Why aren't they starlets?

20 comments

• Gi

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  18 years ago

  Hello.... U are reading a soon to be staret right now!!!
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  ... hicktown indeed ... :P ...
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Met many, dated some, married two, still kow a few, see them all over town. Eat your hicktown heart out. Yes, I seem to recall an earlier discussion.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  Chandler -- ah, understood. You're not suggesting that your current social / work circle has women of that level of attractiveness, but simply that in your history you met some. Welll, either way, I'm still looking. I know a few -- should have asked every single one of 'em for a date, live and learn -- but mostly, I'd have to say, the "could be a starlet" quotient isn't filled by my work / social circles at all. But at a club, it is, to a much greater extent. Haven't we already had that discussion? :P
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Minnow, the question was about a different kind of modelling and acting. A closer athletic analogy might be why more big, strong guys aren't in the NFL, except the answer to that is that they are.
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Hmm. I'm not sure what I meant with that analogy. Anyway, Book Guy, if it makes any difference, I should clarify that there are/were more non-strippers I have *known* over the years, especially when we were all younger - not that I'm currently surrounded by should-be startlets.
• minnow

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  18 years ago

  BG: Asking that ? is a bit like asking why no local high school jocks don't become All Pro in their sport 6-10 yrs later. Several house dancers have modelled, done mag spreads, done porn, etc, but not enough to support full time. I've encountered verifiable instances of Tampa, LA, ESL, and Indy house dancers doing variations of some or all of the above activities with some degree of success.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  I don't know ANY women who aren't strippers. At all. :) No, seriously, I don't really know any women (aside from the strippers whom I "know" only in the club) who could be Hollywood stars. The circle of my acquaintances doesn't include anyone that physically appealing. Or, I'm misled by makeup and silver-screen magic into thinking they're more beautiful than the Uglies who surround me ...
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Success in acting is more about expressiveness than good looks. To communicate onscreen for movies or TV, an actor must embody some recognizable character that the camera captures and instantly registers with audiences. Good looks, talent, motivation and luck can all put them in a position to show their stuff, but the true stuff of stardom is an innate quality that's separate from those factors. Successful models have a similar quality, except that good looks of a particular kind are more important, and the level of communication to make clothes look desirable is more basic. Stripping has as many differences as commonalities with either acting or modeling. I know more women who aren't strippers who I think could be actresses or models.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  I think Ms. Aniston did have those "connections." Mostly they worked their way out by means of intense childhood training -- attending the arts/drama high school in NYC, IIRC, having a pop around who could offer pointers, and just consistnetly encourage and direct. However, I have a different point of view from FONDL about the idea that dedication leads to success. I think dedication is just one of the many necessary ingredients. I do think there are plenty of half-successful people who have accepted a certain level and arent' striving for higher, as FONDL asserts. But I also think there are an awful lot of dedicated failures out there, people who lack other certain criteria -- connections, or luck, or access to capital, or experience, or childhood training, or general education, or specific education, or whatever it was that this particular person in his or her particular situation would have required at the time. So, more accurately, dedication may be a sine qua non, but NOT the sole necessary condition. I think the "American myth," that anyone can make it to the big leagues, as long as he's completely dedicated and "really wants it," is in fact a lie that leads to a great deal of unhappiness. First, it implies that ALL of us who aren't actually kingpins and multimillionaires are somehow "slacking off" and denying ourselves and our country our maxiumum effort. Second, it suggests that many of the super-successful are "better people" than ourselves, when in fact they're just luckier in their circumstances or preparation. Third, it exhorts us to increase negative self-image, pounding at ourselves to do more more more of the same thing that we're already doing, even when that more might actually be counter-productive, standing in the way of us finding something different and more effective, or stepping back and re-thinking the general premises. It's messianic fervor, the American religion of (as learned professor Bloom puts it) enthusiasm. The American "enthusiasm" construct is not enough. To JUST "want it really bad" is how plenty of sports teams fail. Not knowing the opposition's tactics, not having a key player in the right location, you name it. And then when you don't win but you DO "want it really bad," you just go out there beating yourself up for not wanting it enough, and you fail again. In fact, that rhythm sounds very much like the current administration's policy in Iraq. "Well, we're up against a difficulty. Therefore, we must CONTINUE THE SAME THING but BELIEVE IN OURSELVES MORE." It doesn't necessarily work. Many American successes aren't Horatio Alger stories. Bill Gates had the ear of the IBM board because his mother was on it. And had the entrepeneurial experience because his family funded six of his million-dollar failures for him before he founded Microsoft. Most of us could have been just as dedicated, and still sleeping on the floor in the midst of bankruptcy hearings for our FIRST failure. Andrew Carnegie advanced entirely on the basis of what would now be illegal insider trading. Many movie stars are from screen families (thus suggesting, as an aside, that the "talent" necessary for success in Hollywood is actually rather simple to come by, and it's much more about connections or training or just physical appeal than about ability in the movie business). Most American millionaires have lower-class understanding about work ethic and saving (living below their means), and own their own business. Usually a business with a minor light-industrial or technological infrastructure: dry cleaning, dump truck fill dirt, car repair, software design, etc. The next most lucrative niche in America, as far as I can tell, is the highly paid professional positions -- lawyer, doctor, certain types of consultants and engineers. But that second class tends to spend as much as they make, thus having high income but low net worth, unlike the dry cleaners and plumbers. I don't know why I go off on this subject. Much of my life I've been very successful at "dedicated failure" -- putting in a lot of effort, often much more than the people around me, but not reaping the rewards. Maybe I'm just still looking for a way to success, whether it's "dedicated success" or not. I certainly sympathize with the strippers in question, since I see them in a similar circumstance. Soon enough, many will be saying to themselves, "Hey, wait, I DID WHAT I THOUGHT WOULD WORK but I ended up failing instead of succeeding. I was led down the garden path." Some will be able to point to their mistakes. "Well, I went into stripping. That was dumb. I need a career." Or, "well, I took drugs. Lots of drugs. How much damn money and life energy did I waste on addictions?" But what about the clean bright ones, or other people who aren't in stripping but end up with nowhere to turn except "you gotta want it more"? What if they ALREADY want it more?
• FONDL

