For men who bare it all professionally, privately, they are very quiet people.

They might be idolised for a couple of hours a week on stage, but few really know nor try to understand the man behind the public role.

It’s hard to draw a line when you are your job. For models, strippers, actors, or anyone in the public eye, they have to draw their own line. They might promote themselves as a product, but don’t define themselves exclusively by what they do.

For Greek Australian male stripper, Pistol Pete, there’s a lot more than meets the eye. The buff exterior is more like a shield; a way to promote a new side of him that for a long time wasn’t there.

Having lost his accounting job in the financial crisis and getting very sick in 2008, Pete didn’t give up. He found an escape and focused on getting fit, a variable he could control.

“I went to Thailand for six months and I would train,” he tells Neos Kosmos.

“I would do weights in the morning and in the night I would do Muay Thai, it’s Thai kick boxing.”

Along with a new healthy eating plan, he sculpted his professional body, but still didn’t consider using it for work.

Temping in the financial industry wasn’t giving Pete the satisfaction he needed, and when a friend at the gym mentioned stripping, the rest became history.

With a badge, a gun and the blue police uniform, Pete transforms himself for crowds of screaming women, strictly for entertainment purposes.

“To me, it’s art and entertainment,” he says.

“A lot of strippers go and within three or four minutes they’re naked and they’re jumping around with everything hanging out. I find that tacky.

“Some girls in the audience have boyfriends, some have got husbands. I don’t open my towel and start wiggling my dirty bits. You’re there to accommodate for everyone.”

In his down time, you’ll find Pete keeping up his healthy body by fasting two times a week and hitting the gym daily. His regimen is precise. “There’s no point having abs if you have fat covering your abs!” he says with a laugh. Pete is a huge believer in what he calls a ‘junk day’, a reward day where he can indulge in his mother’s paidakia or galaktobouriko.

He doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, nor is he tempted by the sexualised world of stripping.

He says it’s his four-year-old goddaughter and his faith that gives him a reality check every so often, to keep him on the straight and narrow.

“You don’t have to follow the way of an industry,” he says.

‘I’m not aiming to be a priest, not aiming to be a saint, I’m far from that.

“All I’m aiming to do is be a better person and a better Christian.”

He is known for never booking a late night show on a Saturday lest he miss Sunday mass.

For you or I, Pete’s job and his morals might seem like a walking contradiction, but for him, the two can mutually exist.

“I understand I create lustful eyes and I’m accountable for that and that is why for that very reason I will give it up one day,” he says.

“But in saying that, I’ve learnt to reconcile; I’ve learned to balance the two.”

The job doesn’t define the man

A male model, promotional representative and topless waiter, Aaron Teboneras has made a strong living out of marketing himself to the right people.

“I’ve kind of versed myself into three different segments,” he tells Neos Kosmos.

“A lot of promotional people do a lot of acting, some just do promo or study at uni,
so I kind of spread myself over.”

Juggling three jobs means that Aaron is in high demand, working straight for months with just a couple of days off.

Stuck in an office marketing job, he started to appreciate promotional work as a way to get out and start communicating with the consumer, one-on-one.

“I realised people on the ground were having a lot of fun, being immersed in different environments and interacting with different people,” he says.

“They were getting paid good money, so I thought ‘why not, why not me, why can’t I do that?’.”

Aaron’s work life sees him cover a different company every day, while becoming the face for a multitude of products. Working through 12 different agencies, Aaron has fronted technology companies like Samsung, worked for sporting events and of course, even marketed for the alcoholic industry (previously a promo man or woman’s bread and butter).

Normally a female-centric industry, promo work is slowly becoming a more equal playing field. Aaron says even the fact that there aren’t many males in the Australian industry means jobs are easier to come by.

The fluidity in the way he can change for each company means Aaron doesn’t get attached too easily to each job.

In fact, he doesn’t even consider working to keep his body in shape as a chore.

“I enjoy the gym, I pretty much go five, six days a week,” he says.

“It’s an escape from reality for me, I can take any frustrations that I have and just go on the weights.”

Each day Aaron works on a new body part at the gym, while working on his cardio and of course, maintaining a healthy diet. He finds a lot of confidence from keeping fit and maintaining a physique he’s happy with.

“A lot of people these days are very self-conscious about their body and I think that hinders them and they kind of tend to shy away,” he says.

“If you work hard at it, you can achieve anything.”

Out of all the three jobs he juggles, Aaron describes modelling as his favourite thanks to a variety of locations and the intimacy of a shoot. But he does reveal he still holds a soft spot for topless waiting.

Dressed up in a bow tie and black slacks, the job always has its eccentricities.

“When you arrive there, the ladies are very, very shy, like in the first hour or so forth,” he reveals.

“And they’ll keep their distance, and they’ll have very minimal conversation with you while you serve drinks. After about an hour or two, the alcohol kicks in and they are
a lot more open, a lot more touchy-feely.”

Yet despite being surrounded by women daily and with bodies many men envy, there are some negatives to the industry.

The dating scene isn’t as easy as you’d expect. Aaron himself might be currently in a relationship, but Pete hasn’t been as lucky. He says his job hinders relationships before they begin.

“Not many girls give you a chance,” Pete says.

“And the girls that do, two weeks after, they either threaten you with leaving if you don’t change job or they start waiting outside your house or call you to see if you come home alone.”

Pete believes finding ‘the one’ will eventually push him to leave the industry.

“I just think that if I’m going to give a girl a chance and I’m going to be her boyfriend, I think out of respect to her I don’t want to be in this industry.”

For the world of modelling, stripping and acting, there is one other problem to battle. Age is not your friend. Both Pete and Aaron understand that they cannot do it forever and have always looked at their jobs with a certain time frame. They have made provisions, with Aaron about to join the defence force, and Pete still holding his accounting degree.