Quote:Another plaintiff, identified as an 18-year-old LSU student, says other dancers under 21 have told her they plan to switch to prostitution once they can no longer dance.

Quote:CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL reports the law, passed with no resistance by a state legislative body that is overwhelmingly male, caused some controversy when state legislators began joking about it on the House floor.


Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, asked whether the bills author would put a maximum age on dancers. The House, which is 87 percent male, laughed raucously.

Rep. Kenneth Havard, R-Jackson, jokingly offered an amendment to require dancers be in between age 20 and 28 and be under 160 pounds.

“In the spirit of this legislative session,” he said, he wanted “to trim the fat.”
Rep. Nancy Landry, R-Lafayette, was not amused.

“Are you saying people over 28 or over a certain weight aren’t fit to be dancers or strippers?” Landry asked.

“No, ma’am,” Havard replied. “I’m worried about their health.”

Havard withdrew his amendment, but it was too late to stop the jokes. Legislators derailed an argument for consistency of laws from Rep. Chad Brown, D-Plaquemine, by bringing up a pile of one dollar bills, presumably tips for the dancers in Havard’s amendment.

Then Rep. Julie Stokes, R-Kenner, unleashed righteous fury, as she stormed to the podium in the well of the chamber.
“I hear derogatory comments about women in this place regularly,” Stokes said. “It has got to stop. That was utterly disrespectful and disgusting.”

“Looking out over this body, I’ve never been more repulsed to be part of it,” she said. “I don’t even know what Rep. Havard was thinking. That’s a dangerous thing to do politically.”

She went to tell the quickly sobering legislators to imagine if their daughter was in the situation that the some teens find themselves when they become dancers at strip clubs in Louisiana.