Stripped Awake

Kaylee King June 18, 2026

Dancers hear it all the time, Go back to school.

Get a “real job.”

Settle down.

People imagine leaving the strip club behind and transitioning into a new career path as being this happy ending. But that is so far from reality.

The hard part isn’t the decision. It’s trying to build a life in a society that isn’t as welcoming as it claimed it would be.

You’re told your past doesn’t define you. Until suddenly it does.

And then reinvention starts feeling less like a personal decision and more like an audition.

Like now I have to prove I’m respectable enough.

Professional enough.

As if surviving in one environment somehow disqualifies me from belonging in another.

I thought I could make a clean break– Just leave and never come back. After all, that’s how civilian work operates. When you quit or get fired, you move on and find something new. I pictured being able to transition to Real Estate without a problem.

How naive I was. 

I quickly realized what a bubble I had been living in for the last eight years. Making friends with civilian girls proved to be incredibly awkward because I couldn’t relate to them, and I felt like I was from a different planet. 

I was moving forward in the professional world, but I felt like a complete phony. I had no choice but to omit the last decade of my life completely and sometimes flat-out lie just to get through an interaction.

I hated this.

I was terrified I would accidentally say something that would give me away, or trust the wrong person enough to tell them, only to have it backfire.

So, I slowly dimmed my light. I thought that’s what I had to do. My usually charismatic, confident self was zapped. I became unusually paranoid because I was terrified of getting caught in a lie or my past being used to invalidate my professional achievements.

I also realized I had no concept of what is appropriate and what’s not. And I know how ridiculous that sounds, but in the adult industry, sexual harassment is part of the job. We become desensitized to it. I kept winding up in uncomfortable situations with men in professional settings because I didn’t know how to assert those boundaries in a normal way.

I was like a fish out of water. My uneasiness and insecurity was obvious and preyed upon.

Following a sexual assault, I lost my housing and spent several weeks couch-surfing.

My self-esteem hit an all time low.

I thought to myself:

If I have to deal with sexism, assault, and harrassment anyways, I may as well be in control of it —

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Leaving an industry—especially one that can provide unusually high income, flexible schedules, strong social bonds, or identity—often means rebuilding multiple parts of life simultaneously.

Income.

Routine.

Community.

Professional identity.

Future plans.

For many of us, leaving isn’t difficult because we lack ambition.

It’s difficult because rebuilding requires resources. And the very communities and services that could actually help us, are the same ones that shut us out. 

So. After almost a year away, I reluctantly went back to working in the club, tail between my legs. My return was met with mixed reactions from the fellow dancers. I found that after so much time away, I no longer could relate to my industry friends anymore either. Great. Now what?

Maybe I never should have quit in the first place. 

Clean break–unsuccessful. I realized this was not going to be easy, and even though I didn’t really want to go back to the club for work, the real world felt so impossible to navigate.  I began to wonder if what I wanted for myself was even possible.

Even though I lost a little bit of hope upon returning to the club, I eased up on myself, as I was starting to grasp what I’m really up against. And it’s far bigger than my own limiting beliefs.

Stigma.

 I have since surrendered to the long haul, and stopped trying to erase myself, stopped dimming my light. Quitting anything is difficult. And quitting overnight wasn’t reasonable.

I don’t live in fear of being ‘found out’ anymore, and I’m slowly detaching from unhealthy habits I developed to survive the industry. I’ve curated a small circle of professional acquaintances who know my story and support me. I couldn’t be more grateful for these people.

The stigma will always hurt me. It never gets easier, but I’m learning how to not take it personally. I do what I can to educate the public and fight the inequality and unfair practices within the adult industry.

I will always proudly be an ally.

I decided that even if I never create a career outside of the adult industry, I’m okay with that, because no matter what— I’m still me, and I’m not defined by what I do for a living. 

So maybe we need to stop acting like telling dancers to leave is the same thing as helping to build something new. 

I don’t believe leaving one industry should mean rejecting the person I was inside the other.

I don’t think I have to be ashamed.

I don’t think I have to pretend that chapter never happened.

I don’t think starting something new means abandoning the version of me that I had to be to survive.

Whether I’m dancing actively or not, I’ll always understand that world in a way other people don’t.

I’ll always have love for the girls in it.

I’ll always see the intelligence and resilience that exists there.

And I think a lot of us deserve permission to evolve without feeling like we have to disown ourselves.

I think we deserve more choices than people pretend we have.

No matter where life takes me, I don’t wish to distance myself from dancers.

I want to build while standing beside them.

Because I was never “better than.”

I was always one of them.

And I still am.