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.

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