‘I worked as a dancer at a strip club’ A former Russian stripper tells Holod Media about her struggles in a heavily stigmatized industry

Angelina, a 22-year-old from Kursk, worked as a dancer at a strip club for about a year. Her time as a stripper was not easy. In that year, she started using drugs and faced harassment and hostility from the club’s very patrons and even her boyfriend. Angelina told Holod Media journalist Marina Kiryunina that her life improved after she quit stripping. She also described the challenges and stereotypes she encountered at work, how it affected her relationships, and how a flood of Russian soldiers to Kursk since the invasion of Ukraine has led to rowdier patrons. Meduza translated Angelina’s story into English.

I ended up at the strip club by chance when I was 18. I was in college and had found a temp job as a cashier at a pizzeria. My family isn’t poor, but I didn’t have enough of my own pocket money. They bought me the stuff I needed, but I wanted to earn a bit extra myself.

One day, I came across a job posting for hostess and waitress positions at the strip club chain Zazhigalka [Lighter]. When I showed up for the interview, they told me, “This is all pretty complex — there’s a lot to learn, and it’s a huge responsibility. Why don’t you try working as a dancer instead?” I thought about it and decided I wanted to give it a try.

The dancing was something between striptease and classic pole dancing. The stage had a standard pole without a spinning platform at the base, but you could place your foot near the pole to spin. We were trained by a girl who worked as a dancer and also taught newcomers. I picked it up fairly quickly, got into it, and learned to do some pretty simple tricks.

The girls perform in lingerie, and a standard set lasts two tracks. For the first song, we danced in panties and a bra. During the second song, the bra would come off. Sometimes, there was full nudity as part of promotional events. On certain days, usually weekends, there was a full-strip show where the girls would undress completely on stage or in the private rooms.

Sex work in Russia

‘Mom, is it true?’ What happens when children find out their mother is a sex worker. A report from Russia’s heartland.

4 years ago

Sex work in Russia

‘Mom, is it true?’ What happens when children find out their mother is a sex worker. A report from Russia’s heartland.

4 years ago

‘You’re all whores here’

At first, I enjoyed the act of dancing itself, but it eventually became mentally exhausting to work in that environment. The girls were allowed to drink on the job, so a lot of us were drinking. I drank heavily, too, and sometimes I just broke down. I did all kinds of dumb stuff when I was drunk, and I’d even yell at the guests sometimes.

I generally got along well with the staff since I didn’t want to deal with extra stress or argue with anyone, but some of the patrons were just awful. We’d get guys who’d come in and say, “You’re all whores here.” Most of the guests were drunk. They’d come at us, thinking it’s okay to grope a woman if she’s undressing on stage, even though we told them no. Nobody made us cater to guests like that, but it still sucked.

Dancers go up to the guests themselves to offer private dances or a special show. We had a service menu and earned extra money for specific acts. So, we had to approach the guests, introduce ourselves, chat a bit, and suggest a dance. Some guests would call us over on their own, especially if they liked a particular girl.

Some guests treated us like sex workers and asked us to leave with them. Some came in assuming the club was a brothel, thinking any girl would go with them for 5,000 rubles [$50]. And, yeah, some girls did leave with guests. Guys would give the club 10,000 rubles [$100] and then pay the girl whatever she asked. As far as I know, nobody charged less than 20,000 rubles [$200].

It wasn’t always about sex work when someone left with a guy. My friends from the club and I would sometimes go out with guests just to hang out. They would pay the club, take us out, and we’d just talk and drink together. But that kind of decency from men was pretty rare. Most came to the club expecting to get what they really wanted.

Sometimes, we’d finish our shifts and find men waiting for us outside, calling out: “Come with us, come on, let’s go.” It was uncomfortable, but we’d order a taxi and leave to get away from them. Besides, the security staff stayed until the club closed, so we could call them whenever anyone was too aggressive or in our face.

A guy just dropped his pants and started jerking off

I had a lot of really disturbing experiences. We got men who’d come in, they’d sit down and talk, and then at some point, one of them would pull out his phone and start showing me photos and say, “This is my wife. Here’s my daughter. So, want to come over and give me a blowjob?” It was really weird.

There were fights at the club constantly. Once, I walked into the bathroom, opened the door, and a glass bottle flew past my head. When I stepped back out, there was some massive brawl, and guests were also punching the DJ. The guards were trying to break it up, and one of the dancers had joined the fight because she knew some of the guys. I guess she was trying to defend them and got roped in. So, yeah, it was a pretty unhealthy atmosphere.

Once, a fairly well-known coach of a local children’s sports team came to the club. At one point, he just dropped his pants and started jerking off. That wasn’t allowed, and we told him that we’d throw him out. “I’m allowed,” he answered. Another time, there was a guest who shat himself on the couch.

Drugs were banned in the club, but some girls did them with guests in the karaoke area. About five months after I started, we got this other girl who didn’t use anything at first. But she was so fried by the end that she wore only stockings because her legs had gone completely blue and purple. They fired her recently because she was in such bad shape during her shifts. I don’t know where she ended up, but it’s a very sad story.

‘You whore,’ said my boyfriend, who lived off me

My friends and family had mixed reactions to my job. I told my family that I was working as a waitress. But my mom is the deputy head doctor at a hospital, and one of her patients saw me at the club. So, my family knew. My grandmother begged me to quit, but my parents didn’t say anything. They always thought I was a bit of an oddball and were surprisingly chill.

