First post: so we begin here.

I started stripping a little over five years ago in a shitty Baltimore club. I needed the money. I quit a year and a half later to focus on graduating from college. I didn't miss it; I was burnt out. Three years later, I moved to Atlanta for graduate school, and somehow felt the inexorable draw of the stage and the pole again. In April of 2011, I found myself at the Dekalb County Police Department. $300 later and a permit in hand, I was officially reborn as Elena.

I recently picked up Lily Burana's memoir of her days as a dancing girl, "Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America". Then Diablo Cody's "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper". I'm not writing this to give a different view - Burana and Cody both get it exactly right. I do think they were a bit hypercritical in their approach though - sometimes it is okay to enjoy a job in the sex industry. They seem to constantly feel the need to justify why they, as sheltered and middle class "good girls," had "gone bad." (Maybe not - I get the feeling that neither of them regret dancing... I suppose it's more for the audiences' benefit.) This is not that kind of blog. Or maybe it will be, I don't know. We'll see where this goes.