Naked ambition

Harsh treatment has sent strip club workers on to the streets to campaign for legislative and workforce rights.

- PETE MCKENZIE

Over the decade since Cleo (not her real name) began working as a stripper, she has performed at clubs around the country. Most have been nightmarish rife with bullying, exploitation and violence, she says. She quickly learnt to be careful: in the first club she worked in, she turned a corridor to see the manager abusing another worker while holding them against a wall by their throat.

Technically, the adult entertainment industry is bound by the same rules as any other business. Its venues must be clean and safe, its workers are entitled to protection, and its managers must abide by labour laws. But in an industry largely run by men and with a workforce that is mostly young women on contracts, those protections are often more imagined than real.

For Cleo, that is infuriating. "The work itself I actually enjoy," she says. "I enjoy the confidence in myself, learning how to perform and feeling more empowered. It isn't actually that hard to make something like sex work or a strip club safe, healthy and fun." Yet, to do the work, she has been forced to navigate a world of abuse and exploitation.

It was partly to escape that pattern that Cleo moved to Wellington in 2022 and began working at Calendar Girls. Because it is part of the country's most prominent chain of strip clubs, she hoped it would be an exception to the rule.

Like elsewhere, she found managers taking large percentages of tips, imposing dramatic fines for things like "rudeness" and "misuse of cellphone", and bullying workers who complained, she says.

Then, in early 2023, the club announced it was reducing the share of money its dancers earned from each guest. Cleo and 34 co-workers complained to the club manager. The next day, 19 of them were told to clear their lockers: their services were no longer required.