I am so excited to announce that I am debuting my solo show Just The Tip: A Stripper’s Guide to Strip Club Etiquette as a part of Wellington Fringe Festival 2023 programme!
Stripping in Aotearoa
Since December of 2018, I have worked as a nude dancer in strip clubs all over Aotearoa. During this time, I have met and interacted with a variety of strip club clientele. Whenever I discuss working as a stripper with civilians (civilian is sex work slang for people who don’t work in the sex work industry), one thing people often ask me about are what sort of people go to the strip club and how they behave. This is a complicated question, because I know that civilians have this idea in their head of what a “typical” strip club patron looks like: They typically assume he’s a creepy old man, somewhat of a Phantom figure who lurks in alleyways, only coming out at night to visit strip clubs. The thing people are shocked to discover is that our clientele is everyman. He is your father, your brother, your uncle, your local barista, and he is always somebody’s son. He’s not always even a he. Our clients can be women, gender non-conforming, trans etc. Just as strippers are amongst you in society, so are the people who create the demand that we supply. It’s hard to put our clientele into one box because like strippers; they are a diverse group of people.
In saying that, that’s not to say that I haven’t noticed a behaviour that these otherwise ordinary people shift into upon entering the strip club. This is extremely applicable to cishet men, who view the strip club as a place where their actions have no consequences. They believe it’s a place to freely exercise their misogyny and assert themselves as the “superior sex”. I would be lying if I said that working in strip clubs hasn’t changed my perspective of the male species as a whole, because us strippers see a side to cis men they keep hidden from the “real” world. It was through this exposure to the shadow side of cishet men that I created a character called Bruce The Strip Club Customer based on the stereotypes and behavioural patterns that I’ve seen exhibited even in the most “ordinary” of men who visit strip clubs.
Bruce The Strip Club Customer
In the past, my Halloween costumes have often leaned towards the more sexy/slutty side. But for Halloween of 2019, I wanted to go as something scary for a change. I asked myself “what’s the scariest thing in the world? A cishet white man!” Just kidding (I can already hear the “misandrist!!!” messages being typed). Correction: a cheap and entitled cishet white man who thinks he’s God’s gift to women! Now that’s terrifying. So I ran to the local $2 store and purchased a fake moustache and a tacky “white man on vacation in Hawaii” shirt. I drew hair on my chest, assembled the costume and made a quick video sketch to go along with it:
In the sketch, I spoke to my phone as if it were a stripper’s POV while dangling a $2 tip and asking “What are ya gonna do for it? Huh? Huh?? HUH?!” I posted this to my Instagram because I knew I had a stripper following who would get the joke. To my surprise, the video went viral! Overnight, the video reached 10k views and 400 shares. Strippers from all over the globe were messaging me saying they’ve had this customer before and how much they laughed seeing a stripper poke fun at the entitled men we deal with. I realised I had accidentally created a drag persona that I could step into to let out my cathartic frustration towards the annoying, cheap gross customers I interact with.
In 2021, I debuted a ten-minute comedic sketch of Bruce at the Sex Worker’s of Aotearoa Art Exhibit. It was opening night which is open to sex workers only, so needless to say this act was extremely well received. It felt amazing to have created a satirical character that gave sex workers the chance to be in on the joke, as so often we are treated as the butt of the joke. Fast forward to early 2021, I debuted Bruce’s first Drag Show lip sync act If I Were A Rich Bloke for Monty Montgomary’s MENARCHY. I remember I felt anxious performing Bruce to an audience that was not exclusively sex workers, but to my surprise he was well received and met with a roar of laughter. After the show, civilians came up to me saying “I’ve met many Bruce’s in my life! They are the worst!” as well as “I can't believe the shit you strippers have to deal with! If I ever see someone being a Bruce in the strip club, I will tell him off!” In this moment I realised that Bruce was not just an inside joke for strippers: he could also be a means of educating the general public on the sort of clientele strippers deal with. Bruce is a strong example of what not to do in the strip club.
Writing Just The Tip
Since 2021, I have been working on the script for Just The Tip. I started by adapting the ten-minute Bruce sketch I performed at SWOA into a longer act. At first, Just The Tip was an hour of Bruce being a total sleaze. This wasn’t working for me as I didn’t want the only focus to be one type of client. I was worried this would lump all strip club clientele into one villain for civilians to poke fun of, detatching from this behaviour and positioning themselves as a “good person” because “I at least don’t treat strippers like that!” The aim of my script is to provide a social commentary on the ways the general public may unintentionally and intentionally contribute to the whorephobia that strippers experience in our puritanical patriarchal society.
I started reflecting on the many encounters I've had in the strip club, and in doing so other strip club clientele stereotypes began to mould themselves into fully fleshed out characters. I now had four solid strip club patron archetypes (come to the show to see what they are!), but I wanted to make sure that my voice was still in there. Even though I am playing all of the characters myself, their lines are inspired by actual things that grown ass adults have said to me while providing my stripper services. I went over my blog posts and started to adapt them into the script, positioning Vixen Temple as a character in the show. I like to think of the Vixen Temple scenes as a live action adaption of my blogs; they’re educational, extremely raw and vulnerable and (hopefully) hilarious and witty as fuck.
