Star Light Ministries

January 21, 2008

From ex-millennial girl:

It’s hard when you’re a dancer and you want to belong to the real world. So many aspects of daily life were foreign to us, like getting up at 7:00 a.m. to go to the office. It’s hard to feel like you belong to a world that looks down on your profession. But people are not like soap opera characters: always plotting some evil scheme to personally benefit from another’s suffering. And yet that’s how people treated me when they found out I was an exotic dancer. Hey: strippers like to send get well cards, make their own Christmas wreaths, and baby-sit, when they’re given the chance and the trust.

If I could do anything in the world, I would have everyone meet at least 2 exotic dancers. I’d make them meet for breakfast or lunch, or go grocery shopping together. I’d want them to just do a terribly mundane thing, so that that the non-dancer could see, once and for all, that dancers are just folks. They’re not evil. They’re not catty. They’re not conniving.

Sure, there are evil, catty, conniving dancers out there. But there are evil, catty, conniving bankers, cashiers, real estate agents, stay-at-home moms, ministers, IT specialists… Every profession has them. But that doesn’t mean that every one in the profession shares the same traits.

Those of us who are not exotic dancers have a responsibility (Yes, I am going to get preachy now) to make sure that we’re not adding to any woman’s feeling of isolation from the rest of the world. Yes, you are your sister’s keeper.

Ex-millennial girl continues, “If you can beat down the overwhelming feelings of worthlessness, you can be a good person, whether you’re stripping or working the register at McDonald’s. We all feel inadequate about our professions, it’s just that stripping is such an easy target. What about you? Are you a good enough publicist? Trial lawyer? Candy bar manufacturer? We all deserve to feel like we matter.”

What are YOU doing to make sure someone feels like they matter?