What Age Can You Work at a Strip Club
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A stripper, pictured in 2006.
(CHRIS GRANGER)
When the body of Jasilas Wright was found last month on Interstate 10, torn apart by oncoming traffic, the investigation immediately turned to her boyfriend and alleged pimp, Adam Littleton, who was charged in her Jun 10 death.
Unmentioned in the coverage of her troubled life and gruesome death was how, at age 19, she got a job dancing at Stilettos Cabaret in the French Quarter, the last place anyone other than Littleton is known to have seen her alive.
Stilettos did not respond to requests for comment sent to the club's email address and twitter account. But Wright's death is being cited by advocates urging for strict enforcement of a 25-year-old law meant to prohibit New Orleans club owners from hiring strippers younger than 21.
The law's language, however, is vague. It has no provision for penalties and is completely unenforced by city officials, according to youth advocates.
As a result, New Orleans has a pipeline for girls as young as 16 to gain entree into the world of stripping, which is itself a gateway into prostitution and sex trafficking, said Jim Kelly, director of Covenant House, a shelter for homeless youths. The shelter sits just outside the French Quarter, the epicenter of the city's adult-club industry.
"Either they are flouting the law, or they don't know it," Kelly said of the clubs.
Topless loophole
The city's ordinance prohibits strip clubs that serve alcohol from hiring anyone under the age of 21 to "perform on stage as a dancer while such a person is unclothed or in such attire, costume or clothing as to expose any portion of the pubic hair, anus, cleft of the buttocks, vulva or genitals."
John Kirkendoll, owner of the Penthouse Club, a high-end club on Bourbon Street, said the local industry's interpretation of the law is that women between 18-21 are allowed to dance topless but are forbidden from working all-nude.
That effectively makes the ordinance meaningless, some argue, since women of any age are prohibited from dancing nude in clubs that serve alcohol.
Kirkendoll's argument galled Kelly. "So, he's saying we should strengthen the law by adding breast and nipple to it? I think that's a great idea, and I thank him for the suggestion," Kelly said.
Even without new language, the current law still forbids what the clubs are doing, Kelly said. Underage employees are not allowed to display the "cleft of the buttocks," which, in the industry-standard G-string, is plainly visible, he said. "Are you telling me that those dancers in G-strings are not showing the cleft of the buttocks?" Kelly said.
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Regardless of the law's interpretation, there doesn't appear to be any regular system for enforcement.
Asked who was responsible for making sure clubs were not putting underage girls on stage, Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office issued a statement saying the "Police Department or a law enforcement agency has the authority to issue citations for law violations in adult beverage establishments."
Compliance investigations are carried out in response to complaints, not on a proactive basis, according to the city. But the statement made no mention of how often investigations occur.
Kelly said in an interview that a system based on complaints only is inherently flawed. Men go into those clubs expressly to leer at young women, he said, and are unlikely to concern themselves with their age.
More than titillation
Kelly asked the City Council Thursday (July 24) to strengthen the ordinance by hitting scofflaw club owners in the pocketbook. Under his proposal, a violation would shut a bar down for a week, a second for a month and the third for a year.
Kelly said more enforcement is necessary because stripping is not simply a means of selling titillation.
Academics who study the sex industry say it can facilitate prostitution and human trafficking. In a 2015 study of Covenant House residents, Loyola University researchers found that about 10 percent of respondents, who ranged in age from 18-24, had worked as strippers. Of those, 60 percent had also exchanged sex for money.
At least one woman in the study said that she had been recruited into the sex trade while working as a dancer.
Several of those who worked as strippers told researchers they started when they were younger than 21. One said the club asked to see ID before she started, saw that she was 18 and still hired her. A 17-year-old lied and got away with it because nobody verified her age. Another said she started when she was 16.
One woman said that the only way she made money as an 18-year-old stripper was to do private dances in the "VIP room," where she was expected to have sex with the customers.
Council members, confronted with the study's findings, expressed outrage that strip clubs were hiring young dancers, particularly in light of the human trafficking associated with it. Councilwoman Stacy Head said she planned to direct the Landrieu administration to report on its enforcement efforts within 60 days.
Kirkendoll, the Penthouse Club owner, said Covenant House's intentions are good, but a ban on dancers ages 18-21 would have ugly unintended consequences. "Everyone in this industry is interested in protecting women of all ages," Kirkendoll said. "But the idea of enforcing or creating an ordinance that would prohibit entertainers under 21 from working is ill conceived."
If young women were blocked from earning their living dancing in New Orleans clubs, they will only go elsewhere, either to shady clubs that ignore the rules or to clubs outside the city, Kirkendoll said.
"The reality is that if a 20-year-old woman can't be an entertainer, she's not going to go enroll in nursing school or law school," he said. "That's just not going to happen."
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What Age Can You Work at a Strip Club
Source: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_031921d8-2674-5dc7-9e6d-68d8e6aa0bb3.html