The Seville Series: Brandi Michele

Brandi Michele went by the stage name “Hunter” at Seville.

She came up to me at work a couple of times, to angrily inform me that her customers had complained that I was not smiling enough. Brandi Michele would then tell me that I need to smile more. It makes me sad that Brandi Michele did not say something to her customers such as,

“So what that she is not smiling. Women are entitled to a range of feelings and expressions. They don't need to sit like Stepford statues until you are ready to give them money. You are a misogynist. Don't tell women to smile.”

That is what I would have said to a man complaining about a woman not smiling. Instead, Brandi Michele chose to harass me about my naturally pouty face, thus siding with some entitled man in a strip club. I feel really sorry for Brandi Michele's daughter, who has probably spent her childhood being subject to misogynist sentiments, like that women need to smile more to make misogynist men feel happy.

At work, Brandi Michele used to brag about how she perused escorting websites like Craigslist or Backpage, looking for advertisements that strippers she knew put up. When she found ones she recognized, she would print them off, to out escorts who were closeted, by telling everyone she could about the advertisements. That is a very mean and dangerous thing to do to an escort, but Brandi Michele regularly expressed violent fantasies about her hatred for escorts.

Brandi Michele's signature stage move at Seville was squatting on a glass beer bottle, then walking around the stage with it wedged between her buttocks. This move always grossed me out, and made me think it caused Seville to attract the wrong kind of crowd. It was interesting to me the way that Brandi Michele behaved in this crude, crass way, yet held such vehement hatred of escorts. I don't think Brandi Michele realizes that to outsiders, both strippers and escorts are perceived as deplorable sluts unworthy of rights or dignity, and that by unifying we would all be stronger. That would make me smile gleefully.

At arbitration, manager Rayner Perez stated that part of the reason I was fired was that dancers had complained about me. He did not say which dancers had complained about me, but I will always wonder if Brandi Michele was one of them.