Finding Creativity at the Strip Club

If I asked you to name a creative person, chances are you’d tell me someone famous, like Andy Warhol, Billie Eilish, or Elon Musk. I’ll go out on a limb right now and bet you $1,000 your answer was not someone who works at your local strip club.

Source: Pexels / Rodolfo Clix

But why not? They may very well be just as creative as the so-called geniuses who come to mind easily. Who you named probably has a lot to do with how you define the term. Despite most people’s assumption that you have to change the world or have an extraordinary talent in art to qualify as a creative person, which causes us to underestimate our own ability to innovate, creativity is in fact much broader than that.

The lines for what is creative and what is not are by no means clearly drawn. Researchers have varied definitions of creativity, including the paradigm-changing, genius-level, socially recognized creativity known in the literature as “big-C creativity” (for example, the never-before-seen architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright), to smaller-scale, everyday creativity, known as “little-c” (figuring out a unique and functional storage solution for an oddly shaped nook in your house). There is even “mini-c” creativity, or the novel ways we make connections in our process of constructing our knowledge bases. And creativity doesn’t have to literally involve creating something; often, it just involves coming up with unique and clever solutions to everyday problems.

It may be comforting that creativity is not an all-or-nothing affair. However, if you think your creativity is limited to finding clever solutions to home improvement challenges, keep in mind that big-C and little-c are more of a continuum than distinct categories to which you either belong or don't. Researchers argue that although we may be at different levels of creative achievement, the dichotomy between big-C and little-c creativity is a false one. People who have achieved recognition for their creative eminence once demonstrated little-c, and there’s nothing stopping people from developing their creative potential into something world-changing.

With this in mind, if we were to make a list of the most creative people to emerge from the pandemic, in my estimation, one group of strippers in Oregon is right at the top.

If creativity is problem-solving, the pandemic certainly has provided us with fertile ground for innovation! There are many ways, small and large, in which the pandemic has produced a burst of new ideas. One of the biggest challenges small businesses faced in the last year was how to keep their doors open and their employees making a living when it was unsafe to be indoors unmasked. Quickly after shutdowns began, the owner of a Portland, Oregon strip club came up with an unorthodox solution that was perfect for the times.

Source: Pexels / Nadezhda Diskant

It was called “Boober Eats,” a play on Uber Eats, the meal delivery service. Women who worked at the Lucky Devil Lounge began delivering food with a mini show on the side. Dancers deliver food wearing sexy clothes, accompanied by security guards; kitchen staff and bartenders keep doing their thing; people get paid, and the business keeps running. It was a smashing success at a time when many people around the country lost their jobs completely.

Because of the way many people view sex workers, a strip club is not a place we usually expect to find innovation. But regardless of your views on strip clubs, this is true creativity! Did this business give us a magnificent work of art? Design an architectural masterpiece? No; but that does not and should not undermine the creativity of their idea. Creativity, even the everyday kind, knows no bounds, and can just as easily be found on a dimly lit stage as in the halls of the ivory tower.