Warning: The video above contains footage from a strip show.
For 17 years, outback stripper, Bonnie Tonic, has had a near monopoly over thousands of square kilometres in central Queensland. She’s booked months in advance and has a thriving online business – but she just can’t seem to attract an apprentice willing to put on the kind of shows that Queensland men will pay $500/hr for.
“Advertising for an apprentice is very difficult,” she told The Feed from her Rockhampton home.
“I have advertised on LinkedIn. I've advertised on Gumtree. I've advertised on Facebook. You can't actually say ‘double ended dildo show’ in [a Facebook advertisement] because it will probably get blocked.”
But Bonnie’s problem isn’t only the strict ‘morality standards’ on social media platforms. It seems that Queensland women either “don't take it seriously” or are increasingly unwilling to perform “XXX shows”.
They don't take it seriously.
“I’ve had a couple of girls apply. They’ll say ‘I can totally go topless but I won’t go nude’. And I'm like, 'Well, you won't earn any money.'”
“I'll usually rock up to a room full of screaming guys. If it's not a room it will be a paddock full of them,” she told us as she prepared for a private party in Mackay, four hours’ drive from Rockhampton.
“To me, when I'm doing a buck’s party show I feel like I'm on a Broadway stage. Her main focus “isn't the stripping”, she explains. “I wanna make people happy.”
“Mate, I just flash my tits, shake ‘em around a little bit and they just smile.”
Bonnie’s long-time friend and booking agent Melinda ‘Malibu’ Slingsby says the 35-year-old is “outrageous” with “no filter” but also a true professional.
“She understands the concept that it's a memory that people are making when they book their buck's party. And these days it's hard to learn the art of striptease.”
That’s not to say her job doesn’t come with challenging moments. Over the years, Bonnie says she’s learnt to control every aspect of her shows and the crowd for her own safety.
Guys have grabbed me on the box.
“I've been up at pubs where guys have grabbed me on the box. A guy once lifted my skirt over my head and licked me from front to back. You practise your right hook with that.”
But Bonnie has little control of the slut shaming that she says is both prevalent online and in public.
“I'd be trying to get my groceries out and people would be like, ‘Get your tits out, ya slut,” she recounts.
“What people think is that because you're a stripper that that's ok, that you don't deserve the same level of respect and courtesy as other women.”
