MatureDJ
Master Don Juan
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I Auditioned At A Strip Club. Then I Found Out What I'd Have To Do To Get The Job.
"A hard rock sat in my stomach and I felt shame. ... If you want to make money, you must not appear too Black."
www.huffpost.com
The dancing manager, a woman I later knew to be Cheryl, told me to stand up against the wall and she took photos of me from different angles. When she was finished, she told me that she would let me know what the boss thought.
Not long after, Cheryl pulled me aside and told me, “I’m sorry, but the boss says you cannot dance tonight because your hair is not done.”
“What?! My hair is done!” I said.
“The boss didn’t like it. You can come back when it’s done,” she said.
My heart sank to my stomach. I was confused. This was a Black-owned club. If I should be accepted anywhere with my Afro, it should be here.
I looked around me and noticed that all of the other Black girls had their hair straightened, in long braids, or wore wigs and that the only women with their natural hair out were those who had a loose curl pattern, 1a-3b.
A hard rock sat in my stomach and I felt shame ― not from the stigmatization of sex work, not from standing in the hallway in a revealing outfit, but the shame that arises when you must change ― conform yourself ― to satisfy Eurocentric modes of beauty that say you can be Black, but not too Black — that you can wear your natural hair, but only if there is a loose curl pattern, not the nappy 4b Afro that graciously sprung from my scalp.
my opinion: It will only be a matter of time before fat chicks start complaining that strip joint management wants them to be trim; if strip joints ever give in and go woke, it will be OVER for VoyeurCels.Penda Smith is an open genre creative writer who is interested in how Black women survive through the use of erotic resistance.