Basic Trope: A single mother who moonlights as a sex worker of some kind.
- Straight: Alice and Bob get divorced, and Alice must find a way to pay the bills (and all the divorce-related legal fees) and care for her children. She takes an ordinary day job, but auditions for a night job as an exotic dancer.
- Exaggerated: Alice is not only a stripper, but a prostitute.
- Downplayed:
- Alice takes a job working for a porn site, but only on the billing end, or in the web design or maintenance aspect.
- Alice takes a job as a camwhore or a phone sex operator.
- Alice becomes a "presenter" for a sex toy company that sells its products mainly by mid-level marketing, or becomes a cashier at a sex toy shop or adult video store.
- Alice becomes a waitress at a "breastaurant," such as Hooters.
- Justified:
- Alice is a divorcee, and she receives little or no child support or alimony (either because Bob is a deadbeat dad, or because she did not receive any of those things in the divorce settlement), so she needs more money than her day job can give her to pay the bills.
- Alice is an unwed teenage mother, whose ultra-religious parents threw her out of the house. She sees a job in the sex industry as a way of making quick and easy money to support herself and her baby.
- Alice was Happily Married to Bob, who died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving Alice with all the household bills and his final expenses. Alice, meanwhile, has been out of the workforce for years since she got married or had children, or maybe married Bob right out of high school and never had a job in the first place, and she has no family or friends that she can rely on for assistance. So she decides to take on some kind of sex work until she gets back on her feet.
- Alice is a single mother, and she has a steady job. Maybe she and her child(ren) aren't exactly living in the lap of luxury, but they manage to get by. Until one day, she loses her job, but she still has kids to feed, clothe, and house. So she takes a job as a stripper to pay the bills until she can get a "real" job.
- Inverted: A stripper or prostitute leaves the sex industry behind when she finds out she's pregnant or gets married.
- Alice gets into sex work to support her parents, who are unable to work due to age, disability, addiction, etc., not her children.
- Gender Inverted: Bob (recently widowed or divorced) takes a job in the sex industry to support his kids.
- Subverted: Alice is a stripper, and she is a single mom… but when she’s asked about it she explains that she has this job because she likes it, not because she’s desperate.
- Alice receives child support money from Bob.
- Although Alice does work for the porn industry, it's some kind of behind-the-scenes work (e.g. lighting, makeup, set design, foley artist, video editing, costume design, or even directing the films). She doesn't actually appear in the films, even as an extra. (Or if she works for a porn site, it's only on the billing or web-hosting side.)
- Alice is seen working in a call center.
- Alice loses her job, but she is able to collect unemployment until she gets a new job.
- Alice takes a job as a waitress.
- Alice states that she's doing it to put herself through school, with no mention of her having children.
- Alice is a newly-divorced single mom and is seen entering a strip club, the implication being that she works there. Turns out she's going as a customer to celebrate her new freedom.
- Double Subverted: Alice was lying, because she didn’t want to share such personal financial and emotional information with the person she was talking to.
- Alice feels that it's not enough on its own, or even in combination with her day job, to support her family, so she takes a job as a stripper.
- Or, the money dries up. Maybe Bob went to Prison, or died, or got involved with Carol and is frittering all the money that should be going towards supporting his children to wining and dining and buying gifts for her instead. Alice becomes desperate, and takes a job as a stripper.
- One day, the lead "actress" calls in sick, and someone is needed to replace her, fast. They look to Alice, who is desperate for the extra money and agrees to it.
- She is a phone sex operator, although when asked about her work, she simply says she does "customer service" or "consulting."
- When the unemployment benefits run out, she takes a "survival job" working as a stripper or phone sex operator.
- She is a waitress in a strip club.
- Alternatively, she has a job as a waitress, but then has a second job as a stripper, to make extra money.
- In actuality, she's doing it to support her child(ren), either instead of or in addition to putting herself through school.
- Alice feels that it's not enough on its own, or even in combination with her day job, to support her family, so she takes a job as a stripper.
- Parodied:
- Alice does a presentation at her child's Career Day event at school...about her job at a strip club.
- Alice participates in "Take Your Child to Work Day," either in celebration of that holiday, or simply because she has no one to babysit.
