Ever since she was 16-years-old, Kelly Pridding has been living on her own.  After her mother died in a car accident, her father kicked her out of the house because of “all the suffering” she put her mom through.  As a teenager, Pridding had battled a drug addiction that left her mother scrambling to help her daughter.

“My mother always said that when I was a kid people always used to say I seemed really smart and said I was going to be somebody,” says Pridding.   

Pridding’s mother raked in thousands of dollars of debt to make sure her daughter received the best education.  “I was in enrichment for grade 7, grade 8, it’s like the smart people class,” she recalls.

But after her mother died, Pridding lost her only cheerleader. At 16 she was getting by on menial jobs, at 18 she got herself clean, and at 19 she started stripping to make some real cash. 

“You can make anywhere from $200-$300 a day, but some girls can make up to $1000 a day and some girls make nothing,” says Pridding, now 22 years-old, about this unstable job. She has lived with the social stigma of being an exotic dancer for two and half years, but, until recently, the cash has kept her going.

Club owners say the recession has brought an influx of new dancers drawn to the promise of quick cash. But the dancers themselves are making less money. Trapped between dwindling income and a lack of options, many dancers like Pridding are unable to find other work.

Good for the club, bad for the dancer
Tim Lambrinos, the executive director of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada – a group that represents the interests of strip clubs - says the economy has made recruiting new dancers a lot easier. “People are losing their jobs, the economy is more competitive and women are becoming aware of the potential to earn more money,” he says of the influx. 

According to Howard Adams, president of Filmores Gentlemen's Club, the adult entertainment industry is countercyclical. “All these men who are laid off need somewhere to go, something to do, so they come to the club,” he says.

But these cash strapped men are coming to enjoy the show rather than participate in the action. They are not buying lap dances. This means the clubs, whose main source of revenue is liquor sales, are making more money in the recession. The dancers, on the other hand, make less money because the bulk of their income is from lap dances that just aren't selling.

Dancers are not salaried employees of the club. Under the Labour Code, they are categorized as self-employed workers and have to pay the club for the right to dance there. However, they have no control over the price set for lapdances, this is set by the club. If they have a bad night, they may actually walk out of the club owing money to the owners. As self-employed workers, they are not entitled to any benefits such as maternity leave, vacations, or paid sick time.

Sex isn’t selling
Unemployed autoworkers and investment bankers aren’t spending money like they used to. In Toronto, a lap dance costs about $20 and lasts for about four minutes, or one song.

Pridding has noticed there are fewer businessmen coming in. “I don’t know, maybe they are just going to a coffee shop now or something. It’s a little less hard on the wallet.” 

The men who still come in are spending less, Pridding says.

More women entering the industry combined with frugal customers, means every dollar is harder to earn. Mary Taylor, a former exotic dancer and founder of the Exotic Dancers' Rights Association of Canada, knows the difficulty dancers face when there are too many strippers, and lap dances are at a premium. 

“If you’ve got 50 dancers…they’re all going up to the same guy: ‘Do you want to dance? Do you want to dance?’ What do you think he’s going to say? He’s only got so much money in his pocket. At $20 a dance he might only buy one or two dances.”

Lambrinos says if the girls have a problem with the $20 dances set by the club owners, they can go work somewhere else. 

Getting out in hard times
Unlike the unemployed autoworker and investment banker who still have marketable skills, dancers have a harder time finding other types of employment because of the social stigma surrounding their vocation. During rough economic times the need to leave the industry is more pressing for dancers while simultaneously harder to do. 

Canada’s unemployment rate as of February 2009 was 7.7% with 83,000 job losses between January and February of this year.  In Toronto, the unemployment rate is 8.1% as of February 2009. 

Equipped with a high school equivalency diploma and no formal work experience, Pridding is unsure of where to find a job. “If I were to try and apply for a normal job, I really have nothing for my references for the last two years,” laments Kelly, “It’s really not socially acceptable to say, ‘Yes, I’ve been an exotic dancer for two years and its given me really good work skills.’ Even though it has. I kind of feel like I don’t have an option. I feel like I have to start my own business or bust.”

Taylor successfully transitioned out of dancing after 21 years in the industry.  A high school dropout with no experience beside stripping, she founded Live Girl Productions in 1997 to teach women how to do stripteases for their partners.

“Dancer’s can’t follow rules, they make their own rules,” Taylor says.

This affinity for freedom, says Taylor, often means former dancers don't last in jobs that require a 40-hour work week and usually provide less money at the end of the week than they could make in a day of stripping. 

“Women who have been dancing for all these years in the bars, I don’t believe that they should be working a traditional job. I think that they have a lot of skills that they aren’t even aware they have,” says Taylor, "I think they could do a lot of things to be self-employed.” 

The missing piece
Many women in the industry do not have the education necessary to garner the incomes that they are used to. “What’s missing is some kind of funding for these women to get out,” says Taylor, “That’s what is missing, funding for somebody to start an agency that helps these women get out.” 

Pridding has been wanting to get out for the past year, but she has been paralyzed by the obstacles. With nobody to guide her and no clear idea of where she wants to go, her workday still starts at 8 p.m. and her office is a neon lit stage.

Go back to Wo/men - casualties of the crash