What Do Men Actually Want?

A natural woman, or just the illusion of one?

Photo by Dynamic Wang on Unsplash

Let’s be real here. There is a lot of pressure to look a certain way in a strip club.

It is everywhere.

Certain clubs have unspoken (and sometimes very spoken), guidelines about how they expect their dancers to look. If you do not fit the mold, you do not get hired. It really can be that simple.

And even if you do get accepted, the pressure does not stop there.

The dressing room becomes the next test. You are suddenly body to body with beautiful girl after beautiful girl, each one somehow managing to look effortlessly packaged. It is almost impossible not to compare yourself with these icons.

Surgical enhancement is no longer unusual. In most clubs, it is more common than not. Botox is pretty much non-negotiable. Nails, lashes, tan, hair, filler, perfect breasts, smooth skin, your beauty regimen can be as extensive as you want (or can afford) it to be.

Now, more than ever there are extensive opportunities to alter ourselves. The older dancers at my club reminisce how a tan and a set of nails used to feel like making an effort. Now that’s the bare minimum. Hair extensions, lash extensions, tattooed brows, lip filler, cheek filler, botox, breast implants, fat transfers, butt lifts, veneers, facial resurfacing, skin tightening, GLP-1’s (I guess this is an improvement on meth) — the list just keeps growing.

For a number of my dancing years, I was blonde.

It wasn’t because I desperately wanted to be blonde. In fact, I have always suspected it washes me out a bit. Dad never hesitated to let me know it made me look ‘sickly’.

But I went blonde because men kept asking for blondes.

“I want a blonde one.”

“Have you got any blondes?”

“Any blondes working tonight?”

So I bowed to the pressure and to the promise of more money.

And annoyingly, it did work. My earnings improved. I got noticed more. I was picked A LOT more often. Blonde hair, under strip club lighting, does have a way of announcing itself. We shine… literally.

But my hair didn’t love the arrangement and one evening while I was getting ready for work, a patch of hair broke off in my curling iron. Panicked, I booked an appointment with my hairdresser for the next day and went back towards my natural color.

My hair is healthier now and the color suits me more, but I do think I need to try that little bit harder to stand out. Lots of white outfits now that shine in the UV lights.

Beauty isn’t just personal in the strip club industry, it’s economic. Will my body make me money tonight? Will my hair color get me noticed? Will this outfit stop someone in their tracks walking past me? Will my assets — my face, boobs, legs be enough to compete with the girl beside me?

We often joke that men say they like “natural women,” but what many of them actually respond to is natural-looking enhancement. They want the no-makeup makeup. The fake breasts that sit perfectly but somehow still look real. The smooth skin but not obvious filler. The tiny waist - but just don’t say how you got it. The effortless body that actually takes an exhausting amount of effort to maintain and mold.

The cosmetic industry knows this too. Globally, cosmetic procedures are not a niche thing anymore. The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported more than 34 million surgical and non-surgical aesthetic procedures worldwide in 2024, with Botox-type injectables and hyaluronic acid fillers among the most common non-surgical treatments. Breast augmentation, liposuction and eyelid surgery remained among the major surgical categories.

So women aren’t imagining this pressure as it’s showing up in actual numbers. Social media has also been a huge driver of comparison — now you don’t even need to work in a strip club to face this pressure to be perfect. A 2024 review on social media, body image and cosmetic surgery consideration found that appearance-focused social media can contribute to body dissatisfaction and social appearance anxiety, especially through selfies and visual comparison.

And men aren’t even comparing women to women they see in real life anymore. They are comparing women to filtered instagram models, Onlyfans creators with professional lighting, porn performers and now, AI generated influencers.

GLP-1s add another layer. Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro have legitimate medical uses, and for some people they are life-changing. But now they have also become tangled up with celebrity endorsement of thinness, beauty, status and the return of a much smaller body ideal.

After years of working the club floor I am still confused as to what men actually like.

I have heard men say they hate fake breasts, but then stare at them all night.

I have heard men say they prefer natural women and then choose the most enhanced dancer in the room.

But then, I have also known men who genuinely prefer softness, curves, natural hair, small breasts, and don’t’ cringe at stretch marks, bellies, lines and cellulite.

A male friend once told me he could never be with someone super athletic because he loved having something to grab onto in bed.

I loved hearing that as it’s so different from the environment I am now conditioned to.

Madison is one of the dancers I work with who has completely embraced the beauty pursuit of perfection. She has the most fantastically enhanced breasts. Liposuction on her already tiny stomach and thighs. Chemical peels and lasers every few months carefully slotted into her dancing schedule as you need to take a few days off to heal. Extensions of various shades of blonde that take hours at the hairdressers to maintain. She’s done everything to help guarantee a successful career as a dancer.

But she is still one of the most insecure people I know. She should walk into the club with complete confidence and be immune to comparison. But it doesn’t seem to work that way. She’s still really on edge and vulnerable to any potential rejection.

I can’t quite figure out where this pressure to look a certain way has come from. Has it come from unkind comments from drunken patrons at the club? Has it come from self-comparison with all the other women vying for the same piece of the pie? Has it come from the club itself, where certain bodies are rewarded more obviously than others? Has it come from porn, Instagram, OnlyFans, filters, AI girls and the endless stream of women online who look perpetually perfect?

At this point, I’m tired. The longer I have danced, the less I care about how I look. Don’t get me wrong, I still love dressing up, putting on a sexy outfit, my sky-high heels and getting my glam on.

But I am a lot more realistic these days.

I do my best with what I have, and if that’s not enough, then so be it. As I get older, I find myself becoming far more interested in actually being healthy on the inside than maintaining a perfect facade on the outside.

And the funny thing is, men still seem to like it.

I came back from holiday this year after indulging a little bit too much in the delicious food that’s associated with the holiday season. I definitely wasn’t feeling in top shape and told myself I was going to work extra shifts until the extra weight came off. But even with the extra couple of pounds, I ended up having a great week. Several of the regular patrons asked if I had had a boob job.

“No, just too much ice cream,”

It didn’t seem to matter - the tips were flowing. Sometimes you have to choose between the flat stomach or the perky tits.

Honestly, I don’t really know what men want.

And sometimes I don’t think they know either.

I think men’s perception of a natural woman has become so skewed that a lot of them wouldn’t recognize one anymore. After years of porn, filters, cosmetic enhancement, Instagram faces, OnlyFans bodies and now AI-generated women, “natural” has become a very “gray” word.

After years of watching women exhaust themselves trying to walk this tightrope, I think I want to find that balance between being the fantasy and staying true to myself.

And eating the ice-cream.

Thanks for reading, I look forward to continuing the conversation with you below.

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