1

Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love: The Relationships Between

Dancers and Their Regular Customers

R. Danielle Egan

Palgrave Macmillan Forthcoming January 2006

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This book is dedicated to the two women I most admire. My mom, Debra McEwan, for

her deep, generous and unconditional love. And to Fran Ingram, my grandmother, for

her belief in me.

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Acknowledgments

The pages that follow are marked by family, friends and colleagues who, over the years,

generously offered their time, feedback and insights. Throughout this journey my family

has shown love and tremendous patience. My mother, Debra McEwan, has been my very

own cheerleader. Cyndi Ingram, Fran Ingram, Gilbert Ingram, Scott McEwan, Erin

O’Flaherty, Laura Daniels and Julia Hill have been important touchstones and wonderful

supporters.

Stephen Pfohl’s comments were invaluable during the formative stages of my research

and writing. Eve Spangler, Sy Leventman, Brinton Lykes and Patricia Clough provided

powerful feedback and direction. While mired in reams of interview transcripts, Julie

Childers, Julie Manga and Steve Farough (a.k.a the Q-tips group) were sounding boards,

tough critics, sympathetic ears and great friends. Ross Glover’s eye for inconsistencies,

challenging questions and knowledge of the finer points of Lacanian psychoanalysis

aided this work in numerous ways. The dissertation fellowship provided by the Boston

College Graduate School of Arts and Sciences afforded me the luxury of uninterrupted

writing time.

Christine Warner deserves special mention. Her facile intelligence, sense of humor and

editorial brilliance are found throughout this entire book. Her experience brought me to

this research and her keen eye kept me honest.

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I would also like to thank Patricia Arend, Greg Dimitradis, Katherine Frank, Lisa

Johnson, Denise Leckenby, Sarah Liebman, Julie Schor, Allen Shelton, Kristin Sutton,

Amy VanWagenen and Elizabeth Wood for their helpful comments.

I have been blessed with amazing colleagues at St. Lawrence University. Abye Assefa,

Margaret Bass, Robert Cowser, Ken Church, Judith DeGroat, Ron Flores, Traci Fordham

Hernandez, Mary Hussmann, Liam Hunt, Marina Llorente, Kallen Martin, Elizabeth

Regosin, Eve Stoddard and Cathy Tedford have provided insightful and invaluable

feedback. The close reading Erin McCarthy and John Collins offered on several chapters

was particularly helpful. The work done by my research assistants, Heather McCauley,

Heather Marsh and Theresa Petray has been incredible. Mary Haught and Rita Hewlett,

have kept me sane through this process, providing unending administrative support and

much needed comic relief. St. Lawrence University generously provided small grants

and faculty forums to support my research.

The excellent scholarly environment provided by the Sociology Department and the

UN(E)SEX Research Institute at the University of New England can not be overstated.

The close reading Gail Hawkes gave my entire manuscript and her consistent excitement

for this project have been incredible.

I would like to thank Steve Papson. His patience, sense of humor, editorial help and keen

sociological insights indelibly mark this book.

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I would also like to thank my editor, Gabriella Pearce whose support and encouragement

is greatly appreciated! I have felt very lucky having someone like Gabriella in my corner.

Last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank the dancers and regulars of Glitters and

Flame. Their time, honesty, and patience (at my at times glaring ignorance) made this

project possible.

Sections of chapter one, appeared in Critical Sociology as “Eyeing the Scene: The Uses

and (RE)uses of Surveillance Cameras in an Exotic Dance Club” (2004 Vol 30. No 2).

An earlier draft of chapter four, was published as “I’ll Be Your Fantasy Girl, If You’ll Be

My Money Man” (2002 Vol. 8 No. 1) in the Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and

Society. An early draft of chapter five is forthcoming in Body and Society under the title

“Emotional Consumption: Mapping Love and Masochism in an Exotic Dance Club.”

`
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Table of Contents

Preface Stripping, Social Class and the Strange Carnalities of Research

Introduction Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love

Chapter 1 Mapping the Architecture of Exotic Dance

Chapter 2 Subjectivity Under the Black Light

Chapter 3 “Bad Nights,” “Good Nights” and Feminist Possibilities

Chapter 4 Money Men and Fantasy Girls

Chapter 5 Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places

Conclusion Lessons Learned Under the Black Light

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Preface
Stripping, Social Class and the Strange Carnalities of Research

My social class expressed itself like genetic code, presciently providing

knowledge of the strictures of capitalism, long before I ever read Marx or learned the

word “proletariat.” Walking the tight rope between working class and working poor,

families in my neighborhood hoped for the best, but expected the worst (not an

unreasonable assumption during the Reagan-nomic trickle down years). In the midst of

these tensions I knew, before anyone told me, that women from my community might

end up performing erotic labor. Somewhere inside I realized that we were more likely to

be sex workers, than surgeons. Just as surely I knew the boys I played with would

probably end up with grease under their fingernails or iron bars surrounding their bodies

instead of in Brookes Brothers.

As a six-year-old girl arriving home from St. Genevieve Elementary School in

my blue-checked and yellow-striped uniform, I informed my mother that I either wanted

to be a Playboy bunny or a Catholic nun (ironically, I think my mom was far more

horrified by the nun possibility). Wondering how I came up with such a bizarre duo, my

mom laughed and encouraged me to, “Be a doctor.” Since then my second grade career

aspirations have become a familial joke, told and retold, over barbequed hamburgers and

coleslaw at family gatherings. But there are times when I think my six-year-old-self

tapped into something, a kind of fortune teller’s premonition, that my friends and I might

end up in the buildings by LAX airport that flashed, “Real Live Nude Girls,” “XXX

Naked Girls Inside,” and “Come Inside You Will Be Pleased” in red neon. In our small

living room on Colbath Avenue the virgin/whore dichotomy lay before me and I, in my
 8

proclamation, naïvely thought there was a choice between the two. If only it were that

easy.

One hot summer day in 1982, my best friend Kristin and I were sitting in her

backyard ease dropping on her older brother and his friends whispering about a girl.

Frustrated by the code they were speaking in, Kristin said, “What are you guys talking

about?”

With a smirk, her brother said, “None of your business.”

Fascinated and highly curious we kept bothering him until he told us, “We know

someone working on Sepulveda Boulevard.” I knew this street, it is one of the busiest in

the San Fernando Valley, littered with shops and restaurants, always full of traffic and a

junior high, it traversed several areas some good, some bad. Our confusion registering in

bewildered looks caused a fit of laughter among the boys, because neither Kristin nor I

was exactly sure what, “Working on Sepulveda” meant.

Frustrated and uncomfortable I wanted to ask my parents, but was afraid to

because I could glean from the boys’ laughter that it was something sexual. My mom, a

woman who always believed in telling her children the truth, undoubtedly would have sat

me down and answered my question. But something in the pit of my stomach told me I

did not want to know. Once the cat is out of the proverbial bag, you can never stuff it

back in and I was not ready to meet this particular animal head on. A couple of years later

I found out that there was a strip club on Sepulveda, and that the women who worked

there took their clothes off for money.

As a teenager, I was both fascinated and repulsed (I was Catholic after all) by

sexy women. After school, before anyone else came home, I would sneak into my
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father’s room and search under the bed for his private stash of Playboy magazines.

Furtively I would quickly glance at the various issues (he must have had at least three

years worth under there) pick one and return the others to their dark and dusty hiding

place. In the privacy of my bedroom, hours were spent studying these women and their

naked bodies, searching for the silhouette of the Playboy bunny which always marked the

cover in a different place every month. As a 14-year-old stuck in the ooze of adolescent

angst and my own self-absorption, I was constantly preoccupied by the questions,

“What’s next? What’s my future? For some reason I thought their bodies might provide

the answers. Flipping through the pages I hoped that one day I might look like these

Playboy women, but was petrified of what that might mean.

The word “slut” and its connotations permeated my consciousness. Plagued by the

fear of its painful designation, I tried to evade its sanction. To be a slut was to be to be

popular among boys and a pariah to girls. Mired in the contradictions all girls find

themselves: be sexual, but not too sexual, like boys, but not too much, all my actions

were measured against a socially constructed “slut” or “whore” standard. If one crossed

this ever-shifting-line you were unprotected, subject to ridicule and sent to no (wo)man’s

land—also known as social purgatory in Catholic School. Operating as a form of social

control the slut label kept me, at least in the overt sense, on the “good girl” side of the

categories girls fell into in high school.

Managing to keep my reputation intact (a truly different endeavor for any girl), I

narrowly escaped the slut stigma, although I came close to crossing over when I thought

of dancing for dollars in college. With each year the “parental contribution” portion of

my tuition rose, to levels unfathomable for my mother. After pleading with financial aid
 10

officers and explaining the finer points of the phrase, “You can’t get blood from a

turnip,” with little success, I thought of ‘alternative’ and less socially acceptable forms of

income. Considering a job on the “Block” (Baltimore’s version of a red light district) was

particularly difficult because while at Goucher College, my ‘consciousness’ was ‘raised,’

and stripping felt paradoxical to my new found radical feminist politics. Although I never

became a sex worker, I made other bodily sacrifices, such as staying in bad relationships

too long in order to survive monetarily.

During my senior year in college a friend of mine from home became a dancer.

Shocked, I vacillated between thinking it was degrading and exciting. Over beers we

would talk about her experiences whenever I was home. In the middle of one of her

stories about a customer, or the club, my internal bells sounding a shrill alarm would

scream, “I could never do such a thing!” While some far quieter voice would whisper,

“Well maybe I could.” My internal confusion continued, when Tina, my lover during my

last year in college, had a friend invite us to “see her show.” Torn between apprehension

and speculation, I never went. I didn’t want to see women perform for the men I feared

went to such places. I thought that they would be disgusting, or worse, that they would

remind me of men from my neighborhood I knew and loved.

Exotic dancers made me nervous. Their combination of eroticism, confidence,

bad-girl defiance and “fuck you” attitude felt alluring and threatening. Stripping felt like

a dangerous precipice luring me to jump free-fall into the void. Keeping my distance felt

like the safest bet. When asked about stripping attraction and repulsion coursed through

my body; however the words that slipped from my lips were often moralizing ones.

Citing the inequality inherent in strip clubs and their degrading nature, I insisted they
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should be closed. But as Gertude insightfully pointed out in Hamlet, “The lady doth

protest too much.” Chagrined and perplexed my friends who were dancers told me that

for the most part they “enjoyed it.” Dancing provided financial stability unobtainable to

most women with only a high school diploma (hell dancing paid more than I currently

make with a Ph.D.). Stuck between the paradox of my radical feminist education and my

working class experience, I was confused. Then something changed.

A friend of mine from college Chris, became a dancer to pay her way through

graduate school. In an economically desperate situation Chris felt stuck between a rock

and a hard place, between dancing and dropping out of her master’s program. A highly

educated, feminist, Ivy League student, Chris felt defeated and forced into dancing. I felt

confused. How could something like this happen? After speaking with Chris we decided

to record her entry into exotic dance and write about it, to create a feminist text. We

hoped the process would help both of us make sense of what she was going through.

Visiting different clubs, talking to managers, we watched women dance nude and semi-

nude on stage and on tables. After finding the right club Chris started dancing. Sitting at

the bar watching her onstage the first time, felt surreal and felt wrong. Words failed and

tears flowed. Our initial forays into the clubs were hard. Chris’ desperation was palpable

and it was painful seeing her doing this work and the tears she shed because of it.

My experiences with Chris illuminated the complexity of exotic dance as a

cultural practice. Over the course of months Chris’ understanding of her time as a dancer

changed. Her situation stabilized, and dancing shifted from the only option, to the option

among many. Not easy but not totally disempowering either. Providing a window on this

scene Chris’ insights were (and are) incredible, brilliant and invaluable. One night I
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realized that there were some men who were in the club every time I was. Bringing

flowers and gifts these men looked more like ‘boyfriends’ than ‘customers.’

Transitioning between holding hands and table dancing, dancers and regulars would

spend hours talking and laughing. Chris told me that these men were “regulars” and how

dancers “made most of their money.” Fascinated I needed to know more. I decided to

study the relationships between dancers and their regulars. I wanted to understand how

desire, fantasy, and power operated within the clubs. I had to understand the mechanisms

of desire and how it was that men were in the position to buy fulfillment and women

were most often relegated to commodified objects of desire. I needed to tease out the

complex mechanisms of power and fantasy and examine how they circulated throughout

the club. Quite simply, I was hooked.

After spending more time in exotic dance clubs a more intricate and complicated

picture of exotic dancers and their relationships with regular customers developed.

Against sex work at the beginning of my research, my views shifted after talking to many

dancers and watching Chris’ transition. I realized that women in the clubs slipped

between easy binaries, they were neither victims nor were they falsely conscious. They

were something else all together. Dancers’ experiences gnawed at me. I felt drawn in.

Inching closer to the precipice I wanted to jump, try exotic dancing; to see what it was

like, and felt it would make my research and my life richer, yet I was afraid. I dreaded the

idea of being a bete noire to other feminists and facing stigma from the academy at large.

There were, as Virginia Wolf eloquently said, “ghosts in the house,” that I needed to

wrestle before I could make my decision. Backing away I sought safer ground. However I
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continued exploring my options asking many dancers, “What is it like?” Most

encouraged me to “Try it.” I was definitely playing with fire.

During my first year in the clubs, customers rarely talked to me. Uninterested in a

fully clothed and curious sociologist, the only information I could get on their

experiences was second hand (from dancers). Frustrated I wanted to untangle their

understandings, motivations and desires more fully. Finally an academic reason presented

itself. Armed with intellectual hubris under the guise of “ethnographic commitment,” my

research dictated that I dance in order to experience the context and get to know

customers in more complex ways. Clearly dancing would grant access to regulars in ways

untold, but to say that my entry into dancing was purely academic would be false. I

wanted to put my body where my mind was. I sauntered, albeit with shaky legs, to the

edge and jumped.

Waiting to go on stage for the first time at an amateur night I felt, for the most

part, intellectually comfortable and good about my decision. My stomach, well that was a

horse of a different color. As I climbed the stairs onto the stage, I wondered if I was

walking the academic plank, stripping not only my clothes, but also my academic

credibility. However, once the music started my anxiety slipped away. After the manager

informed me that I was hired, I decided to split my ethnographic experiences: I went to

Glitters (my first research site) as a customer and worked at Flame (my other research

site) as a dancer. I traversed the boundaries of participant and observer, gaining insight

both intellectually and personally. Dancing illuminated the complexity of desire, the

vacillations of power, the raw emotion regulars feel for dancers and the challenges of the

job for me in ways I would have never understood sitting in front of the stage. It provided
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the opportunity for me to better understand the multi-layered aspects of regulars’

experiences.

In the end, my experiences as a dancer were mixed. There were nights when I felt

on top of the world, sexy, smart, like a superstar. Other nights I left depressed, feeling fat

and unattractive. Luckily, there were more good nights than bad. However, proudly

proclaiming my status as a dancer was another thing all together. As Lily Burana states,

I learned early on that I would often have to lie—outright or by omission—that

I would have to cut friends carefully from the judgmental herd, to spin and twist

in the face of bureaucracy. Tell the wrong people and they’ll never treat you the

same again. You’re stained: Slut. Idiot. Damaged Goods (Burana 2001:124).

Dancing felt like a torrid affair I had to hide from friends who I feared would rebuff me.

Some did. Some were hesitant fearing for my safety. Some were supportive. Losing long

time friends was the most painful consequence, far more than dancing on stage or on laps

ever was.

My time as a dancer pushed my research and explorations in ways that would

have been otherwise impossible. Providing me with a new level of interpretation, insight,

and bodily experience, dancing made my research and my writing richer through poetry,

prose, and academic writing. However I would not say that I ever truly lived the life of a

dancer because I always remained a researcher. My position at Flame was a privileged

one; I could leave at any time, I could distance myself from stigma by placing my

activities under the guise of “research,” and I was pursuing a degree that provided me
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access to a job that held more “status.” Although my vision of exotic dance was

broadened by my time as a dancer, it was by no means complete.

This book does not offer the Truth of exotic dance, rather it is a situated account

informed by my position within both cultural and academic contexts. It has holes and

limitations as well as illuminations and rich complexity. Therefore like all research it is

systematically and experientially informed. Woven through each chapter my experiences

remain in the text because to hide them felt dishonest. My time on stage was, after all,

formative to my analysis. Far from distanced objectivity, I have tried to heed the call by

feminist poststructuralist theorists for reflexivity in order to shed light on the ruse of

positivism and post-positivism. Given these concerns, Dancing for Dollars and Paying

for Love ventures to illuminate the complex, messy, painful and pleasurable interactions

between dancers and their regulars in two exotic dance clubs to demystify and

destigmatize this form of sex work.

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Introduction
Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love

Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love explores the complex, messy and

contradictory interactions between male regulars and female exotic dancers at two clubs,

Flame and Glitters,1 in the New England area. Between 1996 and 2000, my roles at

Glitters and Flame transitioned between observer, dancer and researcher while I moved

between two clubs with vastly different services—all nude with no contact to semi-to-

fully nude with high levels of contact in the form of lap dancing. In the midst of

laboriously transcribing interviews, writing detailed fieldnotes and learning “to work” the

pole, the confounding dynamics at play in the club occupied my days and nights. Shifting

between the classroom and the lap dance room, I began to understand the intersections of

space and subjectivity for dancers and regulars. Tangled and messy, I witnessed and

experienced the manner in which fantasy, desire and power shaped the relations between

dancers and regulars. I watched the savvy ways dancers used strategies of subversion

against the owners and regulars of the clubs and the tears shed when these strategies, at

times, failed. Fascinated by dancers’ discussions of their work and regulars’

proclamations of love, I realized the leaky boundaries of concepts like “consumer

power.” Taking these tensions and contradictions seriously, I have tried to analyze their

complexity without flattening them into sterile categories. Between the ethnographic,

theoretical and autobiographical, I have attempted to portray the nuanced and, at times,

paradoxical facets of exotic dance in the hopes of shedding light on the “complex

personhood” of dancers and regulars and the intersubjective relations between the two.
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Feminist sociologist, Avery Gordon argues, “Complex personhood means that all

people (albeit in specific forms whose specificity is sometimes everything) remember and

forget, are beset by contradiction, and recognize and misrecognize themselves and each

other” (Gordon 1997:4). Individuals, located at the intersections of self-reflexivity and

that which is unacknowledged or beyond recognition (the unconscious, uncomfortable

contradictions or ideology), craft the narratives of their lives. To this end, “the stories

people tell about themselves, about their troubles, about their social world, and about

their society’s problems are entangled and weave between what is immediately available

as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward” (Gordon 1997:5). Therefore,

all stories elucidate and occlude and are situated at the crossroads of the personal, psychic

and cultural. Dancers and regulars are no different. Their experiences both inside and

outside the clubs are deeply complex, intensely personal and intertwined with cultural

discourses of gender, consumption and production, feminism, capitalism and desire,

fantasy and power. Untangling the often divergent experiences of dancers and regulars

and how they employ these various discourses is focal point of my analysis.

Laws, Laps and Obscenity

Historically conceptualized as a deviant, pathological and immoral practice,

exotic dance has come under fire from the criminal justice system, the church, psychiatric

medicine and social science (Jarrett 1997). Contradicting cultural norms surrounding

“authentic” or “pure” female sexuality, exotic dance and exotic dancers have faced

stigmatization, and at times criminalization, from moralizing institutions. Challenging

patriarchal ideologies of femininity as passive, demure and less sexual than her male
 18

counterparts, exotic dancers transgress norms policing female sexuality. Exchanging

eroticism or erotic activity for cash flies in the face of culture norms which dictate rigid

boundaries between sex, intimacy and capital (Chapkis 1997). As Gayle Rubin contends

“authentic sexuality” emerges from discourses of sexual essentialism that naturalize

particular types of sex and sexuality—namely—monogamous heterosexuality for

procreation (Rubin 1993). These discourses, with their biological impetus, ignore the

cultural and political formations that give meaning to sexuality and sexual possibilities.

Those forms of sexuality which fall outside normative parameters, branded as deviant,

become symbolic lightening rods for religious and moral crusades.

Virtue, Vice and the Fallen Woman

Placed upon a tenuous pedestal, women historically had to negotiate rigid cultural

norms defining their sexuality. Seen as sexually uninterested and submissive,

heterosexual women’s sexuality was viewed as in the service of her husband. Religious

and patriarchal discourses promoted women’s chastity thereby making the idea of

women’s sexual autonomy an oxymoron and any woman who liked sex suspect. In his

seminal 1871 text on reproduction and its biological, moral and social underpinnings,

William Acton states,

The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled

with sexual feelings of any kind. Many men, and particularly young men,

form their ideas of women’s feelings from what they notice early in life

among loose or, at least, low and vulgar women…Such women however
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give a very false idea of the condition of female sexual feelings in

general…The best mothers, wives, and managers of households, know

little or nothing of sexual indulgences. Love of home, children and

domestic duties are the only passions they feel (Acton 1871:112).

Pure or virtuous women, therefore, were not concerned with ‘sexual indulgences,’ but

only with home, hearth, and children. Sociologist Gail Hawkes contends, for women

subject to this cultural model,

any aspect of sexuality not necessary for this [reproductive] outcome

was superfluous and therefore, formally, irrational. Invisible and

therefore unmeasurable [sic], desires were pathologized as dangerous to both

individual and social order (Hawkes 2004: 122).

Given these social dictates, women who enjoyed sex or worse, sold sex were viewed as

dangerous, vulgar and thus less ‘womanly’. Fallen women, particularly prostitutes,

subject to moralizing public condemnation were beaten, jailed and even murdered for

their offenses (Anderson & Zinsser 1999). Although discourses of “authentic sexuality”

have changed over time (our culture is more tolerant of sex before marriage—as long as

it is in a committed monogamous relationship), women who challenge sexual norms still

face ridicule and women who perform erotic labor are still considered deviant.

Historically, men who consumed erotic labor, such as exotic dance, have been

viewed as exhibiting poor judgment but rarely considered “deviant.” Libidinous and
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dangerous, if not taken care of, the drive for sex in men was viewed as natural and in

need of satiation. Unlike their female counterparts, men were “expected to seek relief

from whatever sources” (Hawkes 2004: 124). The consumption of erotic labor was

conceptualized as a “necessity” as opposed to an act of “deviance.” In fact,

dominant cultural beliefs about male sexuality accept and almost dictate that

"boys will be boys," leading many men to find themselves held near-hostage in

the overdetermined rites of passage for the American male—bachelor parties and

birthday parties—tipping a dancer for her time on stage or on their laps (Egan,

Frank and Johnson 2005: 17).

Academic attention has only recently turned toward the consumption side of exotic dance

(Egan 2005, 2004, 2003; Egan and Frank 2005; Egan, Frank and Johnson 2005; Brewster

2003; Frank 2002; Liepe-Levinson 2002; Erickson and Tewksbury 2000). Even with this

shift in focus, customers have faced less ridicule and stigmatization due to discourses of

masculinity that foreground a proliferative male sex drive as opposed to female dancers

who are subject to discourses of sexual essentialism.

Located squarely between contradictory cultural ideals on gender, sexuality and

capital, spectacles of female sensuality for male audiences have continued despite

cultural discourses espousing moral protest. As Katherine Liepe-Levinson argues, this

form of performance has remained “one of the most persistent and controversial forms of

indigenous American entertainment” (2002: 2). From burlesque to lap dancing, exotic

dance has indelibly marked the American imaginary and its consumer landscape.
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British Blondes and Burlesque Shows

Exotic dance can be traced to two converging historical formations: burlesque and

North African dance (Jarrett 1997).2 In 1868, Lynda Thompson and her British Blondes

dance troop introduced burlesque to the American public. Their arrival transformed

British farce comedy into a unique version of American burlesque featuring bawdy satire,

song and dance, and women revealing their uncovered legs while kicking into the air in

short gauzy skirts (Jarrett 1997; Allen 1991; Aldridge1971). Initially, Thompson’s troop

was a widely celebrated form of family entertainment. However, with the rise of protests

from “traditional actors,” the church and early feminists, burlesque’s reputation and

audience began to shift. Historian Robert C. Allen argues that burlesque combined

“female sexuality and inversive insubordination” disrupting traditional gender roles in the

public eye (Allen 1991: 281). Such challenges, proved too transgressive, sparking

community outcries and moralizing protests. Deemed “immoral,” “obscene” and

“dangerous,” the women who participated in these shows were viewed with suspicion

and often wrongly accused of prostitution (Jarrett 1997).

As literary scholars Peter Stallybrass and Alison White point out, ‘high’ cultural

forms (such as the church and traditional theater) create boundaries of difference between

themselves and bawdy or low culture by deeming it grotesque or immoral (Stallybrass

and White 1986). These designations are constructed in relation to the body in ‘low class’

performances, where the body’s “orifices (mouth, flared nostrils, anus) [are] yawning

wide and its lower regions (belly, legs, feet, buttocks and genitalia) [are] given priority

over its upper regions (head, ‘spirit,’ reason)” (Stallybrass and White 1986: 9).
 22

Controlling the transgressive qualities of burlesque was an attempt to protect bourgeois

and patriarchal values of gender, class and morality; and in doing so, traditional

institutions of high culture (i.e., the church and traditional theater in this case) reinstated

their status by distancing and differentiating themselves from such ‘low class’ displays.

Conflated with prostitution and deviance, burlesque shifted from a show directed toward

a respectable middle class audience to a successful form of entertainment for

predominantly working-class male spectators.

Popular and profitable, burlesque proliferated attracting more female troops from

Europe. With increased competition, women revealed more skin further eroticizing their

performances to increase profit. As shows became more scintillating, a concomitant shift

in location emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. Moved from large theaters in

city centers to marginal and ‘dangerous’ areas, burlesque got increasingly associated with

sexual vice and transgression. Perceived as a “lower class” and “seedy” form of male

entertainment, the campaign that began with upper class moralizing was completed.

Transformed and usurped by carnivalesque types of entertainment, burlesque dancers

performed alongside of or after more popular spectacles of “human oddities” (Allen

1991). Carnivals, in their attempt to maintain and bolster their mainstream audiences,

often downplayed their burlesque shows, placing female performers at the back of their

of the entertainment halls. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the racial climate in America at

the beginning of the 20th century, headline or “more accepted” forms of carnival

entertainment were racist, with exotic displays of the foreign “Other” or minstrel shows

(Lhamon 1998).3
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African Dance and the Exotic Other

Excitement over the ethnic other, often justified under the guise of social science

or “ethnography,” was formative in the introduction of North African dance to the

American public. As burlesque began its first cultural downturn at the end of the 19th and

the beginning of the 20th century, Sol Bloom introduced belly dancing to the United

States through the Cairo Exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (Jarrett 1997). “Cairo

Street,” the most popular attraction at the World’s Fair in Paris, featured “belly dancing;”

Bloom seeing the popularity and the potential for profitability for this sensuous form of

dance, bought the rights and imported the exhibit to America.

Soon after their arrival to the United States, six “Little Egypt” dancers were

arrested and charged with indecency after a performance in New York City. City officials

argued that this form of dancing was obscene and overly sexual (Jarrett 1997). Their

arrest, fueling public curiosity, made belly dancing all the more popular. As Lucinda

Jarrett argues, “by 1905 every small town was home to its own ‘Little Egypt’ (Jarrett

1997: 59).4 Attracted by the sensuality of its gestures, burlesque performers began

incorporating its movements into their routines. As a result, “the ‘cooch’—the basic

dance of striptease—was born out of the belly dance” (Jarrett 1997: 60).

The Minsky Brothers and the Introduction of Striptease

With the relaxation of gender norms in the 1920’s and the shift in women’s

fashion with the ‘flapper,’ burlesque made a comeback as a ‘valid’ form of entertainment

after the Great Depression. Brought to Broadway from the Lower East Side, the Minsky

Brothers re-introduced Burlesque to a popular audience (Jarrett 1997). Far more

 24

affordable than other forms of theater, the Minsky Brothers charged $1.50 per show, in

contrast to traditional theater productions costing $6.50. Burlesque also had something

traditional theater lacked, “striptease” (a phrase the Minsky Brothers coined). Under the

direction of the Minsky Brothers, “striptease became known as a craft which combined

the art of seductive teasing with the craft of comic timing and a dance performed while

undressing to music” (Jarrett 1997: 135). Foregrounding confident forms of female

sexuality, women’s performances often parodied the confining strictures of dominant

sexual norms. Challenging traditional women’s roles, burlesque performers mocked ideas

of demure female sexuality and bawked at traditional marriage.

