Under a ceiling dripping with an unnecessary number of fake crystal chandeliers, a girl in red diamante Victoria’s Secret lingerie takes to the smoke-covered stage. Flicking her blow-dry under the green strobes, she unclips her bra, swinging her hips around the pole.
The opening of a new Spearmint Rhino last week, at the Windmill Theatre in Soho, has reignited an ancient battle between feminists and strippers: a tug of war between empowerment and exploitation that the MeToo movement, Caitlin Moran and T-Pain (who sang “I’m in love with a stripper”) haven’t resolved.
Great Windmill Street, London
Unsplash
Inside, the décor — courtesy of a £5 million refurbishment — is decadently naff: leopard-print carpets, shelves of fake books, an orange-lit bar staffed by “girls” in skyscraper heels, black leotards and fishnets. More than 60 “girls” — the collective name, despite an age range of 19 to 39 — are dancing tonight.
Lucy, the house “mum”, oversees them all — offering spare fake eyelashes, haemorrhoid cream (for the under-eye area) and hugs. A former Miss UK, with two daughters, she says: “If the girls are happy and comfortable — then why not? We all need to work. If a woman chooses to do something, I’m going to support her. We’ve got to look after women, whatever career a woman decides to do.”
Dancers I spoke to enthused about the money and the power stripping gives them over their bodies. Many have other roles — one is a lawyer, another a midwife, while some are carers and mothers. Yasmine, 24, who comes down from the pole and joins me on the pleather banquette, started dancing for Spearmint Rhino in Leicester when she was studying midwifery as a 19-year-old and struggling with “maintenance loans, student finance, rent”. She’s now a qualified midwife and, to me, the greatest scandal is that NHS staff are so badly paid she’s still here. “The midwifery is more stressful by far,” she grins. “With this you come in, relax, have a dance. I love it. It’s fun, you meet new people.”
The antithesis of anxious
“The girls” don’t get paid except when they give private — nude — dances, for which they receive £25 after commission (the club takes £5 per dance) or when they work in the VIP lounge, for which they make £400 an hour (with the club taking £100). The club isn’t charging any commission for the launch period; clients can also tip on top of the fees.
Angel, 35, blonde hair falling to the waist of her red see-through dress, says: “I’ve always been a party girl, was always going out, so it just came naturally to me. One night I really needed to get some cash pronto, so I was like, ‘I might as well go to a strip club.’ I think it’s feminism. It makes us feel very powerful — when you see a woman performing on stage it doesn’t matter if she’s perfect or not, just the energy a woman gives off, it’s so beautiful and magnetic and I’m obsessed with that — that’s why I do what I do, because I love it.”
A feminist shouldn’t look at me choosing to work and tell me I’m being objectified. Feminism is the choice to do what you want
Mimi, dancer
With an anxiety epidemic enveloping many young people, the confidence of the women here tonight feels contagious. Mimi, wearing a sequinned playsuit, is 31 and has been dancing since she was 18. “I’m a feminist — I’m a woman, I know what I’m doing and I want to be here,” she tells me. She rolls her eyes at the idea stripping is empowering. “Sometimes it’s not,” she shrugs, “but when I was working in Waitrose I wasn’t empowered. A feminist shouldn’t look at me choosing to work and tell me I’m being objectified. Feminism is the choice to do what you want.”
She says it feels safer here than meeting men outside the club. It has a strict “no touching” rule, there are cameras everywhere and the “private” dances take place in exposed balcony booths that can be watched. Across the room, I watch a man try to help a dancer in eight-inch heels negotiate the stairs and a bouncer appears from nowhere to admonish him.
“I love this job,” says Mimi. “It feels like feminists just want to take our freedom away.”
Perhaps a gender-neutral lap-dancing club would feel more modern? Although tonight there is a cross-dressing compère and the club has LGBTQ+ Sundays planned. As Mimi says: “If you want to see male strippers, just go to Magic Mike.”
As the night unfolds the strange mise-en-scène, of men in suits sitting beside semi-naked girls, does look strange. But in an age of OnlyFans and extreme internet porn it all feels tame. More surprising is the mixed audience: not only businessmen, lads and Japanese tourists but also east London hipsters (echoing the “feminist in the streets, misogynist in the sheets” profiles ubiquitous on Hinge).
I order a Blitz Spirit cocktail — the name recalls the history of the Windmill. One of London’s first strip clubs, it was owned by a woman, Laura Henderson, and circumvented indecency laws by having naked models posed in still tableaux. Famously, it stayed open during the war, becoming an unlikely symbol of British resilience and resistance. Yet, little seems to have changed in the attitude afforded to the Windmill girls — as middle-class women continue to look down on their working-class counterparts for using their own bodies to push forward sexual liberation.