9. The Journey of Sunshine: Embracing My Past and Shaping My Future

The Journey of Sunshine: Embracing My Past and Shaping My Future

In this inaugural episode of 'Becoming Sunshine,' the host, who goes by the name Sunshine, opens up about her past as a dancer and the impactful decade she spent in the industry. She discusses the cultural stigma and societal challenges she faced, the life lessons learned, and the personal growth experienced. Sunshine shares her motivation behind launching this podcast to inspire others, reclaiming her identity, and controlling her narrative before misconceptions arise. This heartfelt episode aims to provide an authentic look into her journey, aiming to change societal narratives about marginalized communities and empower women to embrace their past while pursuing their future.

00:00 Introduction to Becoming Sunshine

00:29 Revealing My Background

01:53 The Stigma and Trolls

03:42 Identity and Acceptance

05:19 Navigating Relationships

08:34 Entering the Club World

11:00 Challenges and Realities of Club Life

13:41 Social Dynamics and Isolation

17:17 Struggles and Growth

26:31 Finding a Way Out

28:53 Healing and Moving On

29:50 Shifting Perspectives on Social Connections

31:07 The Impact of Club Culture

32:32 New Beginnings and Personal Growth

34:58 Challenging Societal Stigmas

39:49 The Complexity of the Adult Entertainment Industry

49:55 Empowerment and Future Aspirations

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Transcript

Madeline: 0:00

Welcome to Becoming Sunshine. For those of you that know me, you know that sunshine has been an alias of mine for almost a decade now, and sunshine also is me becoming my highest self, and that's what this podcast is about. I'm here to help you understand yourself better, and maybe learn some more about myself along the way. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm excited. Hey friends. Welcome back to becoming Sunshine. Today's episode is about a topic I wasn't planning on discussing just yet. It's not something I really wanted to come out about just yet and I think for a few reasons. I felt that my podcasts and my platform needed to be successful before I came out about my background and I wanted it to be known for something else just because of the cultural and societal stigma about it, and I didn't want that to overshadow what I'm trying to do here. I also didn't want my podcast to become just all about that because that's not what this is about this is about healing, this is about transformation, this is about lessons I've learned, but I also have realized this part of my life is a really big part of my life, and if I don't share it, it's a disservice to y'all and also to myself. I'm a lot more interesting than I've let on and I have a lot more depth than I've let on, and also a lot of my wisdom comes from my backgrounds. I can't just pretend that almost a decade of my life or a big part of that decade didn't shape me into the person I am and the values and everything that I have, and also too I feel like I need to control the narrative. I've already started to get trolls in my DMs, and commenting on my podcast page on Instagram and stuff, leaving mean comments, trying to shame me for my background. I know that there's going to be internet trolls regardless, but I don't ever want people to think I'm ashamed of who I am or where I came from, and also I don't want people to think I'm hiding anything or being inauthentic because that's like the whole brand. Everybody in my life that I care about, knows about my background and they accept me. They love me, so it's just like why should I care about what anyone else thinks or what their perception might be? Sharing this part of my story will inspire other people to share their story and their background. I think there's this societal stigma for a reason. A lot of people like me haven't come out about their background, and I think people only know from what they've seen in pop culture, and more often than not what you see in pop culture is not reality. If I can inspire anybody or help change the narrative then I want to. Part of this podcast and this brand is about changing the narrative for marginalized communities like the one I'm about to talk about, and I feel coming out about it now before my brand blows up is probably a better idea than being outed later or thinking I was trying to hide something. Now when mean girls and mean boys, not men, boys comment on my stuff, I will have already addressed it, so they'll just look like the mean bullies that they are. Anyways, not to be super cryptic or whatever. The title of the podcast Becoming Sunshine, it's all about me becoming my highest self, like enlightened, whatever. That's where I get the Sunshine, but Sunshine is also me reclaiming the name Sunshine. I've gone by Sunshine, it's been an alias that I have had for almost a decade and I talk about that in the intro so it's not like that cryptic, but it's not something that most people would probably pick up on if they don't know me personally. I was a dancer at of club and my stage name was Sunshine, and I don't know why this is so hard for me to talk about, everybody in my life that I'm close to knows about my background. They love and accept me. I feel like Sunshine has become part of my identity at this point, and taking that into my next chapter is something that's important to me. I never want to feel shame about where I come from or things that I've been through, because everything that I've gone through has made me who I am, and also I'm tired of people trying to use my background against me. People have used it to sabotage my relationships, and I will be damned if anyone tries to use my background to sabotage my brand, because this isn't just about me. This is about helping others, and if I can be brave and talk about this and squash any potential problems in the future about it, then I'm going to do it. I'm going to have the courage. When it comes to dating, I've always been honest about my background. I don't lie to guys and I don't try to hide this part of my life from them. It's not something that I lead with when I first meet people just because of this societal stigma, and it's just not worth the drama or the judgment. If this isn't someone that's going to be in my life. I think it's a protective thing. It's not anyone's business unless it needs to be their business. Unless I care about them and I think I'm going to have them in my life long-term or at least in any real capacity or in any major way. It's not like, I lie to these guys about my background or what I do for work. It's not like they don't know, but usually it's the stigma or the stereotype, or just the lack of information or knowledge