Gypsy Rose Lee, the most famous striptease dancer of the time, was a cultural

icon with “shoes, bras and department stores named after her” (Jarrett 1997: 141). On

stage, Lee would combine child-like innocence with sensual dancing while engaging

audiences in conversation. Drawing on her popularity, other burlesque actresses

mimicked her act incorporating “striptease” into their performances. Propelled by charges

of indecency, New York officials frequently raided the theater, but had a difficult time

proving their case. Attempts to close burlesque shows gained momentum when

traditional theater owners, who were jealous of the money made by burlesque, combined

with church groups and employed the familiar discourse of immorality used in earlier

periods. Their arguments incorporated traditional ideas of women’s sexuality and

Christian morality to marginalize this eroticized form of gender representation.

Increasing protest over the immoral and indecent displays of striptease led to numerous

raids, revocation of licenses for the theaters and stricter obscenity laws, resulting in the

majority of burlesque theaters closing their doors in the late 1930’s (Allen 1991). After
 25

World War II, with the rise of the middle class and disposable income of the 1950’s,

striptease rose again in popularity only to be legally sanctioned once again by moralizing

laws seeking to quell the ‘suggestive and lude’ behavior of women dancers.

During the 1970’s a flourish of sociological literature emerged to analyze the

‘deviant lifestyle’ of the ‘stripteaser’ (Boles and Garbin 1974; Skipper and McCaghy

1969 and 1970; Peterson and Sharpe 1974).5 Searching for causal origins, deviance

scholars theorized that strippers had poor relationships with their parents, were easily led

and more prone to other deviant behaviors such as drug use, prostitution and lesbianism

than other women. A titillating case study, striptease offered a window into how deviance

was learned by individuals socialized into particular “deviant occupations.” Deviance

scholarship’s preoccupation with “sluts, nuts and perverts” further pathologized women

strippers and in so doing ultimately, as Alexander Liazos argues, led to the “poverty of

the sociology of deviance” (Liazos 1972: 103). In so doing, early deviance scholarship

unwittingly gave sociological cache to the patriarchal and moralizing claims of religious

groups and their crusades against striptease. Concomitantly, second wave radical

feminists added fuel to the fire, by portraying women who participated in this aspect of

the sex industry as victims of patriarchy and male hostility (Chapkis 1997).6 Although

both discourses differed in their reasons for decrying the problems of striptease (one

defining dancers as deviant and the other posing exotic dancers as victims), both ignored

the voices of women doing this work.

 26

Contemporary Forms of Exotic Dance

With the rise of yuppies and their disposable income in the late 1980’s and the

simultaneous backlash against feminism by the conservative right, exotic dance

resurfaced again onto the American landscape. In the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis,

exotic dance offered a form of “safe” erotic escape where men could experience

sexualized services without personal risk (Frank 2002, Liepe-Levinson 2002; Scott

1996). Over the next twenty years, the popularity of exotic dance gained momentum—as

the number of exotic dance clubs doubled in the United States between 1987 and 2000.

Gentrification of urban centers across the United States produced a corollary

geographical shift in adult entertainment locations. Clubs moving from downtown to

industrial areas and suburban neighborhoods caused panic and the production of zoning

laws trying to control or stop the proliferation of exotic dance clubs in particular areas.

During two Supreme Court cases, Barnes v. Glenn Theater, Inc in 1991 and Erie v. Pap’s

Am in 2000, the court supported a state’s rights to create laws that would make it

significantly harder to run and own exotic dance clubs. Unlike previous moral discourses

that sought to close down strip clubs under the rubric of moral turpitude (which always

ran up against first amendment protest), recent claims focus on secondary harmful

effects. Communities trying to impede clubs from opening, argue that exotic dance clubs

create and compound other harmful effects such as drugs, drunk driving and prostitution

(an often poorly researched and unfounded claim). Utilizing this logic, various

Massachusetts communities have drafted legislation to forcibly stop exotic dance clubs

from opening within 1,000 feet from homes, schools and churches in the hopes of
 27

stopping the spread of ‘drugs’ or other ‘deviant activities’ (Lakshmanan 1996; Rodriguez

1997; Glenn 2005).7

Discourses of family values grate against ones of free sexual expression in

debates surrounding exotic dance clubs. Somewhere between concerns over protecting

children and community from secondary harm and safeguarding free sexual expression,

cultural narratives on exotic dance infiltrated our cultural imaginary. In its combination

of eroticism, gender, sexuality and money, exotic dance clubs are perfect vehicles for a

spectacle driven society. Whether in the form of television talk shows, cable

documentaries (HBO’s G-String Divas and Real Sex) or autobiography (Bare by

Elizabeth Eaves, Strip City by Lily Buranna or Ivy League Stripper by Heidi Matteson)

our culture can not seem to get enough. A far cry from its former location in shadowy red

light districts, exotic dance has moved into the bright lights of health clubs offering

exercise “strip classes” and even to the ivy-covered halls of the all women’s college,

Mount Holyoke, which provided how-to striptease courses (Associated Press 1999).

Often absent in our cultural preoccupation is the material conditions of this form of work

and the ways in which both consumers and producers make meaning of this form of adult

entertainment. Moreover, fascination does not equal cultural acceptance. Dancers still

face moralizing recriminations and are viewed as “loose” or “whorish” women (Egan,

Frank and Johnson 2005; Wesley 2003; Barton 2002; Buranna 2000; Ronai-Rambo 1999,

1998; Deshotels and Forsythe 1996). Given the pervasive fascination with exotic dance in

popular culture, deconstructing the complex interactions that take place within this

cultural milieu becomes all the more imperative.

 28

Red Lights, Big Cities and Blue Light Specials

Shifts in capital, the proliferation of the service industry and the rise of VCR,

DVD and Internet technology, promoted shifts in the form and function of exotic dance

(Egan 2000; Egan, Frank and Johnson 2005). To compete with the increase in access to

pornography and the voyeurism of webcams, exotic dance clubs offer a combination of

flesh, emotional interactions and, in some clubs, physical contact in the form of lap

dancing (Egan 2005, 2004; Wood 2000; Frank 1998). Unlike the cold medium of film or

the computer screen, exotic dance clubs provide live interaction, conversation and tactile

sensation. With services ranging from stage dancing to table dancing, lap dancing to bed

dancing, semi-nudity to full nudity, chicken wings to lobster tails, champagne rooms to

hot cream wrestling, exotic dance clubs in their infinite variety are particularly innovative

in meeting their customers’ needs and desires. Although different clubs may advertise to

varying kinds of audiences (straight male, straight female, bisexual and gay and lesbian

respectively), the most common form is semi-to-fully nude female dancers catering to a

heterosexual male audience. Given the popularity and profitability of this type of club

and my interest in the ways in which male regulars made sense of their consumptive

practices, I limited my analysis to clubs for heterosexual males.

Variations on an Exotic Theme

The late 1980’s and early 1990’s saw the rise of the gentleman’s club offering

fine dining, business lunches, valet service and several stages and private rooms for

dancers and customers to interact (Frank 2002). Extremely profitable, corporations such

as Rick’s Cabaret International, got publicly traded on Nasdaq in the late 1990’s (Flint
 29

1996 A1) and recently showed revenues of 15 million in 2003 and 16 million in 2004

(www.ricks.com; www.hoovers.com). Moreover, Spearmint Rhinos, a multinational four-

star gentleman’s club, boasts of having “6000 entertainers” working in the United States,

the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia (www. spearmintrhino. com). Multi-million

dollar clubs are present in major metropolitan cities from Los Angeles to Providence,

Rhode Island (Frank 2002; Schweitzer 2000). Far from catering only to wealthy cliental,

the United States is also inundated with middle range clubs that draw a middle class

audience and has lower tier clubs targeting local rural working class men (Buranna

2001).8 Given the ubiquity of exotic dance and the variations of its manifestations, it

seems clear this form of adult entertainment is en vogue again.

Exotic dance clubs offer differing ranges of physical contact. Some clubs forbid

contact while a dancer is disrobed (i.e., where money is exchanged on a plexi-glass

barrier). Other clubs mandate that a dancer must stay at least one foot from a customer

and although she can use his shoulder for balance, no other contact is allowed while she

is disrobed. Unlike no-contact clubs, some provide high levels of contact in the form of

semi-nude or fully nude lap dances where a woman grinds against a man’s lap for a

specified fee and time. Levels of contact and the range of services a club permits are

stipulated by state laws and local ordinances.

Given the variations in types of clubs (gentlemen’s, middle range and lower tier),

it makes sense that clubs try to attract specific audiences. There are clubs that advertise to

predominantly white cliental and others that target men of color, some attract wealthy

men and other blue collar workers. For example, “Bootie Shake” clubs feature dancers of

color and cater to men of color. Similarly, different types of dancers are sought for
 30

particular clubs—often high end or gentlemen’s clubs want women who have long hair

and no body piercing or tattoos, and other clubs welcome a variation of aesthetics and

costume. Clearly, the intended audience, and desired aesthetic of a club are shaped by the

owner’s vision and the capital they have to invest. These choices in combination with the

type of services offered impact how dancers and customers make sense of the “exotic

experience” for sale at a club.

Anthropologist Katherine Frank in G-Strings and Sympathy found that in

gentleman’s clubs, where no contact was permitted, regular customers experienced safe

sexualized interaction that did not threaten constructions of monogamy (many of the men

she spoke with were married) (Frank 2002). The regular customers she interviewed had

no desire for physical contact, and were immensely satisfied with their interactions in the

club. As Frank theorizes, regulars felt safe, satiated and fulfilled by their “tourist” forays

into the clubs which produced erotic titillation, a virile sense of masculinity and

uncomplicated connection. However, clubs which combine erotic touch in the form of lap

dances with emotional labor can blur the lines between capitalism and intimacy, creating

a situation where regulars begin to perceive themselves as lovers instead of clients (Egan

2005, 2003). Similarly, lower tier neighborhood clubs, which are highly informal and

closer to a local pub than a gentleman’s club, may produce different emotional reactions

in dancers and their regular customers. Highlighting the differences and similarities in

experience is a central theme of this ethnography.

 31

Regulars versus the Cursory Customer

My analysis focuses on the intersubjective relationships between dancers and their

regulars; men who, I contend, consume exotic dance in a vastly different manner than

their cursory or non-regular counterparts (Egan 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005). Cursory

customers frequent exotic dance clubs for entertainment purposes, “to see the show” and

be turned on by women on stage, often for “special occasions” such as bachelor parties,

birthdays or a ‘guys night out’ (Erikson & Tewksbury, 2000; Liepe-Levinson 2002;

Brewster 2003). Concomitantly, the men with whom I worked were different from men

who go to strip clubs “regularly.” Men who attend strip clubs regularly may go to the

same strip club on a frequent basis or go to strip clubs in different cities when they travel,

but they do not invest in an emotional relationship with dancers. Conversely, regular

customers formed both emotional and erotic bonds with their dancers, viewing

themselves as “more than customer.”

Perceiving themselves as “lovers” and/or “boyfriends,” regulars repeatedly came

to the club to see a particular dancer, spending large amounts of money ($200-$500 per

visit) on services and gifts in kind (ranging from roses to breast implant surgery to cars).

Mistaking dancers’ performances of work for authentic modes of expression, regulars

formed romantic attachments to the dancers in the clubs (Egan 2005). As I discuss in

chapter five, regulars in their interactions experienced emotional states ranging from love

to extreme pain. Untangling regulars’ experiences in the club and how their

understandings are imbued with fantasy, desire and power created in the midst of their

interactions with dancers is a key facet of my examination. To this end, I am also

 32

interested in how dancers are both subject to regulars’ desires, fantasies and emotional

investments and subvert and reinscribe those investments on a continual basis.

The Clubs

Glitters

Flame and Glitters, the two clubs featured in this text, operate at different

spectrums of the contemporary scene of exotic dance. Although both clubs are located in

the New England area, different laws govern the practices that take place in each club.

Glitters is located in the center of a large New England city. An eyesore for officials

trying to gentrify and ‘renew’ this former “red-light” area of the city, club owners face

strong opposition and are continuously pressured to close their doors. Much to the

chagrin of its neighbors, Glitters, due to its long history in the area, is not subject to the

city’s new zoning laws dictating where sex shops and strip clubs can be located. A

relatively small lower-tier club, Glitters services predominantly white working class men

and some white middle class men. Adhering to city ordinances, Glitters allows full

nudity, but no physical contact. Given the lack physical contact, dancers at Glitters make

the majority of their money on stage, from selling drinks to customers and from their

regulars.

Glitters is considered by many dancers and customers as more of a “dive bar”

than a gentleman’s club, but is also often deemed by dancers as “an easy place to work”

as it is accessible via public transportation. Unlike other clubs in the area, which have

strict aesthetic standards, Glitters allowed a wide variation of aesthetic ‘types’ (including

body modification in the form of tattoos, piercing, costumes and weight—women ranged
 33

in dress size from 2 to 12). Most dancers at Glitters were white (there were only two

dancers of color) and were between the ages of 18-38.

Given the location and cliental of the club, dancers’ at Glitters do not pay high

stage fees ($10.00 per shift), however dancers have to sell a particular number of drinks

(a $50.00 worth) a night to keep their jobs. Earning 10% of their drink sales (once the

$50 quota is met), dancers rely on their commission during slow nights. In the club,

dancers are allowed to sit with customers, and there is some contact in the form of hand

holding or small kisses on the cheeks, but this only happens when dancers are fully

clothed. If dancers break any contact rules, they are either fined ($25.00) or fired.

Between drinks, tips and their regulars, dancers at Glitters on good nights earn between

$100 and $350 per shift.

Flame

Situated in a relatively quiet suburban area, Flame is neighbors with a local coffee

shop and across the street from a well-traversed family shopping area. The owners

procured an operating license for Flame before any zoning ordinances were instituted in

the area. Expressing concern over the “type of people” (drug dealers and prostitutes)

Flame would attract, community members unsuccessfully tried to stop the club from

opening. Once in business, the owners faced continuous legal challenges and community

organizing seeking to close it down. Dancers at Flame perform both semi-nude and nude

and also have high levels of contact in the form of lap dancing. Flame offers various

services; topless stage dancing, all-nude stage dancing, cabaret dances (60-second lap

dances on the main floor used to entice men into buying longer dances) which cost $2.00,
 34

$20.00 topless lap dances and $40.00 fully nude lap dances (both of which last the length

of a song), and a Champagne room where for a negotiated fee (anywhere between

$75.00-200.00 per hour) customers can have private interactions with dancers, away from

the main floor and other men in the club. Dancers make most of their money from lap

dancing, time spent in the Champagne Room and their regulars.

Flame caters to middle to upper-middle class white men, and in so doing

guarantee their profit base. Owners pick dancers who are, for the most part, thin (no one

larger than a size 8) with large breasts and are predominately white or Asian and frown

upon excessive tattooing or body piercing. However, Flame is not a gentleman’s club; it

does not have valet or four star dining (chicken wings are the most popular meal at the

club)—as such, it functions as a middle scale club. Due to the availability of lap dances,

Flame is far more popular than Glitters and employs more dancers (somewhere between

50-75).

While working as a dancer at Flame, my stage fees increased three times. During

my first few months, I paid $10.00 per shift to the house manager and $25.00 to the

deejay; by my last shift I paid $25.00 per shift to the house manager and $35.00 to the

deejay. In addition to stage fees, we paid a $20.00 “fee” when we made our work

schedules and paid the house $5.00 per topless lap dance and $10.00 per fully nude lap

dance. On weekends, we were required to sell (else we had to buy) two $20.00 tee-shirts

with the club’s name. We also regularly tipped our bouncers ($15.00-$40.00). With all

these expenses, it was not uncommon for a dancer to pay the club a minimum of $100.00

per shift, to work (a particularly dire situation if a dancer happens to have a really bad
 35

night). Dancers at Flame usually earned between $250.00-$600.00 dollars (before tip

outs) on a good night

Lap Dances and Rules of the Contact

The rules surrounding lap dancing at Flame are designed to explicitly separate this

practice from the services offered in other illegal sexual encounters. During a lap dance

semi-nude or nude women grinds their genitals, buttocks and/or breasts against a man’s

lap in a room surrounded by other lap dances, surveillance cameras and bouncers. There

are times, in the midst of a lap dance, when men orgasm—either purposefully or

accidentally—but it is important to make a distinction between lap dancing and other

forms of the sex industry such as prostitution. While receiving a lap dance, men are

required to keep their hands off women’s breasts and genitals (they can touch a woman’s

back) and for the most part men comply with these rules. When men do violate these

rules, they are either “talked to” by the bouncers or thrown out of the club. Highly

regulated in her movements, a dancer can not touch a man’s penis directly with her hands

or mouth and most often they have to keep one foot on the ground during a lap dance.

Due to the high level of physical contact available at Flame, and the location of

Glitters, both clubs faced accusations of illicit prostitution from community members.

Not an uncommon charge, since, as we have seen, this claim has been made since

burlesque’s inception. Although lap dancing does involve physical contact, I never

witnessed any form of prostitution or any other illegal action at either club. While

working at Flame, a rumor circulated that when the club first opened a dancer gave a man

a “blow job” only to be arrested after the owners called the police to charge her with
 36

solicitation. A kind of stripper urban legend (when I asked, none of the dancers had ever

met this person nor did they know anyone who did), this story was used to keep dancers’

behaviors in check and show that the managers “meant business.” This is not to say that

solicitation never happens in any club (it is beyond the parameters of my research to

make such a claim), rather, it is to say—that to my knowledge—this was not a factor in

either Flame or Glitters. The interactions that took place were sexualized and erotically

charged, but they were not illegal.

Guiding Questions

Initially, my interest in exotic dance revolved around how desire and capitalism

intersected in a commodified sexualized context. However, after watching and interacting

with both dancers and regulars, several other questions emerged: How do men tease out

the difference between fantasy and reality in a space where fantasies of sexual interest are

used as tools for women to make money? How do regulars’ and dancers’ constructions of

desire differ, and how is that played out in their interactions? How do power, fantasy, and

desire get played out in the relationships between dancers and regulars? What are the

symbolic structuring practices of the space of the club and how do those mark dancers

and customers differently? Moreover, how is subjectivity formed and reformed in unique

ways for dancers and customers? What are their experiences of self and how are these

marked by the performativity of exotic dance as a practice? Lastly, can exotic dance be a

form of feminist praxis? These questions permeated my field notes, interview transcripts,

dreams, and poetry over many years and are addressed throughout my analysis.
 37

Theoretical insights from poststructural feminism, cultural geography,

Foucauldian analysis, and social-psychoanalysis served as guide posts in my attempt to

answer these questions. Utilizing these theoretical frameworks, I employ an analytic

montage, taking that which is rich and powerful from each, while creating a form of

synthesis that is not wedded to any one particular vision. My analysis is a collage where

pieces emerge from various sources to construct a new picture--one that grapples with the

geography of the club itself and the complex interactions occurring therein, providing a

sociological grounding for these theories. I construct an account that moves between

theoretical figurations, personal illuminations, and ethnographic inquiry.

Far from creating a grand theoretical narrative on exotic dance, I situate dancers

and regulars experiences in these particular clubs in a broader socio-historical context

(Van Mannen 1995).9 Marked and shaped by the epistemological and political framework

in which it is located, feminist poststructuralism, this ethnography is, to employ Donna

Haraway’s phrase, “situated” (Haraway 1991). I simultaneously recognize the “radical

historical contingency” of my knowledge claims and have tried to provide a “truthful”

and “faithful account” of exotic dance (Haraway 1991:31). Feminist poststructuralism

offers a critical vision which takes the structures of language, history, and power

seriously while acknowledging slippages, multiplicity, and fluidity. To this end, it

enabled me to account for the ways dancer and regulars invoked and were shaped by

particular discourse as well as the savvy strategies of subversions they invoked on an

everyday basis.
 38

Organization

In the following pages, my examination moves from the contextual to the psychic.

Transitioning between the structuring practices of space (in Chapter 1) to the

confounding dynamics of the psyche (Chapter 5), I provide the reader with a

kaleidoscopic vision of the interactions between dancers and their regulars. In so doing, I

have attempted, with each chapter, to foreground a different dynamic of the club (space,

subjectivity, feminism, the psyche and affect respectively) shedding light on the nuanced

ways in which various social forces shape and are shaped within a highly eroticized

milieu. Each chapter serves as an ethno-theoretical layer through which to understand the

contradictory and confounding interactions between dancers and their regulars.10

In Chapter One, I develop a theoretical model of space as both a material site (the

physical geography) and symbolic practice which operates as a mapping mechanism, or

cartography, for intense fields of interaction in the clubs. These cartographic mechanisms

are dynamic, functioning as a performative feature of social interaction. The symbolic

structuring practices constitute a type of social cartography or map for what is given,

normative and acceptable within a specific place. While typically confining for women,

the space of the exotic dance club frequently serves as a kind of utopian site for the men

located within the space. This is an easy space for regular customers. Dominant forms of

white, middle class, hetero-normative masculinity function as symbolic structuring

practices, operating as a social cartography for customers. The owners of the clubs

unproblematically promote this social cartography for profit. Customers refer to the space

of the clubs as a “special place where a man can be a man.” Whereas, for dancers the

space of the club serves as a site of “work,” a “place to make money.” Dancers employ
 39

strategies “to make as much money as possible and just get out.” This site requires rituals

of performative femininity, emotional nurturance, and enactment of sexual availability.

Dancers use the social cartography strategically, both to make money and to keep regular

customers coming back.

Chapter Two explores how various modes of self were experienced and iteratively

produced for regular customers and dancers in the clubs. I analyze the contradictions

between formal interviews where dancers foreground mutually exclusive boundaries

between their performance in the club and their lives outside, and informal conversations

in which dancers talked at length about the rupturing of the boundaries between their

“separate selves.” Employing narratives of mutual exclusivity helps dancers distance

themselves from the stigma associated with the sex industry. However, most dancers also

experience situations when their “dancer self” leaked into their lives outside the club and

their other “selves” (mother, girlfriend, student, etc) drifted into the Flame or Glitters.

This rupturing of barriers between work and home life create challenging and

contradictory situations for dancers, which they found at times both painful and

“empowering.” Similarly, regulars experience a tension between their “customer self”

and their “lover self”—a distinction they were committed to keeping intact. However,

because regulars felt that they were ‘more than just a customer’ when the barriers

between customer and lover began to break down they often experienced anxiety and a

desire to solidify these boundaries.

Chapter Three deconstructs feminist frameworks on the sex industry and how

these paradigms both illuminated and invisibilized the experiences of women at Flame

and Glitters. Utilizing sex radical feminist theories, I challenge the binaries inherent in
 40

radical and libertarian feminist models on the sex industry. I employ the metaphor of

liminality to examine the ways dancers often both enjoyed their work and felt exploited

by it. Embodied in discussions of “good nights” and “bad nights,” dancers’ experiences

resided in a liminal space, and thus, were a type of both/and experience of exploitation

and agency as opposed to an either/or. Taking liminality seriously helps elucidate the

intersections of gender, power and resistance for dancers in the clubs.

Chapter Four maps the intersection of desire, fantasy and power for dancers and

their regulars. Incorporating a social psychoanalytic perspective helped make sense of the

ways in which desire, fantasy and power mark the intersubjective relations between

dancers and their regular customers. Untangling the place of desire and fantasy in our

patriarchal culture illuminates how and why dancers are paid to be objects of desire who

recognize the desirability of their regulars. In the clubs financial success is almost

guaranteed by learning this skill, and as such dancers perform as objects with great

alacrity. Regulars in their interactions with dancers often confuse a dancer’s performance,

start to “fall for” her and make increasingly desperate demands for dates outside the club.

Stuck in the quaqmire of financial need and laborious demands from customers, dancers

negotiate their position as objects of desire in savvy and subversive ways. Shedding light

on the dialectical tug and pull between dancers and regulars in the name of desire,

highlights the complex way power functioned in their relations.

Building on my argument in Chapter Four, I analyze regulars’ proclamations of

love in Chapter Five. Deconstructing the intersection of narcissism, postmodern capital

and masculinity, I explore why regulars look for love in the clubs. I deconstruct how in

their professions of love, regulars blur the distinctions between consumption and
 41

affection and in so doing engage in a process of emotional consumption. Within this

context, love is predicated upon a dancer’s emotional and erotic labor and therefore is

bound to fail when dancers ultimately reject regulars’ demands for time away from the

club. I argue that even if a dancer were to see a regular in a non-commodified context—

she would fail him because she would stop being an object providing a service and would

be a subject who makes demands. Regulars in their search for connection in the clubs

fuse love and masochism.

In the following chapters, I untangle the complex conglomeration of space, self,

politics, gender, capital and affection at play in messy, dense and complicated relations

between dancers and regulars. In my exploration, I tried to show why in a culture where

connection is increasingly hard to come by, men might find themselves falling in love

with dancers. Far from pathological, deviant or all powerful regulars were complex

individuals, who were plagued by loneliness and mired in narcissistic privilege, who

wanted love and made unreasonable demands. Concomitantly, I have tried to give the

reader a picture of dancing that shows the complicated qualities of women who dance.

Negotiating confining cultural dictates on gender and sexuality, dancers felt empowered

and powerless. Dancers’ actions both contested particular forms of male dominance and

were also at times complicit. Within the complex intersections of gender, capital and

sexuality, the relationship between dancers and regulars produce a multiplicity of

emotions: care, friendship, love, hate and pain. In the midst of contradiction and

ambiguity, I hope the reader comes away with how the intersections of gender, sexuality,

class and capitalism are beset by exploitation and resistance, and are always more

complex than they originally seem.

 42

Chapter 1

Mapping the Architecture of Exotic Dance

Imagine walking into Flame and being drenched in black light as you move

through a room in the center of which is a stage surrounded by chairs, and, farther out, by

tables populated by men who are gazing upon a female spectacle. Circumnavigating the

space are bouncers whose job it is to control “unruly” customers. Surveillance cameras

appear intermittently on the walls projecting mediated images of dancers and customers

to the televisions located in the manager’s office. Dancers glance at these televisual

images as they make their schedules for the next week or are “getting in trouble” for

something captured by these mediated eyes of the owner.

Women roam the club as various personas—cheerleaders, school girls,

sophisticated ladies with long gowns and white gloves, cowgirls and playboy fantasies in

g-strings. Titillating customers in conversation or through the touch of her

breast/ass/thighs, she slides across his body for a minute in a cabaret dance in the hopes

of making more money later. Negotiations of seduction, negotiations of need, and

negotiations of men’s desire, move dancers and customers to the lap dance room. Where

an erotic assembly line of men sit side-by-side, two feet from each other, with women

dancing on their laps for twenty to forty dollars a song, depending on whether their g-

string is on or off.

Music blares and vibrates the floor boards with its bass line, interrupted only by

the voice of the deejay calling out, “Let’s welcome Chloe (or Marie, or Sasha, etc) to the

stage” or telling the crowd that they “should treat themselves to those special dances with

the ladies.” Mirror covered walls create an erotic funhouse effect where dancers and
 43

customers alike watch themselves watching each other being watched. In the “nude

room” a stage surrounded by bar stools makes a semi-circle around a dancer who lays on

the ledge with her leg in the air as the customer of the moment gazes at her naked body

and hands her a dollar bill. In the corner, dancers talk to their customers over drinks in

the hopes of hooking a new regular or procuring a lap dance. At other tables you might

see some dancers sitting together talking, some impatiently waiting to go on stage, some

not wanting to deal with “any men right now,” and while others eat their lukewarm

dinners from the club’s kitchen.

In the basement dancers talk among themselves as they get ready to “go back

up,” fixing make-up, perfume, hair, and changing their outfits. The basement is where

dancers meet and share observations, before the shift starts and after the shift ends and

make predictions of whether it will be a “good night” or “bad night.” During a shift, some

women stay down here when they “just can’t take it anymore” while some women stay

down “to take a break;” others stay down to hear gossip, while others stay down to talk to

their boyfriends/husbands/partners and children on their cell phones. An intercom

mounted on the wall echoes the deejay's words providing dancers within earshot cues to

imminent on-stage performances.

About an hour away and across a state line, ‘Glitters’ is nestled in an alleyway of

a gentrifying urban area. Upon entering the club a long room extends before you, with

barstools against the bar and a stage situated safely behind a surly bartender. Booths line

the wall behind the barstools leaving only a narrow row for walking. The spatial layout of

the room mimicks the liminal space which separates and hinders interaction between

customers and the dancers on stage. Lights are dim except for small gallery lights which
 44

illuminate images of female nudes in velvet and on canvas which adorn the walls. A long

staircase descends onto the stage where red lights bathe the dancer accentuating the

curves of her body as she moves onto a barren stage. Imagine her going to the edge of the

stage, where she places her hands on a mirrored wall, smudged with the finger prints of

her fellow strippers, and seems to dance with herself. Only when men begin to notice and

take out their dollars, does she turn and seductively move to the music. Her striptease

stops with every song while she ascends the stairs to change the music. 11 During her

performance, the MC croons into the microphone encouraging the customers to give

these “sexy women the tips they deserve” because, according to him, every fantasy “will

be fulfilled here at Glitters.” Focusing on a customer with money across the bar, she

methodically moves toward him. Due to the laws in this state, dollars move from his

hand, to the bartenders and finally to her garter belt. Upon receiving her tip, she winks

and proceeds doing her special moves “just for him.” Bouncers sit and stand around the

room “keeping an eye” on things. In the booths other customers sit and watch the

spectacle; some alone, some drinking champagne with several dancers, some holding

hands with their favorite dancer.

