When strippers take over the club

By Erin Siegal

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When dancers at San Francisco's Lusty Lady turned the exotic club into an egalitarian co-op, they found it tough to reconcile their lofty ideals with the aesthetic realities of the sex trade.

One of the first things the dancers did was to toss out rules about maintaining the same body type as the day they were hired, and ones regarding height-weight proportion. A list of acceptable hair colors was scrapped, along with a policy regulating the quantity and location of tattoos.

Now, larger dancers and those who might not be stereotypically "pretty" are welcome on the Lusty stage, but this emphasis on inclusion has brought difficulties for the 60 or so dancer-owners.

The performers -- many of whom take on stage names -- run from tall to short, and thick to thin.

Lilah Mayhem is pale with long dark hair and a thin frame, while Cinnamon Rose has shorter, red-streaked hair and a darker complexion. Wendy works the stage in striped pink knee socks and glasses, while another dancer wears old wedge sandals and a cheerfully curling brown wig. Many sport multiple piercings and tattoos.

After buying the club for $400,000 in 2003, the next step was to put themselves through guerilla business school.

The Lusties, as they call themselves, enlisted the help of other local co-ops such as Rainbow Grocery and Good Vibrations, a local female-run sex-toy shop.

They learned the ins and outs of running a collective business and hammered out articles of incorporation within days.