about it, that kind of makes guys feel insecure. People in their ear will use the stigma and stereotype against me, and be like"Oh, you can't trust her","She manipulates guys for a living","She lies to guys for a living","She gets guys to fall in love with her every night", Of course she doesn't really care about you","Of course she doesn't really like you", and I always think that's so funny because if I can get anyone to just fall in love with me every night, why would I need you? Why would I want you to fall in love with me? Obviously I'm choosing you obviously there's not a lack of options for me, despite what people might want to think. I'm choosing to date you and give you my time when I don't need to, so it's just silly that people use that as an excuse. Girls, like disgruntled exes have used that kind of stuff in guys' ears, or they've you know just been like"Oh, you don't know about her background","You don't know what she's done","You don't know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah","Her morals","Her values are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah". First of all, what I do for work and how I've chosen to support myself over the years has never been a reflection of my character, and also yeah, there is this stigma for a reason. There is a stereotype for a reason. There are girls that fit that stereotype, but stereotypes are not everybody. I definitely don't work the same or carry myself as maybe some of the other girls. I am very much about my principles and my morals and that carries over into the way that I work, into the way that I date. I don't carry myself one way in one atmosphere and then behave differently in another, I'm very consistent throughout. I think that's why my friends and family value me so much and appreciate me so much. I think it can be argued that if I was dating a healed man, it wouldn't matter what outside third-party perspective, or people in their ear were saying about me and my background. A healed man should judge me on our time together and my values and the person that I am. He shouldn't be able to be influenced by what someone else says about me that doesn't even know me, or what someone else thinks about my background that doesn't know anyone in the industry or anything about the industry. I guess a little bit of background and how I got into this. I think it's pretty straightforward and pretty cliche honestly, like the broke college student and just wanting to make money. My roommate actually got me into it. I had only really done it a couple of times, and then my life started to radically shift when I was 20 years old. One thing about club life, I feel like that world is a totally separate world. It's almost like an underworld, I guess you could say in a lot of ways, and not to be super dramatic, but I almost feel like Persephone who was taken down into the underworld and I'm finally coming back, or like a hero's journey how they have to go into the underworld and come back. Honestly, that's how I feel. I feel like I was taken into the underworld for a decade and I'm finally coming back. I really feel like it is another world, and part of how I got into that world is because the outside world wasn't very kind to me before. This is hard to talk about, but I'll do my best without getting emotional. The outside world really wasn't kind to me, and so that kind of became my world for a really long time. It's easy to get stuck in that world. I found new friendships, new friends, new family in that world, and for the first time, in a long time, I felt like I found people that understood me and had gone through similar things. Obviously some of that I read into a little bit too much, and I think a lot of it has to do with getting into that world when you're really young. There's a really big difference between people who get into that world, women who get into that world in their later twenties or early thirties or something, versus women that get into it when they're like 18, 19 20. You have to think about that environment. It's probably one of the most toxic environments you can be in, and if you're trying to essentially grow up, like through adulthood in that environment, you're still establishing your sense of self worth and figuring out who you are and trying to do that in that really toxic environment is definitely going to take a toll. I think a lot of girls start to have an identity crisis when they work in that type of industry. It's very cutthroat. It's very aesthetic based. Honestly, there's a lot of things about it that I think teach you how real life works. It's real life shrunk down into a miniature version. The themes and stuff that comes up it's like real life and real world themes that we don't really talk about, or we pretend don't exist. A lot of the dynamics at play are what are at play in real life. So how I got into it, the world wasn't very kind to me. Something happened to me when I was 20 years old that was pretty traumatic, and I ended up losing all my friends, my job, and a big part of myself, like a big part of my soul honestly, and that's kinda when I fell into this world and this lifestyle. I was super isolated. The first two years I was in this world and I was working at a club. I didn't even talk to anybody at the club. I would just go and work and then leave. It was because one of the girls that got me into it, she was like, don't trust the other girls. Don't become friends with the other girls, which is valid. Trust me, but also too, no one teaches you how to be a dancer. No one teaches you the game, and it takes time to figure out. If you don't have people that put you on, or teach you, or people that already know and friends that can help you, it's going to take you a lot longer to figure shit out. You're gonna make a lot of mistakes. A lot of traumatic stuff is probably going to happen. We call those girls baby strippers, a lot of the early mistakes that you make and early things that happen are just being unaware, not knowing your worth or whatever. Then you figure shit out and you start making money. Real money, and a lot of times girls that get into this industry, they've never seen real money before they didn't come from money and it's fast money. if you don't have any kind of background, any kind of financial literacy, it's definitely easy to get sucked up into that world and to get lost. A lot of girls start to have an identity crisis around about year two. I've seen it happen to so many girls that happened to myself, because the more you get sucked into this world, the more you lose touch with reality outside. For years, my only social connections were in the club. I didn't have any friends outside of the club. I didn't really have any connections outside of