In their conversations with customers, dancers try to get them to buy drinks,

which they have to sell in order to keep working, and of which they get a percentage.

When a bottle of champagne arrives at a table, other dancers “join the party” making the

customer feel “special” and try to persuade him to buy another round. Laughing and

stroking the man’s hair, leg, and arm, they talk to him about his life and theirs.

The dressing room is located at the back of the club. One is greeting by a sign on

the door which reads, “No smoking in the dressing room! To do so will result in a fine.
 45

Management.” Once inside, dancers’ dis-shelved things are stuffed into suitcases around

the room serving as makeshift partitions. Inspecting themselves in the mirror dancers get

ready for their shift or “their next round on stage.” In the dressing room, dancers sit and

talk about topics ranging from annoying customers, traffic on the freeway or their desire

for a belly button piercing before going on stage or back downstairs to “hustle more

drinks.” The manager’s office where women make their schedules, get paid, lodge

complaints, or get “talked to if they cause any trouble,” is located next to the dressing

room.12

These are the spaces that became the places of performance within which I

worked and watched, experienced and was experienced. Narratives about Flame and

Glitters, by regulars and dancers, pushed me to think about the constitutive quality of

space. Far from inert, the space of the clubs produced particular types of realities for

dancers and regulars. Eroticism, gender and capitalism intertwine within the walls of the

club producing “utopian” spaces for men, profit for owners and working conditions for

women dancers. Cultural geography helped me make sense of these erotic spaces and the

experiences found therein.

Mapping the Body and Psyche in Space

Representational space is alive: it speaks. It has an affective kernel or

centre: ego, bed, bedroom, dwelling, house; or square, church, graveyard.

It embraces the loci of passion, of action and of lived situations, and thus

immediately implies time. Consequently it may be qualified in various

 46

ways; it may be directional, situational or relational, because it is

essentially qualitative, fluid and dynamic (Lefebvre 1974: 42).

Space helps us make sense of the locations within which we find ourselves.

Providing us with a sense of where we are, what the purpose of the space is, and what we

should do within it; space is an amalgamation of the concrete aspect of place and

location, the phenomenological understanding of being in a space, and the discursive

meaning of that space (Lefebvre 1974; Pile 1996; Kirby 1996). Our sense of self in space

is not static or given: we do not always recognize our surroundings nor do we always

know how to act within them (i.e., culture shock). There is no single definition of any

space. One man’s space of erotic escape, for instance, is another’s man’s den of iniquity.

Space is formed by different discourses mapping what is expected and “given.”

The context and boundaries of a specific space make various subject positions, or modes

of subjectivity, possible (Law 1997; Lefebvre 1974). For example at my mother’s house,

I am a daughter, however in the classroom I am a professor. Particular spaces shape

different modes of subjectivity (my mother would not appreciate me “professing” or

grading her performance). The same is true at exotic dance clubs. Clearly, a woman

dancing on stage and interacting with regulars differs from who she is on a date, or in the

grocery store.

Race, class, gender, sexual preference, ability, and colonial status also mark our

experiences within space and our understanding of it. Far from neutral space is marked

by cultural difference and power inequities. Those who are CEO’s running a meeting

(usually white males) and those who clean the rooms in which those meetings are held
 47

(usually the poor and often women of color), for example, experience corporate

boardrooms very differently. Similarly, exotic dance clubs are experienced very

differently by cursory customers, regulars, custodians, owners, bouncers and dancers.

Marginalized groups have often been associated with “lower” or “lesser” positions in

spatialized dichotomies (such as public/private) and frequently find themselves relegated

to particular areas within a landscape (e.g. poor areas where banks are unwilling to invest

in community development and reservation land for Native Americans) or forcibly

moved when an area is deemed “valuable” (e.g. gentrification and the forced relocation

of Native Americans when their land has resources the government wants) (Pile 1997).

However, even in the most unequal spatialized contexts, resistance is sometimes difficult

to ignore. According to Pile (1997),

[i]t can be argued that different power relations produce different

spatializations and, further, that resistance may well operate between the

spaces authorized by authority, rather than simply scratching itself into the

deadly spaces of oppression and exploitation (1997: 29).

Marginalized groups in their occupation of spaces can construct a type of “third

space” or “border” space thereby creating new types of space and definitions of it

(Bhabba 1990; Anzaldua 1987). By resisting the dominant meanings imposed on a space

new definitions, new sensibilities, and at times, [re]claiming material sites can take place

(e.g. squatters in abandoned homes or Native Americans taking over federal buildings).
 48

Resistance can shift the meaning of a particular space and shape new modes of

subjectivity within them.

Social Cartographies

I utilized the metaphor of a cartograph to help me theoretically untangle the

contradictory and paradoxical aspects of the space of the club for dancers and regulars.

Cartographs are maps that help geographers make sense of physical terrain. Their

purpose is heuristic because a map never mirrors the land exactly (i.e., the need for

reducing a space into the confines of a map). Cartographs are representational objects

providing direction and mapping the various physical boundaries that mark a particular

terrain. Given their representational quality cartographs should not be seen as objective

reproductions. Rather they are influenced by the map maker, her vision, her perception of

the land and her location within our social landscape (race, class, and gender). As a social

product shaped by discourse, my understanding of cartography is more culturally

influenced than its normal definition allows, thus the phrase social cartography is most

illustrative. Social cartographies serve as the discursive architecture (re)producing the

meaning of a physical place. They create the intelligibility of a place for those who

inhabit them.

Philosopher Henri Bergson theorizes the inextricable connection of space and

time (Bergson 1913). When we are located within particular places, we have knowledge

of time within them that often has little to do with objective minutes passing (Bergson

1913). Time can “fly by” or it can “drag on,” our experience of time is marked by our

location within particular spaces. The compression of time within space gives us both a
 49

sense of the “nowness” of experience as well as a sense of duration. Our understanding of

the world and our place within it is as much based on the “hereness” of where we are as

the “nowness” of our experiences within which were are located (Grosz 1995). We do

not experience one without the other. Social cartographies give temporal and spatial

direction to individuals within particular spaces.

In social cartographies we have a naturalized understanding of normative

boundaries and our sense of self within them. Cartographies are not static; they are

porous and permeable. We do not stay in one place; instead, we move between home,

school, work, restaurants, and other public and private spaces. We exist in a multiplicity

of spaces. At times, spaces can be complementary, while at other times they can be

conflictual. Certain spaces can be painful (such as the home for an abused child) while

others can be pleasurable and empowering (such as a demonstration for the politically

active). Social cartographies mark us in a multiplicity of ways; more than one type of

experience and more than one type of subjective modality can emerge within each space.

Katie, a dancer at Glitters, discussed her husband’s anger over the fact that she “didn’t

like to be on top” anymore during sexual intercourse. At first she could not figure out

“why it was so uncomfortable,” until Jill, another dancer, said, “I hate it, too. I finally

figured out that it reminded me too much of being with a customer and I just couldn’t

handle feeling like that with my husband.” Feminist geographer Lisa Law argues that

space creates complex intersections where subject positions are called into question (Law

2000).

A subjective mode is formulated as we move through our social cartographies. It

is in these cartographies that we come to identify ourselves through the wider set of
 50

social relations which constitute our lived experiences. As we engage in the structuring

practices of a space, we integrate the norms and boundaries of what is known as

acceptable in that space. At the club the subjective modality of a dancer self (or dancer

mode) emerges and the subject who is a “dancer” knows how to operate within this

context. However, traces of other sites, such as home, and other subjective modalities

remain. Therefore the boundaries of the subjective modality of “dancer” and “regular

customer” are never static or complete.

Mapping the “Special Space” of Exotic Dance

Danielle: Hope, what do you think customers get out of coming to your club?

Hope: I think they get a lot. The men who come to Glitters are lonely. They get to have

women all over them to make them feel special. They get to feel important and many of

the men who come in here could never get a woman who looks like a dancer to pay any

attention to them.

Spatial Construction and Owner’s Intentions

Fantasy, pleasure, capital, heteronormativity, white masculine privilege,

occularcentrism, and acceptable femininity function as the dominant discursive

architecture of Flame and Glitters. Owners drew on these discourses in the construction

of both clubs and utilized them in their attempt to create a exotic and erotic space. These

discourses comprise the dominant social cartography of the clubs and operate as sense-

making markers for those located within them. Shaping Flame and Glitters and making
 51

them come alive, these discourses serve as the central sense making apparatus of the

clubs. They create a space where women serve men’s needs, making them feel “special,”

“important,” and like “real men,” while the fabricated fantasies the club owners construct

obscure the strategies of exotic dancers in the space—to make money through selling

drinks, dances, or both. Owners manipulate the space to produce and sell fantasy

(Schweitzer 2000; Ryan & Martin 2001).

As Katherine Liepe-Levinson (2001) states, “[s]trip bars, clubs, and theaters

produce three dimensional landscapes of desire through their varying sizes, shapes,

interior decorations, arrangements of spectator seating and sightliness, and general

ambiance” (2001: 51). Clubs are constructed to produce and perpetuate both fantasy and

desire. This intentional production is often obscured from the men who consume exotic

dance, and in so doing, the club takes on a magical quality of being there just for their

pleasure and enjoyment.

Looking around the club one night I realized that all of the tables and chairs

faced the center of the club. Impossible to miss, the spectacle under black light, all eyes

would fall on her at some point and it was the owner’s hopes that this would provide the

visual stimulation that would prompt men to buy more fantasy for sale: private lap

dances.

Profit is the impetus driving the production of this “fantasy” space by the owners

of Flame and Glitters. To guarantee their profits, owners work to make men feel

comfortable and “special.” During a staff meeting at Flame, the owners informed dancers

that this was a “classy” place and that their job was to make men “feel important,” and
 52

“get as much fucking money as possible.” Lights dimmed, women sitting with the

customers’ arms around them and looking as if they were completely enthralled were all

parts of this design. This strategy often succeeded in producing a “special place” for the

customer.

Time

Exhausted and tired during my first shift, I wondered how much longer I would have to

wait until closing time. Not wearing my watch (I thought it would detract from the

aesthetic), I wandered around the club looking for a clock. There were none to be found.

Annoyed and frustrated, I went to the Deejay booth and asked, “What time is it?” Glenn

told me I still had a couple hours. Scanning the wall in his booth, hoping he was wrong,

he pointed to his wrist, showed me his watch and said, “The only clock in the place is in

the manager’s office.”

Temporality in the clubs is an important aspect of its cartography and its relation

to capital. Customers buy dancers’ time on stage, in a cabaret dance, or in the lap dance

room. Dancers do not waste time on customers who are not paying. Dancers gauge

whether they are having a good night on their time spent in the lap dance room,

champagne room or having drinks with a regular. Both bouncers and dancers told me, “If

you spend more than three songs sitting with a guy and he hasn’t bought a private dance,

forget about it and move on.” Owners watch the amount of time dancers spend on private

dances and warn them “not to give their time away for free.”
 53

Time is measured through music in the clubs. Stage rotation is tracked by music.

For example, if a dancer’s name is called she knows she needs to be on stage in two

songs. Music also creates temporal boundaries for the services offered by the clubs: a lap

dance costs $20-40 dollars per song and a cabaret is $1 dollar for a small part of a song

(approximately 60 seconds). Dancers time their strip-teases according to length of songs.

At Flame a dancer is on stage for two songs, whereas at Glitters she is on for four. During

the first song a dancer keeps all of her clothes on, for the second she goes topless and at

Glitters she is nude for the third and fourth.

The owners, with their intentional omission of clocks in the clubs and their use of

artificial lighting, try to construct a different notion of time for customers. Because songs

do not all equal the same amount of time on a clock (songs can range from three minutes

and forty five seconds to five minutes), time is in some ways less rigid. There is no

standardization such as lap dance = four minutes. Lap dances can range from three to five

minutes. Similar to the construction of time in casinos, owners at Flame and Glitters

attempt to separate time spent in the clubs from the clock or traditional time. The

relaxation of time, is part of the constructed fantasy of the club. Owners want dancers to

make men feel like “time is not important” if they are spending money.

Dancers employ time prolonging techniques to make more money. For example a

dancer may continue a lap dance after a song stops, so she can earn two dances instead of

one. Another strategy dancers’ use with regulars is the request for “special time.” Given

its designation as special, dancers urge regulars to the Champagne Room at Flame or buy

a bottle of Champagne at Glitters. The amount of which is never quantified (it could be as

little as twenty minutes or if dancer is lucky an entire shift) or defined in advance, but it
 54

becomes more expensive as time passes and is viewed as worth more economically. This

is not to say that men do not experience time passing, but it is to say that it is less

standardized.

Dancers, however, track time according to music in a different way. They are

cognizant of the length of songs and at times complain when a particularly long song

forces them to do a longer lap dance or spend too much time on stage. For dancers, songs

equal money or lack thereof, and thus, they track them closely.

Surveillance

Protecting investment in both the legal and economic sense also served as a

component of Flame’s social cartography. Surveillance through the use of cameras and

bouncers permeated the atmosphere of both clubs (Egan 2004). According to the owners,

surveillance was needed to keep dancers “in line,” stopping them from either “going too

far with a customer” or from “cheating the club” (not paying the club a 15% portion of

each lap dance performed or sitting with a customer who wasn’t paying). Surveillance

was a strategy often couched in terms of “protection” by owners and managers. Owners’

stated that the cameras were for dancers, and to help management keep an eye on “out of

hand customers” (Egan 2004; Murphy 2003). However, in reality, surveillance systems

were used as a way to protect investment, in both the legal and economic sense, at Flame

and Glitters. Therefore, while the gaze of the customer was on dancers on stage or in

closer contact, the owner’s panoptic gaze surveyed the space (Egan 2004). This form of

surveillance enforced a form of social control which, when breached, resulted in fines or

unemployment for dancers and expulsion from the club for customers. The degree to
 55

which the cameras were actually on and being watched was never clear. However, the

camera’s presence served as a mechanism of self-discipline for dancers. The mediated

gaze produced docile bodies in the dancers, a self-regulating system of social control—

dancers watching themselves in case they were being watched.13

During my first few shifts I met Jacquelyn, a thin woman with long black hair,

who had been a dancer of many years. She took me aside and informed me about the

rules of the game. “Trust no one.” “Never leave your money anywhere.” “Never stop

working the room.” “They are always watching.” Confused, I asked, “Who is watching,

the customers?” I had not really paid attention to the ceilings and had not spent much

time in the manager’s office. Exasperated with my ignorance, Jacquelyn replied, “The

owners and bouncers! They are always watching and they will fire your ass if you don’t

follow the rules.” The rules of the house were still unclear to me because the owners

never posted them and so each time I went to work I asked dancers to tell me about the

rules. So far I knew that the customers were not allowed to feel your vagina, or lick you

and that you would be fired if you poked a hole in the leather couches with your high

heels in the lap dance room. Understanding the rules in their entirety seemed particularly

crucial now since Jacquelyn informed me that the electronic gaze of the owners was

watching and that I could be expelled from the club if any of them were broken. “So what

are they looking for?” I asked, “What shouldn’t I do?” “Well,” she replied, “the rules

are always changing, but don’t do drugs here, don’t do anything that you’re not

supposed to in the back room. And don’t agree to see customers outside the club or it

can be considered solicitation.” I looked around noticing the cameras and the bouncers
 56

everywhere and looked back at Jacquelyn and said, “Thanks.” “No problem,” she

replied as she got up and continued to “work the room for customers.”

Docility and surveillance operated in both clubs; however, it was not a seamless

and totalizing mechanism. Dancers subverted the control of the owner and managers on a

regular basis, by hiding their actions from the eyes of the cameras and bouncers. For

example, some dancers at Flame used their backs to shield their actions from the cameras

so regulars could touch and/or kiss their breasts. Whereas dancers at Glitter, use tables

strategically to get extra money from their regular customers, an act that would be cause

for termination. Moreover, dancers at Flame used the bathroom, which had no cameras,

for other prohibited actions such as drug use.

Surveillance cameras usually go unnoticed by customers, although most

customers are cognizant of the bouncers and do not do anything in an obvious manner

(such as trying to grab a dancer's vagina on the main floor) that would get them kicked

out. Unlike the owners who prescribe the camera as a social control mechanism for

dancers to protect both their legal and economic investment, dancers use the camera as a

convenient way to secure their income without having to break their performances of

feigned intimacy (Egan 2004). I have talked to several dancers who use the surveillance

cameras as a safe excuse to not do things that customers want them to. Gina, for example,

told me about a time when, “there was this customer and he wanted to touch my tits and

my cooche14 and he was a good guy and a regular so to put him off gently I told him,

‘Hey sweetie, I would love it, but those cameras are watching and I don’t want to get in

trouble.’ He totally got it, but didn’t think that I would rather puke than have him touch
 57

me like that.” Gina and other dancers take the owner’s forms of social control and use it

to their advantage to ward off the wandering hands of customers without having to break

the fantasy of intimacy and sexual attraction they perform in order to make money.

Dancers invert the purpose of the panoptic gaze--implementing the tools of social control

meant to control their actions in order to control customers and protect themselves.

Special Spaces and Male Privilege

Fantasy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, whiteness, and male pleasure figure

centrally as the discursive architecture of the clubs, both for the customers and as a

function of labor for dancers. As such, exotic dance clubs are places where “men can be

men” and interact with their “fantasy girls.” They are “special place[s]” for men catering

to their “needs,” making them feel “important.” Unlike other social cartographies, such as

the workplace, the home, and the gym, this space is constructed specifically for men’s

unencumbered pleasure. In the home, men have responsibilities and are expected to

contribute, physically, economically, and emotionally. In the club, however,

responsibility is absent; men do not have to be there at a certain time, pick up any

groceries, make sure bills are paid, help solve problems, or attend to anyone’s needs.

Unlike the drudgery of everyday responsibilities—the clubs are, as Katherine Frank

elucidates, spaces of relaxation (Frank 2000). Flame and Glitters both offered temporary

escapes from the responsibilities of patriarchal masculinity while reinforcing male

entitlement.
 58

Relaxation

During my first month as a dancer I spoke with a regular customer, Jack, a self-

proclaimed “rich” white man, over a beer, and it was through our conversation that I

began to understand how regulars experienced this space.

Danielle: Jack, tell me…your here all the time, and of course I don’t mind...

but why do you keep coming here?

Jack: Well Kayla (my stage name) I love it here.

Danielle: Why?

Jack: You know it’s a great place.

Danielle: Yeah, but I am just curious as to why you think it’s so great?

Jack: What do you think about it?

Danielle: Well I like it, because I get to meet nice...

Jack: That’s what I like about it. It isn’t like other bars where there is a lot of

game playing…this is like a special place. I can meet pretty girls, talk to them,

they talk to me and we have a good time. At other places it’s full of games you

know?

Danielle: Mmm.

Jack: Here it is easy. I can be me and people appreciate it. (Laughing) You know

sometimes... I wish I could meet girls like you in a regular club because I think it

would be easier to start a relationship, cause there aren’t a lot of girls like you out

there. You know nice, pretty, and who like to talk. Not that I have a problem

meeting women, but they are fake. In here it is just easier.

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Jack loves this place, free of “game-playing,” full of “nice,” “pretty girls…” “who aren’t

fake” and who “love to talk” to men like him. Jack experiences this space as one of

freedom, where he is appreciated and surrounded by beautiful women. Jack spent several

nights a week in the club. In this space, Jack felt he could meet the right girl, one who

was erotically stimulating and who would listen to him carefully. He wants, the “perfect

woman.” One who is, as Gillian, a dancer at Glitter, said, “a whorish wife.”

Ken a white, upper/middle-class regular from Flame expressed a similar

sentiment.

Danielle: So Ken, why do you come here?

Ken: How could I not? (we both start laughing)

Danielle: Come on.

Ken: Let’s see. There are beautiful women in G-stings everywhere and it’s a

relaxing place for me. There is no stress. All the women are nice and it’s fun

talking to beautiful, intelligent women, like yourself.

Danielle: Yeah, okay.

Ken: At work things are stressful. At home things are stressful. I can relax and be

myself here. What can I say? You know how to treat me right.

Danielle: Thanks.

Ken: Let’s go do some dances.

Ken, free from the “stresses” of home and work, can be “himself” at Flame. This is his

special place where he, surrounded by beautiful nearly nude women, can have intelligent
 60

conversations and relax. His experience is similar to Jack’s in that he feels taken care of

by the dancers. They “treat” him “right” in two respects: erotically and emotionally. Ken

uses this space as an escape from the “stress” of his everyday existence.

Regulars’ sense of freedom and relaxation comes from the discourse of male

privilege that is part and parcel of the discursive framework of both clubs. This type of

masculinity is legitimated through patriarchal forms of hierarchical power which

construct normative masculinity as inherently straight, white, and middle class. Jack and

Ken tap into the environment that the club owners purposely construct, an atmosphere in

which men are free from the constraints of work and home and can be visually stimulated

by women while simultaneously being emotionally and erotically catered to by dancers.

This form of masculinity operates not only in the club but also in the dominant discourse

of the larger American cultural context. Hard-working white men from a privileged class

background and who are sexually attracted to women come to exemplify “normative”

masculinity (Plummer, 1995). This discourse defines men as needing sexual release

through women in either the fleshy or fantasmic sense in order satisfy their inherent

sexual needs (Weeks 1985).

This form of masculinity operates as a standard for the club. As such, exotic

dance clubs become spaces for men to get these needs met—they can look at nude

women and erotically interact with them (Murphy 2003; Ryan and Martin 2001; Liepe-

Levinson 2000; Schweitzer 2000). The clubs view this as a “safe place” for a man to “do

what he needs to do.” John, one of the bouncers at Glitters, put it this way: “Here a man

can get his rocks off and go home and be with his wife. He isn’t really cheating and she

should be happy. At least he’s not fucking his secretary.” Mary, a dancer at Glitters, had a
 61

similar interpretation: “Men love it here. Their wives should love that they come here.

Men have needs and they work it out here and this way they aren’t having some affair or

going to a prostitute where they can get AIDS and give it to their wives.”

Not surprisingly, Flame and Glitters utilize this form of masculinity in a particular

way. In the club, they want to meet “men’s needs,” but target a specific type of man—

those who can afford to pay dancers and make the most money for the club. Flame and

Glitters use these discourses strategically in order to create a space of male fantasy and

pleasure for capitalist gain. The discourses of white, heteronormative, middle-class

masculinity produce the discursive architecture of both Flame and Glitters. These

discourses do not operate in isolation; they reside within, as well as outside, the club in a

larger social context where they come in contact with other cultural discourses, some of

which promote this form of masculinity and others which contest it.

Protecting Male Privilege

Unlike in the clubs, feminists, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and people of color

problematize and resist the inscriptions of heteronormative, upper/middle-class

masculinity. These groups challenge normative definitions of masculinity, deconstructing

male privilege in socio-economic spheres such as work, home, government, and juridical

institutions. Activists demand alternative conceptions of gender relations, white privilege,

and sexual partnership. The success of these forms of resistance are evidenced in the

recent panic among white men who, in their fear over losing “rights,” decry feminism,

affirmative action, and domestic partnership programs (Farough 2004; Plummer 1995;

hooks 1992; Williams 1991; Faludi 1991).

 62

The exotic dance club as a space of backlash allows men to interact with

“intelligent” and “beautiful” nude women who are “real women” as opposed to the

“fake” women who challenge their masculinity and “play games” with them. During my

time at Flame and Glitters, many customers talked to me about how “sick” they were of

“these feminists who think places like this shouldn’t exist.” Jim, a white male in his 50s

said, “Feminists don’t like this place because they don’t want women to be beautiful.

They want them to be like men and they want men to be like women.”

In the clubs, alternative discourses of discontent such as feminism, queer rights,

and affirmative action, are absent. White, heteronormative masculinity operates

unproblematically and is reiterated for profit. A space of backlash, the clubs are a place

where “men can be men” and can be “treated right” by women. The patriarchal structure

of the clubs makes it appear as though women “want” men’s attention and are sexually

and emotionally available to cater to men’s needs. The dominant practices construct and

reinforce rituals of masculinity where men watch other men watching dancers and watch

each other reifying, through repetition, the space as a white, heterosexual boys’ club.

Men of color did go to the clubs, although to a far lesser extent, but what they found was

a space where whiteness operated as the normative and dominant structuring practice.

Not unlike other social institutions (i.e., the workplace, universities, etc), admittance of

men of color, did not guarantee a welcoming environment (Feagin and O’Brien 2003).

The extent of white privilege in the club was evidenced in a conversation with

Jack, where he, evoked racists’ representations of “lazy welfare mothers” and how he

was sick of supporting “lazy blacks” with his tax dollars. Jack spoke freely in the club,

feeling safe to discuss his racist views of African-Americans, fairly sure that no one
 63

would challenge him or his opinions. Customers’ titillation surrounding their interactions

with and exotification of dancers of color further perpetuates white privilege. Whiteness

operates in the club as a “feeling of pleasure in and about one’s body” (Farley 1997).

Tim, a white male in his early forties, spoke to me about how he “loved Jade” (a

Korean dancer) because she was so “different,” “exotic” and “attentive” and how he

found “Linda” (an African-American dancer) sexy because “she is so wild.” For Tim,

women of color were “exotic” and “different.” Whereas, white dancers were “beautiful”

and “hot.” His interpretations of the attentive Asian female and the wild African-

American woman perpetuate racist views of women of color and how they should

function to sexually service white men. By consuming these women, he is able to “get a

little bit of the other,” thus fulfilling his desire for “bodies of color” (hooks 1992). These

projections are often unchallenged in this space where white, heterosexual masculinity

both inscribes and formulates a dominant component of the social cartography of the

space of these two clubs.

The Rebel

Rebellion also operates as a cartographic component of the space of the club. Due

to the erotic nature of the clubs (i.e., nude women, lap dances, etc), exotic dance clubs

often skirt the line between cultural acceptability and transgression, falling under the

cultural definition of a “deviant” site (Egan 2004).15 Given their designation as deviant,

exotic dance clubs often function as spaces of transgression for regulars. Men can be men

here, but unlike other spaces that are ‘men only’ or are male-dominated, this space is
 64

infused with a sense of rebellion, or the titillation that comes with deviation from the

norm (Frank 2000; Liepe-Levinson 2000). An illustration of this can be found in Frank’s

comment, “I came from a religious background and I could never do any of this stuff as

an adolescent or young adult and my wife wouldn’t understand now, but I like it here and

get a charge out of being in this place.”

The club offers Frank a “charge,” a rebellious act, that is enhanced with the

excitement that comes with being the bad boy. It allows men to “be bad” and to do

things “their wives” would not understand. Unlike other forms of rebellion, such as

speeding, drugs, or prostitution, exotic dance is legal and thus the chances of arrest and

sanctioning are minimal. Given its legal status, Flame and Glitters provide a safe place

for rebellion. Transgression intertwines with the dominant practices of masculinity,

creating a space of male backlash against the challenges of feminism, racial, and queer

criticism, as well as being infused with the excitement and titillation of skirting cultural

norms. Mark, a regular, said, “God I can’t tell you how often I am at work and I can’t

wait to get the hell out of there and come to see you.” Another regular, Henry, said, “It’s

like heaven.” The social cartographies of the club mark regulars creating a symbolic

fusion of experience and memory of the erotic in other, more mundane, spaces such as

work or home, traces that bring men back to the clubs.

Femininity, Sexual Availability, and Emotional Labor

Discourses of “traditional” femininity and it stigmatization of the “whore” are

also at play in the social cartographies of the clubs. These discourses mark the ways in

which exotic dancers function at work. Dancers are privy to the owners’ cartographic
 65

inscriptions of the space and operate strategically within them. Given the service aspect

of this form of labor, understanding how the space is supposed to function is crucial for

dancers. Ignoring the dominant social cartography of the club can result in a loss of

income, or worse, termination. Success for dancers necessitates performatively engaging

with the forms of femininity owners perpetuate and regulars fantasize. Dancers must

exude sexuality, be beautiful, be good listeners and make men feel good. To this end,

dancers experience the club as a space of work which requires a high degree of emotional

labor (Hochschild 1983).

