Episode 192 - Striptease: LIVE!

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I had a thing written out based on a former coworker who lost his job but then I realized we're taking about her ex husband. How do you lose your job because your ex is a scumbag. Being married is one thing but you can't control what your ex does?

THAT'S MY QUESTION

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

I had a thing written out based on a former coworker who lost his job but then I realized we're taking about her ex husband. How do you lose your job because your ex is a scumbag. Being married is one thing but you can't control what your ex does?

 

No, you were right. She was married to him when she got fired. They were in the process of a divorce, hence the custody hearing. I don’t know why she couldn’t get her job back after she got divorced, though. Maybe by the time it finalized the FBI had already backfilled her position?

[grudlian. 4725]

THAT'S MY QUESTION

You're right. I guess I was thinking the scenario was she lost get job because of his criminal behavior then they got divorced. I'm thinking it's more likely, in the words mind but not the real world, that they got divorced a while ago and she just recently lost her job.

 

Someone here read the book. Maybe they explain it more there.

[grudlian. 4725]

 

No, you were right. She was married to him when she got fired. They were in the process of a divorce, hence the custody hearing. I don’t know why she couldn’t get her job back after she got divorced, though. Maybe by the time it finalized the FBI had already backfilled her position?

I didn't see this when I posted.

 

Aren't there occasionally custody hearings well at a divorce if things change? I think it's major changes or extreme extenuating circumstances. I could see Robert Patrick being the kind of guy who would get his ex fired then telling his lawyer to try and get custody.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Either way, married or not at the time of the firing, my question still stands. Why does she get punished for something he does? What does he do to get her fired?

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

I didn't see this when I posted.

 

Aren't there occasionally custody hearings well at a divorce if things change? I think it's major changes or extreme extenuating circumstances. I could see Robert Patrick being the kind of guy who would get his ex fired then telling his lawyer to try and get custody.

 

That’s true, unfortunately, the movie really isn’t specific either way. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I would have to assume that the custody hearing at the start of the film is part of their divorce proceedings. At best, I’d say maybe they were separated but not yet divorced.

[Divinemissem13 5]

[Cameron H. 23786]

Either way, married or not at the time of the firing, my question still stands. Why does she get punished for something he does? What does he do to get her fired?

 

Fair or not (and the movie makes a point of saying it isn’t fair) according to Ryan Sz in the mini thread, it’s a real thing. I can imagine if you work for the FBI they don’t want you to be married to a criminal. I assume that’s why the writer put that in.. They wanted her to be more sympathetic, so they put her in a position where she’s being denied custody for something that’s specifically his fault. It just makes her situation more aggravating. The only way the writers could possibly pull this card is if her character worked in law enforcement. This is the only reason I can think of for the movie to even mention she worked for the FBI since it never really ever comes up again.

 

I mean, you’re right. It’s fucked up. But it’s also the same point the movie was making.

[EvRobert 1684]

If I remember correctly from Elmore Leonard's short stories and full length novel, Out of Sight, Karen Sisco is almost booted from the US Marshals for unknowingly dating a criminal prior to the events of OoS and she turns him in.

 

So I did a little research, turns out that it doesn't matter what level of LE you are in, if you're married to or in a relationship with a felon, it can affect your employment.

 

If you're an officer/agent/investigator, you have access to police issues weapons and body armor that you may be expected to keep in your home. If it is in possession of your home, your partner is considered to have "constructive possession" which is a violation of federal law and most state laws that felons can't possess weapons and gives them hypothetical access to those weapons.

 

If you have access to secure information, as an officer, agent, investigator, dispatcher, secretary, etc. you would be privy to sensitive information that could be shared with your partner, either willingly or unwillingly.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Fair or not (and the movie makes a point of saying it isn’t fair) according to Ryan Sz in the mini thread, it’s a real thing. I can imagine if you work for the FBI they don’t want you to be married to a criminal. I assume that’s why the writer put that in.. They wanted her to be more sympathetic, so they put her in a position where she’s being denied custody for something that’s specifically his fault. It just makes her situation more aggravating. The only way the writers could possibly pull this card is if her character worked in law enforcement. This is the only reason I can think of for the movie to even mention she worked for the FBI since it never really ever comes up again.

 

I mean, you’re right. It’s fucked up. But it’s also the same point the movie was making.

Okay that covers why she gets fired, but still doesn't cover wtf he did and that's part of the thing I'm dying to know.

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

Okay that covers why she gets fired, but still doesn't cover wtf he did and that's part of the thing I'm dying to know.

 

She tells the judge that he’s “addicted to pills and a thief.” Considering his apparent ease of access to hospitals and that he becomes an informant for the vice squad, I’m guessing he was stealing medication and selling it.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

Regarding the big fake boobs discussion. I actually talked to a porn actress I was internet friends with about her's, so if this is wrong, I'm just going by what she said to me, as it could vary from person to person.

