I live a block off 82nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon. It's not the part of town you see on the Portlandia TV show. Instead of a trendy, free-range hipster paradise, 82nd—the ironically named "Avenue of Roses"—is a miles-long cement stretch of by-the-hour motels, B-grade strip clubs, and peeling houses that advertise "lingerie modeling" and "exotic massage." Streetwalkers are discreet, since the cops have been cracking down as of late. They stand at the edge of the streetlights late on the weekends, wary.
It all makes me a little uncomfortable. You see, 82nd is the margins of my society—but it's that place I always talk about Jesus going.
'The Stripper Whisperer'
They call Joy Hoover "The Stripper Whisperer." A girl from small-town Michigan, she has no personal past with the sex industry (even though she chuckles in a TEDx video that her stylish hair might make people confuse her with a stripper). It's a fitting nickname.
She's the founder and president of The Cupcake Girls, a non-profit support system for women in the adult entertainment industry. The group is made up of volunteer women who make friends at strip clubs, brothels, porn conventions, and anywhere else they can connect with women in sex work. They have around 100 volunteers, from 18-year-olds to women in their 50s, and from a wide variety of backgrounds: chefs, marketing directors, fundraisers, counselors, stylists, massage therapists, and more.
They build friendships through coffee dates, birthday parties, baby showers, through doing hair and makeup, pampering the girls at free spa days. They meet them as equals, and share "life, love, and an occasional cupcake."
Underneath its playful veneer, the organization has a robust network to support the many girls in need. They connect sex workers with therapists, financial advisors, lawyers, and any other practical resources they might need. They're headquartered in Las Vegas, with a second team in Portland, Oregon—two cities with national reputations for their large sex industries.
Joy and her husband vacationed one year in Vegas and were overwhelmed by the need of the city's sex workers. Forget the myth of stripping or other sex work as glamorous and exciting. The reality for most girls is bleak. Their lives are frequently characterized by abuse and broken relationships. Profound sexual trauma is commonplace. They feel alienated from "square" society, and many have no place to turn in tough circumstances. For some, even paying rent is a challenge.
I'd heard about the Cupcake Girls through Amy, an old schoolmate and chief of communications for their Portland team. Her Facebook updates intrigued me: pictures of smiling girls out for spa days, groups of women holding boxes packed with bright pink cupcakes.
Hands and feet
I called Joy to learn more. She's energetic when you get her talking about her work; bubbly and laughing one minute, serious the next.
"Sex workers are often marginalized by others, especially Christians" she told me. "The message they hear from society is that they are dirty and useless; not worthy of love or support. They often feel judged and unworthy of friendship from people in the 'square' world. We try to bridge that gap; helping them feel humanized, and helping those outside understand that these women are just like us: mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, friends."
But what's it like to walk into a brothel or strip club with a big box of cupcakes? Joy laughs. Even though every volunteer is nervous at first, once you're there it feels natural. "It's like a slumber party" she says. "It sounds crazy, but we go into brothels and do hair and makeup and lashes and massages, and talk to them about what's going on in their lives, what their kids are wearing for Halloween, what their dreams for the future are. We see how much we have in common."
She goes on. "We realize that we all have body struggles or image issues. We all have work struggles, we all question our own value and belonging. Other than our occupations, there's not much that's different. Maybe we each wake up on a different colored pillowcase. That's it. And as a result of our relationships, we all think differently about our lives."
I asked Joy about her faith. In our email exchanges, she'd seemed a little nervous that a Christian publication was picking up the story. I assured her I'd be sensitive to the fact that The Cupcake Girls is a non-religious non-profit.
"Faith is my whole life," she says. "How I view the world, how I view my purpose. My husband and I have always felt that our purpose is to make unloved people feel loved. The people who feel like they don't belong in the world or in church. Our faith defines who we are and what we do. It's what keeps us going daily—non-profit work is grueling. But our faith and hope keep us going in a world that sometimes seems hopeless. In the work that we do, some of the stories of the girls' devastations are overwhelming. But we're called to this."
