It's time to get naked...

It’s 1^st March – and I've set myself an almost impossible deadline of finishing the first (new) draft of (the much improved – well, practically brand new version) of TRAILER/trash. I imagine it’s going to run to about 90-100 pages – about 100-110 mins of playing time. It’s a daunting prospect, especially as I’m srill undertaking research (this week it’s been centred on the sex industry in the USA) mainly the strip and clip joints in a number of major cities and states.

It’s surprising how the local and state laws differ across the country. But what has surprised me most is how I had fallen into the trap of stereotyping the women who make their living as strippers. I already had an inkling that my perception was going to be changed when I entered into FB PM conversations with a stripper from London and unsurprisingly, much of what she had to say is borne out by the research I’m doing. So much so, I’m taking the plunge and going to ‘treat’ myself to several fully nude lap dances (I won’t be nude) at a club in London. I figure that if I’m going to write about this area, I should de-romanticise the notions I have, engage with the subject matter and jump in with both feet.

I did put a call out on my FB pages for anyone wanting to join me, but you’re all pussies and haven’t taken me up on my very generous offer! But I don’t mind. I think that this (lack of) response says something about the general, mainstream view of stripping as a profession – prostitution by another name, drugs, sleaze, filth, easy women, shame etc etc.   Not women taking on difficult work, studying for Masters or PhD’s, earning money to raise their kids, holding down stable relationships. In my head I’d unwittingly demonised strippers without meaning to, I certainly held no judgemental opinions on them one way or another. But I had allowed the media and film industry portrayal of them to become a version of reality in my mind.

All I have to do, therefore, is convince my audience otherwise without turning the script into a pseudo-feminist reading of the profession…..I am writing fiction, after all, not a thesis or documentary. But with that, comes a responsibility (in my mind) of ditching the stereotype whilst drawing on an element of the truth that remains almost unheard.

It’s time for me to get naked.