Can 16-year-old girls vote, see R-rated movies or get their driver’s licenses? Nope. But can they strip down and sell their bodies on stage for a quick buck? Of course! Just as long as they’re home by 11:30 p.m.

A recently discovered loop hold in a Rhode Island law concerning the rights of minors allows 16-year-olds to work as strippers as long as they are home by 11:30. Needless to say, the majority reaction to this somehow unnoticed loop hole was that of shock and disgust, not only for its objectifying, anti-feminist ideals and damage to self-esteem that strip bars represent, but also because of the subjection of young girls to the dangerous and difficult business of exotic dancing.

Responding to the national backlash from the loop hole, many strip clubs have taken the seemingly moral route.

According to an Aug. 5 abcnews.com article, ten strip clubs in Providence, Rhode Island have signed a pledge to only hire dancers over the age 18. This is a good start, but the pledge has not been labeled as legally binding, so no one is holding their breath over it.

In reaction to this loop hole, minors are flocking to Rhode Island in order to work as strippers instead of graduating from high school, but they would do well to stay in school.

According to the abcnews.com report, even though customers are drawn to strip clubs by the stripper themselves the strippers are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to payment. While the bartenders, bouncers and other workers receive wages and benefits such as workman’s compensation and health care, a stripper’s earnings and benefits include nothing more than the tips they receive from customers. Even worse, at the end of their shifts, they must give a certain percentage of their earnings back to the club as a stage fee, and they must also pay another fee in order to help provide wages for the rest of the club.

While at work, strippers are also constantly placed in dangerous situations, especially with the addition of “private rooms” in the more secluded corners of the clubs that are slowly but surely transforming strip clubs into replicas of the famous “Bunny Ranch”one of the few establishments that provides legalized prostitution.

More experienced and mature dancers are old enough to make the decision of what they are willing to do to please a customer in these private rooms, but a 16-year-old, who may be stripping for necessity, is too young to make such decisions.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), between 60 and 80 percent of nude dancers were raped or sexually abused as children. Some of the minors who are looking for work at these clubs may be suffering from the effects of abuse as well. If this is the case, jobs as strippers, for the sake of their mental state, should not be open to them. Instead, alternate ways of facing these crippling issues such as seeking therapy must be offered and promoted. Allowing possibly abused minors to work as exotic dancers will only keep them from moving on with their lives and lead them to use stripping as a crutch for their psychological issues.

According to the APA, sexualization of a person directly stems from low self-esteem. Again, it’s clear that the young ladies getting jobs at strip clubs may suffer from that same issue of self-confidence. In their eyes a job as a stripper would help regain confidence by proving that they are attractive to customers. Unfortunately, the job does quite the opposite.

In a world where the majority of students attending college are women, the majority of CEOs in the United States are women and, for the first time in history, a woman was just one step away from becoming the Vice President of the United States, it is sickening that somewhere in America, 16-year-olds are allowed to strip and become prostitutes behind closed doors. Whether this horrible practice occurs legally in the dark corners of Rhode Island or illegally in other states, society has let these girls fall through the cracks, forget their self-value and subject themselves to an unsafe business.