the club other than my family, of course, but my family doesn't leave here. We are close, but I don't talk to my family members on a day-to-day basis about my life. That's something that's really dangerous, not having outside ties because you start to lose touch with reality and what's real. That's how a lot of girls fall into situations, or they start to befriend other girls at the club and thinking that these girls are their sisters or their really good friends, and it's just like at the end of the day, there's no real friends at the strip club, trust me. These girls will screw you over, stab you in the back, betray you for a customer, for money every single time. For years I put up with stuff. I put up with that from people that I thought were my best friends and I would make excuses for these girls. I'd be like,"Oh we're all here to make money, blah, blah, blah", but at the end of the day, for me to call some of my friend their values and my values should be aligned, and those values shouldn't change once we get to the club. That's not a real friendship. That is a colleague or a club acquaintance, and someone you make money with. Making money with someone shouldn't be the basis for friendship. Convenience, proximity, politics shouldn't be the basis for a friendship, it's not. Also too, a lot of things start to become normalized that aren't normal. My social world started to get really small, and of course, after everything happened, when I was in college and my social circle went away. I didn't really have much of a social circle to begin with, but the club culture is just so odd compared to other social norms, like when normal civilians will say they hang out with their friends all the time. My friends at the club, we would never hang out outside of work. We started to but it wasn't normal, like it had to be an event, it was weird. We would see each other all the time at work and would feel like we're hanging out and we're super close, but a lot of times you're so tired because that job is so physically, emotionally, spiritually exhausting that you're either recovering from the job when you're not working, you're working on your body, you're in the gym, you're at beauty appointments because you have to stay at this peak level physically and aesthetically. That rivals a full-time job in and of itself. I started to develop this sort of social anxiety for years. Especially when I got sick. I had no social interactions other than inside the club, and I feel like when I did develop a connection with someone outside the club, I put so much value on that connection. For example, if there was a guy I was seeing. It was so easy for him to take advantage of that situation because he could be doing whatever while I was at work and I had no idea. He could be running around with other girls. There was even a guy, he had a whole other girlfriend behind my back and I had no idea because I had no other social ties. I didn't have anyone out seeing him with this other girl able to tell me and be like,"Hey girl he's running around behind your back". There was none of that. I just was so clueless for so long, also I think I felt this person was my tie to reality. I just put so much value in that relationship, even if it wasn't good for me, because I had isolated myself so much for so many years, and that's also a really dangerous position to put yourself in. it wasn't all bad, obviously this career path has given me a lot. It's introduced me to a lot of people I probably never would've met. It's given me a lot of opportunities I probably never would have had. If I had done things a different way, I'd have a different life and maybe it would have been better. Maybe it would've been worse, but I wouldn't be the person that I am and everything happens for a reason. I feel like I am such a positive person and I have so much light in me, that's what they call me Sunshine. I'm very spiritual, and it's crazy that the universe, God, put me in this place for so long, which is a very low vibrational place. Unfortunately it attracts low vibrational people for the most part, a lot of the people that go there are sad. They're missing something. They're looking for something, and it's definitely shaped the way I have viewed men over the years. How could it not, it attracts men in their worst moments, a lot of the time. When you start to see that night after night, and that's all you see, you start to get a certain lens and it's really hard, so obviously dating has been difficult. Of course, that's not always the case. Guys go there to entertain clients, or they go there to celebrate a bachelor party or something. So it's not always these low vibrational dudes, or these sad dudes, or guys that are unhappy in their marriages, or looking for something, or need validation. Honestly, more often than not it's guys that just need someone to talk to you and some form of intimacy. I don't mean physical intimacy, maybe sometimes, like they honestly just need a hug. A lot of times, it's the connection that these guys go there for because they don't have that honestly. A lot of money comes in and out of these places, especially at the more high end clubs. A lot of the clientele is CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, lawyers, doctors, surgeons. They're not bums. They're not typical strip club guy. I hate when guys come in there and they're like, I'm not your average strip club guy. I'm like, babe, this place isn't for average strip club guys, like in order to have any type of fun here, you have to have the disposable income in order to do so. Strip clubs, especially high end clubs are designed for men who it's part of their lifestyle, and they get pleasure and enjoyment out of spoiling women and taking care of women. Sometimes guys are, they're looking for something else, but more often than not it's entertainment, and these are the types of places that cater to that type of man. It's just crazy for society to look down on women in these industries, or say that it's a cop out or anybody could get naked, and it's just more often than not the guys that are coming into these types of establishments are the same type of guys that don't even take meetings. You couldn't even get access to these guys, and now these guys are paying these women to mentor them or give them advice or talk to them, or have a conversation with them. For anyone to not see the power in that role or that position, it's pretty silly to me, but I don't know, maybe people have never thought about it that way and that's why I feel like it's important that this stuff is talked about by someone that actually knows that world and can shed some light on the reality. It's not what you see on TV. It's not always the in pop culture. Of