Episode 20: Izzie Pop
In this episode of YAS Podcast, AM Davies (they/them) sits down with Izzie (she/her), a fellow stripper, amputee, and close friend, for a deeply personal conversation about bodily autonomy, resilience, stigma, and continuing to dance after life-altering change.
AM opens the episode by reflecting on the weight of making major life decisions and the importance of research, self-trust, and community input, context that ties into their own upcoming below-the-knee amputation. Izzie shares her journey as a below-the-knee amputee since 2016, detailing the long recovery process, complications, and her eventual return to stripping in Los Angeles. She discusses dancing on crutches at Cheetahs, performing floor work while bandaged, and later collaborating with her prosthetist to design a custom “stripper heel” prosthetic foot that allows her to wear Pleasers again.
The conversation expands into broader issues facing sex workers: workplace stigma, abuse of power within strip clubs, and how society’s treatment of sex workers trickles into the mistreatment of women in general. Izzie recounts a frightening encounter in Los Angeles where she was mistaken for a street-based worker and harassed by a man claiming to be undercover police, illustrating how normalization of violence toward sex workers impacts all women.
Together, AM and Izzie reflect on consent education, societal conditioning around sex, and the importance of self-definition in the industry. Izzie closes with stripper tips encouraging dancers to stay authentic and resist pressure to mold themselves around customer expectations.
Read the full transcript