the post-post industrial revolution

I’m from a small town. A couple of small towns, actually. Inevitably, of the people who chose to stay in those towns rather than venturing out in the big wide world, well, some of them ended up doing whatever they could do to survive. The available jobs in a small town usually include F&B, sales, education and retail. And some jobs for women that might pay fairly well, but are some steps below working in a bar or working as a substitute teacher.

I was an unfortunate, accidental witness to what a friend from high school had told me was a “modeling” job. It was a sad, sad farce that actually meant wandering around in a bar wearing a see-through teddy and trying to entice male patrons to buy the cheap lingerie for their wives. Those women moved on to having photos taken for hardcore calendars and later, to websites. And stripping.

I am fairly sympathetic to strippers. I really am. I know I’ve written a few things on the blog about the men’s clubs in town, but that’s just because of the spillover outside Covington’s strip clubs- you’ll often see staggering patrons wandering in and out of the clubs, and the bars are close to the library. And a school. I don’t think that’s appropriate.

But on the whole, I don’t have a problem with strippers. I have empathy for them, and for women who work in the porn industry. If you’ve ever watched or listened to Howard Stern, almost the first question he asks every woman in the sex industry is “who abused you?” Referring, of course, to the sad sexual abuse stories so many of these women have to tell. That’s more common than you might imagine.

Inevitably, with small towns, these women will cross paths with their more successful counterparts. On one occasion, a group of fellows that I know well went into a strip club and ran into a friend of mine, who was working- and topless. She was terribly embarrassed, and immediately tried to cover herself. Why? Well, I think it was because it was two worlds colliding. Because I’ve talked to her and her friends and they definitely live in two worlds. And never the twain shall meet.

When the story was related to me by one of the guys, it was definitely in a “how could you be friends with someone like that?” tone. And I was subjected to more dialog, along the lines of how disgusting the whole thing was. “It’s you and your friends that make her what she is,” I firmly replied. Because without their male customers, where would these women be?

I’d like to go to a strip club some time. A statement that usually results in my beau of the moment sitting straight up and volunteering to go with me “tonight, if you want.”

I don’t think I can adequately judge what goes on inside a strip club, nor write about it, without experiencing it firsthand. I tried to take a couple of my guy friends into one of Northern Kentucky’s strip clubs one time. It was dark, smoky, and kind of scary, but I was game. They weren’t. Practically peeing their pants, they begged me to leave, so I didn’t get to see anything.

My understanding is that I should skip the local clubs anyway, and either go to Indy (I hear that one a lot; the women there must be striking), or go when I’m out of town sometime, in Chicago or Florida, perhaps.

My other struggle with the sex industry hits home on a more personal level. Hanging out in Hilton Head with friends, a man who’d been asking me about my SEO work suddenly asked me a surprisingly insightful question: “You must get a lot of offers for work that you don’t want to do, huh?” Yeah, I do, actually.

I’ve been approached a few times by people to help optimize their porn websites. Because most of their advertising is internet-based, they pay very well. Very, very well. So far I have said no. I like porn websites as much as the next gal. But I have my limits. I think my threshold is about 15 minutes of online porn. Then I start to feel kind of queasy.

I don’t think porn is the root of all evil. I think that if you look at porn like a mathematical equation, there are some factors that make it undesirable.

For example: Let’s say I take on a job for a new adult-themed website. I write a cluster of explicit Meta tags, some more content that explains why the porn website is hot!-hot!-hot! Get my (really big) check in the mail, and move on.

6 months later, the website is shut down because there are minors in some of the videos. I don’t think I could live with that.

So, does porn = minors? No. But what about this: Without the porn website factor, no minors would have been involved. The equation ends up being: porn + videos = minors (sometimes). Or maybe it’s this: porn + women being treated badly = website (often). Because whether or not you’re a porn enthusiast, it doesn’t take an accountant to figure out that most of those women look pretty unhappy. Bored. Soulless.

And for my high school alumnus who ended up in or on the fringes of the porn industry, well. I don’t think they’re really happy. They seem to struggle with their interpersonal relationships. When you only think of men in terms of money, and you witness everything from cheating husbands to secret drug addictions firsthand, you’re going to become more than a little jaded.

I once read a behind-the-porn-scene book by a former “actress” that talked about a number of degradations forced upon women in the industry. Women told after arriving on-set that the script changed, placing these nervous young women in the awkward position of saying “no” and shutting down the entire movie… or taking one for the team. From the team. Women forced to wear the same (unwashed) lingerie for shoots right after it was worn by someone else. And someone else before them. The churning out of straight to vid doesn’t leave time for laundry, apparently.

So for now, the answer remains no. I told the fellow in Hilton Head that this is just not where I want to hang my hat as a writer or as a small businessperson. As we left, he told me that there’s “nothing wrong with taking the high road, you know.”

I agree.