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.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.