Sumith Prasad
Starz’s drama series ‘P-Valley’ centers around the workers and owners of The Pynk, a strip club located in the fictional city of Chucalissa, Mississippi. The Pynk becomes the home and shelter of numerous individuals, such as Hailey, Uncle Clifford, Mercedes, Keyshawn, etc., who try to battle several personal challenges and conflicts. When a group of local businessmen tries to put an end to the operation of the strip club, Clifford and Hailey try their best to save the club from them. Since the series is chiefly set in The Pynk, one must be wondering whether it is a real strip club. Well, let us share the answer!
Is The Pynk a Real Strip Club?
No, The Pynk is not a real strip club. The strip club is conceived by creator Katori Hall. However, Hall had researched extensively for years to conceive the strip club and the women working at the place. The creator even celebrated her 30th birthday at the then-active New York strip club named Sin City. The research has helped Hall to create a fictional-yet-authentic strip club for the show. With The Pynk as the nucleus of the narrative, ‘P-Valley’ explores the lives of workers employed at strip clubs through fictional characters.
“[…] strip clubs are a huge hot button topic in our society. We stigmatize women who are strippers. We shame them. So for me, this show has always been a way to humanize a group of women who have been ignored,” Hall told Deadline. “The fact that the story is told from their perspective and we see the world through their eyes really embraces the [storytelling] that centers on the female gaze,” the creator added. As Hall indicated, the show attempts to depict the complexities of the lives of strip club workers, who are often reduced to their physical bodies by the male gaze.
Although The Pynk is fictional, the lives of the dancers working at the strip club and the challenges they face while working at such a place are extremely close to reality. The inappropriate or abusive behavior Mercedes or Keyshawn suffers in the private rooms/cabins of The Pynk isn’t far from the actual realities of strip clubs across the world. In that way, The Pynk represents any typical strip club where women fight prejudices, physical and emotional abuse, and misogyny for their survival. Hall’s creation offers glimpses of the harsh realities behind the exotic strip clubs by mainly setting the show inside The Pynk.
Even though The Pynk is located in a fictional Mississippi city, the Cheetah Club in midtown Atlanta, Georgia, reportedly stands in for the fictional strip club in certain scenes of the second season of the show.
Read More: Is Mayor Tydell Ruffin Dead? Did Isaiah Washington Leave P-Valley?
