"Perhaps the greatest challenge with this group was to gain their trust, since many of them complained of bad experiences with the mainstream service system."


THE LIFESKILLS GROUP

I had several important tasks in launching the project. Perhaps the greatest challenge with this group was to gain their trust, since many of them complained of bad experiences with the mainstream service system.

Since I had worked in the burlesque entertainment world, I knew many of the strippers and the bar owners, and could easily chat with the strippers. In several months of almost daily visits to bars, I interested enough entertainers to develop a group of 4 - 15 women for the weekly Life Skills program. About 4 - 6 of these women were core participants, and on the average, 10 other women came each week. Because of the newness of this kind of program, and the isolation of strippers, the group was purposely kept very open-ended and outreach continued.

This outreach was tremendously valuable. Even some women who never came to the group found talking to me useful as a very informal type of advocacy and life-skills counselling.

Establishing a time and place for the group was not easy in view of the entertainers' hectic schedules and their scattered locations. Sunday was chosen since that is the only day that most burlesque dancers have off. We tried holding meetings at the Toronto YWCA.

They were relatively successful: the group developed a high enough profile to receive referrals, and four of the core members developed the confidence to explore other career options, and eventually left the field.

But some of the strippers felt uncomfortable in a relatively formal group setting. Strippers are forced to be fiercely competitive in their professional lives, and have trouble opening up in a group. Others saw a conflict between their needs to discuss their own personal problems and a group focus on more general discussion of the situation of strippers in society.



"Flexibility seemed to be crucial in trying to develop a
program which could meet the strippers' needs."


As some of the strippers became increasingly uncomfortable, we changed the format in the fall and held informal sessions about two or three times a month in the entertainers' familiar milieu. Flexibility seemed to be crucial in trying to develop a program which could meet the strippers' needs. Although I believe strongly in the value of life skills for strippers, I realized that these women are at different levels of personal development and cannot all assimilate the material and skills in the group context.

ACTIVITIES

Strippers face overwhelming problems, which affect any group activity. They feel excluded and rejected by most other women and by conventional social services. Always demanding and competitive, their world has become even more cut-throat as the advent of steep licencing fees has concentrated business in the big establishments and drastically cut the available jobs, forcing some strippers into prostitution or into types of performance they might have refused a few years ago. A 1985 ruling removing the prohibition against G-strings was welcomed by some strippers, but has made many others feel increasingly exploited, as the removal of the G-string was demanded by owners. Table dancing has become increasingly prevalent, eliminating the safe distance from patrons, often lengthening working hours, and making the club atmosphere more competitive than ever.



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