In the article “The Hustlers at Score”, Jessica Pressler does multiple interviews on the charges of former strippers drugging and swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars out of wealthy New York men during the 2010’s. Throughout the article, Pressler exhibits the cultural information of the stripper subculture describing the behaviors and insider language of strippers such as Samantha being “too ancient” in the stripper world only being 30 and how strippers work together in groups to gain a larger profit off men. Strippers live in a disadvantageous field having rules to pay the clubs to work, tip the bartender, DJ, house mom and the hosts and are looked down/degraded by their clients.

Cultural information is also given on the “wall street men” who spend strainious amounts of money on these strippers. Rosie and Samantha discuss the shared belief for strippers on these “clean-cut family men” who work on Wall Street making millions that they would spend in these strip clubs. The men are described are “mostly assholes” who “party so hard …make money, but you’re not happy, so you go out and splurge on strip clubs and drinking and drugs, then the money depletes and you have to make it again.” The men are described are people who have no value of money and spend it without any care.

The background information provided in the article gives the readers information that allows further comprehension of the stripper subculture. Pressler gives context on the era in where stripping was no longer degrading but sexually liberating and financially empowering. The market collapse in 2008 had left half of Wall Street unemployed gives a better understanding of the economic recession that affected the strippers financially. The information about the Wall Street men provides an explanation on how the women were able to execute their plan so successfully. The ability to gain a great profit by swindling these men by drugging and maxing out there credit cards ultimately leads to her becoming addicted to stealing money.

Pressler describes her informants thoroughly bringing her informants back to life. She interviews multiple people and giving many perspectives from the strippers to the police. She gives Keo’s life story describing events such as her parents abandoning her to raising a child alone at a young age from her past bringing more emotion to the story and allows the audience to be more connected to the informants. Rosie’s story allows us to feel sympathetic towards her even though she did illegal crimes like drugging and robbing men. Pressler provides descriptive language that allows the readers to create images by using metaphors such as “Her body was Jessica Rabbit curvy, her lips Angelina Jolie puffy.” She puts the story in a timeline that tells the story and all the circumstances that these women did to try an survive that ultimately led the girls to the end point of getting charged for there crimes.

Jessica Pressler’s “The Hustlers at Scores” tells the story of Roselyn Keo and other women who fished wealthy men by the use of MDMA and other drugs. Roselyn and other women in her group unfortunately share similar backgrounds of difficulty while growing up, and resorted to working in strip clubs in order to support themselves. Some cultural beliefs the article include are the workers’ pride in not accepting handouts. Even though Roseyln expressed her dissatisfaction with her field, she chose to “do what she has to do” in order to support herself and provide for her daughter. Another cultural belief that the article includes is the idea that the workers develop the mentality that men are not real, “they are there for me to manipulate and take money from”. This shows the competition that the workers have even between themselves  in their fight for profit and ultimately leaving the business for good.

Pressler does a great job in giving an overview of Keo and the other women’s stories. Some background information that the author included to help us further understand the story is describing their usual clientele, a male wall street worker. Keo speaks upon the many experiences the group and herself had with these people, and their extraordinary spending habits. She describes one client spending $300,000 in one week at her strip club. This shows that these men were able to spend much money during their sessions, which made them an even bigger target to Keo and her group. Thus, by including the information, the reader is able to understand how the group was able to do this scheme successfully. Additionally, Pressler describes how the 2008 economic recession affected the lives of the workers at the club. Before the recession, many of their clientele, male wall street workers, were spending leisure time at her club which gave the club great earnings. However, the success took a dip once after the recession, and their clientele started to decrease. This also resulted in more clientele that demanded more services than before, which resulted in the group executing their fishing scheme. They drugged these men and maxed out their credit cards in order to support themselves, a way they viewed more wholesome than subjecting to the demands of their “perverted” clientele Therefore, by including this information, the reader gets a better understanding on why the group did these crimes.

Pressler describes her informants in many ways to make them come to life. One way Pressler does this is by describing Keo’s personality. She chose quotes from her interview that help the reader understand Keo’s personality. For instance she includes parts in their interview where she sighs, jokes and curses passionately about their actions. Another example is when Keo talks about her time working at a diner. Pressler describes her time at the diner as a place she did not want to be; working long hours for little pay. Thus, these examples help bring Keo’s personality to life, and made her character more relatable to the reader.

In conclusion, Jessica Pressler’s, “The Hustlers at Scores” tells the story of a group of exotic dancers who, at rough times, were able to plot a scheme in order to support themselves and their loved ones.

In the reading, a couple of shared beliefs would be the idea that stripping was liberating and no longer degrading. Also, one of the rituals/ behaviors at Hustlers and in the dancing world would be to work in groups in order to obtain the maximum amount of money possible from the clients. Samantha was old but maintained her capital by having clients and “cultivating younger dancers.” The use of the word clients could be insider language because it sounds more professional rather than calling them customers or Johns. Some beliefs also include that men are there to be manipulated and have money taken from, believing that men are not real. 