Emotional Labor

At Flame and Glitters dancers sell emotion as part of their erotic performance

(Hochschild 1983). Similar to other professionals who perform affect in the workplace

(i.e., flight attendants, doctors, waitresses, bill collectors), exotic dancers use emotion

work in their interactions with regulars (Frank 1998). Acting interested and supportive

dancers use emotion to create a comfortable environment for regulars. A particularly

useful skill, emotional labor helps dancers procure regulars and is thus essential for their

financial wellbeing. Although tiresome, Serenity, a dancer for eight years in her mid-

twenties, thought of the club and her work in this way:

Serenity: When I think of the club I think of it as my work place. I mean I used to

think of work as a place to party and have fun and I didn’t make very much

money. Then I got serious. I go there and I know what the men want and I do it

and I don’t fuck around. If I go up to a man who has been staring at me and we
 66

talk and he doesn’t buy a dance within ten minutes, I am out of there. I don’t have

time for that shit. I will be nice and pretty and pretend that that guy is a fucking

god, but if he isn’t buying I am not staying.

Danielle: So you just get up and walk away?

Serenity: Oh hell no. I do it nicely. I don’t say, “pay up or get the fuck away.” I

say, “Oh it has been so nice talking, but I need to go change my outfit,” or

something like that. Then I go to the dressing room or the bathroom and I come

back working the floor...you know I am here to make money, not fuck around.

Danielle: Yeah. I am stupid sometimes. I sit with a guy for an hour..

Serenity: Oh no. If they don’t show interest in spending money quickly they

aren’t serious.

Danielle: So what do you think men want?

Serenity: Looks-wise or in general?

Danielle: In general, what type of woman do you think they want?

Serenity: Well different men want different things. Some men like stupid women,

some men like smart women, some men like artistic types, but at base they want

women who are interested in them. You know it’s fine if she’s smart but she has

to “want him”... she has to like to grind against him…and make him feel special...

know what I mean?

Danielle: Yeah.

Serenity: That shit has to come across...you have to be confident and be the

slut...it feels weird saying it... but it’s true. If you’re shy or hesitant or worried or

pissed off or desperate for money man...men pick that up.

 67

Danielle: What about regulars?

Serenity: They want a relationship. I’ll tell you what, man, that shit isn’t always

easy.

Serenity, in this narrative, discusses her understanding of the club as a space of erotic and

emotive performance. Elaborating on the skill it takes to be a dancer, Serenity narrative

highlights effective work strategies and the emotional labor of making regulars feel

“wanted” and special. Sociologist Wendy Chapkis argues in Live Sex Acts, that emotional

labor can provide sex workers “with a sense of control and professionalism” (Chapkis

1997: 76). This seems to be the case for Serenity, although “it isn’t always easy.” Her

understanding and manipulation of the space help her earn between $500-$700 dollars

per night.

Sexual Availability

Discourses of femininity map this space in complex ways. Libertarian discourses

surrounding women’s sexual freedom intersect with stigmatizing discourses condemning

women’s sexual autonomy (Vance 1984). However the libertarian discourse of women’s

sexuality as a form of freedom or liberation tend to be most predominant. Tapping into

the sexual liberation discourses of the 1970’s, women’s sexuality is conceptualized as

“free of restraints.” Within this discourse women should be able to have sex whenever

they want and however they want. Serenity points to this in her interview. Regulars want

women who are “confident,” “sluts,” who “like to grind.” In the club, dancers’ sexual

freedom is constrained by the requirements of their work, to provide pleasure to men in

the club. Therefore, the discourse of sexual availability operates within and constructs
 68

dancers as “liberated” sex workers—as women who like to bend and make men in the

club feel good, feel as if “he’s a fucking god.” However, because of the fantasy

component of the club, male customers often “forget” that a dancer is working when they

are together. Her labor is fetishistically sublimated; she just “likes” to be with him and

wants him. Therefore, she becomes a “whorish wife,” a woman who can emotionally and

sexually cater to his needs.

The “whorish wife” exists as a powerful aspect of the cartography of the clubs.

By combining the “slut” and the “wife,” clubs are able to overcome the wife/whore

dichotomy. In becoming the “whorish wife,” dancers provide men with a fantasmatic

woman who is both sexually available and “wants it,” as well as an emotionally nurturing

woman and thus, one who wants to “listen to it.” For example, Katie, a dancer for four

years, said, “Fuck, you have to act like a wife, and act like you want their dick.” Or as an

advertisement for Glitters proclaimed, “At Glitters Men Can Have it All.” While men

may “have it all,” women have to “do it all,” and it is the negotiation of this structuring

practice--linking expectation and performance--that informs women’s work in the clubs.

Faking It

As discussed earlier, women are expected to perform erotic and emotional labor.

As Sandy, a dancer at Glitters, said, “We are here to work. The owners make sure we

know that. They tell us how to act and how to be and if we don’t make money we get

fired.” When I was becoming a dancer, Harry, a manager, and I discussed how a dancer

should act at work and what it took to be a dancer.

 69

Harry: Most women who come in here say, “My boobs are too small, my butt is

too big, I am too fat, I am too skinny,” but basically it all seems to work out. You

understand that all of the women out there [in the club] have fake breasts?

Danielle: Yes.

Harry: Well I think that having natural breasts can be a turn-on for men.

Danielle: Ughh, okay.

Harry: Plus men are really here to see your vagina many of the other things do not

matter

Danielle: Yeah, that makes sense.

Harry: So why do you want to do this?

Danielle: I… because it fascinates me and I want to try it.

Harry: Well that seems like a good idea as any...so you don't have any problem

being nude?

Danielle: I don't think so.

Harry: Well let me give you some tips (he gets up and points to the chair next to

me). See this chair? This is like the men’s perspective (he is very tall and much

higher than I am) so instead of picking money up like this (just bending over to

simulate getting money) you want to squat down so you are at their level. This

way the men don’t feel like your trying to be superior to them.

Danielle: (Smiling) Okay.

Harry: Plus if you do not want to be totally naked your first time you can wear a

wrap and that will technically be naked for us... okay?

Danielle: Okay.
 70

Harry: Plus when you take the money you need to smile and say ‘thank you’.

Danielle: Umm humm.

Harry: Because if you smile at men and seem nice…

Danielle: (I start smiling)

Harry: Yes. Just like you are now...even if you take the money before you bend

for them or whatever you want to do…they think you really like them and that it

is not about the money.

Danielle: Ughh, okay.

Harry: Plus you may think because you are up there that you need to strip even if

men are not giving you any money. That’s bullshit. This is no free show. These

men need to pay. If they aren’t giving anything do not show anything. Because if

you go up to one man and you give him a free peak then none of the other men

will pay because they’ll think you’re giving it away. Do you understand?

Dancers are supposed to act like their interactions and expressions of sexual

interest in regulars are natural and authentic while simultaneously getting men to pay

them for their time (Boles 1974; Ronai-Rambo 1992). Dancers must juggle acting like the

do not want money, while not showing or doing too much until they have gotten paid.

When men stopped paying, dancers at Glitters would stare at themselves in the mirrors,

sit on the ledge of the stage, talk to one another and sometimes even chide men for not

paying them any money. Conversely, when “working,” dancers would appear as if each

customer were special, talking, laughing, bending, and thanking them for their money.

The enjoyment expressed by dancers at work often moves beyond “faking it” particularly
 71

when it comes to regular customers. Many dancers enjoy spending time with regulars, but

all dancers are cognizant that what they are doing is work…even when they are having

fun. As Marie a dancer of several years said, “I like them, but sometimes the work gets

tiring.” Dancers must be “on” when working, performing the erotic labor involved in the

actual act of stripping and lap dancing, as well as performing the emotional labor of

making men feel special, non-intimidated, and wanted (Ronai Rambo 1992; Wood 2000).

Unlike the cartographic inscriptions which mark regulars’ experiences of this

space, labor is the primary cartographic inscription of this space for dancers. The

discourses of traditional femininity, sexual availability and sexual liberation, and service

requirements of emotional labor shape how women workers experience both these

spaces. Dancers employ these cartographic mappings in order to make sense of this space

and learn how to function strategically within it. These discourses map shape and give

meaning to this space in terms of how to act, materially in terms of how to make money,

and subjectively, in terms of constituting the subjective modality of being a dancer.

Conclusions

Social cartographies map the spaces of Glitters and Flame, serving as sense-

making devices, giving dancers and customers an understanding of how to operate in the

spaces within which they find themselves. Fantasy, capital, pleasure, heteronormativity,

white privilege, rebellion, masculinity, sexual availability, and emotional labor construct

the multi-layered and complex discursive architecture of the social cartographies at play

in both Flame and Glitters. These practices intersect and intertwine. Some are

complementary while others are conflictual, constituting an active production, where

 72

dancers and regulars experience the space of the clubs in complex and different ways.

The social cartographies give dancers and regulars an understanding of what is expected

and acceptable behavior in these spaces. Social cartographies are not unitary; they are

contextual, multiple, and complex, mapping and marking us differently, creating

resonances and resistances.

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Chapter 2

Subjectivity Under the Black Light

Confused, I found myself in a church-like structure with big windows and religious

iconography surrounding me. After investigating the space for some time, I realized that

the windows previously stained with the Stations of the Cross were now clear, and
1
All names used in this text, including the titles of the clubs, are pseudonyms to protect the identities of

those involved.
2
This historical overview of exotic dance is highly condensed due to time and space constraints as well as

the provocative and important historical accounts provided in the work of Frank 2002, Jarrett 1997 and

Allen 1991.
3
For more on the representations of the Other in carnivals and minstrel shows see W.T Lhamon 1998.
4
Shedding light on the “dark” and “untamed sexuality” of Egypt, belly dancing was viewed as exotic and

erotic, reifying the American public’s racist views of the African other (Jarrett 1997).
5
For more current deviance literature see Enck and Preston 1988; Thompson and Harred 1992; Thompson,

Harred and Burks 2003; Mestemacher and Roberti 2003; Wesely 2003.
6
Chapter 5 has an in depth discussion of the feminist debates surrounding exotic dance and how women

dancers view themselves in relation to feminism.

7
Most of these legal battles target clubs for heterosexual male customers, as such, men who work in exotic

dance clubs are rarely subject to such sanctions (Liepe-Levison 2002).

8
Middle range clubs will be discussed extensively later in the chapter. Both Flame and Glitters are middle

range establishments.
9
Clearly, given these constraints my analysis is limited. Unfortunately, I can not speak to the complicated

interactions taking place in other types of clubs. For example, I can not speak to the ways in which African

American customers or dancers’ experience desire, fantasy and power in club that caters to a predominantly

African American audience. Nor can I untangle how women consumers make sense of exotic dance clubs

(for more on women consumers see Liepe-Levinson). This lack of knowledge, a result of my research sites,

is an unfortunate gap, one that I hope is filled by other ethnographers interested in exotic dance.
 74

beyond the pews and paintings, were books and comfortable chairs. It was in this section

of the room that I noticed Jill. She was sitting next to her computer when she called me

over to make my schedule. Looking impatient, she asked “So?” Confused, I told her I

could work Thursday and Saturday. While Jill entered my schedule, I noticed that I was

wearing one of my work gowns; my heels were on and my make-up and hair were done.

As I walked away, my gait began to change. Hips jutting forward with each stride, the

tips of my toes dragging ever so slightly, my back arching so that my breasts were

forward and my butt was out I looked for customers. I moved through the space

confidently, but not quite completely comfortably because I couldn’t figure out why I was

10
This text is not an attempt to create a single unified poststructural argument. Rather, it is an attempt use

the powerful and explantory aspects of various theories to make sense of the interactions taking place

within these two exotic dance clubs. As such, I use and abuse theory, to take the powerful aspects of

different theoretical premises to construct a multi-layered account of the complex and challenging facets

from space to the psyche that are at work in the clubs.

11
At Glitters, unlike at Flame, the women must change their own music. There is no deejay to control the

music; thus, in between songs the dancer must ascend the stairs to change CDs for the next song. The

reason for this difference is that Glitters is not as big as Flame nor has it put as much money into the club.
12
It is important to note that I am not as familiar with the private areas of the club (the dressing room and

the manager’s office) because I was a full observer in this club. Therefore, I was not as privy to the inner

workings of the club. Whereas in Flame I was a full participant and as such I spent a lot of time in the

private areas.
13
For a longer discussion of panoptic surveillance and the formation of exotic dancers as docile bodies, see

Egan 2004.
14
“Cooche” means vagina.
15
For more information on exotic dance as a form of deviance, see Boles and Garbin, 1974; Skipper and

McCaghy, 1969; Skipper and Mc Caghy, 1970.

 75

dancing in this church/library. As I walked around, two male students said, “Hello

Professor Egan,” the three words that I feared hearing most at Flame. However, they

seemed to be unaffected by my appearance and, as I sat down, I understood they needed

help with their statistics. In between my tutoring sessions, I would intermittently get up

and dance on stage. I would collect my money, get off stage and continue tutoring them.

In the middle of talking to them about the ontological and epistemological assumptions of

positivist thought, I woke up.

Dazed and a little nervous, I got up and got ready to teach. On my ride into

school, I knew that I needed to think and write about the fissures and fluidity of

subjectivity, about the complexities and multiplicities that mark the boundaries between

teacher/researcher and exotic dancer, as well as how those fissures were embodied in the

women and regulars with whom I worked. I realized that my life, as a woman, is like a

palimpsest, the paper used at the turn of the century. Small sheets were placed over one

another so that paper could be reused to write new words; however, the old was never

absent, it was always slightly visible, present, and literally just under the surface. Like

the palimpsest, my various subjectivities as dancer, researcher, and teacher were never

completely bounded; they bled through into each other, slightly under the surface,

marking my various modalities of subjectivity. It is the fluidity of these modalities of

subjectivity and their visceral and psychic effects that I illuminate in this chapter. In so

doing, I analyze how subjectivity and, more specifically, modalities of subjectivity are

constructed and inform the interactions between dancers and their regular customers.
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Subjectivity in Motion

A poststructuralist position on subjectivity and consciousness relativizes

the individual’s sense of herself by making it an effect of discourse, which

is open to continuous redefinition and which is constantly slipping. The

reassurance and certainty of humanism, with its essence of subjectivity,

disappears, but so does the inevitability of particular forms of subjectivity

with their attendant modes of consciousness (Weedon 1995: 102).

Subjectivity marks us, gives us a sense of coherence, a sense of self, both

psychically and viscerally. Our subjectivity helps us place ourselves in the world and ties

us to various socio-cultural aspects of our lives such as family, school, government, and

nation, helping us to see who we are and what we are about. Through subjectivity we are

able to make the claim “I am” or “I think” or “I feel.” Subjectivity comes to operate as an

intensely personal and important aspect of our lives. Moreover, it allows us to take on

identities, claiming our locations in the world. For example, I define myself as a woman,

a feminist, a very recent member of the middle class, a scholar, a former exotic dancer, a

teacher, a daughter, a sister, and a lover. We use our subjectivity to make knowledge

claims based on our social location (woman, person of color, working class) and our

experiences (sexism, racism, classism or privilege) in these locations. For example, when

I am teaching and I talk about gender as a socio-historical production, oftentimes students

say, “Well I don’t see that,” “That is not my experience,” or, “I am a woman that is just

who I am. It is in me.” These are not students who simply refuse to expand their minds;

rather, subjectivity operates so powerfully that it is difficult to go against that which feels
 77

so essentially “real.” If our subjectivity, our sense of who we are in the world, functions

with such force and seeming authenticity, how can it be a site of discursive contingency?

A site of contestation, one that allows for resistance? A poststructural conceptualization

of the subject provides a particularly provocative analyses of how such things are

possible.

Postmodern Subjectivity

Beginning with Platonic philosophy, the subject becomes a series of techniques

prescribed by culture through which individuals come to reflect on in order to form,

maintain, and transform their identity (Foucault 1977). The primacy of the individual

subject, and hence subjectivity, comes to the fore through relations of self-mastery and

the imperative to know oneself; thus, attention is turned in on the individual in order to

plumb the depths of her or himself. Subjectivity emerges through dominant discourses

prompting the individual to believe that he is the center of the world, and that it is his

vision of the world that is supreme. Occluding difference and alterity, this notion of the

self was both imperial and phallocentric.

This vision of the autonomous subject, which privileged individual consciousness

and rationality, was formulated by discursive truth regimes that operated as natural,

taking on a commonsense quality. However, this conception of the subject is no longer

taken for granted as natural. This disappearance is, in part, an effect of various

contemporary social theoretical and social movements, such as Marxism, Feminism,

Structural Linguistics, and Foucauldian notions of discourse which, have displaced this

sovereign subject (Hall 1997). These discourses call into question the humanist (male)
 78

subject, by attending to sexual, racial, classed, colonial and gendered differences, as well

as the importance of language in (post)structuring social and individual experiences

(Pfohl 1992). The emergence of these discourses of challenge produce new forms of

subjectivity—which disrupt previously naturalized humanist and “enlightened”

masculine subjects.

In conjunction with the formation of contestational subjectivities, the emergence

of globalization and transnational postmodern capital problematize modern notions of

subjectivity. Severing the ontological surety of previous meta-narratives which worked to

anchor the subject to particular truth regimes (i.e., God, Nation, Empire, Science, etc),

postmodern capital creates a fragmented subject who is decentered and displaced. At the

intersection between discourses of capital which dictate “there is no race, there are no

genders, there is no age, there are no infirmities” (MCI commercial 6/97 ) and disruptive

discourses questioning previously hegemonic forms of subjectivity (i.e., white, male,

middle class, western and heterosexual) we find subjectivity at the cross roads of these

two paradoxical truth regimes.

As Zygmunt Bauman, John Urry and other postmodern theorists elucidate, this

subject beleaguered by narcissism and dislocation replaces the ontological surety of God

and Science with the momentary pleasure of consumerism (Bauman 2000; Urry 2003).

Searching for the security of authenticity that is missing from their lives, postmodern

subjects often cathetic to the discourses of advertising (Goldman and Papson 2005). So

that wearing tee-shirts inspired by African prints or engaging in eco-tourism in Costa

Rica provides the absent signifiers of authenticity, the spice of ethnicity and “a bit of the

Other” in an otherwise alienated existence, while simultaneously maintaining safe

 79

distance from actual relations with the other (hooks 1992). Given the transitory nature of

consumption, lack, urge, and absence intertwine keeping satiation at bay—encouraging

more desire and more accumulation. At base, this is a subjectivity of dissatisfaction, and

produces a particular form of subjectivity--one of wanting and need. To this end, it makes

sense that some people might search for connection in the market place, would seek

authentic connection in the miasma of postmodernity. Due to the structure of postmodern

capital and the proliferation of the service economy, the fact that some individuals must

work to provide this sense of authenticity and connection should come as no surprise. It is

this postmodern subjectivity produced in the mist of complex, contradictory and

conflictual discourses that I take as axiomatic to my analysis.

Discourse

Discourse resides in language, where forms of social organization (both actual

and possible) and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested.

Language is not a transparent modality of communication reflecting a pre-given social

reality; rather, it is a constitutive force that forms social reality. Various languages (both

proper and hybrid) and different discourses within the same language shape social

realities, giving them life and meaning that are not reducible to one another; that is, they

are not universal, translatable, or static. Language is a system made up of competing

discourses, which are historically situated within vectors of power and knowledge, and it

is through these competing discourses that different forms of social reality get created.

Discourses which have their roots in institutions such as the medical

establishment come to serve as dominant discourses, however, due to the plurality and
 80

difference of language, alternative discourses also operate as competing ways of marking

institutional and social processes. For example, the dominant “moralizing” discourse

surrounding sex work constitutes sex work as “sinful,” “bad,” a “public health problem,”

and as a “menace to society which perpetuates crime” (Scott 2005). This discourse

originates with the church and with the medical and legal institutions (Chapkis 1997). An

alternative discourse of “empowerment” also exists, defining sex work as “legitimate,”

“important,” and sometimes as “liberating.” This alternative discourse exists as a site of

contestation, one that problematizes the dominant discourse by seeking to change the

moral condemnation of the church and the legal structure of the criminal justice system.

It has its roots in the sex radical feminist movement (many of whose activists were/are

involved as either former or current sex workers) (Chapkis 1997). Alternative discourses

seek to subvert dominant discourses, just as dominant discourses often try to overturn or

delegitimate alternative discourses. Therefore, discourses have implications for the ways

individuals are constituted and governed as subjects.

Poststructuralism, due to its reliance on language, opens the possibility for

multiple forms of subjectivity. There are multiple positions within discourses through

which various forms of subjectivity emerge. Dominant and alternative discourses

produce different subject positions, different experiences, and different notions of who

we are in the world. Individuals can resist dominant discourses by resisting hegemonic

representations of experience. For some individuals who do not see themselves or their

experiences within dominant discourses, an alternative vision of the world can emerge

(on a visceral, cognitive, or psychic level) enacting a rebellion of subjugated knowledges,

eventually informing alternative discourses (Braidotti 1994). For others, a lack of

 81

identification can cause confusion, alienation, hopelessness, and depression. Unlike other

paradigms which pre-figure subjectivity as essential, solidified, and unified,

poststructuralism theorizes subjectivity as in motion, a form of subjectivity where

alternative forms of experience and change are possible.

Subjective Modalities: The Fluidity and Fissures of Self

Through my research, teaching, dancing, and dreaming, I realized that my various

modalities of subjectivity were not mutually exclusive; rather, they slipped into one

another, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, creating a sense of self and a bodily

experience of simultaneity and contradiction. Various modes of subjectivity collided into

one another at different moments, creating both confusion and curiosity. My theory of

subjective modalities unfolded as a way to make sense of the confounding and, at times,

confusing experiences of moving between my selves as a dancer, researcher and lover.

Subjective modalities are the various modes of subjectivity that emerge vis-à-vis

our location within discursive regimes.16 These modes of subjectivity are embodied,
16
Subjective modalities are dynamic and interactional, and as such they are similar to the concept of “self”

found within the symbolic interactionist perspective. For symbolic interaction, the self is a process that

allows us to act in the world with others. It is through our “selves” that we are able to take ourselves as

objects, allowing us to perceive ourselves through the lenses of others and to come to understand cultural

norms and values (Mead 1967). Therefore, the self, according to symbolic interactionism, is inherently

social. Subjective modalities, like the “self” are dynamic and interactional; however, they are produced by

and through language and discourse and thus, differ from symbolic interactionist perspectives. Moreover,

we come to know ourselves, how to act, and our position in culture through discursive regimes, which are

iterative and historically contingent. It is through various forms of discourse and language that makes what

is “knowable” possible.
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performative and dynamic informing our sense of self and our experience of the world.

Subjective modalities help us illuminate how modes of self are experienced by the

individuals and how various forms of subjectivity slip into one another. Unlike multiple

subject positions, which focus on the dispersion of subjects within discontinuous

discursive regimes over large historical moments, I am interested in how this dispersion

and discontinuity promotes modalities of subjectivity that slip into one another, forming a

subjectivity of dispersion.17 Therefore, this chapter explores how particular individuals

within particular spatial locations, subjectively experience the collision of various

discursive regimes within which they are located. Interrogating how location within

discourse promotes modalities of subjectivity in motion, I examine the resultant

experiences of oscillation and fluidity and the ways in which the boundaries of a

subjective modality are leaky and porous.

Modalities of subjectivity emerge within specific social cartographies; they are

contextual, and at times transitory. Aleatory in their manifestation, subjective modalities

17
Foucault in The Archeology of Knowledge, states;

“Here we are not dealing with a succession of instants of time nor with the plurality of thinking

subjects; what is concerned are those caesurae breaking the instant and dispersing the subject in a

multiplicity of possible positions and functions. Such a discontinuity strikes and invalidates the

smallest units, traditionally recognized and the least readily contested: the instant and the subject”

(1972: 231).

It is my contention that Foucault’s unit of analysis is discursive regimes in macro-level historical moments.

This is not to say that I am turning away from Foucault; rather, I want to theoretically extend Foucault to

explore the effects of this dispersion and discontinuity within exotic dancers and their regular customers. In

order to examine how this dispersion and discontinuity promote modalities of subjectivity that bleed into

one another in order to theorize a subjectivity of dispersion.

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can create cracks or slips within particular identities.18 For example, Hope, who identified

herself as a feminist prior to working at Glitters, said, “Being a dancer made me question

my feminism and then my identity as a feminist began to change.” Subjective modalities

challenge the notion of origins and “authentic” identity. Because subjective modes are

about movement and specificity, they constantly reproducing and reformulating.

We come to identify or mime ways of being as we move through social

cartographies and engage with the discursive regimes that mark the norms and boundaries

of a particular space. However, far from being spatially anchored to one location,

subjective modalities, once produced, can leak into other cartographies. We can, in effect,

“slip into dancer mode” at times in the most inconvenient places—like the classroom, for

instance. Moreover, subjective modalities exist within and in-between other modalities

and identities; we always occupy more than one simultaneously. We view the world

through our multiple modalities as sense-making devices and as self-markers. I argue that

it is in this space of flow and change that modalities become leaky, effacing the solidity

of self through continuous shifts in both social cartographies and subjective modalities.

“I Slipped Into Dancer Mode”

18
Subjective modalities differ from identity in that identity is linked to master signifiers. Identity, for

individuals, is perceived as a more encompassing, or inherent, quality of the self. To this end, identity

operates as something more solidified for subjects in multiple contexts such as “woman,” “African-

American,” or “lesbian”. The master signifier of the individuated subject “is the place in the symbolic order

with which the subject identifies. It is the place from which the subject observes him or herself in the way

he or she would like to be seen” (Salecl 1998: 11).

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Subjective modalities and the slips and flows between them were embodied in

myself and the other dancers in the clubs. Dancers shifted between the various subjective

modalities of sex worker, student, girlfriend, wife, mother, and other paid positions, such

as secretary or waitress. Moving between complementary and conflicted social

cartographies, dancers are marked by the residues and traces of the various modalities

they experience in each. The fissures and flow between modalities can be both painful

and powerful. They can be confusing and surprising and they can offer new possibilities.

Feminists of color such as Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989), Patricia Hill Collins (1990),

and Gloria Anzaldua (1987) theorize this multiplicity when they discuss the often

contradictory spaces women of color embody. Hill Collins, for example, argues that

African-American women occupy complex subject positions where race, class, and

gender intersect--and at times collide into--one another, in particular ways to form a

subjectivity of multiplicity (Hill Collins 1990). This multiplicity is not static, essential or

solidified; rather, it is iteratively constituted as African-American women move through

various cultural contexts. Such multiplicity can, at times, be painful, but it can also

provide new (re)visions of the world. African-American women move between and

negotiate these modalities in their formulation and reformations of self. This subjectivity

of multiplicity promotes a triple consciousness that offers a more complex and critically

resistive vision of the world. I am not conflating the experiences of African-American

women with the experiences of all sex workers, but I do want to argue that like

subjectivities of multiplicity, sex workers must move between very contradictory spaces

and must reformulate their sense of self on a continual basis. Carol Rambo Ronai argues

that the self, in exotic dance clubs, is “erased and drawn again throughout the night,
 85

imitating others and drawing on traces of the past that exist in our memories” (1999:

127). Dancers’ positions within these contradictory spaces can produce a double

consciousness which in turn can promote a form of critical resistance to their situations

both within and outside the clubs.

The Body

Subjective modalities mark people in bodily ways. The body is marked and made

intelligible by both the interior aspects of subjectivity as well as by the demarcations of

cultural inscription (Grosz 1994, 1995; Butler 1992, 2004). As sites of contestation,

bodies are involved in social ritual, regulation, and the production of expected and

unpredictable linkages (Grosz 1994). Therefore, our subjectivity is always in play in and

through our bodies. This is illuminated by Jennifer Wesely who argues, that dancers

corporeal understandings of the boundaries between dancing and home are not always

guaranteed (Wesely 2003). These shifts and multiplicities marked the bodies of the

dancers I worked with, as well as myself, and as we moved between our various

subjective modalities, slippages and flows were embodied in and on us. We experienced

these modalities in visceral ways that were both pleasurable and painful.

Dancing at a colleague’s 50th birthday I felt free. There were many of us enjoying

the music. Looking across the room, I saw two male acquaintances sitting on a couch

looking sullen and thought they might have more fun if they joined us on the dance floor.
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As I approached the couch, I asked, “Wanna dance?” My request was met with one of

the men taking out a dollar bill and handing it to me. Walking away, I heard both men

laughing. Shocked and embarrassed, I looked around to see if anyone, else had seen the

interaction. In that moment I felt like my work as a sociologist, teacher, researcher, and

feminist was effaced. Crying on the way home, I realized that what my colleagues did was

more disrespectful than anything my dancer self ever experienced in the club.

