After working as dancers for several years, What kind of job they do for remaining life? What percent of dancers take up real jobs or profession like accountant, nursing, law, medical etc
Many dancers are licensed in some version of the cosmetology business (25 percent?).
Automobile sales, Real Estate sales, and Nursing seem to be other pursuits.
I assume most of them do not end up getting a college degree and either work in fields that do not require a college degree or do some kind of 1 or 2 year vocational type training
Once a dancer has been in this business several years, it just becomes harder for her to do anything else. The difference in money is huge comparing stripping to a low-paying civilian job. It's hard to be a full-time student and strip at the same time and the girls that only go to school part time, usually at a junior college, often never finish (a 4 year program, or one that takes 4-5 years if they went full time). Then they often get knocked up once or twice and it becomes even harder for them to make ends meet and get an education.
So what are the options? Cosmetology seems pretty popular. The ones that have been successful for a decent amount of time actually might have a good head for business and some sizeable savings. The small business failure rate is still very high (well over 90% in 5 years). There was a discussion recently about strippers becoming bartenders or even waitresses. Seems like a step down in income, but there really isn't much of a choice if they are no longer able or willing to viably continue stripping.
Some strippers make very good masseuses and that might be something that they could transition into, but that takes education, training and licensing, more than cosmetology. Some might even go into sales.
If a girl really has a good head on her shoulders, i would recommend going into real estate, particularly renting properties. Of course the credit issue is a problem (also very recent discussion) as well as the discipline required to save large amounts of money and the judgement required in finding suitable tenants.
The reality is that many of the girls probably go further in the hole of sexual services/prostitution. It is the oldest profession, but also one that is always in demand, so they can do that for who knows how long. SA, BP and CL make it easier than before to hawk such services. Even that, they can't do forever, so a lot of them might try to find some domestic partner or pimp that would normally be below their standard unless they strike gold and find a suitable lifetime partner.
Below are all the ones I can verify at least one dancer ended up doing after she retired.
Fashion Designer
Fitness Instructor
Dental Hygenist
Nurse
Bartender
Here are a few professions that dancers have mentioned going into
Psychologist
Cosmetology / Hair Dresser
Make up artist for movies.
Sports Medicine / Physical Therapist
Talent / Sports Agent
Paralegal
Lawyer
Landlord
Police Officer
I did not realize a pharmacist averages about $120,000 a year in the US. I looked them up and it takes about 8 years of college. Obviously I must not understand everything they do since it seems like some computer programmers and a few pharmacists could program the multiple combination of drug interactions combined with different medical symptoms and eliminate the need for pharmacists across the nation and kill the need.
Just remember, dancers think what they are doing are real jobs. They think they put up with all kinds of crap in strip clubs to keep doing these jobs. Some of that may be true. However they may not realize how much crap everyone else puts up with doing other jobs. Customers think it's not a real job because they see dancers drinking, smoking, and talking all the time while on the job. Maybe less smoking than in years past.
From a dancers perspective, they spend money on housing, travel, tip outs, late fees in some clubs for showing up late, and sometimes don't even leave with enough money to have earned minimum wage in some clubs. They buy outfits that can cost hundreds of dollars and then deal with old, fat, and ugly people that sometimes are rude, stinky, and obnoxious or arrogant, or even drunk. Then they are told they need to take off their clothes, do this, do that, get on stage, etc, etc. pay the bouncer or club a percentage of each dance, etc, etc. Some might get upset if they heard it wasn't a real job.
From our perspective though, many of our real jobs must suck because bosses and companies like to work all of us long hours with little to no extra pay if on salary while demanding higher and higher performance just to get a standard cost of living pay increase and in many places that do give vacation time, many companies abuse workers by having a culture where they expect workers to work vacation days to achieve desired performance goals. Executives may deny this but they hire supervisors that expect it. Thus in the US, work life in real jobs sucks big time. Average Americans often work long unpaid hours and often are expected to work vacation days even if it's not official company policy. Salary employees are expected in many companies to work extra hours each week, sometimes weekends as well routinely for no extra pay. Then some large companies do cost savings by doing mass layoffs of long term well performing employees who have received pay raises each year who aren't working 60 or 70 hours a week. That's what many of us think is a real job. One that sucks where you work long unpaid hours and you are expected to work vacation days too. A salary should be based on a 40 hour work week, not 60 or 70 in my opinion with goals that can be achieved without putting in lots of extra hours or working vacation days. Working 60 to 70 hours should be considered exceptional performance but in a real job in the US, exceptional long hours have become the standard expectation.
