To strip or not to strip?
by Vaughan Lovell
At present I stand accused. Accused of being party to the oppression, manipulation, disrespect and outright objectification of women.
How did these rather serious - and, I must add, rather hurtful and offensive - accusations come to pass, you may wonder?
I hired a stripper to appear at my brother’s 21st birthday.
Let it be said that I don’t like strip clubs and the like - I find them sad, boring and pathetic, and could lose fingers in an accident and still count the number of times I have visited such establishments on one hand.
However, I realise the hypocrisy of my statement here - and this is where my defense, as the accused, becomes what I would deem to be valid.
Firstly, towards the beginning of the night, I advised people that a stripper was coming later, so as not to offend those who would be offended.
I devised a plan to ensure the strip show occured in a separate area and would only be seen by those who went out of their way to see the said stripper perform.
This, I felt, was the noble thing to do - my mother, who is my main accuser, even laughed at the time and uttered, in pure jovial form: “It would be better if it was a male stripper!”
My brother’s girlfriend was not impressed from the get-go, and I sincerely regret that this occasion did turn out to be hurtful for her.
However, this was a 21st, it was out of my fully-digited hands, and I am adamant that this was a passable occasion for a stripper to appear at.
Perhaps the main thing that gets my goat about this is that the friends of my brother’s girlfriend were there to provide not only support for her, but as it turned ugly, also heavy ammunition for the attack on me and a couple other mates.
These allegations came from a group of young women who have idolised Paris Hilton, owned handbags adorned with her face, purchased her album and seen her television shows; and even gone so far as to adopt some of her ditzy mannerisms to apply at specific times - mainly amongst each other.
This is the same Paris Hilton who recently went to prison for various publicised criminal offences; the same Paris Hilton who gained her fame by releasing a home-made pornographic video; the same Paris Hilton who allegedly had breast implants; the same Paris Hilton who did this, that, the other and more, and gains millions as a result.
And I’m the a-hole here because for 15 minutes, a woman showed up of her own accord, unchained, un-drugged, unoppressed and certainly uninhibited, to earn $230 for a quarter-of-an-hour.
I remain baffled beyond belief as to why I am so very guilty of ruining an occasion which was not ruined, despite certain dramatists who did their best to do so.
Maybe it’s a guy thing. Or maybe I should take more notes on Paris to see how it could all be done more tastefully.
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