Meals4Heels Takes Health Food to Portland’s Late-Night Strippers

Portland, Oregon, ranks as America’s number one “strip city,” with more strip clubs per capita than another major American urban metropolis. The city’s 54 strip clubs actually rank second to Houston, Texas, but with only a quarter of Houston’s population. And with a multitude of strip clubs comes a multitude of strippers with the numerous issues faced by workers in the industry, from labor and safety conditions to protection from police—though Oregon’s state constitution protects “obscenity” as a form of free expression. But one of the least-discussed but perhaps most important issues facing strip club dancers, especially those who work late-night shifts, is the problem of maintaining a healthy diet, according to a Guardian report on Wednesday.   “Where I work, we just have fried shit, like wings,” Julia Flores, a Portland stripper, told the paper. Into the void steps Meals4Heels, a food service start-up founded and run by Nikeisah Newton, who in addition to dominating the health-food-for-strippers market, is also an African-American run business in a city that not only has the most strip clubs per capita—but also the most white people. At 76 percent white, according to a Washington Post report, Portland qualifies as the whitest major city in the United States. Newton, who told the Guardian that she was inspired to create the business because her own former girlfriend worked as a stripper, prepares and cooks all of the Meals4Heels food herself and delivers, so far, to 20 of the city’s strip joints. “We’re known for our food carts and strip clubs, but yet the human aspect is missing,” Newton told the Guardian. “It doesn’t make sense why there hasn’t been something like this.” Providing fresh and healthy food options for strippers has become just one aspect of an overall push to improve conditions for the city’s sex workers. Oregon’s liberal “obscenity” laws allow strippers to perform fully nude, with no permit required, and may allow customers to make physical contact with them, a recent study found that Portland’s strippers are especially vulnerable to violence at work. In the study, 32 of the 33 strippers interviewed said that had been victims of violence in the course of their jobs—including “unwanted groping, rape, forced or coerced unwanted sexual acts.” Newton, who is herself both black and a lesbian, told the Guardian that she sees her business as part of an overall support program for Portland strippers. “It’s all about marginalized groups,” she said. “We’ve got to take care of each other.” Photo By Meals4Heels Twitter