What better way to reinvent yourself than on the stage of a strip club? That’s what Lily did after graduating with a BFA in architecture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She took to the stage and entered into a rather interesting life, one definitely worthy of an interview.

From her suite in Las Vegas, Lily explains the trials and tribulations of her career as well as her transition from an art student who nude modeled for money to a full blown stripper. She worked in Massachusetts and then moved to Las Vegas where she is now a card dealer and dancer at the Gold Coast Hotel and Casino.

Stripping is empowering to Lily, not objectifying, and she is not ashamed of her career choice. The once self described “shy girl” is now happily without “modesty” and living an exciting lifestyle that leaves a white collar job in the dust.

We spoke for about a half hour about feminism, freedom of expression and the stigmatization of women who strip. The transcribed interview below is a fascinating take on the life of a woman who took the path less traveled, and has a story to tell from doing it.

Meet Lily

1. How did you get into stripping?

By the time I got to college I just had in my head that I was absolutely not going to be that shy scared person anymore. I wanted to reinvent myself for art school. By the time you get to art school it is pretty easy not to have modesty, you walk down a hallway of classrooms and every one of them has a nude model in it.

So I started out freshman year, I did a little bit of nude modeling and I realized I was totally fine with that and I kept going with that. When I turned 21 I visited my first strip club and I remember just being like, “Oh my god. They are awesome!”

I just worshiped these girls.

They have so much guts and I wish I was up there and at the time I thought I was way too short to do it, I had all of this insecurity and then it got to a point when I was around 23 or 24 when I was talking to a friend of mine who had done it and she was like, “No. Just walk in and go for it! So I knew that modesty wasn’t an issue, and I needed quick money at a certain point so that lit the fire and it made me just walk into a strip club and audition. After I did it once I was like, “This is fine, this is fun.” I kept going on for four years.

Lily at a glance

2. Can you tell me about the best and worst experiences you had stripping?

Well, the worst thing about stripping is not even the customers because you are an independent contractor, you can literally tell them to f*&k off and walk away. If they are being that bad and there are some of them who have been super annoying; and for some reason, I talk to a lot of them and they are homophobic they like to tell me how they are super okay with lesbians but it is not okay to be a fucking f*&. I am like, that’s not hypocritical or anything. It takes a lot to not smack them in the face.

3. What about some of the bad experiences that you or someone you work with has had while stripping?

Well there is one girl I knew who was so paranoid that her parents were going to find out, she was still a little bit shy. She was on stage and a guy ran over to her with his cell phone and took a picture of her and he just ran out the door.

She came over to me. She was crying, saying, “What if he puts it on the internet?” I then said, “Believe me, if they want porn they can find it on the internet, they don’t need a badly lit picture from a strip club.” But that was definitely incredibly rude on his part.

First of all there’s this stereotype that we are making $2,000 every single night and I think that during the Clinton Administration it was kind of true; depending on the girl, but at this point no one is doing that.

This idea that you can pay for your college education stripping, you really can’t. You can make more than you can in retail or something like that. I was averaging out at $20 an hour and it is better than minimum wage, but you are not getting rich doing that. It is not this huge and glamorous life, like now I have a huge sports car and a mansion because I am a stripper.

There are both ends, there are girls who have exciting lives. I knew a girl who modeled all the time for WAAF and got invited to all their exclusive parties. Then there’s a certain amount of girls who are doing it to support their kids.

There are quite a few of them who are mothers.

So, they will skip the house for a while and go to a strip club and then go back to changing diapers. They were not even close to glamorous. I would say like 25% are mother and 25% or so are completely normal girls, like me, who need money. But about half of the girls have some sort of issue going on, like daddy issues and drug addiction.

The hardest thing to deal with is not the customers, but the other girls. Some of them get crazy competitive, if you go near their regular customer they will try to punch you. I just stay out of the way and if anyone tried to start a fight with me I would just walk away.

But I mean if somebody has a drug addiction and they desperately need to make $500 that night in order to feed their addiction they will be crazy-crazy if you are stepping on their toes at all.

5. Do you get pleasure out of stripping?

I like it for the most part and there are some days when it would just get tiring and I was not making enough money and I would get frustrated and I would think back to when I was 21 and I was looking at those girls and I was like “Oh my god! They are amazing. That’s me right now, I’m really cool.”

It does a lot for your self confidence to be a sex symbol to have all these people looking at you. You are not going to be everybody’s type. I heard insults, but for the most part it is fun to be that person on stage and whenever I was frustrated I would be like, just think back to what you would have thought of yourself five years ago.

6. So what about the stigma? Do you feel discriminated against or are you world-hardened and you don’t care anymore?

There is the feminist view that strippers are being taken advantage of and being objectified and I always felt like it was the exact opposite.

I go in and I basically exist.

I hang out, I sit down with a guy, have a drink, chatting. I leave with all their money, they leave with nothing. How are they taking advantage of me and not the other way around?

There is a stigma, obviously, that you should try to hide it.

My mother would freak out if she knew.