Strippers have launched a bare-all campaign hitting back against a council decision which they say undermines their ‘right to choose’ to strip.
Three weeks have passed since the Platinum Lounge was stripped of its sex establishment licence after opponents argued the surrounding neighbourhood had become more residential.
But now dancers at the club, on Bridge Street Row, are stripping off in protest against the ‘demeaning’ decision which many of the women say has left their livelihoods hanging in the balance.
The campaign, featuring a naked woman holding placards reading ‘my body, my choice’, hits back against comments made in the Chronicle by long-term opponent Debbie Lomas – co-owner of the Rainforest shop on Watergate Row – that the council’s decision was a ‘good day for women’ after a long fight to reveal the ‘darker side of the industry’.
But leader of the dancers’ campaign a 23-year-old who goes by the stage name of ‘Courtney’, said during four years working as a stripper the Chester club had been the ‘tamest, safest, strictest, cleanest’ and most ‘discreet’ on the circuit, insisting the women ‘hadn’t been hurting anyone’.
“The women that I have spoken to have all expressed sheer desperation in not knowing what to do now that their source of income has been taken from them,” said Courtney.
“We were not flaunting it in public, in fact unless you knew what you were looking for (the club), you wouldn’t have a hope in finding it as it was that discreet and looked like a bar/casino from the outside.
“We were not hurting anybody and to whoever believes that we are degrading ourselves and exploiting selves, maybe we are but that is still our choice.”
Courtney said many of the dancers would struggle to support their children, pay their rents or university tuition fees now the club could only put on 11 events a year.
“Ms Lomas talks of ‘our fight’ and yet the only people fighting now are the ones who have no job anymore. The ones who will have to find a new way to feed their children and to pay their bills.”
The dancers hope the campaign, dubbed ‘If you’re tippin’ I’m strippin’’, will unite dancers and destroy prejudices, showing the world that they are free to choose what to do with their own bodies.
“We are human beings with the freedom to choose. We are not the drug addicted hookers that many ignorant people believe us to be,” said Courtney*, who said the name may sound demeaning but that was how the dancers were being made to feel by the council and opponents to the club.
“I feel as though I’ve travelled back in time. It’s such a shame.
“We, as strippers, reserve the right to work without fear of judgement or prejudice and we will not stop fighting until we get what is ours. Our freedom and our right to choose.”