course, there's the stigma and the stereotype for a reason, but most of the women in there are some of the most ambitious women that I've ever met. A lot of them use this as a stepping stone and go on to open businesses or they're supporting their families. In order for you to make it in this world, and to not have this world chew you up and spit you out, you have to have a certain type of character and a certain level of grit, and most girls can't cut it in there. They don't make it. Honestly, I joke, I say that I swim with the sharks every day, like I'm in the shark tank and if you can make it in that world, you can make it anywhere. Unless you're born into wealth or you come about it some other way. This is really one of the best ways to wield your power as a woman, and get ahead. We don't have to participate in the patriarchy. We don't have to participate in the gender pay gap. I don't know why that's bad. Of course there's definitely some toxic things that go with the industry. Of course, there's definitely some very dark themes that go on. At the end of the day, you're all competing for the bag. You're all competing against each other and being in that environment every day is definitely difficult to navigate. I don't like competing against other women. A lot of the times, it's not even your looks, of course your looks help and it's definitely easy to get sucked into that as well. Thinking you always have to be working on something. You always have to be getting a surgery, you always have to be getting some kind of a aesthetic treatment done like lasers or preserving your youth. I think a lot of times, a lot of the early trends, a lot of things that trend first are in the club A lot of girls that are in the club are into these aesthetic things before the rest of the girls are, and it's because you have to take such good care of yourself. You have to get your nails done, you have to get your lashes done, you have to get your brows done, you have to get your hair done, you have to be in peak physical shape, you have to have nice teeth, you have to have a nice body. A lot of girls get their bodies done. A lot of girls get their teeth done. A lot of girls get their faces done. It's such a cutthroat competitive world, which honestly is not great for your psyche either, especially when you're young and you're trying to establish your sense of self worth, and you feel like you always have to be changing yourself or ever improving yourself. Girls that get into it a little bit later, in their later twenties, early thirties, they kinda are already established in who they are, and they're not as easily influenced or swayed. That's definitely something that needs to be addressed and have some light shut on. I have friends that started when they were 18. I have friends that started when they were 28, and it's just completely different. When you're 18 or whatever, you don't know the game, you don't know what's going on. You don't have friends that got you into it. You honestly, we're probably in a really bad situation, and you got into it out of desperation. Then you start to figure stuff out, your situation changes, and then you stay in it because you see the opportunity that it's going to give you. That it's going to get you where you want to go. A lot of times when women get into it later, in their later twenties, early thirties, they go in with a plan. They go on with friends. They know who they are, they immediately start making money, they have an exit strategy. It's just a completely different dynamic, so I think we should give grace and the girls that got onto it early should give themselves a lot of grace because it's easy to pass judgment or be like, why were you in this so long? Why were you doing this for so many years? Why blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's just these are babies that got into it. They didn't even know who they were and they're thrown into this toxic environment that's so cutthroat, and it takes a while to figure shit out. I've met a lot of people that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. I was connected with people that have moved my life in huge ways. I was shown a different way to live. I grew up pretty average. My parents made sure we had everything we needed, but we were middle-class I never was exposed to real levels of wealth before. I never seen that before. I'd never been on a private plane before. I'd never known anyone that had made hundreds of millions of dollars. I didn't know anyone with generational wealth. I never lived this luxurious lifestyle before I got into this world. Once I was in this world, I was able to have access to it. I was able to see a different life for myself, and to want a different life for myself, and to be inspired to want more for myself, and to see what's possible. I also was connected to my functional medicine doctor through someone that I met in that world. I never would have got better, I never would have learned all these things about myself and my body if I hadn't had these connections on these resources. I'm very grateful. The club has given me a lot, but it also has taken probably just as much, if not more from me. Like I said, I developed really bad social anxiety for a long time, because my only social interactions were in the club, as someone else, as Sunshine. For a long time I struggled because I felt like everyone loves Sunshine, everybody liked Sunshine, but people didn't really like Madeline, and so figuring that out, finding my identity again, after that and especially after battling a chronic illness and dealing with that, that was a whole other thing in itself. I wasn't the person I was before I got sick. I wasn't the person I was when I was sick, and then I had to figure out who that was after. I finally started to heal a lot of this and find real motivation to get out. I had been trying to get out of the club for a long time. I was trying to figure out what I was passionate about, what I wanted to do. There were so many different things I tried to pursue. Everyone's like,"Oh go into real estate","Oh, go into pharmaceutical sales","Go into XYZ". You're so good at sales, you should do X, Y, Z", and so of course, the natural pipeline is they try to get into some type of sales. I took all these different courses, took all these different tests, and I realized this isn't really what I want to do. I stayed in the club, because for a long time, a lot of my friends were there, I was making really good money and I felt like until I figured out what I was passionate about, I wasn't going to leave. I wasn't just going to pursue something else. I understand that logic, I do. I think for a long time I was way too comfortable in that world, and I was ignorant to