Facing Go-Go Dancing.
Loud music, bright lights, drunken customers – that is the atmosphere of a go-go club. The ladies’ room is littered with piles of cosmetics, brushes, blow -dryers, and random stuff near the mirror, and half-naked girls are changing right in the middle of the room. I am in the “FlashDancers” gentlemens club in Manhattan.
To save space, the owner decided to combine the lady’s restroom and dancers changing room, which may seem reasonable, since the majority of the clientele are men.
A girl, who can barely stand, is leaning against the bathroom door, speaking in a slurred unclear voice. She seems to be drunk or on some type of drugs, but aware of whats going on around her, as opposed to her friend behind the other side of the door. Her speech is incoherent, but obviously Russian. Visible under the door are woman’s feet, dressed in 10-inch pumps. The door opens to reveal the woman lying on the floor near the toilet. Her friend is repeatedly saying her name, shaking her head and shoulders, sitting next to her on the floor, but the girl is apparently unconscious.
“The honey traps are everywhere. You may get into one of them, literally as soon as you get off the plane- they meet you right there, offering you a free or very cheap living and “the best work you can have”- dancing in a go-go club.”
Larisa, a 22 year-old go-go dancer,
Many girls, having nowhere to go and having no source of income, are happy to get it all right away. But they dont know the price they will have to pay for it.
Go to the most popular web-site for Russian immigrants in NY, open the page with job vacancies of bartending/waitressing section, the first add youll find is going to be the go-go dancing job. They know what kind of position the young Russian girls look for (mostly waitress), and where they will look for it, thats why they post all these adds there. The majority of these posts use the same phrases as “#1 gentlemens club,” or “nobody can touch our girls” or “get rich quick.” One add even said that they provided the girls with “the free luxurious furnished new 15-room house with new TV and Internet” and they could “save at least 600-1200 a month on a free housing.”
It is next to impossible to go to a go-go bar in mega polices such as the New York City without meeting a Russian-speaking (I am using here “Russian-speaking” because Russian was the official language in the USSR, which is a common trait for all these countries inasmuch as such a trait as poverty now. I presume the reader knows it. Let me know if I am wrong) girl who is working as a dancer. This is because of the poor economic situation in post-soviet countries and the fact that this job seems to bring money easily. In reality, go-go dancing is a shady profession that can easily lead to prostitution.
Summer time is the peak time for students from different countries to come to the United States and work. Students get an opportunity to travel and make money during the three months of their summer vacation. Most of them go to different states to work at the least- paid jobs. But nowadays, a huge number of them come to Brighton Beach, one of the best places in the U.S. to live for Russians who barely speak English to live. They want to come back home with loads of money, no matter what. Still, the reality is bitter.
It is hard to find a decent job for those who are here only for three months and whose English is bad. Summer is the time when Russian newspapers and web-sites are jam-packed with bright posts with beautiful girls, inviting newcomers to work as go-go dancers. Every post says that any kind of illegal activity is unacceptable, some of them try to bait young girls with free transportation and the absence of any fees, and others post nice pictures of the clubs and limousines.
Sadly, most of these girls know what they will be doing during the only three months they have to spend here, and they already know the difference between go-go dancing in Russia and the U.S. America is far from their home, where they went for adventures and money. It is always easier to overcome difficulties at home, but here is different. If you say you work as a go-go dancer in Russia, it would mean you dance in a night club in front of the crowd, creating the right atmosphere. Go-go dancing in the States basically means the same, but sometimes it means dancing topless, and lately it has acquired a negative connotation. There is topless dancing in Russia (strip-tease, etc.), but these two concepts do not blend that much as in New York City. Young, beautiful, inexperienced girls come to big cities like New York hoping to earn money, and very often choosing the easiest ways by going to a night club after they read a teasing and moon-promising advertisement in a newspaper. The job that hides behind the online posts named “go-go dancers needed” might be drastically different from what the job-seeker expects. Some girls cannot quit simply because they need money, some do not speak enough English to work at least as a cashier and some are just fine with such a filthy job.
Go-go dancers were initially meant to be dancers to entertain the crowd. It was never connected to lap dancing and it always differed from stripping. But, lately, poles have shifted. Now go-go dancing as a rule means doing something dirty, because of inability to get a better job and because of poverty. Those who work in this field here in NYC, the ones who organize the whole business know the specifics of it, inasmuch as the fact that covering prostitution with go-go dancing will bring them more profit, they fool the girls that come to the foreign prosperous country seeking for success and new impressions. With the opening of the programs mentioned above (which let students work in the USA), the curtain between the USA and the former USSR countries was risen, letting a flow of students in the US, what created perfect conditions for the club-owners to make money on their business, and even changing it.
Most of the girls are ashamed to say what they are doing. The majority have their families back in Russia, so they lie to their parents by telling them they work in a restaurant.
Veiling prostitution behind go-go dancing is also becoming a trend. Once a girl breaks herself and goes into this business, she is different; the longer she dances, the harder it is for her to quit, since that becomes something she is good at, and all the morals tend to be forgotten.