This particular experience put each of my subjective modalities--dancer, teacher,

researcher, and feminist--into spin. Heart racing, stomach aching, feeling angry, hurt and

confused, I was in a “new territory.” In that moment, I was marked by the stigma of their

actions. This stigma marked every dancer with whom I worked. The designation of

women who dance as “whores,” is both a degrading and dangerous place for women,

since “whores” receive little cultural or institutional protection. Given these

consequences, the women I worked with sought to separate themselves from this cultural

category. To this end, they were more likely to state, and believe, that they had two

different selves, which were mutually exclusive.

Early in my research, women I worked with talked about mutually exclusive

selves, a “dancer” self and an “other” self and it was this solidity that I examined.

However, my own bodily experiences of moving through the contradictory spaces of

teacher/researcher and dancer moved me to another theoretical possibility.

While teaching a section on the sex industry, I thought it would be interesting to read

works by sex workers and their differing thoughts, feelings, and experiences with regard
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to the sex industry. Interspersed with other dancers’ writings, I read some of my own

poetry. This was a difficult thing to do because I had not come out to my class. They knew

that my research was on exotic dancers and their regular customers, and that I was

conducting ethnographic research, but that was the extent of it. I started to read my poem

and in the middle of it realized that I was doing my work walk--dragging my toes across

the classroom floor and moving my hips seductively. I got scared wondering if the

students could tell that I was a dancer. What would happen if they went to the Dean? I

was worried because my course always occupied a tenuous position at the college,

because of its Catholic status, and this may give the university a reason to stop offering

it. This would not be the first time that someone noticed a change in me; as a matter of

fact people had been commenting on how I had changed all year. I immediately went

back to my teaching stance and continued reading. However, I was curious as to how I

could let myself slip in front of forty undergraduates.

To say that this slip produced some anxiety is an understatement; however, it also

produced a level of excitement...what was going on...how was this happening when I

thought that my “dancer self” was so separate?

Stigma

Dancer after dancer told me when I was thinking about becoming an exotic

dancer that all I would have to do is “put on some make-up, throw on a wig, and at the

end of the night take it off and move on with [my] life.” Feelings of mutual exclusivity

between the workplace and spaces outside of work are not unusual for individuals
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involved in professions which make use of uniforms (i.e., police officers, professional

athletes, doctors, nurses, etc) however, what made the desire for mutual exclusivity

unique for dancers was its link to stigma (Mestemacher and Roberti 2004; Wesely 2003;

Thompson, Hared and Burks 2003; Bruckert 2002; Thompson and Hared 1992; Enck and

Preston 1988). Putting on street clothes provided a form of distance from the cultural

designation of deviance ascribed to exotic dance and thus mutual exclusivity offered a

sense of reentry into normative or acceptable behavior.

As a dancer, I saw this process at the end of the night as we moved into the

dressing room, taking off our “dancer” clothes and putting on our “street” clothes.

Shedding our high heels and sparkly dresses, slipping on jeans and sweatshirts, tying our

hair up into ponytails or into baseball caps we shifted our presentation of self from sex

worker to student, mom, girlfriend, or wife. From afar, we looked as if we were coming

from school, the grocery store, or the gym as we left the club and went to our cars.

However, if you looked closely under the baseball caps, our make-up clad faces with

layers of mascara, heavy amounts of eye shadow, blush, and lipstick created a ripple in

the picture. They gave away our disguise. It was like we were underdressed for a night on

the town or over-made-up for a trip to the store. It was a fissure in the presentation, a

crack in the representation.

When I began to realize the contradiction in myself, I was hesitant because as a

feminist researcher committed to the women I worked with, I wanted to take seriously the

dancers’ words and experiences. I also realized that I occupied a very privileged position

as a dancer because of my academic and thus my transitional status. However, it was

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becoming more and more difficult to keep my dancer self outside and away from my

other selves.

Leaky Boundaries

During informal conversations/interviews, dancers talked about static boundaries,

selves in contradiction and mutual exclusivity, but when they would talk about their

everyday lives, I could see how these boundaries were leaky, illustrating fluid subjective

modalities. In our interview, Serenity said, “Man, when I am at home I am at home and

when I am at the club I am at the club... they are totally different.” Yet, later in the

conversation, she told me the story of how she had use her skills as a dancer to be tough

with her child’s doctor who was not taking her seriously:

So I just turned it on, you know. I used my powers against him. I told him

that I thought he was a smart man and that I liked him a lot, but that I had

something important to tell him…that I thought he should know and that I

really needed his help to make sense of it. I told him that Mikey’s [her

son] teacher said that he had difficulty reading for more than three minutes

and that he gets angry and frustrated, but that he loves listening to stories.

He then said...oh maybe we should get him tested for learning disabilities

before we put him on any medication. I had been trying to tell him that

before, but he wouldn’t listen. I realized that when I played him like a
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customer... you know making him feel big and important it worked. I just

slipped into dancer mode you know I didn’t even mean to it just happened.

Serenity’s “slip into dancer mode” illuminates how subjective modalities slide into

various social cartographies. In this situation, her slip and the combination of her

modality as mother and her modality as a dancer worked for Serenity. She used what she

learned from work, “to play” the doctor and get him on her side. Doing so empowered

Serenity in a situation where she, as a mother, might otherwise feel powerless. This slip

happened without her doing it on purpose. It was not an intentional calling up of her

dancer self; rather, it leaked in. In this slippage, Serenity was able to get what she needed

for her son. She felt this was important and helpful, although not necessarily planned.

She embodied a multiplicity of subjective modalities; she was simultaneously mother,

dancer, and advocate in a savvy way in order to get what she needed from a doctor who

previously would not listen.

After noticing these contradictions, I started asking dancers more about

experiences where they felt that their dancer self came out in their personal lives or when

their girlfriend, mother or student self came out in the club. Hope, a student at an Ivy

League University, dances at Glitters which is about five miles from her campus. When

we talked formally, she told me, “I know how to keep things separate. I am a student at U

during the majority of the week and I am dancer on Thursday and Friday nights.”

However, Hope also experienced situations when her two modalities collided in both her

university and work context. During our conversation she told me how these two

modalities came together:

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One day I was at school and I recognized two men from the janitorial

staff. It took me a second, but then I realized I knew them from the club.

They looked at me and said, ‘Hey Hope how you doing?’ and we talked

for awhile. They asked me about being a dancer and a student and I told

them it was not a problem. I felt like I was coming out. I was proud of

being both a student at U and a stripper.

This was not a one-way situation; Hope had similar experiences at the club:

So sometimes the men ask me what I do and I tell them I’m a student and

if they really want to know I tell them I go to U. Then its like the weirdest

thing…they start asking me about math problems and want to know about

engineering...I am then like the brain who likes to bend. You know? I am

naked one minute and talking about differential equations the next…it’s

kind of confusing, sometimes it feels schizo[phrenic], but the men really

get turned on by it.

Hope, in her discussion of being “the brain who likes to bend,” is not just a student or just

a dancer; she is a combination, embodying multiplicity and flow as she moves between

the social cartographies she inhabits. These are not completely comfortable transitions; in

fact, they are confusing and can at times feel “schizophrenic.”

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These are spaces where the micro-processes of the body and subjectivity flow into

one another, where the various regulations and rituals of various cartographies leak into

one another, creating a porous self that is never just one thing. Changing, mutating, and

transforming, dancers negotiate this multiplicity and reformulate self contextually.

Painful Consequences

These fissures or slips can also become troublesome. The inability to sure up the

boundaries between a woman’s dancer self and her other selves is often theorized as an

unfortunate cost of working in the exotic dance industry (Wesely 2003; Barton 2002;

Sweet and Tewksbury 2000a, 2000b). Trena’s story elucidates the painful aspects of

these slips:

Trena: There was this one time when John and I were out at this bar and we were

having a really good time. We were drinking and dancing. It was just really great.

Danielle: Mmm hmm.

Trena: And…this is embarrassing (she pauses)

Danielle: It’s okay

Trena: Well I feel bad because I just. Because I started working the room like I

was at work. I was flirting and walking like I was in the club. John got really hurt.

We got in a huge fight. The fucked up thing was it just happened…I wasn’t even

conscious of it. It just happened. I was on automatic.

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Trena’s slip “just happen.” She “wasn’t even conscious of it” because she was on

“automatic.” Painful and embarrassing, this experience hurt both Trena and her

boyfriend. She transgressed the subjective modality of partner and lover with the

modality of dancer. In so doing, the line separating work and a date became fuzzy.

Traumatic fissures were not uncommon in the realm of sexual intimacy. Many

dancers talked about how they could not do certain sexual acts with their partners

“because I automatically go into work mode and I begin to view them as customers

instead of my boyfriend/husband/partner.” Struggling with these slips, I had similar

experiences,

I am scared. I am scared that I won’t be able to have sex without thinking

of it as a performance. Sometimes when he and I are together I start

cocking my head and reassuring him and I get this plastic smile on my

face and then I get freaked out. I am treating him like a customer! Or

maybe I am treating my customers too much like lovers! What part of my

sexuality is left?

After this painful and frightening experience, I feared that I could not have relationships

with men without thinking of them as customers, without becoming what they wanted,

without slipping into dancer mode. Marie, expressed a similar concern:

I am like worried that now I will never be able to think of a relationship

outside of exchange. You know what I mean? It’s like before I used to

think I could be with someone and it was mutual. And now I swear to god
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what I think is what am I going to get out of this, because I am not going

to give it out for free.

These fissures are not always positive; in fact, they can be painful and confusing

illustrating why the option of mutual exclusivity might be both longed for and seem

beneficial to dancers.

If a woman leaves her dancer self at the club, no one can question that she is

putting her “full” self into being a mother, wife, lover, secretary, etc. Being a dancer is

just a small aspect of herself, an act that she performs at work and no more. In this

conceptualization, there is more protection for women both culturally and personally. It is

for this reason that I believe women talk about mutual exclusivity. If a dancers has two

different selves, then she can move into spaces where her “self” as a dancer is absent. She

is not a whore or a slut; she is a concerned mother, a warm lover, a good student and a

helpful teacher. She is safely back within the realm of cultural acceptance. Her work is

nothing more than that, a job.

Powerful Possibilities

The intersections dancers experience are complex and operate simultaneously as

sites of pain and power, stigma and confidence. This emerged for me when the dancers

who talked about painful and disturbing slips with their partners also said that dancing

“made me more confident about myself than anything else I have ever done in my life.”

After listening to several women talk about their increased confidence, I wondered if it

was possible that the transition from fear and stigma into pride might open up new

visions of themselves as sex workers. One woman I have worked with closely, Trena, has
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transitioned into this; at first she was ashamed of her work and kept it a secret. However,

after dancing on and off for two years, she has a different conceptualization.

Trena: You know I am proud to be a dancer. I find it liberating when I can

shock people and tell them, yep that’s right, I am a student, a feminist, and

an exotic dancer.

Danielle: Well what about that time you told me about where your

boyfriend got so hurt when you two went to that club and you were acting

like a dancer?

Trena: Well I do that all the time and I don’t care anymore! It’s confidence

and that’s what dancing has given me. Before I always thought I was ugly

and I was always feeling bad about myself. I was hesitant and felt bad.

Well no more! I walk into a club and I know I look good. I don’t feel bad

about being a dancer anymore. There is nothing wrong with it.

Trena shifted from shame and embarrassment to “pride,” wanting to tell and shock

people. She found power in her multiplicity as feminist, dancer, and student.

Embracing multiplicity can create politically resistive possibilities, combating

hegemonic views of sex work to formulate alternative discourses. Given the motility of

subjective modalities, double consciousness or alternative visions of experience can

emerge producing alternative visions of exotic dance. This, in turn, could lead to other

shifts, such as unionization, better wages, and less exploitative working conditions.

Although none of the women I worked with were directly involved in any social

movements that sought to change the status of sex workers, they participated in small
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resistances. For example, some women picked music that was resistive, such as hard core

rap and punk, whose lyrics conveyed that they had confidence, and that, “I won’t do what

you tell me to.” There were times when I would see a dancer bending down to take

money while the lyrics, “I am a bad mother fucker” echoed across the room. 19 They

danced to music that was not “sexual” or “romantic,” but spoke of race, class, and

gendered injustice.

The owners at Flame tried to ban resistive music, by creating a rule that women

could only play “top 40” songs. For several weeks after dancers expressed their anger in

the dressing room with one another. Lelia, a small framed and particularly boisterous

dancer, said, “We should all play what we want and refuse to pay the fines---they can’t

fire all of us. Without us who is going to come into this place?” After this discussion

dancers tipped the deejays extra money to play the music they brought. During my time

at Flame, the discussions over music were the only venue where dancers coalesced into

collective labor action. Within a month the owners gave up and let dancers play whatever

they wanted. It was within these contexts that dancers’ struggles over self-expression,

agency and performance took place.

The transition from stigma to pride, also offers broader political possibilities.

Such an example can be found at The Lusty Lady, a club in San Francisco, where dancers

formed a union to protest racism and other exploitative work policies. 20 Through their

resistance, they ensured safer and more egalitarian work conditions. Fissures and flows

19
I discuss resistance and its effects at length in chapter five.
20
The Exotic Dancers’ Alliance (www.eda-sf.org), is an organization that works for the rights and

unionization of exotic dancers.

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create multiplicities of pleasure, power, and pain. There is no one identity, no more

essentially truthful ontology or fusion that emerges. Rather, modalities of subjectivity are

constructed and reconstructed continuously as dancers move throughout the various

social cartographies where they have come to know themselves, promoting a “leaky” or

fluid sense of self that dancers embody both in the clubs and in their everyday lives

outside the club. It was through my own bodily experiences of fluidity and multiplicity

that I came to this analysis of dancers. It also made me wonder how, if at all, customers

experienced fissures in their sense of self vis-à-vis the collision or conflict of their

various subjective modalities, or whether they were able to protect themselves from

feelings of fragmentation.

“We Have a Great Future Together:…I’m More Than Your Customer…Right?”

Marcus, a middle aged Latino man, was struggling with racism at his company

and the isolation of a new city. He wanted to protect me from other customers and longed

for a relationship. Marcus always teased me about the cost of lap dancing and how he

thought it was stupid to have to pay “for such a simple thing”--yet he always came back.

When we would go to the lap dance room, he always whispered, “te quiero” and

told me the plans he had for our life. Inevitably, we would go through the tension that

often plagued the interactions between dancers and regulars—money and emotion.21

Marcus wanted authentic connection and to make invisible that our relationship was a

commodified one. This was one of the hardest parts of my job; trying to handle the
21
See Egan 2004 and Frank 2002 for more information on the intersections of emotions and capital in

exotic dance clubs.

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challenge of having feelings of friendship, but having to feign feelings of romance and

love. This is not to say that I never had a Pretty Woman fantasy while working in the

club; and more often than not I liked my regulars, but I did not love them. To keep

regulars you must perpetuate their fantasies. If the fantasies fissure so do your finances--it

is truly a sticky wicket.

Marcus wanted justification that he was “more than just a customer.” Our

conversations usually followed the same script,

“I don’t want to just be a customer.”

“You aren’t.”

“Then why should I have to pay for time with you?”

“Because I am broke and trying to get through school, because I need to pay my

bills.”

“If you come home with me, I will pay all your bills. But we shouldn’t have to

pay to be affectionate. It’s weird when I came here I was just looking for fun and

some excitement and then I met you. I never thought I would meet someone like

you. You know my colleague at work said that you guys (exotic dancers) just

want me for my money, and that’s all. But we’re different. We have a great future

together. I mean… I am more than your customer…right?”

“I have a wonderful time with you, it’s great.”

“Yeah it is…so when can I see you outside?”

“Soon…it’s just crazy right now.”

“Yeah of course.”
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“Why do you have to keep doing this [dancing]?”

“Rent. Bills. You know…”

“Yes.”

“This is what I am doing to make it through.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“I know.”

“Those other guys are such assholes.”

“I know.”

“Yeah.”

Marcus and I went to the back. As I moved to the music on his lap, he held onto

me, caressing my back like a lover. In the backroom, with bouncers looking on and men

paying dancers all around us, he murmured to me how he thought about me “all the

time.” After paying me for the lap dances, he asked again when we could meet outside

the club. Avoiding definitive answers, I told him I would “see him soon” and informed

him that I had to go. Visibly upset and hurt, he got ready to leave. I reassured that I would

e-mail him tomorrow, that we would talk and see each other soon. It was then that he

asked when I was working next.

Marcus’ subjective modality of “lover” and “customer” blended into one another,

invoking anxiety and anger. He wanted me “all to himself” and for us to spend time

together, beginning our “great future together.” Although this must have been a painful

and confusing experience, he e-mailed me the next day professing his affection. He

wanted to seal off this contradiction, to believe that he was truly my lover and that the
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other men were just my customers. It was the collision of these two subjective modalities

that caused him anxiety, creating the need to continuously say that he was my lover.

However, the boundaries between these modalities could never be solidified because he

paid me for my affection. The line between consumer and consort blurred in his desire for

companionship. Marcus’ story illustrates the contradictory subjective modalities of the

regular and the challenges of negotiating paradoxical expressions of self.

Regulars undergo fluctuations and flows between anxiety, anger, longing, hope,

and excitement in their interactions with dancers. Fractures between their modalities of

customer and lover necessitate verbal reassurances that their affections are returned.

Clearly, the experiences of dancers and regulars can not be collapses given the

distinctions between gender and class. However, the results of fluid and fractured

boundaries of self, were not mitigated by male privilege. Regulars moved between lover,

customer, father, husband, and paid positions such as investment banker, computer

programmer, and engineer. Various subjective modalities flowed into the multiple social

cartographies within and between which they moved. Experiences of multiplicity seeped

into their relationships with dancers as well as other aspects of their everyday lives.

The Desire for Authenticity

The subjective modalities customers experience are additionally mediated by and

through fantasy. The modality of “lover,” although experienced as real to the customers,

is a performative fantasy promoted by dancers as an aspect of their work. Feigning

“authenticity” is a strategy dancers use to keep regulars coming back (Frank 2002, 1998;

Ronai-Rambo 1989). As stated earlier, dancers often care for their regulars and view
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them as friends, however, their job requires performances of affect (i.e., love, attraction,

passion) or the expenditure of emotional labor that often exceed dancers actual feelings.

Dancers’ job requires that they make regulars feel as if they were special and unique. As

Hope said, "You have to make them think there is a chance…like they can really be with

you someday. Otherwise, they stop spending money and move onto someone else. So it’s

like a game. It’s a fantasy, but they really believe it.”

Regulars’ perception of themselves as lovers had tremendous force marking the

men both psychically and bodily. Sending flowers, bringing chocolate, giving gifts of

great expense such as jewelry, computers, and at times even cars, customers felt they

were lovers giving their partners tokens of affection. When this lover modality is fissured

by the modality of customer it produces anxiety and frustration. Regulars seek coherence.

They want to keep their “customer self” outside and away from their “lover self” and

ultimately seek relationships with dancers outside the club in other cartographic milieus

such as restaurants or the movies, where the modality of the customer is less likely to

collide with their lover modality.

Henry, a regular who came to Flame to see Trena at least twice a week said:

Henry: It’s hard because I love Trena and she loves me.

Danielle: Yeah.

Henry: And we like have something special.

Danielle: That’s great.

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Henry: It’s like I never thought I could have these feelings again and here

they are…its wild. But unfortunately you know she’s busy…she goes to

school and so the only time we spend together is here.

Danielle: Um hum.

Henry: Which is fine, but I want to take her out and make her feel great. I

want to go to dinner and the movies.. have something like other couples…

And I hate having to watch her with other men…I know she has to work,

but I wish I could just support her so she wouldn’t have to deal

with these guys. Some of them are such assholes. That’s why we go to the

back [to the lap dance room] so much so we can have alone time together.

Henry embodies the fissures and flow between his lover self and his customer self. He

wants to be like other couples, who go to the movies and dinner, but because Trena is “so

busy,” he must come to the club and protect her from customers who are “assholes.” He

is seeking solid boundaries where his modalities of customer and lover are mutually

exclusive; this, however, is not possible. In order to spend “special time” with Trena he

has to take her to the back (lap) dance room and spend $20 a song; otherwise, she will

have to move onto other customers. He sought to separate himself from these other men

who were just customers; however, this was never completely possible. Special time,

which in other relational contexts is free, costs Henry $200-$600 dollars every time he

comes to the club. He must pay to get in to see Trena, and pay her once he is there.

These boundaries leak into one another, evoking frustration in Henry who “just cannot

wait until she gets out of school so we can get away from this place.”
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Lover versus the Regular Customer

Henry also wanted to keep his customer self separate from his lover self in

another way. Henry would see other dancers at the club when Trena was not there, but he

would not spend any “real time with them. It’s just to get a little stimulation, but they are

just dancers to me. They aren’t Trena. I mean I like them, but I have no real feelings for

them.” It was with these “dancers” that Henry was a “customer”; they were bought for

pleasure, but not love. Most often he would come in, have a beer, pick a dancer, do a

couple of dances and leave. Whereas, with Trena, he bought her jewelry, and other

expensive tokens of endearment. He wanted to be and felt as if he were her lover and not

“just another customer.”

Paul, one of my regular customers, felt similarly:

Paul: When I came in here I never thought I would meet someone like

you. You are so special to me. I have told my friends that I met someone

special and they can’t wait to meet you.

Danielle: That’s great.

Paul: Yeah. I just can’t wait until we can go out on a real date. Don’t get

me wrong I don’t mind coming here if I have to, but I really want to take

you on a real date.

Danielle: Yeah that will be great. I am looking forward to it.

Paul: Do you have to go to work?

Danielle: Well yeah…

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Paul: Well why don’t we go to the back. I don’t want to get you in trouble

and hate seeing you have to perform for those guys.

Danielle: That sounds great.

Paul, like Henry, experienced the leaking of modalities between lover and customer. Paul

wanted a “real date,” the ability to shore up the boundaries and situate our relationship as

“real” and outside a commodified context. He wanted me to be a part of his life outside

the club in other social cartographies such as restaurants, parties with his friends, and his

home. Paul yearned for a girlfriend, not “a favorite dancer.” He sought a woman he could

bring to meet his friends and take to business parties. He told his friends about me and

frequently talked about how he could not wait until we all met.

Expressions of affect, care and belief in romantic possibilities in regulars

presented a theoretical quagmire. At first, I thought the men must be faking it, evincing

what they thought dancers wanted—romance as opposed to a man who only wanted them

for their body. In so doing, regulars would employ the discourse of the knight in shinning

armor as a way to keep dancers interested. To this end, I thought regulars might be

engaging in a mutual performance with dancers. A double masquerade where both

participants performed romance and intimacy and “played” one another. At times, this

took place. However, more often than not, men’s lover modality was understood as a

powerfully real material experience and one that evoked both discomfort and elation for

regulars.

Mark, a regular at Flame, illustrated this for me one night over drinks:

Mark: It’s just weird.. I can’t explain it. Because it makes no sense. I just

love her [Jenny]. She makes me feel good. I feel happy when I am around
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her. I did not expect to find this here, but I did and I am pretty sure Jenny

feels the same way about me. I know I sound stupid saying this, but I can’t

wait until she leaves this place. She doesn’t like these customers. I can

understand why. But she has a hard time seeing me [outside the club]

cause I’m married.

Danielle: Yeah, but I can understand why she feels that way

Mark: Me too, but I am leaving my wife. You don’t know how much I

hate going home after I leave this place. It sucks.

Mark “loves” Jenny. His feelings produce a fissure between the commodified context of

the club and his home life, between the modalities of husband and regular customer.

Catalytic and energizing, his relationship with Jenny produced his desire to dissolve his

marriage. Between his wife whom he hates going home to and the love he feels for Jenny,

Mark illuminates the materiality of his lover modality. Blurring the lines of service and

romance, Mark invisibilizes Jenny’s labor because he believes that she can offer what he

does not have in his life outside the club—connection. He wants Jenny to be his cure and

to extend the possibility of surety, nevertheless the context of their interactions belie his

wishes. As such, he must shore up the fissures and contradictions so that he can negate

his customer self and be her lover. When I asked Jenny about Mark, she told me “he

wants to leave his wife and I keep telling him not to be stupid.” Given the fact that exotic

dance is a service industry, as Jenny’s response illustrates, what happens when the

possibility of a relationship outside the club is not possible? When the boundaries

between these conflictual subjective modalities remain hazy at best?

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“I Can’t Take this Anymore”

When frustration and anxiety become insurmountable, regulars either see another

dancer or leave the club altogether. Realization of the futility of their relationship can

happen for regulars in several ways: dancers tell their regulars “it is over,” customers get

frustrated by the denial of their repeated requests to see the dancer outside the club, or a

dancer makes up a story for getting rid of a customer who is becoming “too much to

handle.” Tom recognized this after repeatedly asking Marie to meet him outside the club:

Tom: I have been coming in here for months. I care about her so much and

she keeps putting me off. I don’t know what to do…

Danielle: Um hum

Tom: She says it is easier to see her here while she is in school, but I mean

she can’t give me an hour? She can’t make the time for me for just an

hour? I can’t take this anymore. I mean I think we could have something

great, and I think she cares about me, but I think I am just a customer to

her and I will never be anything else.

Tom felt the collapse of his fantasized lover modality with the modality of customer. The

reality that he was “just a customer” ruptured the boundaries of his lover modality. Faced

with this untenable situation, Tom stopped coming to the club all together. He could not

handle being only Marie’s customer. Tom could no longer embody the subjective

modality of lover, and thus, the modality of customer was too painful.

Marcus, one of my regulars, who I saw weekly for about two months, went

through a similar experience. As I discussed earlier, Marcus repeatedly asked me to see

him outside, to have dinner with him, and after I declined for over a month and a half, he
 107

said, “If you can’t make time for me outside then I can’t come here anymore. I can’t take

seeing you in here with all of these men and thinking you think of me like them. I want to

be your boyfriend and not your customer. So will you see me or not?” I told him “that

right now was just not a good time.” Realizing that his modality of lover and his modality

of customer were one, Marcus’ fantasy of love and a future relationship were shattered.

That was the last night I saw him.

Conclusions

Both dancers and customers experienced the collision of conflictual subjective

modalities, albeit in different ways. Unable to keep their dancer self separate from their

other selves, dancers experienced the fluidity of subjective modalities at work and in

other contexts. Porous and permeable boundaries between subjective modalities slipped

into both complementary and conflictual social cartographies. These slips were usually

not conscious; they “just happened” and were often shocking and surprising. Women’s

“slips into dancer mode” were often painful and confusing, causing problems in intimate

relationships and other areas of their everyday lives. However, they also promoted a

sense of agency and empowerment for women, allowing them to get what they needed in

particular circumstances. I argue, that the fluidity between the boundaries of self for

dancers can produce new visions of experience and move women from shame to agency

—promoting resistance to exploitative work and cultural conditions. Although the

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permeable boundaries of self can be painful for women, they can also produce alternative

modalities and identities and open the possibility for alternative discourses that challenge

dominant discourses and social processes.

For regular customers, slips between modalities of customer and modalities of

lover collided, grating against one another causing painful ruptures of self. Customers,

invested in the modality of lover, sought out closure and solidity. The phrase, “Can I see

you outside the club,” exemplified regulars’ desire to suture conflicting subjective

modalities. Regulars needed affirmation that they were more than just a customer, else

the commodified context and unrequited nature of their affection became illuminated.

Dancers to this end, provided evidence with high levels of emotional labor and frequent

contact outside the club in the form of regular emails and cell phone calls. However,

regulars, like any “lover” would, wanted more and asked to see dancers in

complementary social cartographies, where the fissures between customer and lover were

not as great. However, because the modality of lover was steeped in fantasy, the ruptures

and fluidity between lover and customer were always present. Therefore, the only way to

resolve this conflict was by ultimately leaving the situation. In so doing, they fixed the

boundaries, embodying the performative illusion of a coherent and solidified sense of

self.

Subjective modalities illuminate the motility of self by foregrounding the fragility

of its boundaries. The experiences of dancers and regulars elucidate tenuous boundaries,

due to the highly contradictory social cartographies they traverse. Moving between home,

school, family and the club regulars and dancers must negotiate paradoxical discourses,

selves and spaces. Far from being unique to dancers and regulars, we all experience
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conflicting subjective modalities as we move through our daily lives. However, it is the

striking contrasts that dancers and regulars embody that makes their experiences so

illustrative. Their lives provide a particularly powerful example of how people move

within and between multiple subjective modalities, showing the consequences and

possibilities, both positive and negative, of fluid subjective modalities on the social.
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Chapter 3

“Bad Nights,” “Good Nights” and Feminist Possibilities

Scanning the room for potential customers, I moved from table to table asking men if

they wanted to ‘buy a dance.’ Talking a man out of his cash for few minutes of fun is

always an interesting endeavor--part seduction, part saleswoman, part fantasy-in-the-

flesh--you have to find the right mix hoping that the stare you got from him while you

were on stage will equal time on the couch. During my ‘rounds’ I met Stan. Dressed in

jeans with a tattered tee-shirt and a bike bag adorned with various buttons, he seemed

more like someone I would hang out with in a café in Cambridge than a strip club in

suburban New England. When I asked him if he wanted a dance he replied, “Sure.”

