Striipping is definitely protected under the first amendment, but there might be other reasons for the license situation.

I didn't dig into the history of stripper licensing in Washington in any great depth, but I'm reminded of the fact that licensing rules for adult entertainment venues in San Francisco have been proposed by an association of adult entertainment performers in response to exploitative working environments where dancers were being underpaid, subject to harrassment etc., with strip club managers arguing that regular labor laws were inapplicable because dancers were independent contractors rather than employees:: http://www.bayswan.org/eda-sf/lawstoknow.html

A quick google turned up the fact that there have been some big organized crime/prostitution scandals in Washington state in recent years, eg http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_federal_agents_raid_strip_clu... which may have influenced the drafting of regulation eg this one from Kent County, WA (which states the legislative purpose up front): http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kent/html/Kent05/Kent0510.h...

It's not unreasonable to suppose that some pressure for regulation comes from people within the industry as opposed to those who only want to curtail it.

You only need a license to do it commercially. You are free to express yourself by stripping for free without a license. Although you might come up against other, unrelated, sanctions.

Commercial activity does not remove first amendment protections. (See: Newspapers)

I always thought it was weird barbers and hair salons need licenses. I get the historical context but still?

NPR did a good story on this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/21/154826233/why-its-...

Why? I, as a customer, would like to know that the person in front of me actually went through some sort of 'test' instead of hoping that a crappy business would be out of business by now..

I had lots of fun discussions with both Israeli and US acquaintances about the fact that 'Business Administration' (as in, 'front desk & more') is something you have to learn in Germany (usually 3 years, apprenticeship split between working and learning at a school). These people usually said 'WTF? So, I know Word, Excel and can communicate quite decently - that's all it would take to get a job like that here'.

Expectations matter and are - to make matters more complicated - often heavily influenced by culture as well.

(You wouldn't be able to tell that I care about a barber that knows what he's doing, tbh. My wife claims I fail selecting the correct shop anyway, whatever I try. But I do support the 'please prove that you have a basic understanding of what you are doing' system)

barbers at least operate sharp tools in dangerous vicinity of your ears and they required to have at least some training as a condition of the license. What could go wrong what is supposedly stripper's license saving us from, and what kind of training government requires here?

I would guess that it's to keep underage girls out of the stripping business.

Probably previously the onus was on the owner to avoid hiring underage girls. But a couple scandals later, the government responded by requiring licensing.

That and chemicals for dying, perming and straightening hair, which can have dangers to both customer and hairdresser if misused. On the other hand incumbents sometimes band together and demand regulations to keep out new entrants to a business, as in a recent controversy over whether a license should be required to braid hair (a popular service in the black community).

And if there were no licenses, we wouldn't have this troubling situation where the licenses are secret.