Having put in the part where Rosie was a pathological liar and with multiple felony charges was interesting because it helped develop her character and paint a portrait of her, especially with both descriptions of the women, one can imagine their beauty and believe the amount of money they bring home from Hustlers. The description is important because I can just picture the setting of the club as rambunctious and picture family men begging for their kinks in a dark setting. 

These descriptions also help understand how they got away with asking for rent or school payments, scamming them out of money. Also, when reading further describing the situation Rosie was in set the tone for the desperation many girls might feel, which explained why they went through such drastic measures to spike a man’s drink with drugs in order to run up credit cards and earn their wage for the night. The fact that they believed they were the aggrieved party was a bit ridiculous. It was all very exciting to read but at the end, it was like everything came falling down and Rosie, again, was lying about it not being true and about her plans for the future which was credible, being that Pressler mentioned that in the very beginning. Overall, this was very beautifully written and the descriptions of everyone played a good part in the reading because it set up the tone for the story.

The article “The Hustlers: The Real Story Behind the Movie” gives us a glimpse into the lives of strippers who are way smarter than society makes them out to be. We are introduced to Rosie and Samantha. Samantha took Rosie under her wing so that they could both work together in making more money by also drugging and scamming men that visited the strip club. Pressler gives a little background on Rosie and Samantha’s lives to help us understand where they came from and why they started striping. Rosie was caught up in the wrong crowd in high school and was a troublemaker. However, she was good at math and made some money selling candy bars at school. It is also mentioned that Rosie had a curvy body which prompted her into getting in trouble. Samantha, on the other hand, was one of the club’s top moneymakers. She was a single mother from the Bronx. Samantha was seen as “ancient” in the stripper world because she is 30 years old, but that doesn’t stop her from making money. She takes the younger strippers and makes them more money by teaching them her skills. Throughout the article, there are many shared beliefs. It was thought that any man from wall street had money and that most of the men were assholes even if they were married. it also got to a point where the girls “… stop believing men are real”. The goal was to make as much money as possible. So the women would go from changing their appearance to drugging and scamming the men. Pressler vividly describes her informants by describing each of their appearances and past.

Asadullah Bin Amir 

Prof. Shamecca Harris 

English 

Blog Post #2 

02/26/20 

In the article “ The Hustlers at Scores A modern Robin Hood story: the strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting men and gave to, well, themselves.” by Jessica Pressler, serves us two lessons women should look out for themselves, and men are to be manipulated for money. In the first paragraph the author describes why Rosie’s behavior growing up had more to do with her situation rather than herself. Rosie’s parents left her to grow up with her grandparents, parents leaving is one of the most traumatic experiences for a child, I can vouch. Rosie claims her parents are refugees from Cambodia but got caught up in the cultural shock of America. The background information that is provided is crucial to this article because if it was not told, Rosie would be painted as the worst human of all time, but since we are told what her parents did to her that traumatized her, it helps the reader understand the actions taken by Rosie. For example, her parents left to escape to Atlantic City to be involved with all materialistic things. When Rosie realized that she could not obtain those through a 9-5, she began doing what she was doing. She wanted to experience the things that took her parents from her, she wanted to know what could’ve been more valuable to her parents then their own daughter. The author does a fantastic job at creating a live picture within the reader’s mind by using very descriptive language which forces the reader to create an image. For example, the author describes Samantha Barbash, the hustler’s top money maker, as “A single mother from the Bronx, she’d started dancing at 19, and, like an ornamental plant purposefully stunted to conform to a certain ideal”. Using metaphors and the author even uses different well known celebrities to describe her body as shown in the next quote. “ Her body was Jessica Rabbit curvy, her lips Angelina Jolie puffy; her hair, which concealed tattoos of a cascade of stars running down her neck, was Cleopatra black. Buried within this ultrafeminine package was a mercenary streak worthy of Gordon Gekko.”. The author describes the people and the situations through great detail to bring a picture to the readers head. 

“The hustlers at Scores”, By Jessica Pressler, describes the lifestyle of strippers who were running a secret business to steal from the rich and usually disgusting men. The story is based around a woman named Roselyn Keo. Ms. Keo became a exotic dancer at 17 years old. She lied about her age to start her new job in the New York City clubs. Rosie as she preferred to be called was pursuing a psychology degree at Berkeley College New Jersey. As she worked in the club she stayed strong minded so that she did not become corrupted and could pursue her degree in college.. Rosie observed everything around her, especially observing the hidden secrets of men. She said, “The reason why Wall Street guys party so hard is because they’re not happy with their jobs”. She observed how they would spend their money freely and ask for absurd requests from women in the club. It was there way of experiencing a more liberating lifestyle. 

