Finally a nice story about strippers in the mainstream press.
My only concern….she wrote this book after going to eight strip clubs?
http://www.nationalpost.com/life/story.html?id=407037
Every day we come face-to-fanny with the stripper-ization of pop culture, from Barbie dolls in lingerie, to pole-dancing classes, to soaring thong sales. Catherine Roach, an associate professor at the University of Alabama, who holds a PhD in religious studies from Harvard University, laid bare the origin of the phenomenon by visiting strip joints across the continent as part of the research for her new book, Stripping, Sex and Popular Culture (Berg, $32.95). We spoke with Roach to unpeel the layers and reveal the naked truth.
Q What is your book is about?
A It’s an academic exploration of the industry in North America, and more generally of what I call striptease culture: the spread of stripper-type phenomena into popular culture.
It’s also a very personal story. It all came about when this friend of mine, Marie, who’s from Ottawa like I am – we’ve known each other since we were four – started working as an exotic dancer. When she told me about this, I was surprised and concerned and appalled.
As we started talking about it and why she was doing it, I wanted to make sure she was safe and happy and that this was a good thing for her. What does it mean to be a stripper? Can this be a good thing for a woman? She was telling me the extent to which it was positive and empowering, not just financially but also socially, emotionally and sexually and, other dancers said, even spiritually. The book is my response to my finding out that my friend was working as an exotic dancer.
Q Tell me about your first time in a strip club.
A I decided that I wanted to do a lot of interviews and a lot of site visits for this book. For my first visit to a club I spent spring break, 2001, in West Palm Beach, Fla., where Marie worked. My first impression was: cold. It’s very hot in Florida, but they turn the air conditioning up; there’s a blast of cold air. They say it’s to encourage nipple puckering among the dancers. There were lots of nude and semi-nude women. It was overwhelming at first.
Q You ended up visiting eight clubs to conduct interviews. Did you ever feel comfortable?
A Not really. I never really enjoyed it. But I was very impressed by the pole tricks. It’s like an Olympic sport. There are very impressive tricks that they do: spinning, upside-down, climbing up the pole. You can do that now, classes at pole-dancing studios. It’s part of the striptease culture, these incursions of stripper phenomena into popular culture. I just got a catalogue last week with a home pole kit.
Q How did the project change your ideas about stripping?
A In many ways, the whole project went against my expectations. I had thought, “Surely this can’t be a good thing. This is sexual objectification of women.” I assumed most women who went into this would not be doing it for good reasons and would not have choices. What surprised me is that the dancers whom I interviewed for the most part were doing it very self-consciously as a way to finance a longer-term, often educational goal. Stripping is the most lucrative legal profession to a young woman who doesn’t have a higher education.
If the name of the game is patriarchy, if we’re in a society that still places great value on women’s looks, then one way to make the game work for you is by taking that which patriarchy values – your beauty, your sexual appeal – and making them pay for it.
Q What did you learn about the sexes in researching your book?
A I didn’t expect the dancers to be so nice to the male customers. It took me awhile to figure out that’s what they’re selling: this fantasy of hyper-sexual femininity that is available for consumption. The customer is buying their time, their attention, their performance of desire.
The pleasure comes from everybody suspending disbelief. It doesn’t work well when the guy tries to insist, “Why couldn’t it be real?” The strippers all knew that what they were doing was a fantasy, a performance, an act. And the men often did not seem to get that.
Q Are men really that dumb?
A That’s an interesting question.
Tags: exotic dancer, mainstream, psychology, sociology, strip club, stripper
This entry was posted
on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 1:31 AM and is filed under Strip Club Industry News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Stripper Style and the Girl Next Door
Finally a nice story about strippers in the mainstream press.
My only concern….she wrote this book after going to eight strip clubs?
http://www.nationalpost.com/life/story.html?id=407037
Every day we come face-to-fanny with the stripper-ization of pop culture, from Barbie dolls in lingerie, to pole-dancing classes, to soaring thong sales. Catherine Roach, an associate professor at the University of Alabama, who holds a PhD in religious studies from Harvard University, laid bare the origin of the phenomenon by visiting strip joints across the continent as part of the research for her new book, Stripping, Sex and Popular Culture (Berg, $32.95). We spoke with Roach to unpeel the layers and reveal the naked truth.
Q What is your book is about?
A It’s an academic exploration of the industry in North America, and more generally of what I call striptease culture: the spread of stripper-type phenomena into popular culture.
It’s also a very personal story. It all came about when this friend of mine, Marie, who’s from Ottawa like I am – we’ve known each other since we were four – started working as an exotic dancer. When she told me about this, I was surprised and concerned and appalled.
As we started talking about it and why she was doing it, I wanted to make sure she was safe and happy and that this was a good thing for her. What does it mean to be a stripper? Can this be a good thing for a woman? She was telling me the extent to which it was positive and empowering, not just financially but also socially, emotionally and sexually and, other dancers said, even spiritually. The book is my response to my finding out that my friend was working as an exotic dancer.
Q Tell me about your first time in a strip club.
A I decided that I wanted to do a lot of interviews and a lot of site visits for this book. For my first visit to a club I spent spring break, 2001, in West Palm Beach, Fla., where Marie worked. My first impression was: cold. It’s very hot in Florida, but they turn the air conditioning up; there’s a blast of cold air. They say it’s to encourage nipple puckering among the dancers. There were lots of nude and semi-nude women. It was overwhelming at first.
Q You ended up visiting eight clubs to conduct interviews. Did you ever feel comfortable?
A Not really. I never really enjoyed it. But I was very impressed by the pole tricks. It’s like an Olympic sport. There are very impressive tricks that they do: spinning, upside-down, climbing up the pole. You can do that now, classes at pole-dancing studios. It’s part of the striptease culture, these incursions of stripper phenomena into popular culture. I just got a catalogue last week with a home pole kit.
Q How did the project change your ideas about stripping?
A In many ways, the whole project went against my expectations. I had thought, “Surely this can’t be a good thing. This is sexual objectification of women.” I assumed most women who went into this would not be doing it for good reasons and would not have choices. What surprised me is that the dancers whom I interviewed for the most part were doing it very self-consciously as a way to finance a longer-term, often educational goal. Stripping is the most lucrative legal profession to a young woman who doesn’t have a higher education.
If the name of the game is patriarchy, if we’re in a society that still places great value on women’s looks, then one way to make the game work for you is by taking that which patriarchy values – your beauty, your sexual appeal – and making them pay for it.
Q What did you learn about the sexes in researching your book?
A I didn’t expect the dancers to be so nice to the male customers. It took me awhile to figure out that’s what they’re selling: this fantasy of hyper-sexual femininity that is available for consumption. The customer is buying their time, their attention, their performance of desire.
The pleasure comes from everybody suspending disbelief. It doesn’t work well when the guy tries to insist, “Why couldn’t it be real?” The strippers all knew that what they were doing was a fantasy, a performance, an act. And the men often did not seem to get that.
Q Are men really that dumb?
A That’s an interesting question.
Tags: exotic dancer, mainstream, psychology, sociology, strip club, stripper
This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 1:31 AM and is filed under Strip Club Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.