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  18 years ago

  I think the major reason that most people in any field don't become super successful is that they don't want it enough. How many of us are willing to devote every moment of every day striving for success in our field? The one person I've know who became truly successful did exactly that. Most of us value balance in our lives and are happy just to be moderately successful in our careers. We aren't interested in making the kind of sacrifices that success requires. I don't think strippers are any different in that regard.
• DandyDan

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  18 years ago

  Just looking at the original post, all I can say is Jennifer Aniston got lucky because her dad, John, was on Days of Our Lives, according to Wikipedia, so she had insider connections, which many strippers do not. Often its not what you know, it's who you know.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  JC2003: indeed, the "full degree" of success is quite high-end and difficult. I didn't mean to suggest it wasn't. Maybe I should have titled the thread as, "Why aren't they TRYING TO BE starlets?" That might have made the answer a bit clearer to me in the first place. :)
• lopaw

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  18 years ago

  I know of at least a couple dozen girls stripping here in L.A. at the "high end" clubs that are trying to make it as actresses. Most (if not all) are stunning, but I doubt if they have the tenacity to succeed in Hollywood.
• JC2003

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  18 years ago

  Succeeding in Hollywood is a lot more difficult than you think, Book Guy. It's on par with succeeding as a professional athlette. Even if you are gifted with natural talent and work extremely hard to be as good as you can be, you can still fail. And if you aren't and don't, the best you can hope for is the fortune of having 15 minutes of fame and the rest of your life to wish you were that famous.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  These are some interesting points. I think girls "go for" that level of success for a variety of reasons. Another that hasn't come up yet, to me, really hits home. One reason some very attractive women aren't actually striving for high-level accomplishment, is that they under-value themselves. Yeah, I know, strippers are arrogant and haughty to guys in the club. But that's just the persona they put on for the night's performance. In "real life" they think of themselves as failures, losers, or just "li'l ol me" who doesn't DESERVE more. So they don't strive for more. Add to that, the fact that a boyfriend or pusher is regularly cutting down their self-esteem, and the fact that the only positive reinforcement that they get about their desirability is somehow based on male ogling for money at the club, and you end up with a typical recipe for lower-class assumptions about success being "for other people." This same thing happened to me, in a strangely chronological way, and this is why I wanted to write about it here on the TUSCL board. I always thought I was a go-getter, destined for success, someone who was making a lot of the right moves. I made sure I didn't do drugs, or waste time in college, or get involved in something I wouldn't be able to really hit Olympic level at. For example, though I enjoy classical music, I knew I would never perform Carnegie Hall on the violin largely because my parents didn't give me violin lessons when I was seven years old, so I didn't take up violin at college. Then, however, when I got OUT of college, I was surprised to find that all my preparation went for naught. I had wanted to be involved in Broadway drama -- well, proper prep for that was to take dance lessons. Dance? I'm not a dancer! I had wanted to be involved in financial success -- well, proper prep for that was to NOT major in English. Not English? But it's TOO LATE to change my major. Etc. Then, ten years later, I AGAIN found out, PSYCH the rules have reversed again. It DIDN'T MATTER if you were trained in dance or not! Not matter? But I wasted ten years thinking I wasn't wanted! See how the "rules" of the game change each step of the way? Well, I think a lot of dancers have had similar experiences. They were taught at