- Alice works a dirty job that she is ashamed of - stripping paint.
- Alice is a grandma.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's job changes as the plot demands.
- Averted: Alice does not take a job in the sex industry, not even so much as working for a billing company that deals with porn sites.
- Enforced: "We need to make our Hooker with a Heart of Gold a sympathetic character. Let's make her sex work a case of I Did What I Had to Do in order to survive and feed the kids."
- Lampshaded: "Yo momma's a ho!"
- Invoked:
- Alice is divorced, and does not receive alimony or child support, or even a lot of assets in the very messy divorce. She either hasn't been working (or hasn't been working at a high-paying job), and needs money for the kids, the house, and the legal fees. She decides to put her good looks and sex appeal to good use.
- Alice is an unwed teenage mother, thrown out onto the streets by her traditional parents. She has no money, no diploma, and few marketable skills, so she decides to put her good looks and sex appeal to good use to earn money.
- Exploited:
- Pimps and strip club owners "recruit" single moms, promising them flexible hours, high earning potential, etc.
- Alice talks about her child to the customers to guilt them into paying more.
- Defied: Alice doesn't want to set a bad example for her kids, or risk her day job if she has one, or risk her safety, so she doesn't work in the sex industry.
- Alice gets a second job in a (tech support) call center, or waiting tables.
- In order to get quick money, Alice sells a valuable item (i.e. her old wedding and engagement rings, her old wedding dress and veil, her copy of Captain Ersatz #1, baseball cards, etc.)
- Alice is thrown out onto the streets when her parents find out about her pregnancy, but she is able to move in with a sympathetic aunt or her grandparents. They take care of her and support her financially, and watch the baby while she's at school.
- Alice gets pregnant at homecoming, finds out about the pregnancy in early December, has an abortion over Christmas break, and is back at school the day after New Year without missing a beat.
- Alice sues Bob for non-payment of child support.
- Alice gets a GED, has the baby, then does college classes online.
- Alice is a stripper at the age of 19 to support her child. However, she knows she can't do it forever; sooner or later, her youth, beauty, and sex appeal (all of which she relies on to make money) will fade. She doesn't want to be 40 years old, trying to compete with women half her age for attention and cash, so she decides she's going to go Back to School, get a degree or a certificate, and get a "real" job.
- Discussed: "I heard Alice is working at Sexy Time to pay the bills..."
- Conversed: "What about the kids?"
- Deconstructed:
- This could bring shame upon Alice's kids, as they are judged for what she does to feed them. (It could also put Alice and/or her kids at risk from belligerent clients.) Not to mention, what kind of example is she setting? Sure, she could tell the kids she's a waitress, or a dancer (but not what kind of dancer, letting them assume she's a ballerina), or simply that she has a job (but not what that job is), but that would be lying. She may also lose her regular day job if she has one, and someone finds out about her night job.
- The "I do blowjobs to feed my kids, what kind of sacrifices have you done for your family lately?" rant Alice tosses out at those who wish to help her is quickly revealed to be self-defeatism. She has done absolutely nothing to optimize herself, to seek a way out, to prevent her children from seeing her at her lowest, or even to improve her business. It is Don't You Dare Pity Me! to an extreme.
- Reconstructed: Alice takes classes at a local community college or online, or gets her high school diploma or GED if she doesn't have one. Through her education (which she may receive grants, loans, and/or scholarships for), she eventually makes a better living for herself and her child. (The stripping/porn/prostitution may be a means to that end.)
- Played For Laughs: Alice's teenage son, Charlie, visits her workplace to hire a stripper for a party. Hilarity Ensues when he finds out that the stripper is in fact, his own mother.
- Played For Drama: Charlie grows up with confused feelings about sex thanks to his mother's job.
- Played For Horror: Alice is a stripper only on paper, a sex slave in reality. There are drugs, degradation, and a quickly burnt life which will suffer a disturbing death and leave behind an innocent child to the uselessness of the local child services.
- Implied:
- Alice is a single mom who has more money than she could seemingly get from her day job. When she drives past a strip club, she cringes excessively.
- Alice is a stripper. She is seen in a supermarket shopping for toys and childcare supplies and is later seen waiting outside an elementary school.
Go back to Single Mom Stripper
