Strip clubs

Photo attributed to flickr user Lamerie

My girlfriends always berate me when I go to strip clubs with my guy and friends, because apparently, I am supporting an industry that degrades women and causes inequality in society. But of course this doesn’t extend to wearing short skirts, high heels, and making a fool of ourselves in male strip clubs.

I find that prostitution and strip clubs in general do not promote a skewed view of women, unless we as women let it happen. I have been friends with many women who worked as strippers to pay their university tabs, or mortgages off, and they found that this was one of the easiest ways to make a load of cash in the shortest amount of time. They deliberately chose this path, when they had degrees in finance or marketing, because working in those fields paid a miniscule fraction of the money they would make working in a strip club. A lot of them had normal side jobs, working as servers or tellers before this, but a little taste of the money that they made in this field, removed them completely from those ‘normal’ side jobs.

They were able to make enough money in a few years to make themselves self-sufficient and independent of any man on this planet. I didn’t think when I heard these stories that these women were lopsided in society in anyway. I would say, they were actually better off then some working women in society, as the working women didn’t make enough money to ever be self-sufficient or independent.

Of course, these are just few of the women that I knew, and they are just a fraction of the women who actually work in the industry. I just wanted to point out that there are two sides to every situation. We can’t just berate something or commend something without realizing there are those two sides.

Do you frequent strip clubs? What do you think of them and the women who work in them?

Mysterious ways

The universe does work in mysterious ways. Mostly because we have no idea what message or idea we are supposed to be getting from all the signals coming our way. We are absolutely mystified by all the different crazy messages in the bottle. We are stumped when yet another random coincidence pushes something our way. We cannot label anything as good or bad, because the minute we do, something happens to change our mind the other way. Being bombarded by all of this misleading information on top of all the misleading information other human beings and media sends our way, it is a miracle that we are able to stay sane.

Are we being weird and looking for meaning where there is none? I am always mocked by others when I tell them I believe the world is trying to help me live a good life. By giving me good things in many different ways. It gives me a good night out when I am feeling down about my job search. It gives me a good yoga class when I am feeling hopeless about moving forward in my practice. It gives me a laughter-filled conversation with my parents when I am feeling lonely. It gives me a glimpse of a procession of birds in the V-formation going south when I am feeling gloomy about the environmental ravages. Hope is given to me in little ways, that keeps me going forward. It is true that I do not have to look for signs everywhere, or look for meaning in everything.

Maybe it is all random. But then where is the fun in living? It makes life mysterious, and it makes you feel special somehow. I have to give you an example of something that happened to me a few days ago. In the summer, six months ago, I went to a house party and gave my phone number to this DJ. It was nerve-wracking for me, but I did it. He didn’t call but I felt braver because I went ahead and fought my demons to give him my number. I was working at a club in December, four months later and he walks in with his friend. I don’t recognize him at first, but he recognizes me and tries to get me to give him my new number. I didn’t, but then I thought about it. There is a reason he walked into that bar a day before I stopped working there. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But I chose to see meaning in it. I found him online, and friended him on facebook. Two months later, yesterday I see him finally. And it was nice. Dont know what will happen with that yet, but weird how life works out.

Mysterious.