Not every strip club is packed at 4 in the afternoon on a Sunday. But Scores was filled all the way to the balcony with every one of the more than 250 dancers who work at the club. This was a mandatory meeting—to encourage their participation, the club levies a $5,000 fine for dancers who don’t show up.
I asked one dancer if she knew what the meeting was about, and she said, “I only know it costs $5,000 if I am not here.” The last meeting had been in December.
A gathering of dancers who aren’t working is different from strippers at work. First, the clothing was not sexy. Gym outfits were the most popular choice. A lot of the entertainers did not bother with makeup. One dancer brought her dog, and another a child. And rather than a place of shadows, the club had the lights on, with everyone seated facing the stage like a school class.
On stage was a projection movie screen and a laptop where the screen read:
The Recession Proof Breast
Scores Edition
Frank L. Stile, MD
Board Certified Plastic Surgeon
“Would you consider plastic surgery?” I asked a table with three dancers; one indignantly replied: “If you looked like us would you consider plastic surgery?” I ignored the fact that I was reasonably sure at least one of the three already had one very obvious bit of plastic surgery. It in fact was in the same area that Dr. Stile focused his presentation: breasts.
“We are going to talk about the truth of breast surgery,” Dr. Stile told the dancers. Dr. Stile turned out to be a Tony Robbins-style enthusiast of plastic surgery during his 15-minute address to the assembled strippers. Dr. Stile said: “Let’s face it, plastic surgery is sex, sex is plastic surgery. If you can’t handle that you are not talking the truth.”
In fact, many of the dancers did not share Dr. Stile’s view. When he asked them if the look of their breasts was crucial to their income, as many shouted “no” as “yes.”
Dr. Stile did not acknowledge the dissent and went on to describe the ideal breast shape that one woman sitting next to me called “odd.” He also spent a lot of time denigrating other surgeons in town by showing botched procedures and implying that another local doctor had made this disaster for him to fix. He spent no time on the risks that go with the procedure no matter who does the surgery.
When he was done, the audience seemed to appreciate the information, though some dancers clearly resented facing a $5,000 fine to hear a sales pitch for cosmetic surgery. “It’s a strip club. The lights go way down, and I look fabulous,” one 32-year-old dancer told me. Meanwhile others agreed with Dr. Stile, though they had already had the procedure. “My money went way up,” one told me. Afterward Dr. Stile told me that about 10 percent of his practice comes from dancers and that the average breast-augmentation surgery could include about three touch-up surgeries over the years.
In fact, boobs may be crucial to dancing, and appearances matter, but stripping is really at root a sales job. And, the confidence gained from altered breasts probably plays as much a role in increased money as the surgery itself. But that is just my opinion. On the other hand, among the dancers assembled at Scores, plenty had modest and unaltered boobs. For example, three entertainers sitting near me all claimed to be entirely natural, and one of those dancers was 39 years old.
After the doctor spoke, the dancers were addressed by Scores owner Dennis DeGori. He read a note from the last meeting in December from a club dancer, Lorena Pena-Finger. She had found the meeting inspirational.
But Pena-Finger died of natural causes, and DeGori paid tribute to her, quoting metaphysical poet John Donne and modernist Gertrude Stein on his way to Shakespeare and finishing with everyone quietly listening to “Panis Angelicus” sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Some women wept openly.
Everything about the meeting was the sort of thing that happens in every business. Workers sometimes have to congregate to hear mundane details, be bored by a presentation their boss thinks they should see and occasionally even mourn the loss of a beloved co-worker.
In short, when the lights are on, strip clubs go from fantasy to real life.
Photograph by Jacob Kepler