Sex in the Champagne Room
Late last year, Humans of New York featured a woman named Tanqueray, who stripped in the 1970s. In the piece, she told a salacious anecdote about how she enticed crowds by squirting real milk from her bra and pulling cherries out of her G-string. She also made certain to point out that she never used dildos, never slept with clients, and never slept with booking agents. She even went so far as to detail how she once punished a dancer who did: “One night after a show, I caught another dancer sneaking off to the Tate Hotel with our biggest tipper. Not allowed. So the next night we put a little itching powder in her G-String. Boy did she put on a show that night.”
This way of introducing herself, by revealing her background in stripping while distancing herself from prostitution, is a common approach taken by strippers when they open up about their jobs. Over my four years of dancing, I have heard countless performers define their work by espousing rancor towards any worker who offers more than a lap dance, particularly inside the club. Anything more than dry humping is considered an “extra”, which includes (but is not limited to) allowing patrons to finger or have penetrative sex with the dancer, giving hand jobs to the patron, and even kissing or touching if the club doesn’t allow it.
The meaning of the term “extras” varies from club to club, but the language is always the same: there are “clean” dances and “dirty” dances, and strippers who offer extras, even if it is done outside the club (as was the case with Tanqueray’s coworker), are dirty and taboo. Many dancers believe this aversion toward full-service work protects their income, but the truth is that this taboo does not effectively serve its intended purpose. Instead, it upholds the same stigma surrounding sex work that negatively affects all people in the industry, including both supposedly clean and dirty-dancing strippers.
Taboos have existed throughout time and differ from culture to culture. One theory is that they serve as a way to protect resources. In India, for example, cows are revered, and it is taboo to kill or eat them, but this has not always been the case. As cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris argues in India’s Sacred Cow, Indians ate beef in earlier times. The Hindu sacred texts from the second millennium B.C.E. did not prohibit the slaughter of cattle, but as the country began to depend more on agriculture, draft animals — particularly oxen — became indispensable. Cows (specifically oxen) were needed to plow and work the land, which meant no ox, no farm, no food. This rationale lies at the root of circumstances seen in modern India, where starving people will beg for food as a cow saunters in front of them, because the taboo against beef protects the whole of India from famine.
The taboo against dancers giving extras in the club exists for a similar reason. Many strippers believe this aversion preserves the industry by keeping the price of a lap dance high and expectations low, much like the beef taboo keeps India from sliding into famine. The thinking goes something like this: if one dancer charges $300 for a 30 minute private room session that includes a lap dance and a conversation, but another dancer comes along and offers all of this plus a hand job for the same price, the first dancer will struggle to earn her desired income on her terms. In this light, shaming extras is presumed to safeguard the value of a lap dance.
In the Humans of New York story, Tanqueray put itching powder in the other dancer’s thong because she went home with the best tipper. If her coworker had offered paid sex to a customer who never spent any money, I doubt that Tanqueray would have cared as much. “An Open Letter to Extra Girls” by Josephine published in Tits and Sass in 2013 further underscores this point. In it, she writes, “But here’s the rub (heh)— you’re undercutting my money. Your chummy blow job makes my private dance seem churchy. I have to race you to customers. I have to hustle twice as hard when you work. Frankly, it’s exhausting.”
Even though these sentiments come off as whorephobic, I do feel the frustration. When a customer realizes that my lap dance does not involve sex, he will often ask me what he is paying for or say something like “But the last girl did it.” It is exhausting to have my boundaries ceaselessly pushed in private rooms, which, more often than not, are not monitored by cameras. This type of environment provokes dancers to turn on each other, blaming extra girls when customers take liberties or refuse to pay for “just” a lap dance. I recently heard a dancer in the dressing room gossip about a coworker who was dancing with her regular. “If she sucks my customer then he’ll expect me to suck,” she complained.
Strippers also argue that shaming extras guards them from police stings, which is another example of protecting income through the use of this taboo. Even if only one dancer gets caught soliciting on the premises, the entire club can be shut down, which takes money out of everyone’s pockets. For example, a popular club called Foxy Lady in Providence, Rhode Island was recently shuttered after three dancers were arrested for prostitution. As a horde of dancers lost their income, the criticisms and accusations unsurprisingly turned toward the dancers performing extras, blaming them for what happened.
This argument against extras does not completely hold up under scrutiny though, because prostitution is an arbitrary crime. Stings typically occur because strip clubs fall under the same stigma that outlaws sex work, not because of suspected prostitution. A police officer can charge a dancer with solicitation for simply telling a patron that he is going to have a good time in the private rooms. A dancer can be charged with indecent exposure (a misdemeanor that falls under the umbrella of prostitution-related crimes) for being nude in a topless club. The raids that often lead to these kinds of charges can happen for a number of reasons, such as because a city council wants to shut down a club to raise property value (which happened in New Orleans in 2018, and more recently in Reno and the Bronx). The taboo around extras uses them as a scapegoat — it is easy to blame the “dirty” dancer rather than question the entire legal system that demonizes workers for a consensual arrangement.
There is another reason the taboo against extras exists. In his discussion of cows in India, Harris theorizes that the country’s beef taboo started during the Islamic invasion because Hindu people may have wanted to distinguish themselves from Muslims who ate beef by worshiping the cow. In a similar way, it is entirely possible that the taboo against extras strengthens the bond between strippers. By emphasizing that she never used dildos or slept with clients or booking agents, Tanqueray let other readers (and dancers) know exactly who she is.
By policing the boundaries of stripping, the sense of community may grow, but in isolating and shaming those who step outside the lines, the sex work community splinters, and the bias against all forms of sex work remains intact, which is a belief that affects all dancers. A dancer who does not offer extras can still get arrested. A dancer who does not offer extras is still frowned upon by society. The taboo against certain services in the club does not erase what is still seen as the ultimate taboo: getting paid for sexual services.
Dancers increasingly have to work in very challenging environments. Clubs commonly overstaff with a hundred dancers or more working the floor with only a few customers in the club. Dancers are expected to work in private rooms that lack proper protection. When resources are slim and conditions are hostile, taboos emerge to protect income and boundaries. But unlike India’s beef taboo, the taboo on extras has not been effective. Extras still happen. The taboo only serves to keep strippers working in silence, treating each other with hostility rather than working to reduce the stigma that negatively affects the industry as a whole.
Published Mar 1, 2020
Updated Dec 15, 2022
Published in Issue V: Taboos
