Stripper says "Being a sex worker makes me a better mum" for her five-year-old daughter
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A mum-of-one believes that her job as a stripper, sex writer and ‘unlicensed underwear therapist’ makes her a better parent.
Elle Stanger works in a strip club three days a week, sells her own amateur porn and writes erotica, but the 31-year-old claims it makes her a better mum to her five-year-old daughter.
University graduate Elle, from Portland, Oregon in the USA, said: "I feel like being a sex worker makes me a better mum because I’ve developed a greater sense of empathy.
"It means that I’m responsible to make a human being that is better for the world.
“She is going to be a lot more secure about the world around her.”
Elle says she is proud of her career and ignores any judgemental parents at the school gates.
“I’ve been telling my daughter since she was three that mummy dances, talks to people and tells jokes for money,” she said.
(Image: Barcroft Media)
(Image: Barcroft Media)
(Image: Barcroft Media)
“I think people don’t trust that I could raise a child in a nurturing, safe, structured environment because they’re projecting their own fears on me," she continued.
"I am not working in full view of her because I am an adult, I don’t want to see my parents do that.
“When I’m a mum, I’m a mum, when I’m in the adult world working, I’m doing my adult work - those two things do not overlap.”
Elle currently works at the Lucky Devil Lounge, in Portland, and says that stripping is a form of therapy for a lot of her customers.
She said: "I realised about six months into stripping that I was learning more about human beings than I’d ever learned in any psychology class.
“It was like, wow there is really a whole lot here, this feels like human, this feels like helping, this feels like giving therapy.
"I know my work is healing to people because they tell me and I see it.
(Image: Barcroft Media)
(Image: Barcroft Media)
(Image: Barcroft Media)
“There are a lot of reasons people go into adult establishments - it’s not just because they want some kind of arousal, but because they want to be heard, they want be acknowledged, they wanna be seen.
“A lot of people don’t have it in them to seek out therapy because they are ashamed to.
"I think it’s a lot easier for a blue collar guy to talk to a pretty girl in her underwear for 20 bucks a song.
"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, just hug her, because her wedding was the next day and she was nervous and so she wanted to de-stress. I thought that was really cool.”
Growing up, Elle wanted to be a police officer and received a degree in criminology, but 'stopped believing in the criminal justice system when she learned more about the world.’
She turned to sex work because 'she felt it was more of a compassionate method of interacting with the world around her.'
As well as stripping, Elle is a writer, and has her own website, Stripper Writer.
“My website is just like 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,” she explained.
"I make shirts, I make coffee mugs, I make shirts that say, 'I only f**k feminists'.”
(Image: Barcroft Media)
(Image: Barcroft Media)
(Image: Barcroft Media)
The mum-of-one also co-organises Portland’s Slut Walk - a yearly march to raise awareness of sexual violence.
Elle said: "I am really comfortable with calling myself a feminist because I appreciate and I respect everybody’s own sexuality. Everybody’s identity or intention.
"Slut Walk Portland has three organisers. I am one. We are all sex workers. The idea behind Slut Walk is that nobody deserves sexual assault.
"Every year I try to wear the last thing I wore when I was cat called or sexually harassed - and it is usually pants and boots and a jacket.”