I am plastic, fantastic porn. I lie on my back in the middle of the stage, watching myself in the mirror on the ceiling. I have no idea why there’s a mirror on the ceiling; it’s recessed behind the stage lights, out of the sight line of people sitting at the stage. I am a voyeur, spying on myself.
On my back my hipbones jut, pulling taut the fabric of my red T-bar, creating a seductive cave of shadow over my pubis. Like so many things in this business, one can almost see the forbidden. The T-bar is much smaller than the bikini I wear in the sun, and thus my crotch and breasts glow paler than my golden skin.
“You’re beautiful,” the man sitting at stage says.
“Thank you,” I reply.
It’s rote now, this acknowledgment of admiration. I hardly notice.
Girls in American society suffer a frightening loss of self-esteem at puberty, and I had been no different. It didn’t help that I lived in a small town with small minds. In middle school I became the target of intense bullying. It got so bad that my parents moved temporarily so that I could change schools. The hit on my self-worth felt permanent.
In the mirror I watch the lights play across my body: red, blue, a pulse of green. My blond hair, splayed out in curls on the black Formica of the stage, looks serpentine, Medusa-like.
High school and college helped tremendously. I had a series of friends and romantic partners who helped me repair myself, rebuild. Stripping completed that process.
Real women who strip are not what is found on television or in the movies. Over the course of my career, I worked with women of all shapes and sizes and colors. Girls with bad skin perfected makeup to rival Hollywood artists. Girls with stretch marks wore G-strings that came up higher, hiding the imperfection. We employed numerous tricks to conform to the ideal beauty standards, but the veneration of countless customers is what really did the trick for me. The flashing lights of the stage did not entirely hide imperfections of the skin, thick thighs, boney feet. The customers who plied us with cash and compliments recognized our humanity and adored us anyway.
I worked with two women, Celeste and Trinity, who had very similar body types. Both were white, thin, and small breasted. Celeste was a brunette and Trinity a blond, but otherwise they looked quite a bit alike. Trinity had a son and the impact that the pregnancy had on her body caused her no small amount of anxiety. She worried about her small breasts: that they weren’t good enough. The stretch marks on her belly did not tan to the same golden as the rest of her skin.
Celeste had no such anxieties. She loved referring to her “mosquito bites” and would pinch her nipples to make them stand up proudly. She had stretch marks along her thighs, caused by a sudden growth spurt during puberty, and she joked about having them tattooed in, like tiger stripes.
These two girls were equally popular. They both had regulars and made good money. But Trinity had low self-esteem while Celeste did not.
Trinity and I share a regular so the two of us often find ourselves together. Our regular, a mild-mannered bachelor for life, brings us dinner every Wednesday and the conversation often strays into the personal. Trinity confides in the two of us that another of her regulars had offered to pay for breast augmentation.
“What?” I exclaim. “You can’t do that!” The idea of a man paying to alter my body horrifies me on a visceral level. It feels like ownership, invasive and controlling.
“You’re perfect the way you are,” Paul agrees without hesitation. “Big boobs aren’t everything.”
Trinity looks taken aback. She’s expecting us to congratulate her, to be pleased that one of her regulars cared for her enough to drop this kind of cash for her happiness.
“I’ve always wanted bigger boobs,” she explains. “I don’t feel like a woman. I feel like a little girl.”
“Um, I think you’re all woman,” Paul offers.
“Look at Celeste,” I venture. “I don’t think she feels like a little girl.” I point to the stage where Celeste lay on her back with her legs wrapped around a customer’s shoulders, her crotch, covered in a thin layer of tropical fabric that glowed in the black lights, inches from his face. He says something, grinning, and she laughs, her head thrown back.
“She hasn’t had a kid,” Trinity retorts.
“So?” I shoot back. “The only reason anyone knows that you have a kid is because you tell everyone!”
She looks at me, solemn. “You wouldn’t understand.” Her gaze drops to my chest, the swelling rise of my breasts under a black bikini top.
“It’s not like I’m huge!” I retort.
“But your clothes fit.”
“What are you talking about?”
She gestures at her own flat chest. “Everything just hangs on me.”
“So what?” I can’t seem to say anything else. I just cannot understand. “You always look adorable. Athletic.”
She crosses her arms self-consciously. “I’m getting them.”
Paul and I look at one another helplessly.
“They’re gonna look fake,” I say.
“I don’t care,” she replies.
Strippers can spot fake tits at 500 yards. I only met one pair of boobs that I didn’t know were fake. Tiana worked with me for a couple of years. A big-boned blond Russian, she sported huge swelling breasts that bounced becomingly on stage. They moved naturally with her body, including the big test: when she lay on her back, they fell normally to the sides.
One day she let slip that she had augmented them before coming to the United States. “What?” I exclaimed, disbelieving. “No way.”
“Feel.” She placed my hand on her left breast.
I squeezed carefully, feeling just the resistance of flesh. Fake usually feels too firm, sometimes even hard. It’s often possible to feel the implant itself if it has been inserted over the muscle. Implants inserted behind the muscle are better but more expensive. And they still usually feel rigid.
“Amazing,” I said appreciatively.
“Expensive,” she grinned.
Now, I ask Trinity, “Are you going over the muscle or behind?”
“My regular is putting up $3000. But I’m gonna pay the extra two grand and have the implants put behind the muscle.”
“Longer recovery time,” I say. Paul’s head turns between the two of us like in a tennis match. I want to laugh but don’t.
“I’ll be out a month.”
“I wish you could just be happy with who you are,” I say. Paul nods in agreement.
“I will be,” Trinity says.
I throw up my hands.
She’s out for a month. When she returns, her tank top fits much differently. Her new breasts look good: no scarring, perfectly symmetrical placement, big but she didn’t overdo it. To a trained eye they’re obviously fake but they look nice, overall. Paul tells her that she looks beautiful and she beams with pleasure.
In the dressing room I ask her about the procedure.
“Oh, my god!” she exclaims dramatically. “It hurt so bad for the first three days! I thought I had made a huge mistake.”
“Didn’t you have painkillers?”
“Yes, but it still hurt. And everything was bruised and horrible looking. But then it all started to heal. And now I love them!” She laughs.
Over the next few days I watch as her confidence blossoms. She has always been an outgoing and ebullient girl but now she positively radiates. Her mood translates into tips and her income soars.
All I feel is conflict: I can’t argue with the results. She’s happy, confident. She thinks that she’s making more money because of the implants, but I suspect that it’s because of her newfound confidence in herself.
Why must a woman’s sense of her own value be so deeply tied to her physical appearance? Specifically, why does our culture sexualize breasts to the point that augmentation is the most common invasive cosmetic procedure in this country? Our culture sexualizes breasts, which makes men focus on them, which makes women obsess over them, which creates an industry that profits off of women’s insecurity, which drives our national obsession. It’s a horribly vicious cycle.
It’s also not uncommon to have customers offer to pay for various augmentations. It’s a way to establish ownership over a woman’s body, to make her conform to a fantasy. To a woman with low self-esteem the temptation to “correct” perceived imperfections can be almost impossible to ignore.
For me, the adulation far outweighed the criticism. Supportive friends and thoughtful lovers started my healing process. A parade of strangers worshipping at my feet finished the process. I never augmented my body to get more acclaim. I found myself. Trinity lost part of herself.