 

Women with the comically large breast implants don't go comically large straight away. So, they'd start with a 34D for example, allowing the skin to stretch and heal to that new size, and then they'd move up to an E or F cup, and then gradually grow bigger and bigger, to prevent the skin from tearing. It's sort of like those gauges that stretch ears, but with big ass titties.

 

This kind of has to do with this but I read an article about a stripper who got her implants as a tax write off. She had to go to court to do it but the judge did rule that her implants were like... too large to be seen as anything but for work and not for personal preference. I find this idea that a breast implant size could be seen as only for work as fascinating. I'm honestly not sure I could ever be that dedicated to my job.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

She tells the judge that he’s “addicted to pills and a thief.” Considering his apparent ease of access to hospitals and that he becomes an informant for the vice squad, I’m guessing he was stealing medication and selling it.

Honestly, Idk why I'm even trying to get answers. Nothing is making me feel any better about this trash fire.

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

Honestly, Idk why I'm even trying to get answers. Nothing is making me feel any better about this trash fire.

 

I mean, the movie is definitely terrible.

 

My biggest thing was the movie couldn’t even make her an FBI agent. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an Administrative Assistant, but it’s such a deliberate decision on the writer’s part. She works in law enforcement, but not in a position where she could immediately parlay her experience into a better paying job elsewhere. At best, she could maybe get another job as an AA, but it won’t make her the money that she needs.

 

The whole situation is just so calculated - which only makes you realize how every gross decision in the movie is just as calculated. It makes everything else in the movie that much worse. This isn’t a case of a movie being bad because it was done on the fly. No, these people *thought hard* about it and this is what they came up with.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

I think i know what happened to the monkey...

 

But it’s not pretty.

 

In the clip of the monkey Paul showed at the live show, there is pretty clearly a tiny NOOSE in the monkey cage.

 

...RIP little monkey

 

Maybe the monkey is into auto-erotic asphyxiation. Or it's like a little loopy swing thing I've seen for birds and this was a cage originally meant for a bird

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I mean, the movie is definitely terrible.

 

My biggest thing the movie couldn’t even make her an FBI agent. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an Administrative Assistant, but it’s such a deliberate decision on the writer’s part. She works in law enforcement, but not in a position where she could immediately parlay her experience into a better paying job. At best, she could get a job as an AA somewhere else, but it won’t make her the money she needs.

 

The whole situation is just so calculated which just makes you realize that every gross decision in the movie is just as calculated. For me, that makes every disgusting thing in this movie that much worse. This isn’t a case of a movie being bad because it was done on the fly. No, these people *thought hard* about it and this is what they came up with.

Couldn't agree more.

 

Feasibly they could've made her a disgraced detective that had an air of "did she help him?" about her in regards to Terminator 2. It still would've been a little hard to swallow why she was then losing her daughter but maybe if they tried to paint her as a crooked cop then that would make a little more sense as to why she loses everything so easily.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

God, June fuckin NAILED it on her criticisms and did an excellent "This Week in Feminism."

 

This "movie" is fucking disgusting in every single aspect. From the judges ability to scoff at a single mother who doesn't currently have a job, to the way she scoffs at dancing as a profession, to the way every man turns into a gd Tex Avery cartoon the minute she walks on stage, to Jerry being written off as "harmless" when he full on stalked her (and later we discover built a shrine to her), to Ving blaming Demi being on edge on her fuckin period, to Burt Reynolds referring to her as a creature, to literally every scene in this movie. I can't even go through everything that made me cringe because I'll basically be posting the whole script and highlighting the parts where the other dancers have each other's backs because that's literally the only good thing this movie shows, but then June is right in that not even Demi sticks up for the girls because she is seen as "above" them. I'm so fucking sick of these fucking types of movies that posit themselves as liberating women when they do nothing but shit on them for 2 hours. Yeah I feel super duper liberated now...

 

So with all of that said I have a few questions:

• What did Terminator 2 even do to get her fired? Why is it her entire career as a secretary hinges on what this asshole's criminal record is like? Did he do something through her job? Like did he steal something that he wouldn't have gotten hold of if he hadn't been married to the FBI's secretary?
  
• She mentions how impossible it seems to get $15,000 for an appeal in 6 weeks, but she also says this is already 8 weeks in to working at the Eager Beaver. Has she not already made some money? Is that the additional money she needs now that she is already so much in?
  
• If she truly did not want to be an erotic dancer, then why is she? I understand the hopelessness women can feel and understand that many women do not feel they have a choice when it comes to becoming a dancer or a sex worker, but we don't actually see that kind of hopelessness here. She goes from court to 8 weeks later without the audience being clued in to the fact that she tried to get any other jobs. I know they want us to accept that she felt this was her only option (and I believe she says to the detective that this is the job that will pay her enough in such short of time), but this all just goes back to how fucking awful this movie is to women and to erotic dancers.
  