the world outside. I didn't have a lot of outside friends. I didn't have a lot of outside connections. For a long time, I really hid myself in that world and I think part of that was because of fear and limiting beliefs, and because of core wounds that I hadn't healed yet. I have such core wounds around being seen. I know it sounds crazy. How can you get up on a stage with the hardly any clothes on and be in the spotlight and do all these things, where most people could never be that vulnerable and couldn't perform the way that these girls do. I don't know, maybe because I've always been a performer and an entertainer, it just didn't feel super unnatural to me, or maybe you just get used to it and you get desensitized, but also too, it's not really me. I'm never too far away from myself when I'm at work, but at the end of the day, that's not me. That's a persona, that's Sunshine. That's not Madeline, and so I'm not really being seen and showing up authentically and genuinely as myself. It's like this character. I feel like for a long time, I was hiding behind this character. Especially because like I said, I had been hurt in my personal life and I think for a long time I didn't really want to be Madeline anymore. It was just easier to be Sunshine, which is really sad when I think about it. I've done so much healing and now I love Madeline. I'll always be grateful for Sunshine and the things that I got from that world, and the time that I needed that persona to help me get through life. As I started to get older, I started to heal a little bit. I started to make more connections outside the club and I started to get uncomfortable in the club. I think that's when things really started to shift for me, and also too it just took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do. As I started to get more clarity around that too, I was more motivated to get out and more excited for this next chapter. The universe makes you uncomfortable, otherwise you would never move. You would never change. Things have never changed. A lot of my club relationships went away. The environment started to get really uncomfortable for me. I started to meet people and make connections outside of the club that meant so much to me, and I wanted to be able to spend more time with them. As I started to take steps away from the club and spend less time at the club, I started to feel different in my body. There was this constant level of exhaustion working there and it started to go away. I felt like I was so drained socially from how much it takes at the club that once I wasn't doing that anymore, I was able to enjoy being social outside of the club. As an entertainer you're getting paid for your time, you're getting paid for your attention, and so I think it starts to warp your brain a little bit and you don't want to do things unless you're getting paid for your time and attention. It starts to become a part of the culture, not wanting to do stuff. There's these memes are reels I've seen about dancers that are funny, but it's so true. It really becomes part of the lifestyle. Like inside outside the club, you start to get paid to party. You don't want to go places unless you're getting paid. If you're going to a party, if you're going to a dinner, if you're going to something, and I think that definitely starts to skew your brain a little bit. You start to get this weird sense of entitlement and just this false sense of reality, and also you start to lose the joy of just being social because it's just like a job. I don't know if that is the case for a lot of entertainers outside of the sex worker, industry. Sex workers is basically an umbrella term for anyone in the adult industry, whether that's only fans, whether that's dancers, whether that's porn stars, whether that's whatever. Even outside of that, I think maybe anyone in entertainment, like when you do it for a living, it's starts to skew things for you. You don't want to do stuff unless you're getting paid for your time. That's the way I felt for a long time. I just was like, why would I go to this? Why would I do this when I could just go to work and get paid to party instead. I didn't see the value in social connection, social interactions for a really long time. When the club world started to get uncomfortable for me, I was forced to start to make new connections outside of the club, and I think that's what really started to change my brain and shift things for me. I met someone that I really developed strong feelings for, and obviously he wasn't cool with me working at the club. A lot of guys, obviously aren't going to be cool with it. Honestly, I probably wouldn't be cool with it. I don't want to date someone that entertains other men, other women for a living. Especially in that intimate of a setting, it's just not really something that I would be comfortable with, so I can't really blame them. I started to go out with this guy more. I took a step back from the club and I started to really envision this new life for myself. This level of exhaustion I constantly had from working all these crazy hours went away. My body started to feel better. This job is so physically exhausting, you're wearing these crazy seven inch platform heels. You're dancing, you're walking around, you're contorting yourself. It's hard, my back hurts, my knees hurts, my hips are probably so out of alignment. I'm pretty sure I have a posterior pelvic tilt because of working in this industry for so many years. I started to go out with him socially and I started to put myself into social situations and I finally felt like I was able to enjoy myself. I was able to enjoy that part of life again, and I feel like it had been almost 10 years since I felt that before. I started to feel like my old self again, who I was before started dancing. The more I spent time with him and the more I spent time outside of the club world, the more I really wanted to just be in the real world full time. I'm so grateful for that connection and for him showing me this world that wasn't kind to me before, a lot has changed. I've changed a lot since then, and I started to be excited about a new life and a new future. I hadn't really wanted this new life enough for me to really take the steps to move my life out of that world. In the past year, my life has completely changed. It's almost unrecognizable. I have this whole new career path. I have a whole new social circle. I have all new goals and I feel more myself than I have in probably a decade. I feel like I'm finally stepping into the highest version of myself and who I've always been meant to be. Although I'm grateful for all the lessons and everything I learned in that world. I'm just so excited for this next chapter, and I know that a