Playful1, you go, girl! As a former stripper who paid her way through college with crinkled ones and fives, I applaud you and wish you the best! My bachelors is in Criminal Justice, and I hope you get more mileage out of your degree than I got out of mine. It's nice to meet another normal gal doing what has to be done.
Just to take a minute to touch on the "drama amongst strippers" conversation going on here, as much as I hate to admit it, yes, stereotypes exist for a reason. I would say that about 50% of the girls I worked with were either trailer-park style drama queens or spoiled little plastic Barbies that "just couldn't live off of $400 a night". That's probably just enough of a percentage to justify the stereotype. The other 50% were college girls and and women who either were single moms, or were providing the "luxury" part of their household's income. Unfortunately, the drama 50% are much louder and more noticeable that the drama-free 50%, so, they get noticed more.
It's a shame that we wind up stereotyping people. I've probably had more black friends than white in my life, and none of them were "thuggalicious". I've had gay roommates and friends, and none of them were child molesters. I've known lots of swingers, and I never met one who was a sexual predator. I've known and dated, and occasionally been an escort, and none of us were drug users, much less abusers. And in all the adult establishments I worked at, I never worked for an owner who partied and used drugs (some of ya'll are definitely going to some really bad clubs), they always wore nice business clothes, never talked down to us, and advised us not to piss our money away (which is a lot more than I can say for some of my former day-walker employers). I'm still very good friends with the last club owner I worked for, we occasionally go for a meal or to a game together. Heck, for that matter, during my summers off from school, I "day-lighted" as a librarian while stripping at night, so I guess that puts me into the uber-cliche category.
But since we're going to tenatively agree for the moment that there is a high percentage of drama and issues with some strippers and escorts, let me point out that the only ones that I ever saw problems with were the girls who came from a background of poverty and...what's the politically correct way to say it?...hmmm...maybe a family history of social assistance programs. So, it's my theory (based on five years of observation in the field) that the drama isn't really a by-product of being a stripper, but instead is learned from earlier experiences.
And I'm not denying that being a stripper will exacerbate any body/relationship issues that a girl/guy might have had before going into it. It genuinely is the one venue in our society where a a girl who wouldn't give x guy the time of day can be summarily rejected by him (but I'm digressing into the issues of the stereotypical topless bar customer). It's like any other job in life, stripping will either kill you or make you stronger, though I know stockbrokers who say the same thing about what they do.
Anyway, long and short of it, no, it wouldn't affect my decision. I'd still go on whether I was attracted to them or not. There's only one occupation on my no play list, and it's not strippers and escorts.