Growing up in a semi-conservative family, I was exposed to different ideas because my parents trusted my judgment.

Being the old soul that I've always been, I always wondered what went on behind closed doors after watching movies that featured strip clubs. When I became an adult, I noticed some of my peers had become strippers. Being nonjudgemental, I became more curious. I had wondered, "why go that route?"

Strip clubs have been focused on in action movies about sex, drugs and rock n' roll. I didn't think those stereotypes were all completely true. Without becoming a stripper, and by talking to my peers, I began to discover what these ladies had to say about the stereotypes.

The hardest part is that when there isn't a lot of patrons in the club, the performers have to fight for attention. Sometimes this would result in the performers leaving the club having to pay out of their own pockets because of different fees. The job comes at a gamble. With the amount of patrons, there are various types of personalities. Both male and femlate patrons, can go from being generous to being mean and shady. Normally the performers make friends with the bouncer (Door guard) at the front of the club because of the shady types. Some people have the wrong idea when they come into the club because of how the media portrays strip clubs for story telling purposes. Shady people are everywhere, not just in cliche places. With every bad part of the job, there is always the good side of the job.

Unlike most stereotypes, the performers (strippers) are regular people like you and me. The names of the ladies are not going to be featured in this article, due to their need for privacy. One of the ladies loves to have intelligent conversations with all of the patrons that walk through. She doesn't just have the beauty and grace, but she has the intelligence that had her clients keep coming back.

Some girls would make friends with the DJ in order to have their favorite genre of music playing during their pole dance introduction. The ladies used the cash to buy their house, or to put their child in the most expensive private school in the region. Not to mention, it gave one of my ladies a major confidence boost. The stereotypes that involve them all having daddy issues, drug addiction or sex addition is not the case for the majority of them.

Talking with these ladies gave me a different perspective on what it's like to be a performer at a strip club. The stereotypes surrounding these ladies could not have been more wrong. Some of the performers live up to the stereotypes that surround them, but one should not judge a book by it's cover.