lot of the lessons and everything I integrated from that world and that life are what is going to propel me forward and get me where I need to go, but that world and that life just doesn't really fit anymore. I'm just really grateful to this person, and also just to myself for how hard I've worked, because it's scary doing something different. It definitely hasn't been easy getting over my social anxiety, and believing myself, stepping into this new version, this new timeline. Part of what I want to do with this podcast is change the narrative. I feel like there's this societal stigma and these stereotypes. Of course, some of them are there for a reason. There's definitely some girls that live up to the stereotype for sure, but I think the biggest part is the stigma is because it's a female dominated field. Yes, there are male strip clubs, but those guys don't make nearly the same amount of money because women don't spend nearly the same amount of money as guys do in these types of establishments. In this world, like I said, these very powerful men, not always, there's definitely some beta males that come in there and they come in there because they think they can have some power and they act some type of way, but that's a totally separate thing. I could talk about that on future episodes, but these super powerful guys come into my domain where I work, and then I have the local star power, I'm the one with power, and I think that's why there's a stigma. I think if men could make the same kind of money doing the same types of things, there wouldn't be a stigma at all. Men just don't like when women have power and when women are able to wield their power in any way over men, and I'm not saying that these girls are manipulative or doing anything wrong. They are embracing a power that they have and men don't like that stuff. It makes men uncomfortable. Obviously not the men that are in there. They love that, eat that stuff up. That's why they're there, but society doesn't like it, the patriarchy doesn't like it. This honestly goes back from the beginning. Jesus and his number one, disciple, Mary Magdalen, the disciple of all disciples, there's different interpretations, but Mary Magdalen was basically the female entity, the feminine energy to the male masculine energy that was Jesus. They were basically doing the same thing and a lot of her work was erased from the Bible. She's still mentioned in there, but a lot of her work is not in there, and a part of it is because she had a lot of power and she associated with women that were sinners, and anything that has to do with sacred sexuality, anything that has to do with women in power, anything that has to do with high priestesses and what they were doing. Any time in history when women had real power, It was violently erased from history books. A lot of high priestesses were called witches and the whole Salem witch hunt was about taking power away from women, taking land away from women, taking resources away from women. There's just so many instances in our history where women had power and they had to be demonized somehow, and they had to have their power stripped away from them. I think that's why this whole industry is stigmatized. We have made so much progress as a collective. We've come so far. We are so woke now as a collective and we're still so behind in this one particular industry this one particular sector, when it comes to women using their bodies or using their feminine energy to get ahead. The whole Trad Wife trend and the Pilates Princess, stay at home wife, stay at home girlfriend thing is just so glorified, and it's like these women aren't even in their feminine energy. They're in their masculine energy and they're being performative. The fifties housewife was not in her feminine energy. She was being performative and catering to and working for a man, her man. It's just if you're not working for yourself, you're working for your man. I think men would prefer it that way. They don't want us to be working for ourselves, so of course the Pilates Princess, the Trad Wife, that stuff is going to be glorified and any woman who's out there trying to make her own money, and support herself is going to be demonized. It's also crazy to me that guys have tried to call me a gold digger when I make my own money and I don't need anything from them. Anything that I require I provide for myself. I don't need any man for anything that I'm going to have in this life. I'm going to get it myself. Of course, I would love a man for his companionship, for his inspiration, for his leadership, but I don't need you, and then the women that are just stay at home whatever, that don't have their own ambitions, that don't work, that are just with them for the lifestyle that they can provide. Those women are not called gold diggers. I'm just confused on that narrative. It doesn't really make sense to me, but anyways. People saying that being an only fans girl or being a dancer or being a porn star or being whatever is taking the easy way out or a cop out, but what is easy about being naked or being next to naked and being vulnerable and having to perform and be entertaining at the same time, no matter how you're feeling that day. No matter what's going on with you internally, you could be having a bad day, you could be going through a breakup, you could be sick and you still have to be hot. You still have to be charming. You still have to be performative. I can't speak so much for these other women in other parts of the industry, the adult entertainment industry, but as a dancer, what is easy about competing against a hundred other women every night, staying in peak physical condition, keeping yourself to a certain aesthetic at all times. Keeping up with your beauty appointments. When you're not working, you're at an appointment, or you're out at the gym, or you're going to therapy to make sure you're healed enough to even do this job and integrate everything that goes on and everything you have to deal with mentally. The mental toll, and emotional toll that this job takes, it's just crazy, but anyways what is easy about having to profile a room every night. Every night you're starting from negative. You start from negative and you have to build up from negative. How many people go to work every day, potentially working the entire shift with less money than they came with. It doesn't matter how good you are at your job, sometimes it's just not your night. This isn't the type of job that you can just go through the motions. If your energy is off, you're not going to make money. It doesn't matter if you're the hottest girl in the club. If your energy's off. It's just a waste of time, and you're not going to make money and you're going to