ELLE STANGER: I feel like being a sex worker makes me a better mommy because she is going
to be a lot more secure in her understanding of the world around her.
ELLE STANGER: My name is Elle Lynn Stanger and I am 31 years old. I am really organised,
empathetic, sensitive. I cry a lot. I will probably cry during this interview.
ELLE STANGER: Coffee run. Hi!
WOMAN: Hi! You look familiar.
ELLE STANGER: I…
WOMAN: Stripper, right? Stripper, writer, right?
ELLE STANGER: Yeah!
WOMAN: Oh, my god! Seriously this is like the highlight of my day.
ELLE STANGER: I currently work at the Lucky Devil Lounge in Portland, Oregon. I will stick
a cocktail straw through my nose or light my pubes on my fire. This is glitter that
I put on my butthole because I think it’s funny and I work in a fully nude club. So
when people see a glittering anus that they didn’t expect to see, it usually makes them
laugh or react in some way.
ELLE STANGER: I take my bottoms off first. Most of the clubs do topless first. And I
have pubic hair that I am pretty proud of. Everybody has a shtick, right?
ELLE STANGER: The nature of my work is varied. I work in a strip club as a stripper three
nights a week. I have done webcam on and off. I have done a little bit of escorting, full-service
sex work but it’s illegal and that makes it more dangerous. I really hardly ever dabble
in that. I write erotica. I do sex toy reviews. I sell my own porn; me and my partner, we
just made our own. That was fun. That was a nice learning process. That was always on
my to-dos.
BRYAN BEHRNDT: My favorite qualities about Elle would be like her open-mindedness.
Like never a dull moment.
ELLE STANGER: So my daughter is 5.
ELLE STANGER: May I have a huggie? I don’t think I have had a huggie since we got home.
ELLE STANGER: What does your daddy do for work?
GIRL: He just works on his computer.
ELLE STANGER: What does mommy do?
GIRL: Mommy stuff.
ELLE STANGER: Mommy stuff. I do mommy stuff.
ELLE STANGER: I have been telling her since she was 3 that mommy dances and talks to people
and tells jokes for money.
ELLE STANGER: What else?
GIRL: Dance on a pole.
BRYAN BEHRNDT: Elle is a good mom because the well-being of her daughter is 100% her first priority.
ELLE STANGER: I think people don’t trust that I could raise a child in a nurturing
safe, structured environment because they are projecting their own fears on to me. I
am not working in full view of her because I am an adult. I don’t want to see my parents
do that either, you know. When I am a mom, I am mom. When I am in my adult world working,
I am doing my adult work. And those things do not overlap.
ELLE STANGER: A lot of culture you see strip clubs, you see people taking pictures. Some
places it is allowed but not in this city.
ELLE STANGER: Playing with the light word.
ELLE STANGER: White is not good because it will show all of your stretch marks and razor
burn and ingrown hairs.
ELLE STANGER: I used to want to work in street-level law enforcement. I use to want to be a cop.
ELLE STANGER: I received my BA in Criminology from Portland State University. But I became
a sex worker for economic reasons.
ELLE STANGER: But I realised about 6 months into stripping that I was learning more about
human beings than I’d ever learnt in anything, any psychology class and I was like, wow!
There’s really a whole lot here. This, this feels like healing. This feels like helping.
This feels like giving therapy. So I know that my work is healing to people because they
tell me and I see it.
ELLE STANGER: A lot of the reason that people go into adult establishments is not just because
they want some kind of arousal, which is great. A lot of people don’t have it in them to seek
out therapy because they have been ashamed to. I think it’s a lot easier for the blue-collar
guys to talk to the pretty girl in her underwear for 20 bucks a song.
ELLE STANGER: This is how I find out what I made the night before. There’s not a lot
of big bills in here last night though.
ELLE STANGER: It looks like more than it is when it is ones.
ELLE STANGER: Where is your bone?
ELLE STANGER: I had a woman a couple of years ago who asked me if I could just sit with
her and just play with her hair, and just hug her because her wedding was the next day and
she was nervous and so she just wanted to de-stress. I thought that was really cool.
BRYAN BEHRNDT: I think she does a lot of good in this world. I think she does a lot of healing.
I know, I felt a lot better when I used to see her at work before we started dating.
ELLE STANGER: So we have been together for almost 14 months. I was flirting with Bryan
when he would come into my place of work, which I don’t usually do. But I really liked
him and I kept asking him out and he finally said yes.
BRYAN BEHRNDT: I don’t get jealous with her activities or what she does for work.
I am able to separate the two.
ELLE STANGER: My website is just kind of a hub for where you can find me naked on the
internet, where you can find me naked in person, where you can read my writing. So, there is
the book that I published. We make coffee mugs. I make a shirt that says, "I only f**k feminists",
because that’s the case. That’s probably one of our top-sellers. I am really
comfortable with calling myself a feminist because I appreciate and I respect everybody’s
own sexuality.
ELLE STANGER: We lead a yearly march. Slut Walk Portland has three organizers. I am one of three.
We are all sex workers. The idea behind Slut Walk is that nobody deserves sexual assault.
ELLE STANGER: And it’s just really interesting how many people don’t know how to react.
Because they have gone their whole lives hearing about whores and sluts and hookers and shooting
them on Grand Theft Auto and watching them be dead on Family Guy.
ELLE STANGER: These are some of the ones that our volunteers made. "Sex isn’t bad, slut shaming is."
"Support Our Sluts.’‘ "A rape is never the victim's fault."
’‘Walk of No Shame."
ELLE STANGER: After this we are going to FaceTime grandma. Okay!
ELLE STANGER: I feel like being a sex-worker makes me a better mommy because I have developed
a greater sense of empathy. It means that I am responsible to make a human being that
is better for the world.
WOMAN: Hey! You have seen me before.
GIRL: I am trying to see you.
ELLE STANGER: Here, come sit.
ELLE STANGER: I think it’s just my job to kind of, raise a little human that's going
to make the world a better place.
ELLE STANGER: Okay, bye. I will be right back.
ELLE STANGER: People ask me, ‘What are you going to do after?’ I say, ‘I am going
to do this until my knees explode from crawling on a metal stage.’ My boobs are going to
be fine because they are, they are surgically enhanced. They are not going anywhere. So
as long as I can keep, keep the money-makers intact, I think I will be fine.