Cash offer turns Rotorua teen off strip show

By ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE

ROTORUA - Rotorua's teen stripper has accepted a $1000 offer not to take off her clothes.

The unidentified 16-year-old said this week that she had entered an amateur striptease competition at Alexandra's Massage, Sauna and Strip Club because she wanted the prizemoney to pay for a portfolio to launch a modelling career.

But on Thursday night when the same sum was proffered to stay out of the June 2 final of the contest, she turned it down.

Through her mother, the teen (who used the stage name Che) said yesterday that the offer by a radio network was "like a handout."

"She wants to earn the money herself. She says she has a point to make now and is going to see it through to the end," the mother said. According to her, the teenager declared: "It's not fair to me or anyone else if I don't go through with it."

However, a few hours later, she had a change of heart.

Hounded by the media for her story and harassed by people who know who she is, the girl decided she had had enough of notoriety and would give up stripping.

"She's sick of the pressure," said her mother, who had maintained her elder daughter's right to undress down to a g-string before an audience.

Now "in hiding," Che felt bad that people were blaming her parents and insisted she had entered the striptease contest because she wanted to.

Graeme Edwards, Classic Hits operations manager and programme director, said his network represented "the family values of New Zealand" and offered the young stripper $1000 as a responsible, civic-minded gesture.

His organisation would rather the teen did not have to "go to such extreme measures to earn the money."

Classic Hits will get the girl to sign an assurance that she will not strip in Friday night's contest final.