Why not just say they're Christian? Many volunteers are vocal about their love for Jesus—they're free to do that—but there's a reason that the organization keeps itself "non-religious."
"We face misunderstandings from both Christians and people in the secular world. Our hope is that skeptics can see our lives and the impact that we're having with no strings attached. We hope other Christians are struck by the example of Jesus in his affirmation of God's love for those at the margins. After all, sex workers were disciples of Jesus. He was criticized for feasting with 'the sinners.'"
'It's like a slumber party. We do hair and makeup and lashes and massages, and talk about what's going on in their lives.'
Joy understands that some Christians are put off by the fact that they don't open conversations with "Here's a cupcake! Jesus loves you!" And many of the girls they meet are confused too, asking the volunteers, "If you're a Christian, and she's a Christian, and she's a Christian, why are you a non-religious organization?" Joy answers by saying that they don't need to speak love as an organization, they can act it. At first blush, this might seem a little disingenuous or timid. Then she explains that many well-intentioned believers often find it difficult to understand how the Good News sounds to someone in the sex industry.
"We're not going to be another person in the girls' lives that tries to choose something for them," she says. "Most of them have had situations forced on them by others all their lives—from their families, from their boyfriends, from their work. They've often been robbed of choices, manipulated. Given something they need in exchange for something someone else wants. We're not going to be another person in their life who does that."
Joy says she rejoices when girls choose to become disciples of Jesus but is equally clear that her motivation is simple, genuine love. No strings attached. No expectations. The Cupcake Girls have a simple calling: to be "the hands and feet of Jesus."
Neighbors, not dirty secrets
Joy thinks that Christians' reluctance can be traced to a paradox we see in the wider culture. We're sex obsessed, but at the same time, we don't want to think about it.
We don't want to understand that the women in our peep shows, porn flicks, strip clubs, and brothels don't just exist as dirty little secrets. They are our daughters, mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives. They're our neighbors. It bursts the bubble. We know that sex has power. Power to make people look, or look away. It frightens us.
"Many people are scared of the sex industry" Joy says, "but it's a part of our lives whether we acknowledge it or not. We write people off who are connected with it. But why not just get to know them?"
She and her team are doing just that. And, thousands of girls and tens of thousands of cupcakes later, it's making a difference. Simple acts and robust follow up communicate the love and belonging that many working girls have never felt.
Joy does not minimize the challenge of the work, and cautions newly zealous Christians about doing what she did—just baking a tray of cupcakes and going out to a club. Unless someone's truly willing to commit to the friendship, and has the resources for self-care and for connecting girls with needed support, it can do more harm than good. "We don't want to be another person in the girls' lives who says we'll be there for them, and then walk away because it's too hard."
A family recipe
The Cupcake Girls have just made it past year three, a frequent death-point for non-profits. It's been a steep learning curve for Joy, but she's figuring out how to balance the demands of organizational leadership, healthy family life, and her own work volunteering as a salon stylist for adult entertainers. 2014 looks promising—teams are likely to start in two new cities, and it feels like there's momentum building.
Her dream? To one day have delivered a box of cupcakes to girls at every strip club in the United States. She dreams of resource centers, safe houses, permanent housing everywhere it's needed. Which, given the ubiquitous nature of sex work, is everywhere.
That's a ways off, but they have an impressive start. Joy's baker said that so far this year—in Las Vegas alone—they've given away more than 3,000 cupcakes. The Portland team? 1,800. That's nearly 5,000 little rounds of cake just this year, frosted with a bright pink confection of sugar and butter and love, given by unlikely friends in unexpected surroundings.
Here, a block off 82nd, I can almost smell them baking. And I'd wager that Christ, that scandalous friend of sinners, is proud of the family recipe.
Paul Pastor is associate editor of Leadership Journal.
Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
