Her stage name is "Velveeta." She's a stripper and that's the term she likes--not dancer or entertainer --but stripper.
"That's the clearest description of what we do, and we're proud of it,' said the 31-year-old.
She's proud that on Wednesday she and the other 17 strippers from Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood filed for their official National Labor Relations Board election. They want to be union members for better working conditions, improved safety, more respect and as ‘Velveeta’ puts it, "... shining light on the hypocrisy where our society upholds actors playing strippers and sex workers on stage and giving them the prestige, protections and union contracts...." and not the real strippers and sex workers themselves.
Stefanie Frey is with Actors Equity, the union that represents 51,000 theater stage workers and stage managers. To Frey, strippers are no different adding, "It's not just Star Gardens. This is really an industry-wide problem with some of these issues."
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