Fuck this fucking movie.

 

 

I just want to say I have never loved you more. I almost want to unlike this just so I can like it again.

 

Ok so I asked why she got fired in the mini episode and someone said that at the prison they work at you have to disclose all prior criminal connections. So maybe she somehow manged to get hired and it went under the radar until her divorce and it came out that he was a criminal and they had to fire her? I don't understand why they would fire her though. At most I would think maybe they would ... I don't now put a demerit on her record ? (Though why she should be punished I don't really understand. I guess you could say she lied about her contacts or falsified parts of her background check?)

She's a secretary though I don't think she's working with much classified stuff but I'm sure since it's technically a government job she would have had some kind of background check. I know on a lot of government forms ( I'm disabled on social security) I fill out they have that box you have to check if you yourself were convicted of a crime but I've never seen one for if you consort with criminals. Maybe there was one of those on her application and she falsified it?

• She mentions how impossible it seems to get $15,000 for an appeal in 6 weeks, but she also says this is already 8 weeks in to working at the Eager Beaver. Has she not already made some money? Is that the additional money she needs now that she is already so much in?
  

THIS!!! If your a decent dancer you can make FUCKING BANK. I think I've already talked a bit about this in the The Hurricane Heist thread. it's a very lucrative career. On a good night I've read you can make about a grand.

[Smigg. 509]

 

This kind of has to do with this but I read an article about a stripper who got her implants as a tax write off. She had to go to court to do it but the judge did rule that her implants were like... too large to be seen as anything but for work and not for personal preference. I find this idea that a breast implant size could be seen as only for work as fascinating. I'm honestly not sure I could ever be that dedicated to my job.

 

In the case of the porn star I talked to, she told me that a lot of them get all of their's paid for by the production company they're signed to, but obviously, this is only for those who have signed exclusivity deals. The problem is, because it's all paid for out of somebody else's pocket, it does lead to some of them going too far with it, because it's like they get some kind of dysmorphia (if that's how it's spelled), where money is no object, so they can say "Well, I do want bigger boobs... Now I need a bigger ass... these lips look a bit thin..." and some were getting botox and facelifts before they were even 30.

 

Not to bring it back to wrestling, but there's a wrestler called Goldust, when he got the gimmick in the mid-90s, he was this provocatively androgynous weirdo, and he actually pitched an idea that he would get breast implants to further the character to make himself even more creepy. So, had things lined up, the son of Dusty Rhodes would have had fake boobs, for a wrestling character.

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

Feasibly they could've made her a disgraced detective that had an air of "did she help him?" about her in regards to Terminator 2. It still would've been a little hard to swallow why she was then losing her daughter but maybe if they tried to paint her as a crooked cop then that would make a little more sense as to why she loses everything so easily.

 

Abso-freakin’-lutely!

 

Or! Just make her an undercover FBI agent! A guy was murdered and the last place he was seen was at this strip club. Get rid of the husband and daughter stuff - which is all just false sentiment anyway - and just make it about government corruption.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Abso-freakin’-lutely!

 

Or! Just make her an undercover FBI agent! A guy was murdered and the last place he was seen was at this strip club. Get rid of the husband and daughter stuff - which is all just false sentiment anyway - and just make it about government corruption.

She could go in with these gross ideas about what erotic dancing is like and what these women have to deal with and then it becomes Miss Congeniality and suddenly Sandra Bullock is actually there and we're all happier cause we're watching a better movie.

[Cameron H. 23786]

She could go in with these gross ideas about what erotic dancing is like and what these women have to deal with and then it becomes Miss Congeniality and suddenly Sandra Bullock is actually there and we're all happier cause we're watching a better movie.

 

And that's perhaps my biggest problem with the movie. The movie wants you to believe it's being progressive by showing us that exotic dancers are real people with real problems and real emotions, but it never fully commits to it. It's like the movie is trying to make a case against the exploitation of women while simultaneously exploiting women. Demi is constantly shamed and ashamed of what she's doing as if it's "wrong." It's like what June says in the episode, when the credit rolls, you can just tell that Demi Moore's character is ready to put this whole episode of her life in the review mirror. She never comes to terms with it. She never says, "I did this, and you know what, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it."

[grudlian. 4725]

Either way, married or not at the time of the firing, my question still stands. Why does she get punished for something he does? What does he do to get her fired?

So, I messaged a friend of mine from college who works for the FBI.

Looks like it's not only plausible, but very likely that this would happen. I think it's interesting to note you can't even be involved with police. While I didn't ask for different rules for agents versus secretaries, I would assume they have similar rules just because they probably have access to a lot of information.