Afterward he bought me a drink and we talked.

“So do you like the club?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you feel exploited? Like a piece of meat?”

“Sometimes, but mostly no. Not really. It’s complex.”

“I am not sure if you are seeing what I see. This looks pretty oppressive.”

“Really.”
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I found this particular line of questioning fascinating given the fact that he was in a

strip club and according to his logic was my oppressor. The conversation continued.

“Have you ever read feminist theory?”

“Yes. I am a feminist.”

This answer seemed to confound him. He thought I must be mistaken. How could I be

a feminist and a stripper? He told me that at his university, and amongst all of his

friends who were feminists, I would never qualify. To which I replied, “well what

would they think of you?” His never gave me an answer and changed the subject by

asking if he could use my answers in a class project. Feeling angry at his vision of

exotic dance while simultaneously feeling the curious inversion of moving to the other

side of the research relationship—I said, “Sure” as I left his table.

This encounter was reminiscent of conversations I had with radical feminist

friends outside the club. Concerned I had gotten brainwashed or seduced; they feared that

I had forgotten that sex workers were victims. By talking about how women had agency

in strip clubs, I denied their objectification, victimization and oppression. Conversely, it

mirrored discussions I had with men at conferences who compulsorily gave me their

opinions on exotic dance and exotic dancers. Dancers were, according to them, “all

powerful” pragmatic women in a complex market place or were manipulative women out

to get men’s money (of course these are really two sides of the same coin). Somehow,
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elucidating structural inequalities, poor working conditions or moments of discomfort I

seemed to cloud the issue of dancers’ sexual freedom. Between the binaries offered by

radical feminist friends and libertarian colleagues, were the experiences of exotic

dancers. A Gordian knot of agency, constraint, oppression, resistance, pain and pleasure,

dancers’ experiences never seemed to fit into the categories offered by libertarian or

radical feminist discourses.

In order to remedy this theoretical stalwart, I needed a form of feminism that

could attend to the tangled and paradoxical aspects of dancers’ lives. A feminist theory

that sought at its core a form of praxis that fought for the improvement of women’s lives

and their safety. One that provided safe working conditions for women who performed

sex work, gave them an outlet to leave if they wanted and a support network if they so

desired it. One that could examine how race and class intersect in issues of sex work,

accounting for women who feel they must do this type of work in order to survive and for

those who view it as a pragmatic financial decision. A paradigm that could bring these

two competing ideas of exotic dance into conversation with one another to illuminate sex

work and the diverse experiences of women performing this type of labor.22

Feminist Figurations of Multiplicity

22
In this chapter, I seek to deal strategically with radical and sex radical forms of feminism.

Acknowledging the fact that other forms of feminist thought, such as French feminism deal with this to

some extent, I want to deal with these schools because they are the most outspoken on these issues and

have repeatedly battled to be the dominant discourse of “feminism” with regard to sex work, ultimately

causing fissures within various feminist organizations such as NOW, the National Women’s Studies

Association, and the Feminist Majority.

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[S]ince all our desires and actions still grow up under white supremacist

capitalist hetero-patriarchy, we need to problematize not only choices to

participate in the sex industry, but also choices not to (Nagle 1997: 13).

Sex radical feminist theory conceptualizes sexuality and sex work as both deeply

embedded in socio-cultural inequalities as well as a site of contestation (Barton 2002;

Bell 1994; Califia 1994; Chancer 1998; Chapkis 1997; Delacoste and Alexander 1987;

Frank 2002; Jeffreys 2000; Johnson 2002, 1999; Kempadoo and Doezema 1998; ; Kipnis

1996; Liepe-Levinson 2002; McElroy 1995; Nagle 1997; Rubin 1993; Schweitzer 2000;

Shrage 1994; Sprinkle 1998; Wood 2000). Sex radical feminism departs from libertarian

theories of the sex industry which are highly individualist positing sex workers as free

agents or liberated goddesses and, in so doing, ignore social structural inequities of

gender, race and class (Paglia 1994; Wells 1994; Roiphe 1993). Whereas, sex radicalism,

critiques dominant modes of power and inequality, which often objectify women and are

plagued by sexual violence, but does not succumb to the abolition and purification

politics of radical feminism (Chapkis 1997; Nagle 1997).

Unlike sex radical feminist theory, radical feminism is a theoretical paradigm

opposed to the sex industry. According to radical feminists, pornography and the sex

industry are emblematic of patriarchical sexuality which glorifies rape and the

exploitation of women. According to Catherine MacKinnon,

“Pornography creates an accessible sexual object, the possession and

consumption of which is male sexuality, to be possessed and consumed as

which is female sexuality. This is not because pornography depicts

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objectified sex, but because it creates the experience of a sexuality which

is itself objectified. The appearance of choice or consent, with their

attribution to inherent nature, is crucial in concealing the reality of force”

(MacKinnon 1989: 141).

This mode of male sexuality, or the “male sex right,” becomes an overlay…

corrupting heterosexuality so that all types of heterosexual intercourse become

exploitative, thus making it impossible for women to have their own desire and to

have any form of sexual agency other than celibacy. Women’s engagement in or

enjoyment of pornography and/or other forms of the sex industry is seen as the

result of patriarchal hegemony which represents exploitative or non-consensual

sex as the norm of heterosexuality (Dworkin 1981). The sex industry actively

eroticizes women’s inequality for the pleasure of heterosexual male consumers.

Given these concerns, it makes sense that radical feminists seek to abolish the sex

industry in all of its guises.

Radical feminism abnegates any variation of experience of sex work and,

moreover, denies women who do sex work any type of agency in their decisions

to take part in this form of labor. It glosses over the multiple reasons why women

perform sex work, which can range from liberation, pragmatism, and desperation

to need, addiction, and choice. In effect, the moralizing discourse of radical

feminism locks women into a type of “good girl” gender control. This form of

gender control, like other forms of social control, and the stigma attached to it,

operate to keep women from straying from the “good girl” side of the good/bad
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girl binary. In its use of moralizing discourses, radical feminism unwittingly

marginalizes female sex workers and thus offers little protection or support

(Vance 1984; Rubin 1993; Nagle 1997). Relegating women into roles of sexual

disinterest, radical feminism loses its political promise of gender liberation.

Ironically, such discourses come dangerously close to patriarchal discourses of

moral turpitude which portray women as the protectors of chastity and virtue in

heterosexual relations.23

Conversely, sex radical feminism challenges cultural practices and discourses

through acts of resistance on both a micro- and macro-level (from same sex “kiss ins” to

political protest) providing an opening for other diverse sexual practices (such as S/M,

non-monogamy, Bondage, Fetishism, Sex Work) and identities (Slut, Queer,

Transgender, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Whore), often deemed deviant and marginalized

(Califia 1994). To this end, acts that are normally read as complicit with dominant forms

of power, such as exotic dancing, can also be seen as sites of resistance. By employing

subversive forms of opposition, sex radicals make use of the language of the dominant

culture, by resignifing it and using it as a site of contention (Murphy 2003; Egan 2003;

Johnson 2002; Law 2002; Chapkis 1997). To this end, they challenge liberal and radical

feminist discourses of sex work, which intimates that no woman (with any kind of other

options) would ever choose to this type of work. Or that sex workers are either forced

into this type of work or they go into it because of low self-esteem. In contrast, sex

radical feminism seeks a broader vision of what sexuality and sex work entails.

23
Due to the abundance of literature on the distinctions between radical and sex radical feminist theory and

limitations of space and time, I have purposely truncated this discussion. For more on the critiques of

radical feminist theory see Vance 1984; Rubin 1993; Duggan and Hunter 1995; Nagle 1997.
 116

This paradigm does not seek to do away with the critiques of radical feminism

entirely; like radical feminism it challenges gendered and sexual inequalities endemic in

our culture while fighting for sexual agency for women within dominant culture. As

Carol Vance argues,

To focus only on pleasure and gratification ignores the patriarchal structure in

which women act, yet to speak only of sexual violence and oppression ignores

women’s experience with sexual agency and choice and unwittingly increases the

sexual terror and despair in which women live (Vance 1984: 1).

Moving away from separatists politics and monolithic visions of patriarchal power, sex

radical feminists theorize sexuality as constructed within dominant culture, “without

being fully determined by it” (Chapkis 1997: 23). In so doing, it embraces a form of

politics, which “would enable us to multiply the sources of resistance to the myriad

relations of domination that circulate through the social field” (Sawicki 1988: 187).

Sex radical feminism works to create avenues for women to choose, not to

choose, or to get out of sex work. Educating other feminists, as well as the broader

culture at large, sex radicalism reinscribes the terms, “whore” and “sex work” to show

that far from being signifiers of ‘degenerate,’ ‘loose,’ or falsely conscious women—sex

workers are precisely that—workers. Concomitantly, this paradigm argues that the

problems with the sex industry are rarely the sex and more often are the conditions of the

job. Therefore, sex radical feminists are less interested in doing away with the sex

industry (as if we ever could) and instead advocate for better work environments for sex

workers and safety from police harassment.24 It acknowledges that sex workers can be
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“happy hookers” as well as suffer emotional and physical scars from this type of work. At

base, this form of feminism works to change the social conditions of the sex industry, the

status of sex workers within our culture and the meaning of the sex industry itself

(Chapkis 1997). To attend to women’s various experiences is not to deny that

exploitation and violence can occur, rather it acknowledges that sex work is not a flat or

unitary experience. Sex workers each have their own “reasons for working, [their] own

responses of boredom, pleasure, power, and/or trauma, [their] own ideas about the work

and [their] place in it. This work can be oppression or freedom; just another assembly-

line job; an artistic act that also pays well; comic relief from the street realities; or healing

social work for an alienated culture” (Funari 1997: 29).

Feminist Re-figurations: Sex Work as a Liminal Site

Liminality illuminates the betwixt and between of experience, shedding light on

the complexity of dancers’ understandings of their work. Refusing the confinement of

binary logic, liminality is a dynamic model, which highlights the boundaries of static

representations and codification. Making visible the ambiguity of experience which, often

times hybridizes between classifications of good and bad, normal or deviant, moral or

immoral, liminality exposes how people’s understandings of their lives reside between

either/or categories providing a framework for how we make sense of our everyday

24
This type of political organizing is led by prostitution rights organizations such as COYOTE (Cast Off

Your Old Tired Ethics), PONY (Prostitutes of New York), and others that are composed of women who

have worked at some point as sex workers. The main goals of these groups are decriminalization, less

exploitative working conditions, and an end to police harassment. For more on these organizations, see

Chapkis 1997; Sprinkle 1998; and Nagle 1997.

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lives.25 It moves the analysis of feminism beyond the binaries provided by libertarian and

radical feminist paradigms.

Neither victims nor goddesses, neither exploited nor entirely free agents—dancers

reside between these designations and in so doing evaded easy representations. Dancers

move through experiences of power, pleasure, pain, and exploitation which can not be

reduced to the binary of pro-sex liberation or radical feminist exploitation; instead,

dancers’ bodies and their understandings are marked by how they exist in a liminal space,

the middle bar of the binary, one that evades the flatness of either side. Liminality places

the binary of exploitation/liberation under erasure, producing a crack in its boundaries.

To this end, I argue that liminality offers sex radical feminism a useful explanatory

metaphor for understanding the experience and practice of sex work as a site of

multiplicity and complexity.

Theorizing liminal experience elucidates how women sex workers are agents and

located in the intersections of multiple vectors of socio-cultural power differentials.

Highlighting how sex workers occupy positions of other-ness that can both provide a

form of empowerment and resistance as well as produce depression. This

conceptualization allows for new openings as well as occlusions, not providing the vision

of experience, but rather a vision of experience, one that seeks to shatter the painful

binaries within which women who perform sex work have often been placed.
25
Victor Turner theorized “liminal phases” as those experiences individuals face when they are in the

process of rites of passage (i.e., rituals wherein young males transition symbolically from boys to men), but

have yet to complete them. Liminal phases are moments of "no longer/not yet" status: individuals are

"neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom,

convention, and ceremonial" (Turner 1995:95).

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Paradoxes of Performance and Liminal Experience: Moving within the Hyphens of

Power and Exploitation

Women performing erotic labor26 are marked by the tension and complexity of

both enjoying their work and hating it, experiencing both pleasure and pain and all the

feelings between them. Dancers’ narratives of good and bad nights are particularly

illustrative of the complexity and multiplicity of their experiences. When women had

“good nights,” they felt powerful and liked their jobs. Smiling and laughing at the end of

a good shift, dancers would exclaim, “Damn I’m good!” and other dancers would

congratulate them. Bad nights, on the other hand, were painful and very difficult. Dancers

often gave words of encouragement to dancers who, after a particularly bad night, would

be found crying in the corner of the dressing room. Like all dancers, I too had nights

where I felt on top of the world and others when I thought I would never walk into the

club again. There were nights that began one way and changed into another.

Discussions of good or bad nights were often predicated upon the amount of

money a particular dancer made that evening. Money, however, was not the only

indicator; sometimes women could have bad nights even when they made great money

because a regular customer was pressuring them or they got yelled at by the boss.27

26
Chapkis (1997) uses the term erotic labor to describe the type of work sex workers perform. I find this

term both helpful and provocative because it highlights both the eroticism and drudgery found in this type

of work.

27
Although a night can shift between good and bad both, I will discuss both of these modes separately. The

reason for doing so is heuristic, giving clarity, and the ability to make a more extensive argument.
 120

Bad Nights

Bad nights were characterized by most dancers as, “when you aren’t making any

money and you feel like shit about yourself.” Far from being unique to the sex industry,

money in the workplace often translates into a sense of self. Concomitantly the

withholding of money can produce a lower sense of self worth. Marie illuminates this in

her discussion of her early experiences dancing,

It’s so odd because I was really traumatized by it initially...um...I felt

really bad about myself....I…um...I cried every night on the way home and

I didn’t make any money and it wasn’t...I felt like it was just horrible

like...it was just this bad thing and it made me bad or something...I don’t

know.

Later in her interview, she said when you are making money “there is a clear exchange

and it makes taking off your clothes a hell of a lot easier,” and, in fact, “when you are

making good money you feel good and generally have a good time.” Margarita, said bad

nights happen “when you aren’t making any money and you are desperate for it.” During

my time in the club, feelings of desperation were the “kiss of death” for dancers.

One night I asked Jaime for advice. Troubled because I had quit my other job to

do my research, I was beginning to worry about my finances. Jaime told me I had to put

that out of my head,

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If they know you are desperate…they never pay. You will almost always have a

bad night. I mean, shit, if you don’t need the money, you rake it in. If you need to

pay your rent...forget about it. So just act like you don’t need it. [The customers]

can smell it.

Jaime, like most dancers, felt that acting desperate gave the customers the upper hand.

Nonchalance was seductive, desperation was needy. Although good advice, every dancer

I knew, at one point or another felt desperate and had a bad night. No one was immune.

Serenity was one of the only women who would elaborate on her experiences

with bad nights. These nights were rare for her; she was one of the top money-making

dancers in the club, and as such, I think because she had “good nights” so often, it was

easier to talk about the bad ones:28

Serenity: I don’t know. I just can’t explain it to other people…they can’t

understand that some nights suck and I hate it and feel horrible…

I mean really horrible…you know what I mean?

Danielle: Yeah.

Serenity: And so if I tell them…like…. if I tell them then their all “Quit!

You have to quit!”

Danielle: Ah huh.

Serenity: I know like, I have hurt my mom when I have come home after a

bad night and I am crying. You know? [she almost whispers]

Danielle: Yeah … I know

28
Interview: Serenity, 12/98. I am using a very long portion of interview transcript because Serenity’s story

provided a particularly rich example of the painful and complex aspects of bad nights.
 122

Serenity: And that makes me feel like shit [she starts to cry] I fucking hate

hurting her, making her worry. You know?

Danielle: Mhmmm

Serenity: Like there was this one night where I made no money…I was on

stage and some guy told me I need to lose weight and that I was ugly…

and I felt horrible… you know… [crying] here was this fat, ugly,

motherfucker who has to pay for someone to pay attention…who could

never get a girl like me in “real life” and like he has the nerve to call me

ugly and fat?! I am a size 6! And like on a good night I would have been

all like, “yeah right baldy whatever” but it got to me.

Danielle: yeah…

Serenity: It just got to me… I felt like…fuck I don’t know…maybe a

whore, but not in a good way… not like when we usually talk about it...I

just felt bad. So I went to my Mom’s and woke her up and cried. She

hugged me and made me feel better.

Danielle: That’s good.

Serenity: Yeah.

Danielle: And then what happened?

Serenity: Well then she was like “Quit! This job is bad for you.” And I

tried to tell her that most of the time I really like my job and most of the

men aren’t assholes… you know?

Danielle: Yeah
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Serenity: Like we talked about before…but the only thing my Mom can

remember are the assholes. That’s why I don’t tell her the bad things

anymore.

“They Just Can’t Understand”

Serenity’s narrative illustrates how most people “can’t understand” that although

there are “horrible” nights, “not all the men are assholes.” Although painful for her, the

repercussions of bad nights get compounded when they affect her mother, making

Serenity “feel like shit.” Consequently, instead of going to her mother for support she

keeps bad nights to herself.

In her responses, Serenity, recalls how the lack of monetary compensation for her

work made her vulnerable to the degrading comments of a customer. This is not

uncommon. Often, when I would go down to the dressing room, if a dancer was not

making any money, she would be upset, talking about how “she felt fat” or “ugly” or

“bad about herself.” Bernadette Barton argues that in exotic dance clubs “when the

money dries up on any given night, dancers’ self-esteem may begin to plummet” (Barton

2002: 590). In a context where your value is often gauged by how you look naked, a lack

of pay can create certain insecurities, resulting in women questioning themselves and

their desirability on the market as well as the means of their production their body. Even

though she knew that she had a good body--she was, after all, “a size 6”--and that “this

man had to pay for attention,” it “just got to” Serenity.

Feeling Like A Whore

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Most dancers thought that many of the regulars who came to the club had little to

no chance of sensually interacting with a “beautiful” woman outside the club due to their

weight, looks, age, etc. However, when men who in “real life” could not get a woman to

“talk to them” refuse to pay, it hurt. The customer’s jilting comments made Serenity feel

like a “whore,” cheap and for sale, instead of what she usually felt, which was powerful

and in control. This is what Serenity meant by being a whore “in a good way.” 29 Serenity,

in the past, had referred to herself jokingly as a “kick-ass whore” who knew “how to

hook regulars.”

In response to the distress she saw Serenity experiencing, her mother wanted

Serenity to leave the business. It is in the discussion of her mother’s anguish, that the

complexity of Serenity’s job emerges once again: although this night was terrible and

made her cry, at base, she likes her job. Serenity’s narrative illustrates that by explaining

how painful this work can be, one can make an indelible impression on those around you.

All they can see is trauma and cannot realize that this job, although horrible at times, can

also be fun and even pleasurable. During my time in the clubs, many dancers talked about

how people who do not perform erotic labor “just don’t understand” the complexity of

their work, that there are “assholes,” as well as “great guys.” This lack of understanding

often promotes an unfortunate silence and closes off potential support networks for

dancers.

Reading Serenity’s story it is easy to understand why radical feminists would

interpret her performance of erotic labor as anything but exploitative, causing her pain

and suffering. This is true. This experience bruised her in powerful ways. It made her feel

29
Many dancers referred to themselves as “whores” in a “good way”; this happened most often when

dancers were having a good night and were joking around in the dressing room.
 125

terrible about herself and made her cry—not only when it happened, but also in the re-

telling. However, to end the analysis here--to declare Serenity as only exploited and as a

pawn of the patriarchal order--would be to miss the composite of her experience and

would deny the fact that she, in spite of bad nights, enjoys her work. To render invisible

the tangled and contradictory facets of this form of women’s work would perpetuate

marginalization and silence. This is illustrated by feminist sex workers who often feel

hesitant to talk about “bad times” publicly for fear of “fueling the fire” of radical

feminism which can, at times, occlude the complexities of their jobs (Sprinkle1998: 52).

Unlike much of the sex radical feminism literature that promotes social

organizing and support groups (see Kempadoo and Doezema 1998; Sprinkle 1998;

Chapkis 1997; Nagle 1997), none of the women with whom I worked participated in

these types of organizations. Lack of participation may have been due to a lack of

knowledge (that such things even existed), lack of time, and lack of resources. During my

research, I found only one place in the New England area, a feminist sex paraphernalia

shop, where sex radical forums took place. However, these were usually workshops

educating and “training” interested individuals in sex practices such as S/M, exotic

dancing, and bondage. Unlike other cities, such as San Francisco and New York, where

support groups existed and flourished, the New England area either had a paucity of

programs or they were underground and hard to access. A few of the women with whom

I worked found support in therapy, as opposed to a larger support network with women

who performed similar work. Given the individual focus of therapy it makes sense that

political organizing was not an active focus for the women at Flame and Glitters.
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Good Nights

“Good nights,” for dancers, often referred to nights when women felt confident

and good about themselves and their work. The amount of money made, a “fun”

customer or the lack of “asshole” customers were often the predictors of good nights.

Hope described a good night as

“[w]hen you are just on…and nothing can mess with that…when…let’s

see…it’s when I can go to work, forget about all of my school work and

have fun (laughing). I never know…if a good night comes from making a

lot of money or vice-versa…you know? Like…I don’t know if I am

making cake because I am in a good mood and having fun or if it’s the

cake that makes me feel good.”

Serenity expressed a similar sentiment, “When I am having fun and making great money

doing it…it’s when you are in the zone.” Most dancers described good nights as nights

when they were are “on” or in the “zone.” Being “on” operated as a broad category to

describe confidence, high earnings, or just having fun. As Trena said, “When I am on, I

have fun. I have so much fun in a lot of ways.” During good nights, dancers felt

“powerful,” “great,” “sexy,” “not desperate” and “in control.”

Getting Off On It

Marie, as I discussed earlier in the chapter, described how she “hated her job” in

the beginning. Initially “traumatized” by dancing, Marie “felt bad” about herself and
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would cry “every night on the way home.” She felt that exotic dance was “just this bad

thing and it made [her] bad.” However, after leaving the club for eight months, she came

back “because it [exotic dancing] was in me” and “I missed it.” Upon her return, she had

an entirely different experience. I watched Marie go through both experiences. I saw the

pain she went through when she first started dancing and the enjoyment, pleasure and

power she felt after her return. The dramatic change Marie experienced confounded me at

first, I thought it must only be temporary, but after a year back the club, Marie had this to

say

Marie: Whew it was awesome ever since I went back. I think I probably had like

two or three bad nights and I mean bad ha ha what’s bad? Like between $200 and

$400 dollars whereas before a good night was $200 dollars…like now even if I

make $200 dollars I’m not thrilled with the fact that I’m making 200 dollars but it

does not... it’s not even bad. It doesn’t

Danielle: Mmmm

Marie: I really get off on it.

Danielle: So tell me about that…

Marie: Pheeww [sound] I don’t know. It’s so weird…I’m like…I love the clothes

oh my god! I mean I’ve always been like a total…a total…girly-girl. I mean I am

a girly-girl you know? I like make up. I like doing my hair. I like dressing up. I…

I’ve always loved high heels…uhmm…and uh…I love the clothes I wear! They

are so awesome they are gorgeous…glittery and bucklely, tight and sexy and

damn I look! I just love it [laughing]! And now that I’ve learned to walk in these
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dancer shoes which are these, you know, big six-inch platform Lucite shoes. I’m

so addicted to the shoes and the clothes and I love that I love wearing them I feel

so pretty and I just…and um I mean of course it’s totally…I guess about the

attention and what’s happened is I’ve gotten. I mean I have a couple of customers

but I unfortunately sort have gotten into this [p] unfortunately and fortunately I

have this really good customer [emphasis] and I’m like the belle of the ball... at

work. I mean I am like little princess of the parade. I own the club. I do what I

want when I want. I don’t have to work very hard and I make a lot of money.

Everyone knows it. In a way that’s bad because it causes bad feelings you know.

We were always jealous of girls who were making a lot of money but we’re all

there to make money and we all. But to be the belle of the ball it’s so different for

me. Like I spent my whole life wanting people to like me and chasing after men

who didn’t want me...and now everyone wants me jhuz [sound] like I love that it

feels so.. I feel like I walk around there like such… I mean sometimes I say what

a fucking asshole I am cause I just feel like Queen Shit you know it may be Turd

Mountain, but I am Queen Shit.

Marie’s narrative is one of transition. As her story unfolds and she articulates the

shift from hating work to finding it “awesome” the complexity of her experience is

illuminated. Why she likes her work, why she “gets off on it,” moves from clothes,

money, pride in her work to her status at the club as “Queen Shit of Turd Mountain.” She

has felt exploited as well as powerful. Her story is neither a hyper-individualized

libertarian discourse nor is it false consciousness. What unfolds is a sex radical feminist
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discourse. Marie is clear that exotic dancing can be painful and make someone “feel like

shit;” she has felt that way. But in this portion of her interview, she points to erotic labor

as a more complex site. She points to how she has both hated and enjoyed her work.

Throughout the narrative she embodies the complexity of liminality, never fixing herself

on either side of the exploited/liberated binary.

Marie states that she can have a good night without making a lot of money, that

even on bad nights she is okay, because it has been “awesome ever since [she] went

back.” However, her situation could also shift. Reflecting on the changes in her

experiences, Marie is aware that she is still making more money on her “bad nights” than

she used to make on many of her “good nights.” This sheds light on the importance of

money and how if her income were to dramatically change, she would probably stop

feeling like the “belle of the ball.” Although money is not the only reason she enjoys her

work, the lack of money would change her experience of it.

It is hard for Marie to articulate exactly why she “gets off” on her work. She does

not “know” what it’s about. She moves through the various reasons in each section of her

story. In one section she expounds upon her love of “dressing up”; Marie loves the

clothes. She is a “girly-girl,” and enjoys putting on dancer attire. The clothes are

“awesome” and “gorgeous” and “glittery” and she feels sexy in them. Later in the

interview, Marie talked about how her love of the clothes was difficult for her at first

because she could not reconcile her feminism with her love of the outfits. Prior to

working as a dancer she liked to dress up, but felt very self-conscious. Now, however,

she “loves it” and feels confident. The confidence these clothes inspire is noteworthy;

however, they are probably peripheral to the pleasure Marie experiences at work.
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Another aspect of the delectation Marie has at work is “the attention” she

receives. She has a hard time articulating exactly what type of attention she is talking

about: the attention of men in general, particular customers, or of other dancers. After

rapidly transitioning between different forms of attention Marie stops and moves onto her

position in the club. Marie is the “belle of the ball at work”; she feels as if she were a

“princess.” Although she never relates this feeling back to her earlier statement, it is clear

that her pleasure is determined, in large part, by her princess status and the attention that

provides. The “princess” or “belle of the ball” imagery links back to the discussion about

clothes. Like a princess of a different kind of kingdom (the club), she wears glittery shoes

and dresses. However, Marie’s princess status is not due to her aesthetic choices; rather,

it is attained through the monetary compensation of her regular customer.

Her regular is attentive; he is a “really good customer” and has “fallen in love”

with Marie. He spends more than most customers in the club ($400-600 per visit),

making Marie one of the top earners. It is this steady income that has afforded her the

status of princess. Marie’s regular allows her to relax more than other dancers who must

“work the room” for customers. Her freedom from having to work the room for new

customers, however, does not mean that she getting something for nothing. Marie points

to the costs of having a regular, in her discussion of her relationship being both fortunate

and unfortunate. The attention of this regular creates tension with other dancers, but,

more importantly, it requires a large amount of emotional labor on Marie’s part. As she

says later in the interview, having a regular

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is so much work. I always have to make him feel good; make him believe

that he actually has a chance. He calls me and e-mails me all the time. It’s

hard because my job doesn’t end when I leave the club. I have to deal with

it at home.

Marie’s narrative elucidates the complexity of her work; how she simultaneously “gets

off on it” and recognizes its difficulties. Marie embodies and understands the liminality

of exotic dance.

The liminality of Marie’s job is further elaborated in the phrase, “Queen Shit of

Turd Mountain.” Acknowledging the context and irony of her position, Marie embodies

the betwixt and between of liminality in her self proclaimed status as the queen of shit.

Far from romanticizing the club or her position therein, she recognizes the complexity of

her power as a sex worker in a complex site, which is both pleasurable for her and

problematic. At the same time, for the first time in her life, Marie feels in control. She has

shifted from pursuer to pursued, giving Marie a sense of agency and power with which

she is able to control “what she wants” at work.

