“I am so glad that it was Lorene. I think for the story that I wanted to tell and that Jen wanted to tell, it was very important to have a woman director. It’s a gaze thing, there’s the male gaze, and there’s a female gaze. In a stripper movie, it’s very easy to fall into the male gaze. Lorene says that she thinks of these girls as athletes. If you think about it, they’re using their bodies to make money — that’s what athletes do. They’re both playing games. We have a scene where Jen teaches me how to pole dance, and we’re in sports bras, like we’re not being sexy, this is hard work. These girls are working. So having a female director is what really enabled us to focus on the work that goes behind the optical part, and the humanity that informs it. And Lorene had a keen understanding of both. Women have that understanding.