GrownStories
Is it possible for a stripper to still be a virgin?
Most readers will scoff and say no-of course, there's no such creature. The word "stripper" tends to conjure up a ready-made caricature: a desperate slut who'll do anything for cash, a woman discarded by dignity, tossed around by life like a rag doll on the swing of life.
They bob along like pieces of immoral flotsam, swept through a world that judges first and asks questions never.
But that judgment would be wrong. Spectacularly wrong!
Cassandra, the unlikely heroine of our tale, is exactly what cynics insist cannot exist: a virgin stripper. Unbothered by the labels others hurl at her, she carries herself with a strange, almost inconvenient self-knowledge.
Her identity is not up for public denunciation. She belongs to herself-and that, to her, is enough.
Besides, every "lady of the night" begins her story the same way everyone else does-innocent, hopeful, believing in soft childhood fantasies. Most of them once dreamed of a Prince Charming who would sweep them away from the soot and struggle of their lives, lift them out of the ashes like a modern Cinderella, and carry them into some shimmering Golden Palace where love was pure and salvation effortless.
But reality has a cruel way of rewriting dreams. Cinderella belongs to fairy tales, to storybooks whispered to children at bedtime. Out here-in the real world-hope is fragile, and wishful thinking rarely survives the night.