Tales From the DJ Booth: 12 Rules for Stripping
(Continued from prior months, visit Xmag.com to catch up)
As much as folks would love to dismantle the current economic system, the fact remains: supply and demand rule the market. If something is hard to access, people will pay more (or do more) to access that thing, whether it be spending $35 on bottled water at the electronic music festival under late-stage capitalism, or begging for clean water in the gulags under that-wasn't-real socialism. Scarcity creates value, math doesn't vote, and no amount of Reddit moderation is powerful enough to hide this fact.
Rule 5: Show Less, Make More
Supply and demand are extremely basic concepts to grasp. For example, in Portland, where dab rigs and vape pens are more common than manual transmissions and two-parent families, it's pretty hard to make good money selling weed on the street. But, if you drive a few hours east into Utah, you can flip a handful of bottom-shelf dirt weed for hundreds of dollars to Mormon teenagers. On the same token, while you're in Utah, you may encounter a cute, religious girl who hates coffee and loves her dad. In SLC, this girl is as common as the churches she frequents, but if you convince her to come back to Portland with you, she'll be seen as a rare unicorn trophy wife (at least until she discovers tattoos, divorces you, and opens up a dispensary). It's all relative, and the supply-and-demand cycle is undefeated by even the most rogue economics professor.
Therefore, when it comes to the art of selling glimpses of skin, one must consider the issue of supply versus demand. Put simply, if you show less (or rather, charge more to see more), you will make more. If a customer can see your baby's partially formed foot for less than the price of a value meal, you're not going to be making rent with stage tips. At the same time, if a customer feels they are always just short of seeing what truly lies behind the thong, then you will constantly make more money than the rest of the dancers on shift. Plus, you can still get fully naked (some clubs require this) while still “showing less,” so let me explain what I mean by using an almost-academic example: food.
Your Body Is a Steakhouse, Not a Buffet
There's a shitty little overpriced tourist trap a few miles outside Barstow, California, called Las Vegas. If you're looking to have something other than liquor for dinner, options in Vegas are either a cheap buffet or a nice restaurant. At one point in time, Vegas was known for super cheap, all-you-can-eat buffets. By being affordable (five to ten bucks), these buffets were able to stay in business. On the other end of the strip (or just next door, in some cases), tourists could opt instead to visit an upscale steakhouse that was once frequented by Sammy Sinatra, or whoever was famous in the mafia days. These places ran (and still run) a few hundred dollars or more for the world's smallest cube of steak and a martini that's 80% olives. Doing the math, the hungry Vegas visitor could, in theory, fill their stomach up with hot garbage for five bucks, or get a few bites of something fancy for five hundred.
What's interesting is that, after the pandemic and subsequent recession, only the steakhouse has been able to retain its business model. Unless you're looking to eat prison food, a Vegas buffet currently runs in the range of $40-$50. Meanwhile, the fancy steakhouses have barely adjusted for inflation—the percentage increase from 2019 to 2026 is nowhere close to the buffets, and as a result, the buffets are slowly dying off, while the fancy steak spots are still open. Why? Because rich people will always spend like rich people, but poor and middle class people tend to adjust when things get too spendy—a bad economy won't affect the steakhouses, but buffets will drive away clientele by raising prices. Plus, when lower and middle class people do dine out in a bad economy, it's a rare occasion, so even the poors and wagies are going to opt for the steakhouse, on the medium-rare chance that they have the funds to go out at all. In other words, the buffets that practically gave away food are dead, but the steakhouses that want an arm, a leg, and a thigh for a ribeye, well, they're doing better than ever.
Another component of the steakhouse is that it's both “classy” and “exclusive.” If a steakhouse looked like the inside of a MAX train after a Kid Rock concert at the waterfront, it wouldn't appeal to people who listen to classical music in limos while offering each other Grey Poupon, nor would the steakhouse attract quality upscale clientele if it was frequented by tattooed hoodrats in Cookie Monster sweatpants fighting with their “kid's dad” in the lobby.
