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Asian immigrant families usually have high expectations of their children attaining high-status jobs, like doctors, engineers or lawyers, in hope of assimilating more comfortably in a new environment. But what happens if your child takes on a non-conventional job … like stripping? Samantha Sun, a Chinese-Canadian stripper in East London, tells you all about how her family feels about her job.
When I tell Mom I’m going to work in the evenings, she asks, “Is it circus … or the other one?”
My Mom won’t say “stripping” out loud, neither does my Dad. Still, my parents know that, in addition to my job as an aerial artist, I have been a stripper since I was 19.
I never officially told them, but Mom followed me on Instagram and saw some of the stripping pictures that I posted. Dad told me, “When you left home at 18, I knew you were getting into this. It wasn’t a surprise to me or your Mom.”
When I started stripping, I knew it wasn’t a conventional path to take, which is why I had a hard time reconciling my life choice with my parents. I went to school, got a degree, did the whole thing that immigrant parents expect. I support myself financially and I am nice to my little cousins. I call my grandma and my extended aunties regularly. The Cantonese term is bei meen, meaning that I “show face” on behalf of my parents.
The Confucian value of filial piety, or paying respect to your family, is crucial, and it’s one I that I imperfectly uphold. But when it comes to respecting family hierarchy, I do that well, which is why everyone is kind of OK with the stripping.
Stripping is more my thing than getting “a real job.” I was 18 when I sent out emails to strip clubs, inspired by the profession after seeing strippers post on Tumblr. I used to live in Hoxton in East London, where there are a lot of “strip pubs,” which are regular pubs where you can watch the Premier League and maybe get a lap dance.
When I got the job after an audition, my first shift wasn’t anything like it’s made out to be in movies. No one taught me how to hustle; you figure things out as you go. There’s no science to what makes a good stripper. It’s not really about how sexy you are, what you look like, how old you are. The best strippers are people who know how to make others feel really good around them.
Being Asian helps because you rarely see Asian performers in strip clubs. I was told to keep my stripper name to two syllables or less otherwise people would forget it. There are strippers named “Amber” and “Diamond,” so I chose “Jade” because Asian people love jade. I’m sure my grandma is wearing a jade bracelet right now.
When I perform, customers love to share random Asian things with me—and in the strangest of settings. I once worked a baby shower that was thrown for the father by his friends, and I gave a lap dance to a guy who whispered in my ear, “My first girlfriend was Chinese.”
Maybe I could be making a lot of money as an accountant, but I don’t know if I would love my life as an accountant. If you’ve experienced freedom, it’s not something you can give back.
Stereotypically, Asian immigrant parents have this fantasy of their kids earning lots of money. While many Asian people have stable jobs, they are unfulfilling. It’s why my grandmother doesn’t hate it when I show her photographs of me performing. She just says, “You need your ziyao, freedom and you have your reasons for doing what you do.”
My parents might be very dorky, but they raised me and my sister with values of working hard. So, if I was going to be a stripper, I had to be a really good one. When I am super stressed out with work, I will video-call her and say, “I’m not good enough, I’m not making enough money!” Mom reassures me that I’m wrong — and then apologizes. We both get flashbacks of going to what felt like hundreds of extracurricular activities when I was growing up: piano, ballet, jazz, hip-hop, violin, Chinese school. All of this comes back to haunt her.
“This is all my fault, I’m so sorry,” she says to me.
When I was back home for Lunar New Year, I dressed up in my red qipao burlesque outfit and had decorated my hair with Chinese hairpins. After we took photos, I noticed that my Dad had one of the photos as the lock-screen image on his phone. ur
Mom had sent a photo to Grandma in the family group chat, which caused my Grandma to call immediately with a demand: “Bring that child over here!”
We made a stop along the way to surprise my friend who has conservative Chinese parents, who looked out the window and saw me in gold thigh-high boots and my qipao with the high slit. Her parents were so surprised that they laughed, and gave me red envelopes of money: “Gong Hei Fat Choy … Happy New Year, here is a tip.”
Later, my Dad asked in the car, “Do you think if we went to the Chinese supermarket now, we would get more tips?”
My family has definitely worried about the state of my life. They asked if I want to move back home permanently because they see how I live in London in cramped houses with flatmates, living paycheck to paycheck. They wish that I could make a steady income or be a person who has a LinkedIn profile. Asians compare their children with each other all the time, and sometimes I know that family friends will say to Mum, “Do you want to talk about Samantha?” She refuses to participate, but I think at heart she would like bragging rights.
Aside from lesbian bachelorette parties, I do less stripping now anyway. I now have a proper job as a development manager at The Yard Theatre, overseeing all the fundraising, talking to donors and writing grant applications. My parents are thrilled that I’ve found something else that suits my personality and has me on a payroll.
The funny thing is it’s totally the same job as stripping: I butter people up and ask them for money. I guess you could say I was meant to do this line of work.
