Welcome to the Undressing Room

La Mome Inette, Fetish Model, Modeling for Yva Richard in Paris in the 1930s

Welcome to Sex Worker Style! I’m celebrating how sex workers dress, why they wear what they wear to work, and how what they wear is both influenced by and influential upon fashion, dress, and culture outside of the sex industry. I’ll be combining memoir, observation, and research. I am a primary source, having worked in many aspects of the sex industry. I experienced many secret details of fashion, dress, and costume, watching how the interplay of workers’ preferences and aspirations, the motives of their employers, the tastes of customers and clients, and the directives of law enforcement affected those details. However, I know that I have to research history to give proper context to what I experienced, so I’ve been studying fashion history for 6 years now.

Most of the posts here will be from my Instagram, but I’ll be adding more as the project develops. Feel free to send suggestions for study!

I’ve been a sex worker for nearly four decades, working primarily, but not only, as a stripper and dominatrix. I’ve been an anti-censorship activist since high school, and a sex workers’ rights activist and advocate since the 1990s. I’m the author of The Burlesque Handbook and Fierce: The History of Leopard Print. I’m also the Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque. I’m proud to be a survivor and an achiever, after having been bullied, threatened, harassed, and dismissed, told I would amount to nothing. If you’re a sex worker, you can too! And you don’t have to wait as long as I did — I published my first book at 47 years old, and my second eight years later. You can get started whenever it feels right to you.

For those of you who want to support my work, you can tip via venmo @joweldon, or join my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/m/sexworkerstyle for more insider tips and conversations. For all the visuals, follow me on Instagram at @sexworkerstyle. For burlesque classes, see schoolofburlesque.com.

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Speaking of Demi Moore and high prices, in the 1993 film Indecent Proposal, she played a happily married wife whose boat is rocked when a billionaire offers her husband (yes, he offers it to her husband) a million dollars to spend the night with her. In the scene where he makes the offer, she’s wearing this perfect Mugler dress. The dress sparked a million fantasies of a million dollars, and versions of it sold in record numbers. There was even a report of a fight at a prom that year when more than one would-be Queen showed up in the style. Mugler presented remarkable work in the 1990s as he riffed on showgirl and sex worker style, adding a futuristic twist. In 2011 Lady Gaga strutted for Mugler, singing “I’ll be your hooker ... as long as you pay me...” In 1996 Demi Moore broke the record for a female lead in a movie, being paid $12.5 million to star in the film adaptation of Carl Hiaason’s novel Strip Tease. Evidently she studied some serious stripper moves. Here she is on The David Letterman show doing a great demonstration of how strippers interact with customers who want to hug them when they don’t want to be hugged. It’s Elizabeth Berkley’s birthday, which reminds me of the movie Showgirls, which reminds me of this scene, which reminds me that I started my career in sex work as an opportunistic hooker “hitchhiking.” #dressedlikeawhore #sexworkerstyle #badinfluencer #showgirlsmovie See more at @coco.ono ‘s full post. Random thoughts inspired by encountering an American Gigolo poster: Annie Sprinkle I’m performing live ONCE in August and it’s on MY BIRTHDAY! Join me at Coney Island for the fundraiser and my celebration! Tickets at https://www.coneyisland.com/event/batb080721 We’ll be talking about the burlesque community’s relationship with our Legends at 4 pm pt 7 pm et at @burlycon ! https://www.burlypod.com/pages/community-events I scored some sweet vinyl on the street today! I told the man I bought it from that Eartha Kitt was my hero when I was a kid, and he said, “She went into the White House and spoke her mind! They didn’t expect that!” And I said, “That’s why she’s my hero!”
August 2021
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