, so it’s easy for me to opine about this. But when it comes to mandatory minimum wage – in any industry – I maintain that it’s a bad idea.
Forcing a minimum wage on employers prevents those employers from entering into a voluntary contract with a consenting party. It’s bad economic policy. It contributes to higher unemployment, distorts market activity and can lower productivity. But I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said a thousand times before.
All this being said, the mandatory minimum wage is not going to shutter the doors of so many strip clubs in Nevada, and potentially across the country. Drinks, cover charges and “dancer fees” may go up, but no matter how good or bad the economy is, men will always spend money on sex. Many will chose it over food, employment and family. This is just a reality.
So really, of the three parties involved in this situation, the only real winner is the government. The government just created another revenue stream off the backs of hard-working Americans. Only this time, these hard-working Americans are strippers and club owners. Two groups of people that, unfortunately, most in this country really don’t care about. And that’s what the government’s banking on.