Sexual Pleasure

Marie, in a later section of the interview, revealed another layer of what a good

night entails,
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When its good and I’m having a good night. I just am. And also a lot of it is about

me. Its not totally acting. I mean I don’t… I... I may when I’m in the backroom

appear surprised when I’m performing pleasure you know when I’m pretending

that I’m really getting off on it and there are times when I really am getting off on

it.

In the midst of a lap dance, there are times when Marie shifts from performing pleasure

to experiencing pleasure, when she is no longer “totally acting.” Illuminating the hazy

distinction that can take place between performance and “real life,” Marie shows how the

performance of pleasure can give way to mutual erotic experience between dancer and

customer on the couch. In so doing, Marie expounds upon how “getting off” can extend

to sexual pleasure and eroticism for dancers.30

Women’s sexual pleasure in the sex industry is ontologically impossible in radical

feminist discourses. Given patriarchy’s all encompassing permeation of heterosexual

relations, particularly in the sex industry, sexual pleasure for women would be seen at

best as a rationalization and at worst as simply “a means to male approval” (MacKinnon

1989: 147). Women who express sexual pleasure in a patriarchal context are

conceptualized as traitors to feminism selfishly trying to keep “up [their] stock with the

powerful” (MacKinnon 1989: 147). Marie’s articulation of sexual pleasure complicates

radical feminist discourses. Through her complicated interweaving of agency, pleasure,

30
This was not unique to Marie’s experience. Other dancers discussed sexual pleasure at work. As Stacy

said, “there are times when I really get off dancing and I get turned on.” Lap dancing and sexual pleasure

will be discussed at length in Chapter 4.

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power and pain she confounds the binary logic of radical feminism. Moving between

victim and agent, Marie’s embodies the both/and of liminality as she shifts between the

enjoyment she gets from her work--involving status, money and sexual pleasure—and its

inherent costs and challenges. Marie’s experiences are similar to Serenity’s, both women

acknowledge the difficulties and pains of performing erotic labor as well as its pleasures.

Marie and Serenity illustrate the complexity and paradoxical aspects of exotic dance and

in so doing evade the binary structures put forth by radical and libertarian feminist

discourses.

Bad nights are terrible causing pain for dancers and the people they love. Marie,

like Serenity, experienced bad nights: “I was so traumatized and I was so… and all my

friends were devastated and that was really hard because not only was I in psychic and

emotional pain, but everyone else that heard about it was, too.” However, upon her return

she felt “incredibly powerful.” Like Marie, dancers at Flame and Glitters moved within

and between the binaries, never settling, never residing on one side or the other. They

were marked by multiplicity and resided in the hyphen. Dancers were both exploited and

liberated and many things in between. Attending to dancers’ liminal experiences fosters a

more complex and attentive feminist interpretation of the cultural practices of sex work.

Conclusions

“It was hard to reconcile in my own mind that you could be a stripper or

dancer and be a smart student and be a feminist and be a girly-girl which

is...me. I have come to realize that I am all of these things.” Marie

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“I now know that I am a good mother, a good student, and a good dancer.”

Serenity

“I take pride in the fact that I am a feminist stripper. I am also an

engineering student who is a dancer and likes it.” Hope

“It’s Ms. Whore to you.” Jaime

Exotic dance, like other forms of erotic labor, is a complex site that sits at the

intersection between patriarchy, capital, exploitation, and female agency. Given the

dynamic quality of these convergences, exotic dance, as a cultural practice, refuses pre-

determinant binary categorization. Women who perform erotic labor are both sexual

objects and sexual subjects, as they move through and between these categories on a

continual basis. Dancers experience their work as a both/and phenomenon; it is both good

and bad, they “feel great” at times and “like shit” at others. Produced within inequitable

social structures, but far from being solely determined by them, dancers’ experiences in

the club are both subject to and subvert hegemonic gender relations.

Deconstructing the binary of liberation/exploitation and the re-figuration of sex

work and women’s experiences of it as a site of liminality can shed light on the futility of

the “sex wars” that have plagued the feminist community, providing a model which can

bring both sides into conversation with one another in order to create safer work

environments for women who perform erotic labor and a way out for those who want to

leave it. This figuration of distention is not merely a theoretical model but rather seeks a

form of political praxis—a movement that attends to the complexity of women’s lives
 135

and seeks ways to improve them. A figuration that can grapple with changing horrific

inequalities such as poverty, lack of access into other work, and the abolishment of global

austerity measures which perpetuate the need for women in developing countries to be

part of a global sex trade. This figuration will honor the complexity of the experiences of

women who choose to do sex work, and create a safer environment free of exploitation

from owners, pimps, and the police.

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Chapter 4
Money Men and Fantasy Girls

Watching my regulars, I often noticed a look of longing and wanting. They seem

to be waiting for that “special something” I am supposed to deliver. Am I their

deliverance? Do I provide a momentary reward from that unnamable and nagging thing

missing from their everyday lives? Some nights I visualize them at work clad in three

piece suits, skins tinted slightly green under florescent lighting, stuck at their desks mired

in a culture where global capitalism flows through their bodies like numbers across the

ticker tape in the stock market, leaving them lonely. Most of my regulars say they feel

“more alive” at Flame, because they have “something special” here. After many of these

conversations, I started to see my regulars as upper-middle class somnambulists going

through the motions, between their visits to the club. Do they think they can buy the

cure? Maybe they can. Maybe I offer momentary satiation. Who knows, I might be the

caffeine jolt that offers fleeting freedom from their work induced slumber. After all, it is

my job to tell them they are special, wanted and that I like to “dance just for them.”

Power circulates between us. During my time in the clubs, I realized that the artifice of

male power, which from afar seems so opaque, was strewn with cracks when you see it

under the black light. Yearning intertwining with capital showed the similarities of

financial and emotional desire: wallets opening and closing based on both emotional and

erotic seduction—regular and dancer vacillating between eroticism, capitalism and

emotional investments that almost never produced easy hierarchies.

My initial interest in exotic dance was propelled by my preoccupation with desire.

Fascinated by men who sought out fulfillment in exotic dance clubs from women paid to
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be fantasy objects, I wanted to unravel the ways in which desire shaped their interactions.

Such a simple act but one that embodied a complex amalgamation of feelings, exotic

dance was a Gordian knot of desire that always hybridized into something never easy to

put your finger on. Compelled by curiosity and moved by the lure that kept men spending

and returning to the club, and the tangled pleasure and pain of being an object of desire, I

looked to psychoanalytic theories for an explanation.

Lacanian psychoanalysis elucidates the centrality of desire in our everyday lives.

Conceptualized as a lack we are constantly trying to fulfill, desire under girds the

dissatisfaction and disappointment that characterizes postmodern life. 31 Permanent and

unyielding, desire drives a compulsory search for objects (both animate and inanimate) to

quell our feelings of emptiness. Desire demands satiation, and to this end, it requires that

some individuals function as objects of desire. Providing a framework for understanding

regulars’ narratives of loneliness and the satisfaction dancers supplied, Lacanian

psychoanalysis offered a powerful model. However, given its reliance upon the longing

for repletion at the expense of another, desire needed to be seen as part and parcel of

power.

Extending Lacan’s arguments, I fuse his insights on desire with poststructural

theories of power and gender. Incorporating Claude Levi-Strauss’ concept bricolage,

which encourages us to combine the unexpected and our various theoretical tools at hand

to make sense of social phenomenon, I use the powerful and provocative aspects of each

31
As Judith Butler theorized in Gender Trouble, Lacanian psychoanalysis presupposes a transhistorical

subject of desire. While critical of his universal tendencies, I argue that his theories of subjection and desire

are particularly provocative models of postmodern life. As such, I am using his theories strategically and

for a particular form of masculinity and femininity, western and postmodern.

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framework in order to construct something different, something more (Levi-Strauss

1968). To this end, desire is conceptualized as inextricably linked to gender, power and

fantasy. This chapter revolves around the ways in which desire, fantasy and power

dynamically intertwine in the club and mark the rich field of interactions between dancers

and regulars in particular ways.

Desiring Subjects and Desired Objects: Lack and the Male Imaginary

Desire, for Lacan, is coterminous with his theories of need and demand, stages

which occur prior to desire’s formation (Lacan 1977). Moreover, need, demand, and

desire are corollaries to his concepts of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic.

Untangling desire requires an engagement with these foundational categories. Lacan

conceptualizes need as an infantile stage. Basic and instinctual, needs are crucial for

human survival (food, shelter and minimal interaction) and are provided for by real and

tangible objects. Satisfaction of need is always possible, according to Lacan,32 and thus

patterns of expectation and gratification get formed. Need occurs before articulation and

language; a child’s cry comes closest to signifying her or his request for fulfillment.

Real Needs and Imaginary Demands33

32
I depart from Lacan, who posits that needs are always required and available for fulfillment. A Western,

middle-class overstatement, he ignored the ravages of poverty and starvation in his work.
33
Recognizing the lack of familiarity with Lacanian psychoanalysis, in many sociological circles, a

prolonged discussion of Lacanian concepts follows. However, in the interest of literary flow and brevity I

have included longer definitions of each term in the endnotes that follow. For excellent secondary sources

on Lacan see Grosz 1990; Edleman 1994; Fuery 1995 and Salecl 1998.
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Like need, the real, is pre-linguistic and is the underlay, or ground, upon which

demand and desire, as well as the imaginary and the symbolic, emerge (Lacan 1954).The

real is the moment of pure connection with the mother, where self/other distinctions cease

to exist. Given its primal qualities, the real is beyond signification and is impossible to

integrate into systems of language and representation which Lacan refers to as the

symbolic order (Lacan 1977). Although short lived and ultimately overlaid with linguistic

meaning, the real persists as an exuberant moment (given the intensity of connection) and

is the form of satiation we search for the rest of our lives (Lacan, 1964).

As social and linguistic integration unfold, need shifts to ever increasing and

insatiable “wants” (i.e., bubblegum, toy trucks, dolls, time, food, etc), demands that can

never be fully gratified and which leave the child dissatisfied (Grosz, 1990). Demand is

the result of the transformation of need into articulation and abstraction, and therefore it

is inherently frustrating. Predicated upon another (most often the mother) for fulfillment,

a child’s demand is actually a test of love. To this end, demand has two objects: the

inanimate object the child wants and the other person to whom the child makes the

demand.34

In this phase, children demand absolutes and generalities, seeking “everything,”

which they can never have (Lacan 1977). As such, demand requires the affirmation of the

ego by the mother to such an extent that only an imaginary union and identification with

her, as found in the real, can bring satisfaction. Ironically, these demands and their

nostalgic connection to the real, if met would bring the annihilation of a child’s ego. The

child wants to shore up the separation that makes the formation of the subject possible in

the first place.

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Concomitantly, the imaginary is the realm of image, illusory wholeness,

synthesis, duality, and similarity (Lacan 1954). Like demand, fantasies of synthesis and

connection are central components of the imaginary. With its reliance upon the specular,

the imaginary is the site of a child’s identification with the illusory omnipotent image of

her/his mother and it is in this space that child and mother are inseparable. Given the

centrality of the child’s narcissistic wishes, the imaginary is saturated with the aggression

of unrequited wants. Both the ego and the imaginary order are sites of extreme alienation;

as Lacan states, “Alienation is constitutive of the imaginary order” (Lacan 1954: 146). 35

Surface appearances, specularity, and the seduction of illusion mark the imaginary

order. To this end, the imaginary functions in powerful ways for the individual and is

intimately tied to the subject’s self image. Our self image, according to Lacan, is

ultimately a fantasy driven by the emulation of those we admire (parents, rock stars,
34
Demand fosters an affirmation of the ego by the (m)other to such an extent that only an

imaginary union and identification with the (m)other, a union characterized by completeness, could bring

satisfaction, which, in effect, would annihilate the self. The child seeks complete fusion, which “suspends

the satisfaction of needs from the signifying apparatus, but [is] also that which fragments them, filters them,

models them upon the defiles of the structure of the signifier” (Lacan 1977: 255). The child seeks to be the

other and for this reason nothing else will do; its demands for love equal its annihilation. The child wants to

shore up the separation that makes the formation of the subject possible in the first place (Grosz 1990: 62).

Demand for the subject

…is also the locus of this want, or lack. That which is given to the Other to fill, and
which is strictly that which it does not have, since it too lacks being, is what is called

love, but which is also hate and ignorance. It is also what is evoked by any demand

beyond need that is articulated in it, and it is certainly that of which the subject remains

all the more deprived to the extent that the need articulated in the demand is satisfied

(Lacan in Grosz 1990: 62).

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athletes, etc) and therefore is often distorted. Frustration marks the imaginary order, due

to disappointed (and impossible) connections and unrealized images of the self. Thus,

like demand, the search for satisfaction and synthesis is ever-illusive in the imaginary

realm.

Desirous Lack and Desiring Recognition

Desire is the counterpart to the libidinal structures of need and demand and is

“neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that

results from the subtraction of the first from the second (Lacan 1977: 287).36 Lacking,

longing and searching for repletion, desire can only be momentarily quelled by one thing

—another’s desire. Desire “is the desire of the Other” (Lacan 1977: 264). Narcissistic and

fragile desire is relational and inter-subjective requiring the recognition of another’s

desire to confirm that he or she is “desirable.” Therefore there is nothing essential or

intrinsic about the object of desire, since it is, at base, only an object that acknowledges

desirability. Transitory at best objects of desire take on an ephemeral quality, lack

persists and recognition once had becomes less meaningful. Given its reliance upon

others through whom one finds its objects and searches for acknowledgement, the

35
Although constituted by the specular and by illusion, the imaginary is also structured by the symbolic

order. The symbolic order serves as a structuring practice of the imaginary, constructing a type of

imaginary matrix (Lacan 1977). In their relation to the symbolic order, linguistic dimensions mark the

imaginary. Signification, as well as that which is signified, regulates the imaginary, whereas the signifier is

the foundation of the symbolic order (Lacan 1964). Language is constructed vis-`a-vis imaginary and

symbolic aspects: “In its imaginary aspect, language is the wall of language which inverts and distorts the

discourse of the Other” (Evans 1996: 83).

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structure of desire is a profoundly social endeavor. Desire emerges in interpersonal

circumstances. As a social phenomenon desire is historically contingent, and thus, the

ways in which desire manifests itself for the subject is both contextual and open to

change. Commensurately objects of desire are also socio-historical products. 37

Social and inter-subjective, the symbolic order dictates linguistic communication,

ideological conventions and acceptance of cultural norms (Lacan 1991). Promoting

dominant social precepts, the symbolic order naturalizes cultural hegemony which

becomes our “common” language. Given these qualities language produces social

subjects and thus ego formation. To this end the symbolic requires acquiescence to

particular laws and restrictions that shape desire and the rules of communication, which

Lacan refers to as the Name of the Father.

The intersection of desire and the symbolic are foundational to Lacanian

psychoanalytic thought; their connection both creates the social subject (giving the

subject a position within language “I”) and simultaneously splits the subject. 38 Language

enables one to speak to his or her experiences, thoughts, and emotions, but, because of its

reliance on a representational system, the ways of making sense of things get distanced

from actual experience (Lacan 1964). Trying to articulate love, sex, hate, or guilt falls

short as words fail to capture our experience, and to this end we are separated from

experience in our quest to communicate it. The deficiency of representation splits the

subject (who relies upon a system that inevitably fails) and produces lack in the subject.

The ways in which we make sense of our sexuality rely upon the structures of

desire and the symbolic. Sexual reality is dependent on “desire, linked to demand and by

which the effects of sexuality are made present in experience” (Lacan 1964:156).
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Sexuality is structured by the cultural norms perpetuated within the symbolic and the

longing of desire. It is the connection between desire, sexuality, and the symbolic with

relation to the phallus that marks the interactions between men and women in

heterosexual relations.

36
Desire operates as the surplus produced by the articulation of need in demand. It takes “shape in the

margin in which demand becomes separated from need” (Lacan 1977: 331). As such, desire “participates in

the elements of both need and demand: it re-establishes the specificity and concrete-ness of the satisfaction

of need; while it participates in demand’s orientation to the other” (Grosz 1990: 64). However, unlike need,

which can be fulfilled and cease until another need arises, desire can never be fulfilled; its pulsion is

continual and persistent. As in demand and need, desire registers as a wish and is based on the privation

and the absence of its object. Desire, like demand, remains tied to an unconditional and absolute fusion

with the other. It separates from demand and functions like need in that desire is beyond articulation

because it is repressed from articulation (Grosz 1990). Desire, in this figuration, is provocative and moving

in that although it is structured like a language, it can never be spoken by the subject. Repression, as an

unconscious mechanism, operates to mark desire and produce its signifying effects. As such, desire disrupts

conscious activity; it is like an itch that can never be scratched and comes to the fore in the margins of

demand’s articulation. According to Lacan desire

is situated in dependence on demand—which, by being articulated in signifiers, leaves a

metonymic remainder that runs under it, an element that is not indeterminable, which is

the condition of both, absolute and unapprehensible, an element necessarily lacking,

unsatisfied, impossible, misconstrued, an element called desire (Lacan 1964: 154).

However, unlike demand (which seeks approval in its gestures or else its requests will not be met, and is

thus subject to the rules and norms of the familial structure), desire, with its ties to the unconscious, has

little concern with approval and the rules of demand. Its own pleasures, its own longings, its own logic, and

the logic of the signifier move desire. Although desire can follow socially mediated rules, it can also resist

and subvert them (Grosz 1990).

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The Specter of the Phallus

According to Lacan, the phallus is the signifier of all signifiers and is the primal

law (or Law of the Father) governing the symbolic (Lacan 1977). The structure of desire,

with its reliance upon the phallus, is gendered with relation to the position one occupies

as a subject or object of desire. Given cultural hegemony which naturalizes the coupling

of authority, law and masculinity, the phallus is most often associated with men.

Therefore as individuals become sexual subjects they are defacto positioned with relation

to the phallus; men have the phallus (not dissimilar to the primacy Freud places on the

penis in his Oedipal model) and women are thus left wanting or becoming the phallus

(the same predicament girls find themselves in with Freud’s Oedipal resolution). Lacan

views the phallus as a social artifact and thus not essentially linked to biological sex. The

phallus and the gender relations ascribed to the phallus as historical constructs open to

change.39

Women in the symbolic order become objects of desire. Acknowledging his

desirability, she operates as a substitute (or objet petit a) that momentarily eases his lack

and separation from the intense connection of the real (Lacan 1998). Narcissistic and

patriarchal, the symbolic envisions all objects through the lens of the masculine

37
Demand and its relation to the imaginary operates on the level of articulating an imaginary subject-object

and self-other relationship. Desire, in its relation to the symbolic, operates in the domain of language and

provides access to culture and to a multiplicity of meanings. Therefore, unlike demand, desire and desiring

subjects have a different relation to and in language. Demand brings children into the realm of the

categories of language and discourse, but it does not construct the subject. In “regulating its primitive entry

into language and coupling this with the mechanisms of repression, desire marks the child’s entry into the

domain of the Other—the domain of law and language, law as language” (Grosz 1990: 66).
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imaginary and in so doing absents the feminine position (Irigaray 1985b). The feminine

provokes curiosity, speculation and fear due to her marginal and abject status. Her

position, like sand that rushes through our fingers when we try to hold it, refuses to stay

firmly within the grasp of the masculine language that tries to make sense of it. Objects

of desire get tangled within a structure of synchedoche,40 whereby one woman becomes

all women, any woman (Lacan 1998). Desiring subjects project their desirous longing

38
The function of “desire is the last residuum of the effect of the signifier in the subject (Lacan 1964: 154).

The Other is the “locus of the signifier” and the definition and operation of the unconscious—the

manifestation of which is the le objet petit `a (Lacan 1977: 310). As the locus of signification, “no

metalanguage can be spoken, or more aphoristically, there is no Other of the Other” (Lacan 1977: 310).

However, because we can never have the Other, desire is mediated by signifiers of the other and this is

where le objets petit a is formed. The primacy of the signifier exists as an iterative process, forming and re-

forming desire, a process which

takes shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need: this margin

being that which is opened up by demand, the appeal of which can be unconditional only

in regard to the Other, under the form of the possible defect, which need may introduce

into it, of having no universal satisfaction (what is called ‘anxiety’). A margin which,

linear as it may be, reveals its vertigo, even if it is not trampled by the elephantine feet of

the Other’s whim. Nevertheless, it is this whim that introduces the phantom of the

Omnipotence, not of the subject, but of the Other in which his demand is installed (Lacan

1977: 311).

Desire--an effect of the Other with whom the subject cannot engage because the Other is the locus of the

symbolic and the law of language--always elusive, always beyond our grasp, and, as such, is insatiable. It is

through the insatiability of the Other that (objets petit a) others come to serve as stand-ins; however,

because les objets petit `a are embodied in fleshy and corporeal others, they can never live up to the

idealization of the Other. Moreover, in order to claim a speaking “I,” the subject must reside in the

symbolic order.
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and fantasies onto the feminine in the hopes of finding recognition and fulfillment. The

dialectical nature of desire, predicated upon the acknowledgement of his desirability,

requires her acquiescence (which is far from guaranteed) else the surety of his position as

subject becomes suspect. The elusive quality of the feminine in the symbolic (due to its

position as the phallus) and the inevitable refusals that come with unrequited fulfillment

produces anxiety, thus it is only through fantasy that desiring subjects find guaranteed

recognition.

Male Projections and the Fantasy of Objects

After greeting Jack with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, I sat next to him and

asked about his life. Work place hassles, deadlines and impending travel to satellite

offices were on his mind.

Finishing his drink, he extended his hand, “Let’s go to the back.”

Knowing this was going to be a good night, I happily replied, “I would love to.”

During our time in the lap dance room he wove a tale of our future together.

“After we date for awhile, we could get a place together and then if it works out

we could get married.”

“Sure.”

“It will be great.”

“Yes.”

“You will really like my friends.”

“I am sure I will.”
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As his fantasy continued, a hybrid Rockwellian/pornographic image unfolded with tree-

lined streets, glowing televisions and me in the kitchen in Lucite heels with him on his

knees. Nodding my head, I smiled as he reveled in our fantasy life. After several dances,

he said, “You are the kind of girl I have wanted all my life.” Smiling in response, several

dancers’ voices echoed in my head; “They believe the fantasy.”

Fantasy operates as defense mechanism protecting heterosexual men from the

ambiguity and complexity embodied by the female other. 41 Inverting the dilemma of

desire, fantasy makes subjects believe that they can know and possess their object of

desire. Women’s relation to the phallus (a result of patriarchal culture) places them both

within the symbolic as well as simultaneously outside of it. Her relegation to the margins

within the symbolic and its concomitant anxieties inform male fantasies about women

(Verhaeghe 1997; Andres 1999).42 Fantasies, like desire, are embedded within the

structures of synchedoche. Given this structure heterosexual men’s fantasies often

collapse women into certain categories (i.e., mother, virgin, whore, wife, etc) eschewing

women’s subjectivity in the process (Edelman 1994).43 Women are seen as closer to the

real and its ensuing exuberance, a position that men can only gain through the

intermediation of fantasy. Fantasy through its various distortions also helps structure

sexual and gender relations.44 However in order to maintain its power fantasy requires

repetition. Therefore fantasy objects require continual reproduction to hold sway over

particular subjects. 45

Women’s status, as object, and its relation to fantasy demands continual passivity.

Given this reliance upon quiescence, women’s status as the phallus and her resultant

position as a fantasy object is far from guaranteed. Women can contest, challenge, and
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reject these roles. This refusal can also involve mimesis, whereby women employ

masculine language or actions in their most exaggerated form to denaturalize the taken

for granted quality they often enjoy (Irigaray 1985b). Using the master’s tools to

dismantle the master’s house, mimesis utilizes strategies of displacement (Irigaray

1985a).

39
Women’s position with regard to the Oedipal complex registers differently and offers little to no reward,

entitlement, compensation, or authority in relation to girls and their inevitable castration. However, both

sexes must suffer castration in order to find a position within culture. Both boy and girl children become

subjects through the name and law of the father, which “we must recognize as the support of the symbolic

function, which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of the law” (Lacan

1977: 67). Severed from the duality to the mother, the girl enters the symbolic order and refocuses her

attention on the phallus (because she sees the powerlessness of her mother’s own position) from which she,

as feminine (her linguistic designation), is occluded. She must enter the symbolic to become a speaking

subject; however, because the feminine is not recognized as having the phallus--and does not have a proper

place within it—her position is always partial. When she speaks, it is never clear whether she is speaking

for or of herself (Grosz 1990: 72). Her place in the symbolic is tenuous; because she does not posses the

phallus, her speech is always but a pale reflection of the phallic position. She speaks from the position of

masquerade and refers to the “you” that is the counterpart of the masculine “I.” She hovers at the margins

of symbolic and must take on the symbolic in order to speak; however, she is also partially outside of it,

always just beyond its significatory inscriptions. The woman is always, to some extent, beyond the

symbolic, whose signifiers can only describe her borders.

The woman “can be but [sic] excluded by the nature of things, which is the nature of words,” and

thus, her status within the symbolic is “not whole” (Lacan 1998: 73). There is no such thing as “woman” in

language; she is barred in language and it is through this exclusion that she becomes pacified in the cultural

order. This is not a universal positioning within all language for all time; rather, this position is a result of a

particular regime of patriarchal culture and language in which the phallus is grafted onto the fleshy penis.

Therefore, women’s position as “not whole” means “that when any speaking being whatsoever situates
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Through resistance women shed light on the ruse of patriarchal desires and

fantasies and their position within it. Like Dorothy, she pulls the curtain away from the

Wizard, thereby illuminating the fragility of his power. Strategies of mimesis enable

women to use their position as objects in order to challenge dominant cultural fantasies

about women (as objects of desire) and their positions within them (as mirrors reflecting

male desirability). Thereby creating a situation where women can function within

patriarchal culture without being reduced to its confining gender and sexual designations.

Theorizing the Intersections of Desire, Fantasy and Power

Women’s engagement with mimesis illuminates the complex ways in which

power shapes and undermines gendered relations in a patriarchal culture. Michel Foucault

provides a powerful explanatory framework for untangling these complex intersections.

Far from static or simply the possession of one party over another, power is a

multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and

which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless

struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens or reverses them; as the

itself under the banner ‘women,’ it is on the basis of the following--that it grounds itself as being not-whole

in situating itself in the phallic function” (Lacan 1998: 72).

40
Synchedoche is a linguistic tool used in poetry whereby a part is used to represent the whole (e.g., a

wheel for a car). However, I would argue that a similar structure takes place within sexist and racist

cultures, wherein one person of color comes to represent their ‘entire race.’ This, of course, is exemplified

in the phrase, “a benefit to one’s race.” This also operates in patriarchal cultures where women get reduced

to object status and become interchangeable.

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support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a

system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them

from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose

general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in

the formulation of law, in the various social hegemonies (Foucault 1981: 92).

41
Fantasy is iterative and forceful; it has energy and pierces both the subject and his object. As iterative,

fantasy is not a one-time function that marks the subject; rather, it repeats itself ritually and it is precisely

through fantasy’s repetition that its force and materiality are produced. Functioning as an aspect of desire,

fantasy crystallizes for the subject an imaginary notion of the other and the complexities she embodies so

that he can come to terms with her and begin to ascertain what it is that she wants. It is through fantasmatic

iterations that men think and feel that they have the answers to that which is beyond their grasp. That quells

the anxiety that she, who is beyond complete knowability--in relation to her position within the symbolic

order, can be figured out and finally be known. Answering the question that plagues masculine desire: what

does a woman want (Andres 1999)

42
Masculine desire functions as a lack of knowledge regarding the feminine, and male desire marks the

feminine through the signifier; as such, the feminine sinks into abstraction (Andres 1999). Although the

object of desire is inherently asexual and there is no feminine signifier per se, object status gets grafted onto

women through fantasy and culture.

43
Fantasy is linked both to the imaginary function as well as to the symbolic. There is nothing intrinsic

about the image of the object that propels his fantasy, but it is always an “image set to work in the

signifying structure” (Lacan 1977: 272). Therefore, it is the way in which language operates, its relation to

signification and the violent occlusions of difference, and the separation from the real that propels the logic

of fantasy.
44
Because I am dealing with masculine fantasy and women’s position within that fantasy, I am not dealing

with other forms of fantasy nor am I dealing with women’s fantasies in general. This is not to deny the

importance of women and fantasy, but because I am dealing with fantasy in relation to customers and

dancers, I strategically grapple with men’s fantasies of women. For more on women’s desires in the club
 151

Power flows and circulates; it is iterative and productive; it is material and discursive; it

oppresses and gives rise to discontent. According to Foucault, there is nothing before,

outside or after power (Foucault 1972, 1977, 1981).

