The stripper-index; the price of intimacy

Why we should care when sex workers struggle

Someone I really love asked me the other day if I could help them get set up as an escort. They needed to find a way to make money quickly because they were struggling, and they were worried with all of the economic turmoil currently happening that things were only going to get worse for them financially. They wanted to branch out and start doing sex work as a means of supplementing their income.

Oh sweetheart, let me be the first to break the news to you gently. The absolute worst time to get started in sex work is in uncertain economic times, and sex work is neither easy nor quick money.

The saying goes that if America sneezes then the rest of the world gets a cold. Well, perhaps they should start using a different phrase; if a hooker has a lot of time on her hands perhaps it’s time to check your emergency funds.

The origins of the stripper index can be traced back too X user ReverseCowgirl69, who correctly predicted the 2022 downturn with her tweet “the strip club is sadly a leading indicator and i can promise y’all we r in a recession lmao.” Even though many media outlets have been more than happy to take her clever idea of a ‘stripper index’ and pass it off as if it was always a thing, or even their own idea, in this house we believe in giving credit to sex workers where its due.

I’ve written before how sex workers are canaries in the coal mine for any sort of economic uncertainty. We are the ones in bed with worried bankers, investors, and policy makers, who pay us to listen to their woes and their grim skepticism that things are about to take a turn for the worse. They’ll tell us to sell some stocks sooner rather than later, or maybe they’ll lay a couple extra Benjamins on the table to pad our emergency funds. Strap in girls, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.