I was studying for a degree in technology at an agricultural college, and my classmates would whisper about me and giggle. I think it was mostly envy: thanks to the job, I always had a good amount of money.

My boyfriend at the time would say things like, “You’re all whores there, and you’re no different from the others.” We started dating when I was 17. I took the job after I turned 18, when we’d been together for almost a year. At first, he didn’t mind, but he’d say things like the club was nothing but whores, filth, and drugs. He wasn’t entirely wrong about the atmosphere, but he’d humiliate me.

We fought about it, but I was also giving him money and buying him expensive things. He’d come over and eat food that I bought, that my parents cooked. He didn’t work, but most chores somehow fell on me. He knew exactly how I earned that money, but it didn’t stop him from picking on me.

I started having breakdowns because of the constant emotional stress. We fought all the time, really badly. And then I found out that he was cheating on me. He forgot to lock his phone and fell asleep. I saw a notification from some girl and couldn’t resist checking their messages. This girl had texted him: “It’s so amazing that you were my first.”

I thought, “This is a nightmare!” I woke him up and showed him the texts. He looked at me and said, “So what? Like you have anywhere else to go.” And at the time, I really was stuck. My job was so emotionally draining that I didn’t have the strength to leave the relationship.

But three or four months before I quit, I ran into an old friend, and something sparked between us. For a while, I was juggling two guys while still working. On top of that, I stupidly started using drugs. In my emotional state, I lost my grip on reality. While spending time with the new guy, I realized it was possible to have a healthy relationship, to live another way, and that I needed to pull myself out of all this.

Working at the club made it much easier to start doing drugs. There were about 30 girls working there, and half of us were using. A lot of guests were using, too. There was a hotel near the club, and the owner was also a dealer. He often hung out at the club and invited girls over, offering them drugs.

This hotel owner also got me hooked on drugs. I thought nothing would happen if I tried it just once. And nothing did happen the first time, but I liked it. I told myself I’d only use just once a month. Then I decided: no more than once every two weeks. I first tried drugs in the winter, after New Year’s. By the summer, I was using once a week or more.

All the girls I worked with seemed to have something rough going on personally. Almost nobody was in a stable relationship. A few girls were single mothers, and many used drugs. On top of that, the job takes a heavy emotional toll. Some were in abusive relationships, and others just couldn’t seem to make anything work. The job probably contributed here because men have trouble accepting it, but nobody was in a steady, healthy, or normal relationship.

I’m not ashamed that I worked there

Honestly, I don’t know how I managed to last so long at that job. I didn’t want to go up to anyone or do the private dances for extra money. I adjusted, more or less, because I drank when I was there. Actually, I was one of the top earners. Zazhigalka is a nationwide chain, and I was in the top even nationally. But I always blew my money on random crap, and I was really depressed all the time. The atmosphere at the club did nothing to help me get centered.

There were girls who managed the job without trouble. Some of them didn’t even drink. But they’d been there a long time, and I guess they’d gotten used to it. I just couldn’t settle in and embrace it like that. I always knew it wasn’t for me.

I wasn’t ashamed about the work itself, but I didn’t know why I was doing it when I could be doing something else. At the time, though, I had no idea what else I could do or what I really wanted. I wasn’t getting anything out of my coursework, either.

I never got a depression diagnosis, but it felt something like that. I completely lost myself as a person. I couldn’t pull myself together or figure out who I was until I left the club. I never turned to psychologists or therapists for help. (It didn’t even occur to me that it was an option.) But as soon as I quit, I immediately felt so much better.

Things could get even worse for strippers

I think working at a strip club is still heavily stigmatized. A friend of mine works as a stripper, and there was this time we went out to a karaoke bar with a guy I know. When he found out where she works, he started asking her to come home with him, saying, “Why don’t you come dance for me? Why not? Come on, let’s work something out.”

Because of the nature of these establishments, many people assume a woman is “available” if she works there. Unfortunately, this attitude is unlikely to change in Russia anytime soon. Working at a strip club might not be full-on sex work (it’s closer to erotic entertainment), but sex is deeply stigmatized in Russian society, even if the topic isn’t outright taboo. And with the push for “traditional values,” things could get even worse.

I started stripping in 2020. I think people were more relaxed about it back then. Kursk is a border city, and now we have a lot of soldiers. My friends say many of these guys come to the club specifically looking to pick up a girl. But you’d think they’d just hire a prostitute and leave the dancers alone. I don’t support prostitution, but if your goal is to find someone for sex, you should probably go looking somewhere else, not at a strip club.

I moved on from dancing and took up boxing. I go to the gym, and I’m training to qualify as a Master of Sports in bench pressing. As for that guy I started dating before quitting the club — we broke up a long time ago. Later, I met another guy and we were married for a year and a half, but the relationship didn’t work out, and we divorced. That didn’t have anything to do with my old job, though. We just had our differences. 

Today, I don’t hesitate to tell people where I worked and what I did there. I don’t see the point in hiding it. If someone has an issue with my past, it’s best to get it out in the open so there aren’t issues later. My past job didn’t affect my marriage at all, and my husband never brought it up.

If you work at a strip club or somewhere like that and people don’t understand why you do it, and they judge you, you might think twice about whether it’s the right path for you. Not because they’re judging you, but just for your own peace of mind. But if you’re happy with what you’re doing and feel good about it, you can tell all those haters to get lost.