A strip club in Austin, Texas has half-naked amateur strippers fighting for the glamorous “Stripper Idol” title and the grand prize of $500 cash (hey, recession hit the strip club industry too, you know). This, however, has pissed off Freemantle Media who owns American Idol and they are suing the Palazio Men’s Club claiming it infringes on their trademark name, it tarnishes the image of American Idol and creates the misconception that the franchise is sponsoring this contest.
Palazio managers couldn’t care less and have no intention to end the Thursday night strip-off. They claim their contest, where girls have 60 seconds to dance topless, then are ranked by audience applause to win $500 is nothing like American Idol.
If anything, the suit has benefited the club because the contest, now in its 12th week, is growing in popularity.
“It’s lots of amateurs: women who come in with their husbands, ladies that come in with their friends. Last week we even had a big girl win,” said club operations manager Scott Stevenson. “It’s shocking. We’re just a local company – it’s not like we’re some big threat.”
Here’s an account of one of those Thursday nights based on Dallas News:
On Thursday night, a dozen amateur strippers signed in for Stripper Idol, giving stage names like Zephyr, Sexy, Goldie, Mercedes. In the dressing room, they slipped out of jeans and sweatshirts and into their exotic dancer garb: 6-inch platform heels, tiny bikini tops and nearly invisible thongs. Tattoos sprawled across salon-tanned skin.
After hearing about the Stripper Idol lawsuit on TMZ, a celebrity gossip Web site, Peyton Watson and Nicole Williams, 20-year-old friends who met working at Hooters, drove nine hours from Amarillo to compete. They listened closely to the house rules – they’re too young to drink alcohol but old enough to give $20 lap dances – before lacing up their knee-high boots.
“It’s nerve-racking, sure, but it’s $500,” said Williams, who went by the stage name Hayley. As she giggled, she held out two shaking French-manicured hands.
“It’s a one-time thing because we need the money,” added Watson, a shock of black hair grazing her pierced lips. She called herself Zephyr.
The suit’s claims are hogwash, said “Kinky” Kelly Jones, a club manager and the show’s emcee. Fremantle can’t lay claims to the word “idol,” he said.
“That word is biblical,” he said, “and has been around for thousands of years.”
And while Stevenson said the club would alter the logo if necessary, he added that he thought the whole suit was a bum deal.
“I didn’t know you could copyright an oval,” he said.
After midnight, when Jones finally took the microphone, the girls lined up backstage, a blur of rhinestones and lace and crumpled dollar bills.
Under the smoky haze of strobe lights, each stripped for a minute, flipping hair extensions and gyrating around a brass pole to pulsating hard-rock ballads. Some looked skittish, like they’d been practicing in their living room. Others, like Zephyr and Hayley, had the look of old pros – though they swore they’d only stripped “a few times.”
When the lights came up and the audience roared, it was Zephyr and Hayley in a tie for the money – and the nearly naked girls embraced gleefully. Finally, Hayley narrowly won – but they both got gas money to get back to Amarillo.