Jessica Pressler’s article gives readers insight on the lifestyle of wall street men speaking of their behavior and language. According to Rosie men would make absurd comments when they were intoxicated. Some would say, “Did your father abuse you? Is that why you do this?,” and ask for freakish requests such as being penetrated by champagne bottles. To fully understand this story it was important for Pressler to include these comments because it showed why Rosie went down the road she did. Rosie felt that it was easy to manipulate such wealthy men. She had left this industry and had a child somewhere in New York. Because of the power she knew she could have over men it was very easy for her to request money. Years later she goes back to the club and meets her previous mentor Samantha. Her mentor had found a loophole in making money where they would attract wealthy men and drug them; they would later bring them to the club where they would spend all their money. She said that she became addicted to the money saying she would leave when she made 100k, 500k, then 1million, but she never did. 

Rosie was depicted as a gorgeous woman who became an  exotic dancer at a very young age. What Pressler did that made Rosie come to life was how she described Rosie’s appearance as a mother when she came back to the industry and her intelligence. This was also what made Rosie the perfect candidate to attract such men into falling for her traps. At one point Rosie told pressler that everything she said was fiction. With all the information that was put out into the media it seems unreasonable. It is hard to believe that none of it could be true.

There were a plethora of shared beliefs in this article; women should look out for themselves, men are to be manipulated for money, rich men especially, among other things. Specifically, I would like to focus on the aspect of women looking out for themselves because this is highlighted when the two masterminds of the, ‘find a rich man, drug him, and max out his credit card’ operation are in the cop car on their way to be punished for their (in the eyes of the law) wrong behavior. Both women headed this operation and yet when asked which of them was the one who organized this, they pointed at each other rather than just staying quiet. Essentially meaning that this shared belief of looking out for oneself even applies to those of a crime-ridden business; it reminded me of when I was a kid and I broke something but when my mom asked me and my brother pointed to one another. Even though I broke it we both got in trouble so it’s funny to see two grown women do it because we carry that from childhood. Anyways, some insider language in this article includes the bars themselves, I’ve never heard of these bars and yet she presents them as these grandeur places. Background information was immensely helpful while reading this article because I knew beforehand to take everything one of the informants said with a grain of salt, and the writer of this article does the same since she knows she has lied before, so why would she tell the truth? And yet there’s something so compelling to the story that I can actually see it play out. Pressler describes the beauty of the women and contrasts it with their age so well that it almost feels like I am playing a mental movie in my head. The writer remembers that age is vital in our society, and she almost makes it seem that although a woman is pretty it all comes down to her age, which is another shared belief (like it or not) in our society. So, while Samantha was in her 30s and beautiful, she was nonetheless “ancient by stripper standards” she was essentially the Tess in the movie Burlesque. I felt bad for Samantha at that moment, although Pressler isn’t asking us to pick a side but rather is telling a story,  but nonetheless I was on Samantha’s side since it is hard for women at that age and to get married since they are seen as ‘past their prime’ but I also sympathize with the man whose career they ruined. This article made me see both sides of the spectrum, and I appreciate Pressler not only looking in the lens of the hustlers.

In the article “The Hustlers: The Real Story Behind the Movie” Pressler takes us on a wild descriptive ride of the women who stole from the wall street men by drugging and running up their credit card bills. The article includes some very valuable cultural information such as the rules to working in a strip club and what was allowed. In a strip club, it is designed so that the club profits more than the dancers. At the end of the night they are supposed to tip out the bartender, DJ, house mom and the hosts. The dancers have to pay to work there. A shared belief between all the strippers were that the men walking into the strip club had deep bank accounts and worked on wall street. The married men were easier to target because they had more to lose which meant that they could exploit them without having the fear that they would say something.  The idea of a stripper was a young girl with curves. The shared belief of sexy was a girl with the “sort of waist-to-hip ratio “that Rosie was born into, the hourglass shape. The background information that Pressler uses to help guide the reader is essential in understanding the story. For an outsider Pressler provided Rosie’s and Samantha’s background to help us understand why they started in this business and what made them successful. The description that she provided helped the audience envision each member clearly. She described everything from the plastic surgery they had to what designer they were wearing on their feet.

In the article, there were many beliefs portrayed. For example, any Wall Street men who came in they knew automatically they had money or when a stripper gets older they are seen as “ancient.” Background information that was helpful was how she used to make her money when she was younger, but many people questioned that because it sounded similar to another person’s story. They article was very specific in getting her progress correctly for example, how she got her first job stripping and how she moved. She described her informants by giving a physical description so it would be easier for the audience to paint them in their heads. With that description she used similes so we can compare and have a more accurate picture of their personality in our head as well. Descriptions have help her show more of a personal side to the story as well. The way she described the struggle helped us get an inside image and see things from her perspective and her views. As a person, I really liked the way she described things because it made me feel as if I was actually there seeing what was happening and how her life was.