Constance Brissenden

p. 12.

Strippers of the world, unite!

"Why am I a stripper?" The voice of Diane Michaels cools audibly. "I do it because I want to be independent, make a living and not starve." Michaels, one of more than 2,000 Canadians taking it off for money, strips for what she considers an obvious reason — to survive. Her family broke up when she was young, she left home at 12, and at 18, with a little dance training, she joined the business. But the question, with its connotations of "what's a nice girl like you…" still rankles.

After six years as a stripper, working from Quebec City to Vancouver, Michaels takes a professional pride in her work, and since March the 24-year-old has held another, unpaid job as president of the fledgling Canadian Association of Burlesque Entertainers (CABE). The strippers are organizing.

Michaels' activities in the group, which has just submitted an application to affiliate with the Canadian Labor Congress (CLC), have ripped away any illusions she still had about her work. She has learned too much, she says, about how society relates to strippers: the employers with roving hands who demand total nudity — even if it means trouble with the police — as a condition of employment; the hot, bright stage lights that give dancers second-degree burns; the cramped dressing rooms and the men who try to break in.

There was a day when burlesque had a slightly more respectable image. Twenty-seven-year-old Zelda Scorch (like "Diane Michaels," a pseudonym) remembers a trip to Toronto's Victory burlesque theatre as a child: "I looked at the stage and thought — how do they create that magic?" Years laten she stripped on the Victory's stage herself; today she works in strip clubs and bars across the country.

Scorch joined CABE after a Hamilton, Ontario, club owner refused to help her when a biker carried her off the stage, hoisted her onto his table and then threatened to come back with his friends for a "gang splash." Scorch packed her costumes and fled home to Toronto. "The managers think we're only there to sell beer," she says. "They don't seem to realize we're not whores, we're professional dancers."

In Toronto, the strip circuit is a welter of 256 "Girls, Girls, Girls" clubs. Like many performers, strippers go where the work is, with an average stay of one week in each club. In the industrial belts of the suburbs, workers drop into the bars for a beer at lunch or after work; downtown, the shifts run from noon until the clubs close.

Across Canada, strippers find the law — Section 170 of the Criminal Code, which defines a nude person as one "who is so clad as to offend against public decency" — interpreted in many ways. In some provinces, including Quebec and B.C., dancers can get away with complete nudity. In others, Ontario for instance, it's tougher.

This summer two Toronto women, charged after removing their g-strings, were acquitted when the Crown could not find any witnesses to testify that they were offended. But for another 24 Toronto strippers awaiting trial on charges laid during the past year, there is still the possibility of a six-month jail term or a maximum $500 fine.

While the dancers take the legal heat, only one club owner was brought up on a charge last year relating to an employee's nudity. Managers who counsel to commit an illegal act can be charged on the basis of a complaint by a dancer, but because the charge is difficult to prove, many women simply don't bother. "There is definitely an injustice here," says Margaret Campbell, a Liberal member of the Ontario legislature and a strong CABE supporter. "These women are caught between their livelihood and the law. It's all too easy for the police to clamp down on them."

The 75 members of CABE want the law reassessed. But more than that, they want protection to do their job legally and safely. They need clout and they look to the 2.3-million-member CLC to give it to them.

"These people are definitely being exploited by managers," says Edward Wright, the CLC's Ontario representative. "They work in unsanitary conditions, they're underpaid and often sexually harassed. It's an unusual group, but that shouldn't exclude them."

For Diane Michaels, CABE so far has made things worse, not better: club managers have branded her a troublemaker and are refusing to hire her. But for the time being, at least, she'll stick with it: "The business is a mess. What other hope do we have of cleaning it up?"

Organizer Michaels: exotic dancers caught between livelihood and the law Photo: Brian Willer, Maclean's