Lapdancing takes off among students struggling with fees

[stockholmer]

Female students and graduates are increasingly turning to lapdancing to fund their studies, according to a London nightclub chain.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23985869-lapdancing-takes-off-among-students-struggling-with-fees.do

About 18 per cent of performers at London's six Secrets venues are in higher education, and about 10 to 15 a month apply for the jobs. For the year 2009-2010, there was a three per cent increase in the number of applications from students and graduates, and in 2010-2011 six per cent more auditioned.

The numbers look set to rise as students struggle to pay higher tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year from next year, while latest government figures show graduate unemployment is at a 10-year high.

Mia, a barristers' clerk in Holborn, started dancing at Secrets in Covent Garden six months ago. She said: "I'm saving up either to go travelling or to put the money towards getting a law qualification and becoming a barrister. I did pole dancing anyway for exercise."

snip

Stephen Less, owner of the chain, said: "Many of our dancers spend more time talking to clients than dancing for them. Dancers who are educated often have more to offer in that respect. It can make them very popular. People often don't expect them to be knowledgeable and interesting as well as attractive."

[closeupready]

1. Silliness, Male students do it, too.

:eyes:

[nashville_brook]

2. handmaids tale meets woody allen

gech.

[MineralMan]

3. And this just started happening, I suppose, too.

Wrong. College students were doing this back in the late 60s and early 70s, too. I remember it. I had a couple of friends who did it. :shrug:

[sudopod]

4. It may be new in the UK. nt

[MineralMan]

5. I doubt that very much. Where there are colleges, there are students

doing stuff like this to pay their way. And worse. I also knew a woman who was a call girl. She didn't go on many calls, because she got paid well when she did. It kept her in school.

The oldest business in the world, selling sex is. Sells newspapers, too.

[sudopod]

15. The point that I was making is that increases in such things are a measure of economic desperation.

Just saying "poledancing (and so forth) has always been there" is not only a trivially true statement, it misses the point.

Yes, it's always there to some degree, but has it increased? If so, why? It's the d/dt that matters in this case.

I would put forward that a substantial increase in poll dancing among college students might have a little something to do with the deep cuts in public education spending in the UK, and the subsequent yearly tuition increases on the order of thousands of pounds. I would like to think that conservatives attacking education, thereby causing young folks to take possibly dangerous jobs is an obvious bad thing. It is especially sad because, until recent times, it seemed that the UK had avoided this sort of bullshit.

[MineralMan]

16. Of course it's linked to the economic situation.

The article said that applications at this place were up about 3%. When times are more difficult, more people apply for jobs like this. When times are flush, there are plenty of other jobs available. College students do all sorts of things to earn money. Some work as cocktail waitresses or waiters in restaurants. Some work at other jobs. Some guys go to work as Chippendale-style dancers, too.

There's always a demand for attractive young people in those businesses, and some are always willing to do those jobs. Are they bad jobs? I don't know. I've never done that kind of job. Is a low paying job in a fast food restaurant a bad job. It surely is. I've done that work, and have pumped gas and lubed cars and many other things to earn a few bucks while I was a student.

I also worked as a life drawing model for a couple of years. The pay was better than those crummy jobs. I thought it was a great job. I never saw any openings for male dancers, so I don't know if I would have done that. I'm not much of a dancer, though. If I were, and there were jobs available, I probably would have considered them.

My point is that there's no such thing as a job someone won't take. Some jobs pay better, but you have to eat a little more of your pride to do them. Other jobs pay crap, but don't require any such thing. Everyone decides what they will and won't do for money. I have never judged anyone for what job they do. The women I've known who worked as dancers and even the one woman who worked as a call girl were friends of mine and fellow students. They earned some money. Other than that, I couldn't see that they were to be scorned or treated any way differently than my other friends. Nobody else did either. It was just a non-issue. None of them reported any untoward things happening that they didn't expect.

People do all sorts of things to earn a living at different times in their lives. :shrug:

[sudopod]

17. Ok? nt

[dtexdem]

6. Well, I hear that pole dancing is very popular in Antarctica.

;-)

[JVS]

8. Only in the southernmost regions

[louis-t]

9. D'oh!

[girl gone mad]

7. Why the straw man argument?

No one said it was new. The article is about the increase in the number of students who are opting to strip for money since tuition costs have risen and other jobs have disappeared.

[MineralMan]

10. It sells newspapers. Sex sells. That's the reality.

You're right. It's not new. It's also not news. It's a story trotted out to increase circulation. So, this story has been trotted out. It's always available, when needed.

[SoCalDem]

11. my roommate and I cleaned apartments

:(

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. My best friend from college did it, still does.

She makes decent money. I'm ambivalent. Her body, her choice. Maybe not the best start for her life because the owner is kind of creepy and lots of the young women she works with need to get their lives sorted out. I don't know if dancing leads to trouble or if trouble leads to dancing but they seem intertwined.

[Blue_Tires]

12. That's small change...I have a friend of a friend in L.A. who paid for law school

by being a dominatrix...Once she built up a safe, reliable, high end client list she may as well have been printing money...

[Xithras]

14. Yep.

One of my college roomates worked her way through Cal as a full-on, highly paid escort, of the "couple grand a night" variety. She once spent two weeks in Europe as the arm-candy of some old rich guy on his yacht, and made enough to pay for a full semester of tuition, rent, food, and car payments.

There's nothing new about any of this. Women have been using their bodies to pay for their educations for as long as they've been allowed to have educations. The media just likes to recycle these stories from time to time for shock value.

As long as there are men with money, and pretty young women who want it, this sort of thing will happen.