Online Censorship
A major contributing factor that inspired me to sit down and write the script for Just The Tip was being de-platformed by Instagram. If you have been following my sex work activism mahi, you will likely know all about FOSTA/SESTA. For those who don’t know, in short: the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act is a bill created under Donald Trump’s presidency that deems the solicitation of sex work via the internet (even between consenting adults) as sex trafficking and as a result online platforms such as Instagram and Facebook brought in strict guidelines that do nothing but police bodies society socialises as “women” as being inherently sexual, therefore a tiny bit of skin can result in you losing your entire platform. But wait, there’s more! Believe it or not but these laws have nothing to do with protecting actual victims of sex trafficking and instead do nothing but protect rich cishet white men in power, while queer/trans/POC/disabled/fat bodies get deleted and erased from the internet in order to maintain white supremacy and patriarchal values that endorse a two gender, monogamous heterosexual binary so that we can continue to feed the capitalist machine. TLDR: Fuck FOSTA/SESTA!
By April of 2021, my Instagram account @vixentempleblog had reached a following of 15k and was growing in numbers each day. My Instagram was not only a safe space for sex workers to show up as their unapologetic selves and connect with other folks in the industry, but it was also a safe space for sex work allies to educate themselves on sex work politics. I was so proud of this beautiful community I had created, only to one day wake up to a login error. This soon snowballed into the entire account being deleted by Instagram. “But why? What did you do wrong?” you may be asking. According to Instagram: I had engaged in “hate speech”. What was the hate speech in question? I posted a photo that said, “Sex Work Is Not Consent.”
I still can’t find the words to describe the impact being de-platformed has had on my psyche, and that’s saying a lot because I’m literally a writer! I had built this beautiful whanaungatanga over the space of two years; only to have it taken from me because of a misogynistic American law. After being de-platformed, I fell into a deep depression, feeling isolated and ostracised from the internet. I started to internalise the belief that “my voice is not important because I am a sex worker”, which goes against everything my blog stood for! The depression and sense of isolation only grew more intense during the extended Tāmaki Makaurau lockdown of 2021. So yeah, fuck censorship.
But like a phoenix rising from its ashes, I chose not to give up. I did not want to be quiet, because that is exactly what the people who created FOSTA/SESTA want: for marginalised voices to be silenced so they can continue to push their patriarchal white supremist agenda. If I can’t be an activist on the internet, I may as well put my theatre degree to good use! So almost one year after my Tāmaki Makaurau lockdown depression, I started to pitch Just The Tip to local venues for Wellington Fringe 2023. A massive thank you to Ivy Bar & Cabaret for having faith in my mahi!
Who Is Just The Tip For?
First and foremost, Just The Tip is my love letter to the sex work community that I have been fortunate to find a whanaungatanga in. Just The Tip is my attempt to humanise strippers, as all too often our stories get told by people with no experience in the industry. These representations are limited to positioning us as either gold digging husbands stealing whores or helpless exploited damsels in distress. An important thing to note is that no two sex workers experience is the same, and a lot of it is influenced by how others perceive us (through race, gender, body type etc). I identify as disabled, Māori/European and queer: but I am a Pākehā presenting, straight passing, thin cis woman who is a citizen of Aoteroa (decrim migrant sex work!) and therefore I hold a lot of privilege when navigating the world of sex work. Because of my privilege, I don’t want to use my voice to speak for/on behalf of the sex work community: but to instead invite civilians to listen to as many of our voices as possible.
Just The Tip is also a show for civilians, especially folks who consider themselves/hope to become sex work allies. While sex workers’ voices are the ones to elevate and pass the mic to when it comes to fighting for our rights: we need allies. We need civilians to educate one another. We need people to see us sex workers as the humans we are. To be a sex work ally means you are also an ally for the queer community, the trans community, the Black, Brown and Indigenous community as well as the disabled community. Sex workers are a diverse group of humans whose stories and voices deserve to be celebrated, elevated and validated.
And finally, Just The Tip is for me. I’ve been a sex work activist for almost five years. During that time, I have been de-platformed and censored so much that there've been many occasions I’ve wanted to throw in the towel and retreat to a hermit lifestyle. But since my sun sign is in Leo, I am too passionate to surrender! I won’t be silenced. Instead, I’ll raise hell! Just The Tip is my chance to tell my story completely on my own terms.
Through hearing my experiences from my time working a stripper, I hope you will feel inspired to listen to more voices from the beautiful and diverse community that is sex workers. May Just The Tip provide you with a safe space to explore a taboo world that you may not understand but wish to know more about. So, with your consent, I would be honoured to be your guide into the weird and wonderful world of stripping!
Wednesday February 22nd //
Ivy Bar + Cabaret // 8pm
Thursday February 23rd //
Ivy Bar + Cabaret // 6pm
Friday February 24th //
Ivy Bar + Cabaret // 6pm
Saturday February 25th //
Ivy Bar + Cabaret // 10pm