Things need to feel exclusive in order to attract the big baller crowd. Nightclubs in L.A. will let lines grow around the block, even with an empty dance floor, because looking like an exclusive club on the outside is enough to get people to pay a ridiculous cover charge, before they get inside and realize how dead the place actually is (at which point, sunk cost fallacy will result in folks staying around, at least for a few overpriced cocktail orders). Fyre Festival had famous influencers eating soggy sandwiches after spending thousands to attend an “exclusive event,” while the Gathering of the Juggalos doesn't care if people jump the gate, and you can get deep-fried anything (plus drugs) for around ten bucks. Guess which one of these places it's acceptable to yell “show us your butthole” at (and equally likely to have your wish granted). I'm a Juggalo to the core, but I'm not going to pretend that the Fyre Festival hustlers didn't make exponentially more than the guys at Psychopathic Records make on the Gathering (insiders tell me they actually lose money, but do it for the love of the fans, so they get a “whoop whoop” from me). An “exclusive” steakhouse (or grilled cheese sandwich) experience will always make more money than a cheap weekend of absolute hedonism that is open to all.
There Are Degrees to Nudity, so Learn to Edge
Let's say you're reading this in a club that requires full nudity by the last song of a stage set, or a club that promotes physical contact and/or near-sex in the champagne room. In this case, it's all about presentation and how you get naked, not how naked you get.
Remember that “infinite curve” thing your statistics teacher brought up? Do that—constantly get closer and closer to zero without actually touching it. When you're on stage, hold your hands over your boobs for most of the song, then put them on the rack in front of whichever customer is spending the most, letting other customers know that your nipples have a cover charge only some people can afford. Undo your bikini bottom, but leave the strap in place by holding it with your thighs and covering your lady bits for most of your third song. It's a “flash” dance and a strip “tease,” not a “speculum simulator” or a “cave dive.” Basic Instinct had frontal nudity, as did the final scene of Sleepaway Camp, but only one is considered classy cinema (at least to people who aren't fucked up in the head like I am).
“Nude” is nude; it doesn't have to be graphic. Both My Girl and Terrifier 3 have “death scenes.” Playboy Playmates (and Exotic pinups) often get “fully nude,” as do the girls in the smuttier, gape-and-zoom magazines (I have no idea what the girls in Club are called, “Seals” maybe?). Either way, there's a huge difference between “Tee hee, I just showed you a glimpse of my labia,” and “Here's what a fetus looks like.” By referencing smut mags (besides the one you're reading), I'm showing my age—so, if you're too young to remember when you could find porn in the woods, take a look at the porn on your phone. The top earners of OnlyFans are Bella Thorne (who barely shows her cleavage) and Sophie Rain (who gets naked for a few seconds per video). These girls make up the steakhouse selection. Compare that to the buffets, i.e., the Bonnie Blues, who are constantly having to one-up their last stunt, lest they “only” bang 99 guys in a 100-man gangbang video. If Bonnie Blue did 101 guys in her last video, she needs to do 102 in her next video to even earn a click. But if Bella Thorne decided to wear a white t-shirt while showering, her subscribers would explode (in more ways than one). I'm not trying to “slut shame” here as much as I am trying to “slut financial advise.” If you're into art for art's sake, by all means, go all out and get that Guinness record. But if you're showing it all at work and coming home with Taco Bell money, then you may consider dialing it back a bit.
While buffet dancers are busy treating their customers like their gynecologists, your job as the steakhouse is to put a top-shelf price tag on any part of your body that would get flagged for removal by Instagram. If your customers want to see more than they did on stage, they need to get a private dance, then another private dance, and perhaps one more after that. Even then, steakhouse dancers are ambiguous when asked about the price for a money shot—the price for full, Penthouse-in-the-’90s style nudity is “question marks ninety-nine.” With each dance, steakhouse dancers get a bit closer without actually going all the way. One more dance will always be just a little hotter.
If you are required to get fully naked on stage at a club, do so in a way that would blend more into a Playmate Video Calendar than something you'd see in a human anatomy textbook or a “challenge” video. Even if you fall on hard times and need to participate in excessive online degeneracy, the trick isn't to “power fuck” a hundred dudes, but rather, “make slow, passionate love” to a hundred dudes. Don't “take a money shot load to the face,” but instead, find a way to “embrace fiscally excessive fluid to the cranial area.” If you're stuck in a buffet, at least try to make it look like a steakhouse. God, I'm fucking hungry.