Just found out that my CF, who dances 5 days a week, doesn't work at a beauty salon, but OWNS it. She is also looking to open a second location next year. She also works part time (weekends) for a very successful company based in Philly who's name she shared, but I won't share here. She has told me that she has a lot of money saved up from 12 years of dancing.
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53% lawyers
43% nurses
4% nutrition professors
Automobile sales, Real Estate sales, and Nursing seem to be other pursuits.
Of the girls I know who got out of the stripping game and went on to other careers:
- fitness instructor
- pharmacy tech at a chain grocery store
- elementary school teacher
- webcam girl (pretty much same as stripper)
- a few as high as a LPN, rarely met a stripper turned RN.
Pharmacy technician is a good job.I heard they make around 120k per year
Fwiw: phar techs make minimum wage up to $25/hr with experience, education, and licensing. However, pharmacist start at $120k/yr.
They get 1099s and pay taxes. So, yes.
I'm sure that there's some cash-under-table going on, but it's still a job.
Once a dancer has been in this business several years, it just becomes harder for her to do anything else. The difference in money is huge comparing stripping to a low-paying civilian job. It's hard to be a full-time student and strip at the same time and the girls that only go to school part time, usually at a junior college, often never finish (a 4 year program, or one that takes 4-5 years if they went full time). Then they often get knocked up once or twice and it becomes even harder for them to make ends meet and get an education.
So what are the options? Cosmetology seems pretty popular. The ones that have been successful for a decent amount of time actually might have a good head for business and some sizeable savings. The small business failure rate is still very high (well over 90% in 5 years). There was a discussion recently about strippers becoming bartenders or even waitresses. Seems like a step down in income, but there really isn't much of a choice if they are no longer able or willing to viably continue stripping.
Some strippers make very good masseuses and that might be something that they could transition into, but that takes education, training and licensing, more than cosmetology. Some might even go into sales.
If a girl really has a good head on her shoulders, i would recommend going into real estate, particularly renting properties. Of course the credit issue is a problem (also very recent discussion) as well as the discipline required to save large amounts of money and the judgement required in finding suitable tenants.
The reality is that many of the girls probably go further in the hole of sexual services/prostitution. It is the oldest profession, but also one that is always in demand, so they can do that for who knows how long. SA, BP and CL make it easier than before to hawk such services. Even that, they can't do forever, so a lot of them might try to find some domestic partner or pimp that would normally be below their standard unless they strike gold and find a suitable lifetime partner.
Fashion Designer
Fitness Instructor
Dental Hygenist
Nurse
Bartender
Here are a few professions that dancers have mentioned going into
Psychologist
Cosmetology / Hair Dresser
Make up artist for movies.
Sports Medicine / Physical Therapist
Talent / Sports Agent
Paralegal
Lawyer
Landlord
Police Officer
From our perspective though, many of our real jobs must suck because bosses and companies like to work all of us long hours with little to no extra pay if on salary while demanding higher and higher performance just to get a standard cost of living pay increase and in many places that do give vacation time, many companies abuse workers by having a culture where they expect workers to work vacation days to achieve desired performance goals. Executives may deny this but they hire supervisors that expect it. Thus in the US, work life in real jobs sucks big time. Average Americans often work long unpaid hours and often are expected to work vacation days even if it's not official company policy. Salary employees are expected in many companies to work extra hours each week, sometimes weekends as well routinely for no extra pay. Then some large companies do cost savings by doing mass layoffs of long term well performing employees who have received pay raises each year who aren't working 60 or 70 hours a week. That's what many of us think is a real job. One that sucks where you work long unpaid hours and you are expected to work vacation days too. A salary should be based on a 40 hour work week, not 60 or 70 in my opinion with goals that can be achieved without putting in lots of extra hours or working vacation days. Working 60 to 70 hours should be considered exceptional performance but in a real job in the US, exceptional long hours have become the standard expectation.