Not to get too personal here, but Whopper, has your knowledge of sex workers been primarily in the mental health setting?
Sex worker may not be the right term. Many exotic dancers I've known think it means a prostitute, not a dancer.
But to answer to your question, I've known 5 women who were exotic dancers on a personal level that was not within the realm of being a patient. Each of them had several borderline or histrionic PD traits if not the full disorder, all of them had some type of sexual abuse, and each of them IMHO had an issue where they overly relied on their sexual appeal to attain their ends. Their coping skills in other areas were not developed, and they either were in a situation where their youth and beauty were gone, and they could no longer use their sexual charm to attain their ends, or they were on that path.
Of the exotic dancers I've had as patients--about 10, they were pretty much on the same order as those I've known who were not patients.
I've had a few patients that were prostitutes, and they actually appeared to be on the same spectrum. All of them suffered some type of sexual abuse, and had cluster B traits. These ladies, however, had different and far worse SES issues. Many of them were very open to not being alive in the next 10 years for whatever reason--e.g. expecting to get killed by a random John, substance dependence or abuse, knowing they had no way to make money once their youth and beauty faded away---in which case death was an option. They also often came from broken homes--to the degree where many of them had to run away from home and had no way to support themselves. In comparison with the exotic dancers, that was a noticeable difference. Most of the exotic dancers I knew were doing it to help support themselves in college or did it instead of a "real" job, but as time went by, the money was too fast and good for them to want to give it up. They were, however, in a better position to actually have a "real" job if they wanted to do so. The prostitutes on the other hand....lower intelligence, drug dependence, broken homes, etc...on a far worse extreme.
One of those ladies I knew who was an exotic dancer (and she was bisexual--which you'll see why I mentioned that in a second), I dated for a few months right after I graduated colllege. Let's just say that my young, hormonally driven, 22-year-old mind at that time had a lot of fantasies on where that relationship could've gone and it blinded me to getting out of that relationship. It was a nightmare. It was the first time I really had to deal with a borderline person on such a personal level and her life was in such a state of chaos, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She had an ex-girlfriend that was stalking her and vandalized her car. The relationship between the two was Melrose Place to the 10th power. The things that went on were to the point where they were as bad as they could get short of crossing a major felony level crime such as aggravated assault.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, there was some real crazy drama going on. Melrose Place was tame compared to her life. I only mentioned what happened between her and her ex-gf. Almost every person she knew, there was some type of hurricane/destructive type of relationship.
It was the first time I came to realize that her behavior was part of some type of destructive pattern that I could identify, but I did not know that this was an already identified disorder. When I finally learned about borderline PD in medical school, the lightbulb was turned on and glaring me in the face--"So that's what she had!!!"
That was the only one I dated. A friend of mine in college was an exotic dancer. She too had emotional instability, and some very strange drama going on in her life as well. I lost contact with that person, and about a year later, someone we both mutally knew (who also lost contact with her) told me he saw her in some low budget porn movie that made me feel sick to my stomach. Nothing against porn actors, but IMHO, as well as I knew her, if she entered porn, it could only be because her life was not going in the direction she wanted.
The other ones I knew were friends of friends. Each of them, however, say that all the exotic dancers they knew had similar backgrounds--e.g. sexual abuse or some type of ultra-strict upbringing, not wanting to walk away from the quick money even if they could.