leave negative. Imagine going to work all night and leaving negative, it happens even to some of the top girls. I think that's why a lot of the girls are very spiritual and very in tune with themselves because you have to be. You have to be so aware of your energy and what you're bringing into the club every night, and you have to be also so aware of everyone else's energy around you and how you're engaging with that energy and how it's engaging with you. Being able to sit in a room and profile people and immediately look at a guy and be able to know this guy looks like he's going to spend money. Most of the time it's not even the guys that you would expect. There's body language that you have to pick up on. Of course, the way a guy's clothes fit him, but a lot of times guys that are trying to look like they have money, don't actually have money. The guys that are flexing are never the ones that spend money. The guys that talk about how much money they have, are never the ones that have money. Wealth whispers. That is one of the biggest things if you don't know that, you'll learn that in the club, but yeah, it's just very minute details. The way someone's clothes fit them, the material of their clothes, the way their body language is, how relaxed they are, what drink they ordered, how they walk into the club, their body language when they walk into the club, how fast they sit down, where they sit down, there's just so many things. It's so calculated and it's so cerebral. The skills that I have developed, you cannot teach. You can not teach these skills. The amount of CEOs and business owners that talk to me and they think that I've gone to business school just because of everything that I know and everything that I've learned. Of course I have invested in my craft. I probably read more sales books, books on personal development, and books on human interaction and communication and interpersonal relationships then most people, but also it's a lot of on the job skills that I've learned. So what's easy about competing against a hundred different girls, immediately having to profile everyone in the room. Then having to sell yourself, sell the room, you have to quickly build instant rapport with these guys, you have to build an instant connection. You have to figure out why they're really there. You have to cater to that. You have to chameleon your personality to cater to this person. You have to be what this person's looking for. You have to mold your personality, your sales pitch, your demeanor to what this person is looking for and what they're needing that night. You have to deal with a lot of rejection also, and you have to be able to bounce back immediately. If you get rejected, you can let that ruin your entire night. No, you got to dust yourself off and put yourself back out there and try again. There's also a whole group of men that come there just to be mean to women. Men that have no real power, just come in there to feel like they have some sense of power and literally are there to be mean to you and to try to break you down. Especially on those days when you're already having a horrible day, and you really don't want to be there, but you force yourself to be there, and then there's this guy that has just come in there to be mean to you and break you down, and you have to deal with it and keep it moving. What is easy about that? People saying that girls are just selling their bodies or dirty or whatever, but think about it logically. The whole goal of being a dancer is selling your time and selling as much of your time as you can. So if you were dirty or you're giving the guy why he wants immediately, he's not going to continue to spend money. That's not the way that you get customers or guys to spend money on you and invest in you for months on end for years on end. You have to be strategic. You have to be cerebral. You have to cater to their psyche for hours on end. You have to have a really good mouthpiece. You have to be really good at conversating. You have to be really good at communicating. Bulding instant rapport, competing with a hundred other goals, and using sales and psychological techniques while also being sexy, witty and charming. I don't personally know a lot of people that could just do that and could thrive at that and I don't think that's the cop-out or the easy way out. I don't think there's anything easy about that. I think it's a lot easier to sit at a desk, or crunch some numbers or do whatever. I'm not trying to look down on anyone that does that, I'm not trying to look down on anyone that's a stay at home Trad Wife or a Pilates Princess or whatever. It's just girls in the industry don't talk shit about these people, so why is everyone talking shit about us? It's just weird. I think a lot of it is because they probably couldn't do it. These women are ambitious, these women are working for themselves, these women are incredibly intelligent. Not all of them of course, but there's a good number of them. Half the time I'm smarter than the guys that I talked to you in the club and me acting like I'm not as smart as I am or dumbing myself down, or allowing myself to be underestimated, that's strategic. I don't mind being underestimated. I don't mind guys thinking that they're smarter than me. Gauging that, what men are going to value my brain and my intelligence, and what men are going to value other things, and playing up either part. I don't want to emasculate someone and mess up my own money. Having to learn to cater to different personalities and different situations at the drop of a hat is definitely not an easy skill to learn, but again, people usually hate up. I'm really not criticized by anyone doing more than me. I would never trade places with a lot of the people that are talking shit about me, or want to make their assumptions about me and my background and what I've done. I've made mistakes in my life. Everybody has, but I've owned up to everything and everything that's happened and everything that I've gone through has made me the person that I am. I have learned so much about men in this world through this career path, because I've spent thousands of hours talking to men and analyzing and assessing men. A lot of it has helped me in my relationships for sure. It's crazy to me that men want to say that dancers wouldn't be good girlfriends or wouldn't be loyal. That doesn't even make any sense because we see men in their worst moments all the time, night after night, and also we've interacted and engaged with so many different men. When we do meet a good man and we are with a good man, why would we mess that up? I'm not out needing validation or attention. I get plenty of validation and attention. When I'm not at work, I'm wearing the