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Thrusting their crotches before a construction site backdrop, four male-model types hoist hammers up to their gym-perfected torsos, smiling as if there is no other place they\u2019d rather be than the stage of the Rio Hotel & Casino in the Las Vegas\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0show. Women of all ages gawk and scream as the men rip off their white tank tops and toss them into the audience, strip\u00a0off\u00a0their pants, swivel, and display their tanned butt cheeks. It\u2019s one of the few places in the world where women are ogling and men are being ogled.<\/p>\n The Chippendales\u2014what the performers themselves are called\u2014come from a range of ethnic and educational backgrounds, are straight and gay, married and single, but they have a few things in common. According to dancers, as recently as 2019, organizational rules dictate that they\u2019re at least six feet tall, have a six-pack, and have no more than a quarter inch of body hair.<\/p>\n Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0is also the name of one of\u00a0the oldest<\/a>\u00a0male strip shows in the nation. Bachelorette and other parties travel from across the United States and the world to gaze at the nearly nude men, paw at their pecs during lap dances, grab their butts, and stare at their genitals, which are always enrobed in hand-crafted pouches (full-frontal nudity is heavily restricted on the Las Vegas Strip).<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to forget that the Chippendales, while thrusting to techno music as smoke billows in the air, are workers doing a job. Onstage showers and pantomimed sex on silk sheets are not a typical day at the office.\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>, originally featuring shirtless hunks in bow ties and cuff links when it was founded in 1979, has nearly always been seen as a curiosity or a joke (see:\u00a0Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live <\/em>in 1990<\/a>). Forty-six years on, the Chippendales are asking to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n In October 2024, two\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0dancers, a married gay couple who also work as interior decorators, attempted to do something the show\u2019s workers have never done: unionize. One half of the couple, Freddy God\u00ednez, came up with the idea. God\u00ednez looks like an AI-generated model, with a perfect five-o\u2019clock shadow, a rippling eight-pack, and taut, tattooed forearms. He had no dancing experience when he started with\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0at age thirty-eight, but learned from his husband,\u00a0Alexander\u00a0Stabler, a forty-year-old with spiky blonde hair and a physique that gives away his background performing rope acrobatics with Cirque du Soleil.<\/p>\n Like nearly all of the nineteen\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0dancers, God\u00ednez and Stabler worked part-time while holding down other jobs.\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0explicitly tells workers that they should treat the job as a side gig, according to multiple performers. Wyatt Hopkins, a Viking-<\/p>\n esque muscled man with ginger hair, took the job with\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0as an on-call position while he continued performing in\u00a0Zombie Burlesque<\/em>\u00a0and Dita Von Teese\u2019s burlesque show at The Venetian Resort. Usually, he danced with\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0once a week. Hopkins says he felt \u201cdisrespected\u201d by the pay: \u201cHowever, I chose to focus on the value of working alongside longtime colleagues, which was far more important to me than the compensation itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Chippendales work all nine shows a week, which run Tuesday through Sunday (Friday through Sunday are two-show days). Until November, the tattooed and chiseled Chippendale Emerald Depree was a nine-show guy\u2014as full-time as cast members get, working about thirty hours a week. A typical day at\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0usually begins around 6:30 p.m., when nine of the cast members arrive for rehearsal. They twist and thrust to the beat of Bad Bunny\u2019s newest song, learning blocking, because shows change regularly to keep up with the TikTok crowd. At 7:15 p.m. there\u2019s a show meeting, and then they suit up in their cowboy costumes, starting with their bespoke \u201ccock socks,\u201d and the show begins. They run through a series of choreographed dances to songs like \u201cSave a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),\u201d ripping off their white tank tops with gusto and tossing them into the audience, where eager fans clamor for them like foul balls at a Yankees game.<\/p>\n After the show, they trade their thongs for black slacks and bow ties, and line up onstage in their shirtless glory for photos with the primarily female audience members, who shell out $35 each for the privilege. \u201cThey tell guests that this is how we make our tips, because we can\u2019t get tipped in the casino because of gaming regulations,\u201d God\u00ednez says. In fact, performers only\u00a0receive<\/a>\u00a0fifty cents of that $35. When Depree complained about the low photo pay, he says the show\u2019s higher-ups told him that the Chippendales used to make only twenty-five cents per photo. \u201cI was like, \u2018You guys are trying to make us feel better because we\u2019re making an extra quarter?\u2019 \u201d he adds.