Sometimes It’s True…

I was reading Bob Sullivan’s “Red Tape Chronicles” blog on MSNBC.com the other day, and I saw one of his posts about things people are doing to stay alive in the current financial crisis. In this case, it’s a woman in her thirties with a law degree who was laid off after nine years in practice and after failing to find any other employment took a job as a stripper. She’s back in school, working on a new master’s degree, and says that the flexible hours and high pay are making the re-education possible, and as soon as she can get a new job she intends to quit stripping, leave town, and never speak of this experience again. The lawyer-turned-stripper says that while the experience has generally been unpleasant – and has occasionally been degrading, frightening, or completely disgusting – it has also taught her some important lessons about people, life, and reversal of fortune. I was immediately transported back to another time, in another place…

In January of 1987 I took a job as a resume writer – since that was still a thing at the time – with the American Resume and Writing Service in Los Angeles. At the time, there were five or six national companies that wrote resumes for people, but ARWS was the biggest, as well as the one that happened to be hiring when I needed a job to pay the bills. During the next few years I held a number of management positions with the company, but it’s the days as an office manager and writer that stick with me – and that led directly to my current occupations of manager, consultant, and teacher. I wrote resumes for a huge cross-section of people, ranging from minimum-wage high school kids to executives making more than I ever expect to; from tour managers for major musical acts to college professors, and at least one Navy SEAL. And one of my clients was a medical doctor who had paid her way through college and medical school as a stripper…

Now, I realize it’s an old story. I have been told several times over the years since (by police officers of my acquaintance, among others) that just about every stripper will claim to be dancing in order to pay for some much more reputable pursuit, and will insist that as soon as she achieves that goal she’s leaving the club and never coming back. It’s much the same rationale that waiters in my home town give – that they’re only waiting tables until they can get a full-time acting gig; or that writers will give you about only driving that cab (or, in my case, writing other people’s resumes) until they manage to sell that screenplay (or, in my case, novel). I’ve delivered pizza for a living, sold several things that I really wish I’d never heard of, and worked 25-hour shifts managing a drug store; I can tell you from extensive personal experience that ANYTHING you do to survive that doesn’t unnecessarily harm another human being isn’t wrong – and that, all things considered, there are worse ways to make a living than taking your clothes off in public…

My point is that my resume client really had gone to medical school, and had been in practice as an MD for a number of years when we first met. Unless she had paid her way through medical school in some fashion that would be MORE embarrassing to tell a total stranger about than being a stripper, I have no reason to believe that her story wasn’t true. This proves that some people who become strippers may be kidding themselves (or you) about funding a new career and a better life, at least some of them aren’t – which means that the woman Sullivan spoke to might be telling the truth, too. It’s something to think about the next time you’re about to call shenanigans on a story that you’ve heard a thousand times before…

Sometimes, it’s true…