[grudlian. 4725]

Also, I agree that it's stupid Demi Moore couldn't be an agent or director or training or profiler or whatever for the FBI. She had already played a naval lawyer by this point in A Few Good Men. We had X-Files and Silence Of The Lambs at this point. She didn't need to be a secretary.

 

I'd argue it makes more sense for her to be an agent after finding out you can't have a relationship with local police. She could have a whole story of "I'm trained to be in law enforcement. That's what I'm best at. Now I can't do that because the FBI doesn't want me and the police don't trust me/want to cross a potential line." Being a secretary for the FBI probably means you could get a job at ANY place needing a secretary because you've done one of the hardest secretarial jobs.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

Ok so I've done some googling to see how much an Exotic Dancer can make. I'm determined to try to figure out (or at least give the far smarter people on these boards the info to do so) why Demi was unable to get the money she so desperately needed when what little I know about exotic dancing says that if you work hard and hustle it can be a great way of making money. I know the job can be very feast or famine though so that could account for some of the issues and there was the competing Flesh Farm *shudder*. So I found a bunch of articles but the one I'm using the most comes from a website geared towards exotic dancers. It's called https://www.exoticdanceguide.com/articles/exotic-dancers-make-a-night/ I'm reading several articles because I'm oddly fascinated by this and have nothing but time on my hands today.

 

Ok so the first thing to keep in mind is how much a dancer has to tip out and how much house fees are. According to this article

"Depending on the fee schedule a stripper could spend 50-100$ per night on fees and tipout, so in order to get past the red, the goal should be at a bare minimum, 300$ per night." if your working at a smaller club.

So Demi would have to try to make at least $300 a night so that her time wasn't wasted.

the article also makes the distinction of a Bikini Club vs a Nude Strip Club because you will make less at the former. I think that the Eager Beaver is a Nude Club ( because nude implies taking your to completely off right?) but if anyone knows the difference please correct me. BUT it says a lot of Nude clubs don't serve booze. So ?

 

If she's working at a Nude club though they say that " The potential income for a nude strip dancer could reach into the thousands nightly"

 

"Nude clubs often host feature dancers, and features not only get paid for dances but they also get paid for merchandise, and for their performance on stage. Features often spend a portion of their money for tipout for security and the DJ who helps them to coordinate their stage shows. The average income for a feature stripper could easily be in the thousands, as well just for a few hours at the club."

 

The Eager Beaver isn't a corporate club which is where you apparently make the most money.

 

A lot of money can be made on private dances and champagne rooms but I don't think we ever see Demi doing either of those.. which might be why she was having such a hard time coming up with the money. From this article from a Vegas stripper who makes about $300,000 a year (her chosen title) on Thrillist (https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/how-i-make-300k-stripping-in-vegas) she says she makes 80% of her money most nights in the VIP room. she says you can do about 30 lap dances on the floor and end up with less and she likes to know she's getting that $700 up front.

 

One of the main things I keep seeing in these articles though is that you have to work the customers hard and we don't really see Demi doing that. They talk about how you can;t spend time backstage or talking. You need to consistently be working. Also you want to get as many VIP/ Champagne rooms sold as you can. It's very clear Demi doesn't want to be there and I think that's affecting her earnings.

 

According to Payscale.com a 33 year old female dancer ( Demi's age when the movie came out) with zero years experience in the field in Miami Fl could make around $16k- 149k a year and her current market worth (whatever that means) is $31,243.

 

and this Reddit thread is pretty interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2icstq/strippers_of_reddit_seriously_how_much_money_do/

[taylor anne photo 11311]

 

And that's perhaps my biggest problem with the movie. The movie wants you to believe it's being progressive by showing us that exotic dancers are real people with real problems and real emotions, but it never fully commits to it. It's like the movie is trying to make a case against the exploitation of women while simultaneously exploiting women. Demi is constantly shamed and ashamed of what she's doing as if it's "wrong." It's like what June says in the episode, when the credit rolls, you can just tell that Demi Moore's character is ready to put this whole episode of her life in the review mirror. She never comes to terms with it. She never says, "I did this, and you know what, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it."

Absolutely. When I mentioned that she could go in with those gross ideas about erotic dancing and the dancers, it would be a learning situation for her and then, by proxy, us the audience as well. Because yes, this movie tries to show these women are good people who jump at the chance to help their fellow dancer (one girl even tries to convince Demi that this is just as much a honest way of living as anything else) but when Demi is our protagonist and therefore the audience's view into this world, it fucking suuuucks to watch her gag at the idea that she herself is topless on that stage.

 

Also because I believe that is Sandy's view of the pageant world before she goes undercover in MC, but when she comes out of it she has friends and people she now respects because she didn't know what it was like before hand.