<\/p>\n After photos, which last from thirty to forty-five minutes, they head to the \u201cFlirt Lounge,\u201d Sharpies in hand, to meet with throngs of audience members, clutching the men\u2019s discarded ripped tank tops, waiting for autographs. The Chippendales quaff their two free staff drinks in between scribbling their signatures, sometimes on women\u2019s cleavage. After fifteen minutes of fan service, they are free to leave, around 10:30 p.m, unless they have an 11 p.m show.<\/p>\n Stabler started at\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0four years ago as a \u201cspecialty act,\u201d bringing the thrill of the Cirque rope show to a male strip revue that competes not only with four other male revues but also with illusionist David Copperfield, the Blue Man Group, Shania Twain, and concerts in the Sphere. When\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0offered Stabler $100 per show and no benefits, he was disappointed. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been in the industry for a long time, and we\u2019re taught that opportunities are scarce, and so I negotiated what I thought felt fair,\u201d Stabler says. What he thought was fair was $140 a night for his aerial silks performance and $110 for when he was just dancing.<\/p>\n Soon after Stabler was hired, he learned there was a job opening for a part-time show host. He immediately thought of his husband, God\u00ednez, who already had a Chippendale\u2019s body and happened to be training for a fitness competition and taking vocal lessons. God\u00ednez was hired and given an offer similar to Stabler\u2019s: $100 per show. Despite low pay and requests that the buff God\u00ednez slim down and become tanner, God\u00ednez saw\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0as a good opportunity. But at some point, after a year of being in the show, he changed his mind.<\/p>\n God\u00ednez wondered if anyone else felt\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0dancers deserved better treatment. Many of the dancers did. A dancer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said he had been brushed off when he asked for $25 more per show after a positive performance review. Hopkins remembers saying that \u201cother shows on the [Las Vegas] Strip that show as much skin as we do get paid a lot more.\u201d He says he\u2019d asked\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0to match the rate he got for\u00a0Zombie Burlesque\u00a0and was told \u201cthere\u2019s no budget.\u201d Depree says a union was necessary because the work environment \u201cwas toxic.\u201d He says he wasn\u2019t treated with respect and was refused a day off for the Sabbath. \u201cThe dance captain told me the reason why I can\u2019t go on tours is because \u2026 they don\u2019t like Black people in Germany,\u201d Depree says.<\/p>\n God\u00ednez, who has spent his career in hotel management and has a master\u2019s degree in urban planning, decided that something could be done. He convinced Stabler that a union was not only feasible but necessary.<\/p>\n God\u00ednez reached out to Actors\u2019 Equity Association, which agreed to represent the performers. \u201cOrganizing is actually pretty similar, whether it\u2019s a strip club or a theater or a McDonald\u2019s,\u201d says David Levy, Actors\u2019 Equity\u2019s director of communications. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s about the workers saying we deserve better.\u201d Actress and model Brooke Shields, who is president of Actors\u2019 Equity, is fully supportive. \u201cThey work hard; they should be compensated, end of story,\u201d Shields tells\u00a0The Progressive<\/em>\u00a0in an email. She\u2019s been a fan of\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0for decades and even celebrated her nineteenth birthday with them in the 1980s. \u201cWe just had the best,\u00a0best\u00a0time. It felt, in a weird way, wholesome,\u201d Shields remembers. \u201cThey were such nice guys.\u201d<\/p>\n The day in October before Actors\u2019 Equity was going to announce they were working with the\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>\u00a0dancers, God\u00ednez and Stabler met with management. They said they loved\u00a0Chippendales<\/em>, but they wanted \u201ca livable wage, access to benefits, proper compensation for merch,\u201d Stabler says. They asked management in the meeting to voluntarily recognize the union. But the talk didn\u2019t go well, and that did not happen.<\/p>\n While most of the Chippendales\u00a0The Progressive<\/em>\u00a0spoke with support the union\u2014the majority of dancers signed authorization cards\u2014not all do. Depree said that the better-paid dancers are not supporting the union. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to want to go against the hand that\u2019s feeding them,\u201d he says. The anonymous dancer adds that \u201c[Guys] that have been there for a long time, for some reason, don\u2019t agree with [the union].\u201d<\/p>\n God\u00ednez and Stabler haven\u2019t taken the stage since Actors\u2019 Equity\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0the union on October 8. It\u2019s not because they don\u2019t want to thrust their hips to the cheers of a margarita-fueled crowd. It\u2019s because they\u2019ve been left off the schedule. Hopkins also says he has seen a dramatic reduction in hours. Since October 2024, he has only been scheduled once. Depree was fired after he didn\u2019t show up to work on the Sabbath. Actors\u2019 Equity\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0all dancers known to support the union have been left off the schedule. At the end of 2024, the union\u00a0filed<\/a>\u00a0an unfair labor practice claim, alleging retaliation and seeking the workers\u2019 reinstatement and other remediations.<\/p>\n