From Nightclub Hostess to Union Director: Yun-Yun Hu’s Social Experiment
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This article is part of the 30th issue of LEAP — Voices of Youth e-letter. Subscribe now.
7 years ago, Yun-Yun Hu was a 19-year-old girl who had just graduated from high school. To take care of her ailing mother and financially support her art career, she began work at a nightclub through a friend’s referral.
Now, Yun-Yun Hu is the founder and director of “Taipei Entertainment Worker and Hostess Union,” the first craft union formed by junior nightclub staff in Taiwan. According to Yun-Yun, the union is a large-scale social experiment that aims to remove general misconceptions about nightclub culture among the public, while also establishing a sense of unity and labor consciousness to build a more ideal work environment in the industry.
Removing the Discrimination and Stigma against Nightclubs through Lectures and Art Creations
Many people have the impression that nightclub hostesses are young ladies who make money by drinking and chatting with customers. They often think of it as an easy, high-paying job through the lens of negative stereotypes. In response to these observations, Yun-Yun has been recording her experiences as a nightclub hostess on the Facebook fanpage, “Diary of the Hostess”, as an authentic account of nightclub culture.
In 2016, she held mini lecture tours across many places in Taiwan with various like-minded nightclub hostesses. The lecture tour, “Real Nightclub Culture”, is dedicated to removing the stigma surrounding nightclubs. The number of fans for her Facebook page has been on the rise ever since this lecture tour.
“Many of our team members have a background in design. As a result, we put a lot of thought into how to integrate our expertise into our actions.” Other than lecture tours, they also began to showcase nightclub culture through art.
In 2020, they launched the “Seeing is Believing” project to display the diversity of nightclub workers through fashion design, with a hope to remove general stereotypes and labels about nightclubs. This year, through the technique of immersive theater, audiences were able to role-play as nightclub hostesses and customers, enabling them to fully experience the emotional process involved in their work. In this way, misconceptions and myths about nightclub culture were broken through actual participation.
These efforts not only introduced Yun-Yun and her team to more people, but also drew more public attention to the profession, further deconstructing biases about nightclub culture.
Uniting and Speaking Up for Legally Marginalized Workers
Despite her own positive experiences in this industry, Yun-Yun has observed the predicaments of other hostesses during her two-year career as a hostess. Some had developed alcohol addiction, while others with low alcohol tolerance began to suffer from urinary incontinence. Some became emotionally involved with customers, and some were even sexually assaulted by customers. Although many people asked to join this industry via the Diary of the Hostess page, cases like these caused Yun-Yun to be more careful in introducing them.
This led her to make an important decision in 2016: transitioning her role from a nightclub hostess to a broker who ensures a quality work environment for hostesses.
However, since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the shuttering of many nightclubs, endangering the livelihoods of many nightclub hostesses who lack social insurance. Under such circumstances, Yun-Yun realized the urgency and necessity of establishing a union. She invited everyone to participate in the union petition, while assisting nightclub hostesses with relief applications. The craft union was finally officially established in June 2020.
Currently, the union has 91 members with backgrounds spanning across a variety of industries. With nightclub hostesses as the majority, the union is also composed of erotic masseurs, sex workers, and erotic video creators. All members shared a common feature: their job is either unlawful or on the edges of the law. They are a group of workers that the social security net fails to cover.
In Taiwan, business premises, such as nightclubs and dance clubs, are classified as special industries under local governments’ autonomous regulations. There are no special national laws in place. In addition, the informal legal nature of employers-employee agreements among nightclub hostesses, brokers, and nightclubs have created a gray area where rights and obligations are unclear. Finally, no local governments have begun planning “sex zones” despite the passing of related laws in Taiwan. This has caused a gap in fully protecting sex workers’ right to work, leading them to potentially violate laws under many circumstances.
As a result, one of the union’s missions is to provide its members with free legal counseling once a year, so that any members in need will be able to obtain immediate legal assistance. Next year, they also plan to publish a “Legal Tips Pamphlets” for workers in different industrial categories. At the same time, the union is also actively promoting legislative amendments in an attempt to protect workers’ right to work.
“Perhaps I am the youngest union director in Taiwan!” Yun-Yun laughed. Throughout the journey from a nightclub hostess to a union director, Yun-Yun has always persisted in her beliefs as she aims to change what people think about nightclubs and the work culture in relevant industries. This social experiment will continue as long as there is a possibility for a better environment.
Also in This Issue:
Mutual Assistance Among “Hostesses” Outside of the Social Safety Net During the Pandemic Lockdown
As the pandemic reveals the vulnerability of marginalized workers, Yun-Yun Hu tries to restore their strength.
Author : Lin Si-hou
Freelance journalist exploring gender and public issues.
