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.

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