biggest baggies clothes. I have no makeup on, my hair is not done. I don't want to be perceived. I'm like, please leave me alone. You don't ever have to worry about me. You don't have to worry about whose eyes are on me because my eyes are always going to be on my man. You don't have to worry about me not being loyal because I've had to engage and spend time with so many different men, so if I meet a good one and I find a good one, I know I got a good one. I don't need to question it. I don't need to fumble him because I didn't know what else is out there. I know what's out there and I'm not worried about any other guy. I'm only worried about my guy. That argument doesn't even make any sense. It probably comes out of insecurity. Obviously, I've learned a lot and I'm still learning, but I know that like I'm probably way ahead of the game. I know a lot more than the average girl when it comes to the male psyche, and also things that work on guys or the way I have to treat or deal with guys at the club, is not the way I'm trying to deal with my man. If I have to treat him like a customer, why would I want him, why would I date him? If I had to manipulate a guy that I'm dating, I'm not dating that guy. That's gross. That grosses me out. If you're acting like a customer, or I have to treat you like a customer in order for you to act right? You might as well be a customer. I want to man that is nothing like the men that I have to engage with at work, because most of the time, the guys that come into the club are sad, and they're missing something in their life. That's just not someone that I want to build a life with. No offense to these men, but I don't want to engage romantically with someone that's unhappy, with someone that's sad, with someone that's missing something in their lives, someone that doesn't know who they are, someone that's lost. Guys never had to worry about me falling in love with someone while I'm at work if I'm dating someone. It's just funny to me, honestly. I know that was a lot and there's honestly so many more things I could get into with this and I'll probably make future episodes on it. I'm still figuring out what I want to share and what feels appropriate, because again I don't want this entire podcast to be about my past, because I'm really trying to step into my future and into this new timeline. That's the part that I want to shed the light on. Of course the lessons from my background are what made me who I am, and have given me this wisdom. Without this world that has been such a big part of my life for so long, I wouldn't be the person that I am. I wouldn't have the wisdom that I do. I've spent tens of thousands of hours in conversation with top businessmen, entrepreneurs, and that's why I have the mind that I do. Figuring out different psyches and diving into the male psyche, and diving into different dynamics amongst the girls. I have pretty high level skills when it comes to interpersonal relationships and communication, because of the world that I've been in. That's why I have all of this depth and this wisdom and that's why I wanted to come out and talk about it and share, but again I don't want my past to overshadow my future. I'm not trying to use my past for clout, or attention to get my platform where it wants to go. I'm coming out about this now because I want to control the narrative and I want to address it before I get big and before other people try to come out about it before I'm ready and shame me for it. This took a lot of bravery, so I really appreciate everyone for listening and for being there for me. I hope that me coming out and talking about my past inspires other women like me to not be ashamed of where they come from, and to come out and pursue their next venture, and to not be afraid of their past coming back to haunt them or tear them down. Not to be so self-important, but if I could just wedge the door open for these girls, the girls after me can shatter the ceiling. Not that I'm this like trailblazer for sex workers or trailblazer for the hoe's or something, and also I say hoes, reclaiming that word too. I'm not a hoe and none of these girls are hoes. I think that the narrative shifts, when more people like me come forward and force it to shift and they force it to change. I have friends in other parts of the adult entertainment industry. I'm not an expert on any of the other ones by any means, but with people hating on only fans girls, it's just those girls are business women at the end of the day, and they are smart. They're making so much money, and it's not just about being hot. It's about psychology and it's about marketability, and these women are using what they've been given to their advantage. These women are investing in themselves and investing in their future. I don't think that's something that we should ever look down on. Women that are taking or creating opportunities for themselves, that's amazing. I think that more women and more people in general should be like that. Seizing opportunities for yourself to move your life forward and not being dependent on anyone else, and having the resources then to give back, give back to your family, give back to your community and to build a legacy for yourself, that's amazing. I don't think that's anything we should ever hate on. Again, I think it comes from jealousy. I think it comes from the patriarchy. I think it comes from other women that wish they could do the same thing that aren't, and instead of hating on each other, why don't we just learn from each other and inspire each other to be better. Those are just my thoughts. Anyways, this was really difficult for me to record and I probably didn't even address everything that I wanted to address. I'm sure there'll be future episodes on this, but this was just my first little coming out episode, I guess you could say. I'm really proud of myself for sharing this. I know everyone in my circle already knows, but I've never publicly spoken out about my background. I hope that this reaches the right people and it helps the right people. I'm excited for this new chapter and everything to come. I really appreciate everyone that's supported me and everyone that encouraged me to record this episode because I was really scared, and I'm realizing every day that there's really nothing to be afraid of in this life. Being fully yourself and being authentic is really the only way you're going to get where you want to go. If you like this episode, if you like my podcast, if you like what I'm trying to do, please share this. Like it, subscribe, leave a review. It really does help me. I really just want this to be able to reach and help as many people as possible, and it really means the world to me. Thanks guys, love you, bye.