the hands of their mothers and sisters that controlling men was a very very important thing for a woman to be skilled at. So they spent a lot of time paying attention to how to hook up with a powerful, alpha-style man. Then, it turned out, this just invited pimps pushers and freaks into their lives. Abusive jerk-types. So, they decided they didn't want to be controlled by men, and instead they worked on living as "independent" of social restrictions as possible. By which token, they didn't end up with independence in truth, they just ended up being society's rejects because they were living too close to the edge. Then, the rules changed AGAIN ... I sympathize with this. You try to do what other people expect, you try to play by their rules, but eventually you figure out that CHANGING THE RULES IN ORDER TO FOOL YOU is exactly the game which they're playing. I have an instinctive "link" with strippers because they feel cheated the same way that I do. I know, I"m not REALLYL cheated, I just FEEL cheated. But that's the same as strippers. They'll figure out, when they're forty and saggy, that they SHOULD HAVE tried to be a starlet when they were twenty. But back then, they were too busy trying to impress the men in their immediate circle. And when they finally get the gumption to go run off to Hollywood and audition, they'll be, well, I already said it, forty and saggy. The world really rewards those of us who are ahead of the curve, living a little too soon. I remember when I was away at soccer camp during the last year of high school or first year of college. Some older dude was being macho, passing around a Playboy. I was surprised to find out that the centerfold was from my mother's home town in Florida. This made her suddenly seem "real" to me, somehow not just a pretty picture. Then, something really shocked me. Another one of the dudes pointed out she was 19 years old. I was busy lusting after the lame-ass high school girls in my social circle who didn't really know how to put on make up, and who still had "childishly girlish" notions of what men want, what work is like, how to have ambition, how to function in the REAL real world. But this girl in Playboy was THEIR AGE and therefore EXACTLY THE SAME as the girls in my social circle. I should have learned the lesson that it was time, right then and there, for me to be ambitious and reject society's rules about how you're supposed to "fail in order to fit in." But instead I followed the rules, not realizing that those rules were exhorting me to fail. I just thought I was supposed to try to fit in somehow, get others' approval. In fact, I even thought that the Playboy bunny was somehow (distantly) accessible, if ONLY I'd get enough approval from other people -- good job, work, money, status, fame, power. Sure, I wanted her; what I didn't know, what that following the rules was the one thing that wouldn't get me access to her.
• FONDL

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  18 years ago

  I've known several strippers who were trying to make it as models but weren't making enough at modeling to do it full time. Yeah I know many of them say that but sometimes it's actually true - one girl showed me a bunch of professional photos, another told me about the ads she had done for some local stores. It's not that easy and they sometimes get taken advantage of worse than they do when stripping. One of them had moved a long distance because she was being stalked by her agent.
• Mickkeyc

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  18 years ago

  Good point, all I hear form ome of them is how hard work is. Sure it is hard - so is my job - but I don't complain to them about it every time I see them.
• Jpac73

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  18 years ago

  Maybe they aren't motivated to do any of the things you mentioned. You have to have some kind of motivation to do anything in life.
• Mickkeyc

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  18 years ago

  Good looking women are a dime a dozen. And a dancer can look great in a club due to the lighting, makeup, and sexy attire. In real life street clothes, a strip club 8 can be a real life 7 (or 6). What makes strippers attractive is the fantasy that they are attainable, want you, and you are in charge. Its an antidote to real life!