‘Would you make it rain on her at another bar?’
We’re not serving drinks or standing in your space, so "get your fucking leg off my stage," Gizelle Marie, the reckoning (de facto) force behind today's stripper strike, wants female bartenders to know.
The strike, now a nationwide phenomenon, branches from New York where she says many African-American and Latina strippers are not receiving equal treatment in clubs.
With many (usually white) drink pourers already making more than dancers, Gizelle says it's unreasonable that they're often near, or on, the stage "shaking ass" and "distracting customers from looking at the bitches who are there to actually shake ass."
She says she and other strippers knows there are elite bartenders who are always going to have customers, but that this is about people purposefully coming into a strip club with singles, and then throwing them all at bartenders instead.
"Would you do the same thing if the same bartender were as at a regular spot?" she said, "Would you pull out $3,000 and start making it rain on her at a regular bar?"
She even goes as far as to say she believes many of the female bartenders who do this come to work at strip clubs because they're aware of the extra cash they'll make: "You shaking your ass, bent over holding onto the stage is distracting."
And other strippers agree, saying some of these bars and clubs are "racist and segregated as fuck."
Complaining about the fact bartenders get to wear the same thing every day, while strippers need to purchase (required) expensive outfits with that money.
The worst part? Gizelle claims bartenders shit on her and other strippers for being strippers to begin with — just before taking some of their money.
"Clubs make it easier for bartenders to do stripper shit, yet shit on us," she says, "talking shit about us, having us look crazy to customers like we’re wrong for doing what the fuck we’re here to do."
Listen to Gizelle's full statement here.