"I mean if you're going to perform what some would consider a demeaning job, surely you'd want to use that to strive for financial independence and know it was all worth it because you'll never do it again."

The Byyzantime empress Theodora might make a good role model for contemporary strippers :-)

Theodora: the empress from the brothel
"Theodora lived in an era of huge changes in the church, language and statehood. What had been Roman was about to become Byzantine, and the eastern regions around Syria, the Levant and Egypt were clamouring to use their own languages, hinting at self-determination. Just 20 years after Theodora's death the Prophet Muhammad would be born."

"Despite the huge amount of history written about the period, Theodora was largely overlooked. In Procopius's Secret History, which current studies believe was written not long after her death in 548, she is a kind of Mrs Machiavelli. He calls her "Theodora-from-the-Brothel", lasciviously details her antics on stage – from allowing geese to peck grain from her lower torso, to dancing naked but for a ribbon – and has her saying she regrets God gave her only three orifices for pleasure. When he goes on to describe her husband, the emperor Justinian, as a headless demon, we can assume not everything he wrote was utter truth."
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/10/theodora-empress-from-the-brothel