Kinda late post today. As I mentioned previously this week, I have noticed over the years that the last business day before Christmas is usually busier than the night shift. So, I worked the day shift for a change today. Coupled with the fact that Christie’s is 3 minutes from the airport, it was pretty hoppin’ around 3pm. There is still something weird to me about giving topless table dances while bright sunlight streams in through the door cracks.
So as I logged out of hotmail today, I saw this interesting article Sudden Divorce Syndrome Warning…it’s kind of long… but it gave me some insight to the psyche of one of the most frequent demographics of strip club patrons: recently divorced men.
These are the paragraphs of particular interest to me:
Compared with married or single men, divorced men are nine times as likely to be admitted to the hospital, to report difficulties at work, or to suffer significant depression. According to a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, they suffer the effects of divorce with the intensity that their wives experience the death of a close friend. And they suffer physical maladies. “Their blood pressure goes up, and so does their cholesterol, and that drives up hypertension, heart disease, coronary artery disease, and peripheral vascular disease,” says psychiatrist Arnold Robbins, associate editor of the Journal of Men’s Health & Gender. Researchers at the Texas Heart Institute have noted that emotional stress can lead to a dangerous ballooning of the left ventricle, which they term “broken heart syndrome.” Says Dr. Robbins: “A lot of metabolic syndromes kick in too, like borderline and type 2 diabetes. There’s cirrhosis of the liver from too much drinking. Even prostate problems. It’s not a pretty picture.”
Scientists have recently come to some possible conclusions as to why this might be so. It may be as simple as a loss of being touched. James Coan, PhD, a psychologist in the departments of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Virginia, found that, for a husband, just holding his wife’s hand is enough to reduce the stress associated with the anticipation of pain. Regular sex helps insulate a man from chronic stress, and that can pay off in increased longevity: In a study of 1,000 middle-aged men by researchers at Queen’s University in Belfast, men who had sex at least three times a week had half the risk of heart attack or stroke of men who had sex less frequently.
It is fascinating to me how a woman’s touch can have such a profound effect on the psyche of men. There has long been the notion of the woman soothing the wild beast inside the man when he is angry or upset. But where does the man go if/when his woman has left him….the strip club of course! I’ll bet that getting lap dances reduces blood pressure, decreases anxiety, and has all the other above mentioned benefits of touch.
So my final thought of the day: if the power of touch is so healing, why does American society frown upon it? There are a lot of laws about what is legal to touch and what is not. It even made the local headlines here when a woman was groped while out walking in her neighborhood. At the strip club, I can get fined thousands of dollars if a patron (aka undercover cop) grabs my boob. Why is it that I get in trouble if I get groped at the strip club, but the woman walking in the park does not? Why is it that the man in the park is a criminal, but the average strip club patron is not? They both did the same thing: touched a boob without permission.
Tags: divorce, exotic dancer, men, psychology, sociology, strip club, strip clubs, stripper, why do men go to strip clubs