About three months ago, my friend Diamond and I went out with his friend for an audition at a Florida strip club. I was nervous – the promoter clarified that the women who were not watching were immediately sent home. Looking up means the nails, hair and makeup are done, the bottom parts of the chin and bikini have been cleaned and each one is wearing two pretty clothes.
When we got to the back room, my anxiety disappeared when I looked in the mirror. I saw a beautiful black woman looking at me. I wore a pair of red shorts, ran afro, redone lip gloss, and waited my turn for the audience.
The dance director, a woman I had known before, Cheryl, told me to stand against the wall and take pictures of me from different angles. When he finished, he told me he would let me know what the boss was thinking.
Soon, Sheryl came up to me and said, “I’m sorry, but Boss says you can’t dance tonight because you haven’t had your hair done yet.”
“Oh ?! My hair is done! ”I said.
“The boss didn’t like it. “You can come back when it’s over,” he said.
The heart fell on the stomach. I’m confused. This is a black club. If I have to accept In one place It should be with my afro Here.
I looked around and noticed that all the other black girls had straight hair, had long braids, or wore wigs, and the only women with natural hair were those with loose curly patterns, 1a-3b.
“I was driving with my friends. An hour away from home – did I try to change my hair? I gasped.
A few years ago, I had my hair done at the Bronx, a Dominican salon. The stylist mixed the perm solution with the conditioner, which came out a week after I washed my hair. Once grown again, I grew my hair like in a garden: I gently touched it from above and then went to the roots. In this experience I learned that my hair was wonderful, lovely and worthy of protection and stood next to someone who would say no. There was some resentment I felt when I told Sheryl that I was going to try to change my hair.
I sat on a heavy rock in my stomach and was embarrassed – not at the stigmatization of sex work, not at standing in the hallway in prominent clothes, but at the embarrassment that arose when I had to change – to fit – to satisfy the Eurocentric modality of beauty . They say you can be black, but not that black – that you can wear your natural hair, but only if there is a loose curl pattern and not a 4b Afro diaper that hard to come out of my scalp.
I took a deep breath and went to the back of the room. There was the smell of burnt iron hair, the scent of Victoria’s Secret, of Chanel and the pink mist that mingled with the scent of the feet. A six -inch stiletto was scattered throughout the room and other women approached the audience. They have natural hair with horns and are preparing to weave the lace front. Without wigs with the kind of hair that if you pass it over your fingers, they will stay – they need to see each other outside the club.
The diamond stopped in one corner and wrapped its edges with circles that were perfectly solid. Her long 20mm lashes flutter when she asks me how my audience is doing.
“She doesn’t like my hair,” I told her.
“Yeah, it sounds good – I was surprised they let me dance with my hair,” she said. Her hair was tied in a box.
“Without the wigs, they have the kind of hair that if you put your fingers in it – they should have met outside the club.
I gasped, I grabbed an Eco Style gel, edge check, screensaver and pen that I would use a makeshift comb and went to the bathroom. The girl, whom I later identified as Raven, looked closely at the mirror while wiping the powder off her face. It has a long blonde and brown Senegalese twist hanging down Gracefully in the back. She wore a Zaffre with two pieces of rhinestones outlined on the bralette and panty. I turned on the cold water tap and put my head in the sink. I didn’t look at Raven, but I could feel his gaze on me as I approached, my hair wet, curly and soft. I grabbed a towel so the water wouldn’t fall on my face.
Raven put his belongings in a brown sports bag and said, “Your hair is beautiful,” as he prepared to leave the room. I laughed sarcastically and said, “Yes, they said I had to change my hair because they didn’t want to.”
“I’m not surprised,” he replied. “I was surprised that no one said anything about my hair. That’s how black women are ”.
“They can go to hell,” I said.
He turned to leave, looked back and said, “But good luck.”
When I tell this story to other dancers, colleagues, colleagues and friends, they give me the same answer as Diamond and Raven: it has been and always will be. If you want to make money, you don’t have to introduce yourself Very dark. Even a black club is not a guaranteed exception to this rule.
I recently met Siobhan Brooks “Unequal Lust: Race and Erotic Capital in the Nudity Industry Explore racial stratification and erotic capital in strip clubs using ethnography. Brooks defined erotic capital as “based on what is considered desirable by existing beauty standards in the United States, which usually includes a person who is white, young and/or has [desirable] The body (although what is considered desirable changes over time).
Brooks, like Diamond and Raven, concludes that “racism against women of color is considered normal in this industry because … the sex industry is based on ideas of consumer tastes and preferences.” And these ideas of customer taste – who prefers and who doesn’t – don’t come from club owners, but instead reflect systematic anti -black beauty constructions.
Dancers – sex workers – especially blacks in this industry, are fighting many battles at once. Not only are we faced with embarrassment and judgment by our colleagues and family members, but we are also constantly discriminated against, which in turn affects the amount of money we can earn. It is common for black women to be accepted into clubs because of their face, body type, hair, or other factors associated with being black. One of my good friends told me that he auditioned for eight clubs in one night and he hired none because it was “too dark”.
On my audience night at this Florida club, I came out of the bathroom and looked for Cheryl – this time my afro was gentle with two contiguous ribbons and a soft forward spiral ring. I found out that Sheryl and I were auditioning again. A few minutes later, he returned from talking to his boss holding a large contract. “Sign here. Original there. Date here,” he told me. “And I did. I swallowed my pride and lifted my heels ”.
Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of the persons mentioned in this section.
Penda Smith is an open genre creative writer interested in rescuing women of color through the use of erotic resistance. He is a sophomore candidate for MFA at Louisiana State University, a Watering Hole Fellow, and a future Cave Canem staff member. He loves his cat, Zoro Neil Houston. His work has been featured or published in Voicemail Poems, Root Work Journal, Interim Poetics, and more.
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