Lap-Dancing For Celebrities

A savvy stripperturned-author dishes on her a-list customers

- Melissa Field

Strolling into work at 5pm, being able to afford expensive designer clothes and also help out her single mother financially was all part of the appeal of stripping for Samantha C Ross. “I also loved that the girls turned into fierce, show-stopping vixens on stage and earned thousands of dollars per shift,” she adds.

The then Melbourne-based Ross was introduced to the world of strip clubs when she got a job in marketing for a sports bar. “There was a gentlemen’s club attached to the bar and I became fascinated by stripping and decided to give it a go,” Ross tells WHO. Her first shift was mortifying. “For starters, exposing your every lump and bump under a spotlight is super-confronting and you soon learn that guys are quite happy to point out your faults. Strippers learn to develop a club persona, so you can become resilient about the insults.”

That persona was the inspiration for Ross’ first novel Sunshine: The diary of a lap dancer. In it, she reveals the realities of working as a stripper. And the biggest takeaway from both her own experiences in clubs, and that of her characters in the book, is that the A-list stars she regularly came across while dancing were almost always unpleasant.