Highlighting how power garners its legitimacy through repetition, Foucault

transforms previous frameworks (Foucault 1972, 1977). Knowledge and power interlock

in his paradigm, authority emerging through particular knowledge claims that come to

operate as natural or god given (i.e., the bible, the law, science). Iterative and ingeminate

power perpetuates particular forms of knowledge and conversely systems of knowledge

provide validation to regimes of power. Power and knowledge inextricable in their

connection, produce the discourses we use to make sense of our lives. Regulatory and

resistive they are formative of every discourse from revolutionary to corporate

advertising.

Power is relational, dynamic and coterminous with resistance. Power relations

depend “on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target,

support or handle in power relations. These points of resistance are present everywhere in

see Lily Burana’s Strip City.

45
It is woman’s place within the symbolic that, in part, propels his fantasies, projections and his desire to

know the fantasy object. Fantasy also operates symbolically to construct the perception of knowability of

that which is inherently unknowable. However, fantasy also operates anaclitically, privileging a scopic

register, which necessitates the display of the other in the position of lack in order to reassure the masculine

ego of its own phallic position (Edelman 1994). In order for the woman to be the phallus, she must reflect

the power of its position by beings its other; her position shores up its boundaries (Butler 1997). Women, in

this scopic regime, become visual screens through which male fantasy penetrates, inscribing her status as

object. However, because of her supplementary position, she is never fully penetrated by his visions and

fantasies: although he thinks he knows her, her oscillation haunts him.

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the power network” (Foucault 1977: 95). Foucault’s model elucidates the iterative,

aleatory and material mechanisms of power. Creating social conditions, but not

controlling their outcome, this vision of power illuminates how something with libratory

goals can turn totalitarian (e.g., Stalin’s Marxism) or conversely something meant to

pathologize can bring about radical social movements (e.g., such as the term queer and its

reinscription into queer rights).

Incorporating Foucault’s insights helped me conceptually uncouple the taken for

granted fusion of masculinity, desire and the symbolic order. Desire, fantasy and the

generative nature of the symbolic order, perpetuate masculine hegemony. The production

of speaking (male) subjects and the objects they come to desire and fantasize about are

productions of a particular manifestation of knowledge and power--patriarchal. Male

subjects are formed through the symbolic at the expense of those the symbolic occludes

—namely, women. As such desire and fantasy are regulatory mechanisms that produce

certain bodies as desiring (males) and other bodies as desired (females); however this

process does not always work smoothly. Deconstructing the phallic function (who comes

to have the phallus, and who becomes the phallus) as an effect of power and resistance

crystallizes how structures of desire both reinstate patriarchy and subvert it (Butler 1993,

2004). 46 Fusing desire fantasy and power offers a conceptual window through which to

view the complex ways in which desire shapes the inter-subjective relations between

dancers and their regulars.

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Real, Live, Nude Fantasy Objects

Desire, fantasy and power intersect in unique ways in exotic dance clubs.

Capitalist interest, male privilege and structures of desire merge, offering dancers’

recognition of regulars’ desirability as a service the club provides. Expected to make men

feel good while she is on stage or on their laps, a dancer’s naked or nearly naked body

bears the mark of men’s desire. Part and whole, she is located within the structure of

synchedoche, becoming the relational conduit through which he can find what he is

looking for—an object who offers connection. Margarita, a dancer at Glitters, highlights

a cost of this role in the club, “Sometimes it’s so hard always being a piece of meat, you

know? You always have to be available.” Painful and tiresome her job requires that she

ritually take part in the reconstruction of her object status. Uncovering another layer of

her work in relation to men’s desire, Margarita says, “It can be a pain in the ass, but damn

there are other times when I feel really powerful.” Far from quiescent, dancers’ use and

46
Phallocentric desire and fantasy function as regulatory regimes, that come into being at the exclusion and

objectification of the feminine by reducing it to phallocentric femininity. It is only through the power of the

symbolic and its erasures, occlusions, and violent foreclosures of the feminine that masculine desire and

fantasy are possible (Butler 1993). As a regulatory mechanism, the symbolic produces boundaries, and

women’s objectification becomes naturalized, taking on great constitutive force and making her the object

upon which he can project his fantasy and seek the fulfillment of his desire. However, since desire and

fantasy are produced vis-`a-vis the recursivity of language, gaps become apparent—gaps which can then be

used to deconstruct its power. The feminine, as occluded or object, haunts the symbolic and resides at its

most precarious borders (Butler 1993). Without her position as the object of desire his position within the

matrix of desire, and fantasy begins to falter and crumble. As such, much is at stake in the maintenance of

her object position.

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abuse of their position as objects, are subject to and subvert men’s desires, and employ

strategies of resistance in the clubs.

Neither passive nor unaware dancers negotiate complex intersections of desire,

fantasy and power in their interactions with their regulars. Using the materiality of

regulars lack and fantasies in order to make money, dancers perform desirability to both

“hook a regular” and to “keep him coming back.” As many dancers told me, “they

believe the fantasy” and “we have to use that to our advantage.” Dancers manipulate

their position within the symbolic by making regulars believe that they have access to

what dancers offer--recognition.

Covert Mimesis

Drawing on their knowledge of men’s desires and fantasies, dancers constructed a

space for themselves that was anything but passive. In so doing dancers utilized strategies

of covert mimesis, performing as objects while simultaneously challenging the

underlying logic of desire. As discussed earlier, desire and fantasy require acquiescence

on the part of its objects, however dancers through techniques of resistance, parodied

these roles and refused passivity. Mocking object status to get what they needed from

their regular customers, covert mimesis enabled dancers to excessively perform their

personas as objects. Unlike other mimetic strategies (i.e., drag or Guerilla Theater),

dancers’ methods were mitigated and constrained by economic pressures (e.g.,

termination, fines, severe loss of income). Within these contexts dancers subverted (albeit

in a covert manner) the matrix of dancer, fantasy, and power making their work a more

hospitable place.
 155

Hope, a dancer at Glitters, illuminates this complexity,

Hope: Well…humm… I think we have all the power. Men come in because they

are desperate and lonely. They need us…you know what I mean?

Danielle: Umhumm.

Hope: And sometimes its like great…you know because once you hook em they

are all yours. Like they believe what you say…they want to believe it and that

makes it easy. I mean you have to reassure them, but they don’t really know you

are not this woman who wants them and that it is just performing. Like they

believe you. Sometimes its great and easy, but shit man there are times when I am

so tired of being what they want…it’s hard to maintain that persona….like

sometimes I want to say…shit I don’t wear these heels at home! I am a regular

girl. I wear flannel pajamas and you are ugly! But I can’t do that for many

reasons. So for me I have the power because I am what they want me to be and

they believe it. You know?

Danielle: Yeah.

Hope: Yeah.

Danielle: Do you um…do you think they think they have power?

Hope: Sometimes, but you know…many don’t. They say things like you can

leave anytime… but then I just reassure them that they are special. Sometimes

they try to make power plays by fucking with the money situation. But then I am

all like…fine I will find another regular. It is not hard…cause like you know there

are a lot of desperate men out there.

 156

Hope understands her place within the matrix of desire, fantasy, and power. Regulars

“need” her. A relational conduit for lonely and desperate men, Hope is “willing” and

“able” to make them feel as if they are special and wanted (a skill all dancers must learn

to be successful). Playing the persona47 is laborious and difficult, and there are times

when Hope wants to tell them that she “is just a regular girl” who wears “flannel

pajamas” and does not find them particularly attractive. Revealing the woman behind the

performance would fissure regulars’ fantasies about Hope and cost her money. Given

these consequences Hope outwardly maintains her role in order to secure her financial

position.

Power occupies an interesting place in her narrative. According to Hope power is

wielded by dancers and regulars. Hope feels in control because she can offer or withhold

emotional and erotic attention to “lonely” men. A common sentiment, many dancers

stated that they exercised power over their customers. After “hooking” regulars (getting

them interested in coming back repeatedly), many dancers felt powerful because they

could deflate their customers’ fantasies at any time. However, regulars’ ability to “fuck

47
Although none of the women or men I worked with used the term “lack” in relation to desire, I am

interpreting loneliness to signify lack because the term loneliness is thought of by the dancers as the draw

that brings men to the club, as that aspect of their lives that mobilizes them to seek their services.

Moreover, I believe that men’s desire is to quell their loneliness and to have access to that which they do

not have access in other contexts—women who are willing to be both the slut and the virgin--is the way

that desire registers for the customers and marks the dancers in the club. Desire manifests itself in multiple

ways. Women become the objects in this context to fulfill what they desire; as such, it fits with the way that

I have dealt with this concept.

 157

with [their] money situation,” highlights the material conditions upon which exotic dance

is predicated. Regulars offer guaranteed income, something that is not always

forthcoming in a dance club. Hope downplays this by saying she can always “get another

regular.” Infinitely replaceable, Hope paints a picture of numerous men just waiting to be

hooked.

Regulars, however, are not always easy to come by, and if he spends large

amounts of money ($300-800 per visit), the loss of income can significantly affect a

dancer’s livelihood. Dancers can and do make money from cursory customers, but they

are less reliable. Cursory customers may refuse to tip because “they are only there to

watch” or they may spend a large amount of money “for a night of fun.” Transitioning a

customer from cursory to regular status takes a lot of time and a great deal of emotional

labor. Situated within the intersections of power and resistance, dancers both subvert the

structures of desire and are subject to a customer’s willingness (or lack thereof) to pay.

Complex and contradictory, power circulates between dancers in regulars in nuanced

ways.

Margarita’s narrative illuminates the intersections of race, desire and fantasy she

must negotiate in her interactions with regulars:

Margarita: Like I am their wild Latina…you know the girl they have always

wanted to fuck, but they were stuck with their prim and proper white wife. They

have all of these weird fantasies about las mujeres latina…¿ tu entendes (Latina

women. Do you understand)?

Danielle: Si.
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Margarita: Like they have always wanted someone like me…an accent, with nice

hips and smooth brown skin, but always were ashamed…like I am that fantasy for

them.

Danielle: Um humm.

Margarita: And so I just play it up…you know…I whisper to them in Spanish…

the hilarious thing is they don’t understand what I am saying…so sometimes I just

fuck with them… you know like telling them some lines from the telenovelas

(Spanish soap operas) or just like what I did that day…it's not always erotic if you

know what I mean...[laughing]

Danielle: [laughing]

Margarita: That’s how I deal…with them…when I am sick of being that shit that

they want…it’s the small shit. You know?

Danielle: Yeah. So why do you think they [regular customers] come?

Margarita: Fuck man they are lonely and want somebody to make them feel

better…and that’s the service we provide…we are better than wives…because we

are sluts too…or at least that’s what they think...they believe the shit though…it's

wild.

Fulfilling their desire for a woman of color, Margarita is their “fantasy” girl. She is “la

mujer latina” (the Latina woman) they have always wanted but were too ashamed to seek

out in other contexts. She offers them the “bit of the other” in a multitude of ways (hooks,

1992). She performs for their desire, donning an accent (even though she was born and

raised in the United States), dancing to salsa, speaking to them in Spanish, making them

feel special. Margarita provides the “spice” of ethnic authenticity which, as bell hooks
 159

theorizes, many whites want due to its seeming absence in their everyday lives (hooks

1992). Regulars tap into their desire to know the feminine other, as well as their desire to

have a Latina body in their relations with Margarita. Easing their loneliness, she makes

them feel as if they have possessed her, the wild and untamable Latina woman who, as

Margarita said later in the interview, “can spin their tops with the flick of [her] hips."

Margarita sheds light on the impacts of being an object of desire and how she

challenges men’s desires when she gets sick “of being what they want.” Employing her

position of unknowability, Margarita uses her ‘mother’ tongue seductively and

subversively. Whispering her errands in their ears, she mocks object status making them

believing that she is theirs while maintaining her distance. Capitalizing on their

ignorance, she draws on their desires for her own benefit. Her resistance should not cover

over the pain she experienced at the expense of men’s fantasies; rather Margarita’s story

illuminates the intricate ways in which marginalization and subversion intertwine in

exotic dance clubs. By incorporating techniques of covert mimesis, Margarita and other

dancers refuse patriarchal desires while getting what they need monetarily and

subjectively.

Fantasy Girls

Fantasy shapes the perceptions regulars have of dancers both inside and outside

the club. Unlike cursory customers, the desire for recognition and possession fuse in

regulars’ fantasies. Regulars’ pleas for more intimate relations (i.e., wanting dates

instead of lap dances) and demands for communication outside the club (i.e., through

frequent phone calls and emails) increase with time. Since regulars’ view dancers as
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“girlfriends” as opposed to labors or “dancers,” these requests make sense. Dancers view

regulars’ fantasies as a normal--albeit an annoying and at times difficult--part of their job.

As Marie states:

Marie: Yeah they always want [time outside the club], but it’s…like the...the

pattern with customers that’s a normative thing. They always want more. You

know…they get sucked in by the fantasy... but that…that world is not enough.

They want to have you...you know...and its not always having something

sexually…you might only have sex together once a month if you lived together its

not really about sex.[p]

Danielle: Mmm.

Marie: You know?

Danielle: Mmm.

Marie: They just want to possess... it. Whatever you are whatever it is. You

know? [P]

Danielle: So you do think that they think that you would be like you are in the

club?

Marie: You know they always think that! [sounding angry her voice is speeding

up] I would fucking one time just one time like to say to them you fucking really

don’t want to see me in the morning before I’ve had my coffee with last night’s

make-up! [starts slowing down] Not only all over my face, but all over the pillows

and my bitchy self until I have nicotine and caffeine. You really don’t want to see

that, but they think they do…

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Danielle: Yeah.

Marie: Cause they think your just. [P] They probably do think you’re always

bubbly and smiling and attentive to their every fucking boring word. You know?

Danielle: Yeah.

“Sucked in by the fantasy” regulars “always want more.” Seeking fulfillment and

longing for possession, men want the fantasy object, “whatever it is.” The frustration

Marie feels mirrors the experiences of Margarita and Hope. Acting “bubbly” and feigning

interest in “their every fucking boring word” requires a great deal of emotional labor.

Marie must maintain her object status in order to make money, but that status costs her.

There are times when Marie would love to fissure her regulars’ fantasies, show them her

“bitchy self;” mascara smeared and caffeine deprived, she would shatter their illusions of

her as attentive, interested, and always willing. Interestingly, emotional labor in Marie’s

story proves more tiresome than erotic performance (such as lap dancing or time on

stage). It is the requirements of emotional nurturance and the promise of (illusory)

fulfillment that is most laborious. As the object, she embodies their fantasy—a whorish

wife—who takes care of customers both emotionally and sexually. She must be “attentive

to their every fucking boring word,” and as she said later, like “grinding their cock.”

As one of the top money-markers in the club, Marie made men believe she was

everything they wanted and needed. Several customers fell in love with her, and many

nights, she would spend her entire evening with only one customer who paid her to forgo

her time on stage. Tapping into men’s fantasies, she became what regulars desired in

order to make money. She mimed a particular form of femininity, the attentive emotional
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caregiver and the sexually seductive woman, while inverting her position with relation to

men’s desire. Knowing she was the key to their desire, Marie employed covert mimesis

to garner agency in her interactions with her regulars.

“I Just Throw the G-Force on Them”

In a room surrounded by the visual geography of two rows of men sitting, not

three feet from each other, on long couches with their hands by their side while nude or

nearly nude women danced the same moves for/on them, Madonna blared,

Faster than the speeding light she's flying

trying to remember where it all began

She's got herself a little piece of heaven

Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one48

In the midst of my fifth dance, I felt good. With each dance, I smiled pleasantly as the

burden of credit card bills were lifting. Wanting to face a different direction, I started to

turn around when John let out something that sounded like “fuck me.” Clearly shaken by

this parapraxis, he blushed and then closed his eyes. We never talked about it explicitly,

it seemed like he never talked about it with anyone, but after that he expressed his desire

to be “fucked” whenever we went to the lap dance room.

This kind of giving over happened during lap dances, part passivity, part

relaxation, part safety because, in the lap dance room, John could do or say what may be

48
Ray Of Light written by Madonna, William Orbit, Clive Muldoon,

Dave Curtis and Christine Leach

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far less acceptable in a romantic heterosexual relationship—he could give over control

and express his desire “to be fucked” as opposed to “to fuck.” Katherine Liepe-Levinson

contends that the inversion of dominant gender norms are the benefit that exotic dance

clubs provide—spaces of transgression that are separate from the rest of customers’

everyday lives and thus offer a place where actions are seen as exceptional and thus

acceptable (Liepe-Levinson 2002). In G-Strings and Sympathy Katherine Frank theorizes

that strip clubs offer a safe ‘escape’ for male customers, a type of tourist experience that

offers them freedoms they do not experience within the confines of home and work

(Frank 2002).

John’s longing to be passive, to be the object of desire, elucidates the way in

which inversion can happen in the lap dance room. The space produced in the lap dance

room allowed John to throw off the confines of traditional patriarchal requirements of

male sexuality which presumes the drive for penetration to be the juggernaut of

heterosexual sexuality (Tiefer 2004). This inversion fosters the possibility that men can

be symbolically fucked by women dancers who fulfill their fantasies for pay. Just as

significantly, it gives rise to possibilities of new conceptualization of dancers’ sexual

agency.

There were moments when, as with my time with John, I felt I held the keys to his

pleasure; that I was in control. It was my movements, my seduction, and my actions that

drove the situation while he laid back in submission. He could not touch my vagina, butt

and/or breasts with his hands, nor could he get up off the couch to move during the

dance. It seemed to move straight eroticism away from the hegemonic heterosexual

equation of penis + penetration = real sex. Lap dancing gives rise to eroticism without
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penetration and without men ever touching the breasts, butt or vagina. It’s a highly erotic

act moved by the force of fantasy and light touching as opposed to the thrust of

intercourse.

Lap dancing a complex conglomeration of physical contact, eroticism and male

passivity, illuminates the tug and pull of power, fantasy and desire in the relationships

between dancers and regulars (Egan 2005). Paula a dancer of two years, felt “powerful”

in the lap dance room, she thought she could “mesmerize” regulars who were

“powerless” when “they [were] against that couch.” During a lap dance Trena could “put

the force on them and they lose it. It's all over.” Kerry said, “Once I start in on them, they

are lost…man, it’s like, forget about it.” As Candy told me, “It’s like bringing a baby into

the light for the first time…they are disoriented [after a lap dance] and it’s funny because

in some ways it’s a total high…I am like, yep, I did that to you.”

Regulars, unlike other customers who may only buy a few dances at a time, often

spend lots of time in the lap dance room. According to Angel a dancer for many years

“Yeah, regulars, they get hooked on that and they are in love so they want to

spend as much time with you back there as possible. It can get tiring, because shit

after about six or seven dances I am sweating and I want to rest, but, hey, the

money is incredible… so I just keep going.”

Dancers mime sexual interest bringing men, as Stacy said, “to ecstasy.” In a later

conversation Stacy told me, “I didn’t used to like it [lap dancing] but then I learned to rub

the right way giving me more pleasure and I started to also get high on watching the men.
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Man they are so vulnerable…it’s like, I am powerful…they are hit by the force and they

are yours.” Marie discussed lap dancing this way:

“Well, it’s such a wild thing and I get off…I mean [p] and it’s not about, like, it’s

not conceited, like, I...I would have a hard time describing this to most peo[ple]…

I mean I would not talk about this to most people cause its not conceited I don’t

think that I am wonderful but I know that… and…and its a weird thing to be

proud of cause it part of the thing that I hated about femininity, but I swear to god

I am so good at playing the sex goddess, you know I can just fucking nail them

[P] [short laugh] [voice lowers] it’s crazy.”

Angel, Marie and Stacy all illuminate the ways desire, fantasy and power intertwine in

the lap dance room. Inverting gender and sexual norms, dancers express feelings of

power and, for Stacy, sexual pleasure. Holding the keys to their regulars’ pleasure,

dancers expressed the pleasure of “playing the sex goddess.”

Given its level of contact lap dancing was also considered, “gross,” “difficult” and

“disgusting” for most dancers. Usually associated with cursory customers “gross”

situations were ones that crossed the line of acceptable behavior (actions ranging from

unwanted grabbing of a dancer’s body to literally feeling men orgasm). Unlike cursory

customers regulars often perceive their time in the lap dance room as intimate and

special. Regulars rarely, if ever, made dancers uncomfortable in the lap dance room.

Complex and contradictory lap dancing challenges cultural norms surrounding

heterosexual sexuality (particularly ascriptions presuming men’s active role) (Tiefer

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2004). Dancers as objects of desire both provide recognition (easing men’s lack) and

mime their position (through their cognizance of masculine desire and fantasy) to

momentarily transcend it (through covert mimesis). Acknowledging their regulars’

desirability in the lap dance room, dancers both perform as objects and invert gendered

discourses. Dancers move between active and passive roles on a continuous basis. I do

not want romanticize exotic dance or lap dancing as some panacea of gender equality—

far from it—rather I want to highlight how dancers are both subjected to and subvert the

desires of their regulars. Showing how within the mire of men’s desires, dancers have

agency and employ subversive strategies in savvy ways.

Through their actions and reactions with regulars, dancers at both clubs disrupted

the matrix of fantasy, power and desire. Moving within and between subject and object

status, dancers render visible women’s position within masculine desire and fantasy.

Neither passive objects nor completely free agents, dancers used their positions

strategically in order to make money and to find a place within masculine desire and

fantasy without simply being reduced to it.49

49
Dancers’ resistance opens possibilities for challenging phallocentric desire in broader socio-cultural

contexts. Many dancers told me that after dancing for awhile, they “stopped taking shit” from partners,

meaning that they were beginning to problematize their position as phallus in other relationships; however,

the extent to which this happened is beyond the scope of my analysis since I did not ask dancers about

these issues. Therefore, the extent to which their contestation of their role as the phallus moves into their

other relations is a direction I would like to move in future research on this topic. However, dancing did

provide many women newfound knowledges they used to problematize other interactions (i.e., with

doctors), which is addressed in chapters2 of this text.

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Desiring Subjects, Phallic Fantasies, and Monetary Power

James and I discussed power one night over drinks while Jenny danced in the

nude room:

Danielle: So tell me about power.

James: Well you know…as well as I do that the women have all the power here

they are the ones who control everything. They decide when and if they will talk

to you when you come in and they can leave you at any time. We just sit here like

sheep waiting for them to come to us.

Danielle: Well what about the money part?

James: Shit, money is the only thing we have over you guys. But hell, that ain’t

much. I mean if Jenny…say Jenny started acting mean and stopped talking to me,

then I wouldn’t pay her anymore, but I can’t see that happening. But she always

tells me the money is not important I have to practically beg her to take my

money sometimes.

Danielle: Yeah.

James: But I know she needs to pay for things like books and school so I make

sure she is taken care of…but I only pay girls I like. Like before I met Jenny there

were some women in here that were so conceited and then they would expect me

to pay for a dance and I just never did. Then I met Jenny and she is so sweet and
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sexy…she is not a bitch and we just clicked and so I bought a lot of dances from

her and then it started getting more serious.

Fantasy and Emotion

James’ narrative highlights the intersection of desire, fantasy and monetary

power. Although James could control Jenny’s money he never would, because with her

“the money is not important.” He practically has “to beg her to take it.” Shifting his

position from consumer to boyfriend, James’ money “helps with school” and “books” as

opposed to paying for services rendered. This narrative twist illuminates his

understanding of himself as a lover rather than a customer. Given this conceptualization,

it makes sense that James does not take his monetary power over Jenny seriously. His

fantasy girl, sweet and sexy, Jenny knows about his life and makes him feel “complete.”

Jenny provides something he does not get anywhere else—a relational context where she

takes care of him and fulfills what he “never get[s] at home.” Jenny, during an interview,

told me she “liked” James and that “He is a nice guy. Totally generous he wants

relationship and he can be a lot of work, but I am glad I have him.”

Desire and capital clash in both narratives, James desires a relationship and Jenny

only likes him ‘as a customer.’ As Jenny illustrates dancers do care for their regulars and

consider many of them as “friends”. However these feelings rarely, if ever, translated into

romance or the level of intimacy James desired. Jenny cares for James but if he were to

stop paying her feelings would probably change, concomitantly James would inevitably

stop paying his sweet Jenny if she started acting “bitchy.” Untangling regulars’ fantasies,

makes manifest the way desire operates in the club. James longs for connection to ease
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his lack. However the satiation he craves would crumble if he thought his desirability was

predicated upon his payment. Regulars use fantasy to cover over the material reality of

their interactions with dancers. Contrary to other contexts where male fantasies may

fracture with female rejection, dancers’ actions are part and parcel of their “work” and

thus their emotional labor often perpetuates regulars’ fantasies. Success for dancers

requires that they must appear to the customer as their fantasy object in an unproblematic

way.

Fantasy Relationships

Marcus, one of my regular customers, embodied the complexity of regulars’

positions within the matrix of desire, fantasy, and power. Upon my return to the club after

a short vacation, Marcus said

Marcus: God, I missed you…I have been waiting for you to come back…you

don’t know how lonely it gets without you.

Danielle: I missed you too it is so nice to see you.

Marcus: Thanks, I was so scared you weren’t going to come back and I would

lose you and I could never find you again.

Danielle: Don’t worry I am right here.

Marcus: I am so happy. I can’t wait until the summer…we should go on a trip…

get away from here.

Danielle: That will be nice.

Marcus: I just, I don’t know, I love you.

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Danielle: Me too.

Holding onto me tightly, Marcus spoke of loneliness and love. We spent the rest of the

evening together. Between lap dances, I listened to stories of work, family, and a far-

away home. To him, I was his fantasy object. I spoke Spanish, I cared about him, and I

always ‘loved’ to perform pleasure when we danced. Fantasy marked our relations,

making him believe that I could give him what he wanted--connection.

“Surprised to find a girl like [me],” Marcus returned frequently and e-mailed me

daily. Our ‘relationship’ became paramount and his expressions of affection increased.

Not an uncommon sentiment, Tom, a regular at Glitters said,

“You have no idea how awful it is to go home at night and leave this place

without the woman you love. To go home, away on a trip, and be in a bed alone,

or worse, go home to a wife you do not love.”

Tom’s relationship granted momentary fulfillment, quelling the lack of desire. Leaving

the club brought pain and loneliness that ceased only with his return.

Henry, a regular at Flame, had a similar experience:

Henry: I just love Trena and when I am away I can’t take it…I just miss her and

want to be with her all of the time…she makes me happy. You know it…she just

makes me so happy and I love her and want to be with her forever. And I know I
 171

could make her happy. I believe I do already but I mean really happy I could give

her so much and I know she has been hurt before, but I would never hurt her.

Danielle: Yeah I know.

Henry: I could give her everything.. she gives me so much. More than I have ever

had before.. I have never had feelings like this.

Danielle: That’s great.

Henry: I have never been with someone who makes me this passionate and

happy… [Trena joins us] Hi, I was just telling Kayla how happy you make me.

Trena: Why thank you…you make me very happy too.

Henry found something with Trena, “more than [he has] ever had before”. In the midst of

our conversation, I realized that Henry had been coming to the club twice a week for the

last six months to see Trena. Unable to “stay away,” Henry wanted “to make her happy.”

Promising “everything” “forever,” Henry longed for a less commodified context for their

relationship. He wanted a fantasy wife instead of fantasy girl in the club. Moving

between affection, care and longing, his narrative sounds more similar to someone talking

about a lover as opposed to a dancer providing a service. Whereas for Trena, Henry was

“just a regular” and she “didn’t think [she] could ever see him any other way.”

Trena provided a fleeting connection, quelling Henry’s lack and longing for the

exuberant and all-compassing merging found in the real. Trena, like other dancers,

functions as a fantasy object and a powerful relational conduit; however, because her

status as object is based on phallocentric and capitalist exchange, it is always ultimately

unsatisfying. Fulfillment, in this context, will never be mutual, due to its capitalist pretext

therefore any hopes for transgressing division for intense connection are futile.
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Ending the Relationship

Longing for a time when they can spend ‘free’ time with their “girlfriends”

outside the club, regulars construct fantasy futures. Regulars want a fantasy girlfriend

who will nurture them emotionally and sleep with them at any time, not a dancer who

they must pay for services rendered. Paradoxically if regulars got what they wanted (the

same ‘service’ only in a different context), they would have exotic dancers outside the

club, not girlfriends, lovers or wives. The structure of their desire requires a hierarchal

relation within which their desirability is bolstered at the expense of her subjectivity and

complexity. Regulars seek what they cannot get in other contexts—women who will

unproblematically give them what they want. Desire, fantasy and capital intersect in

regulars’ wants and like all forms of consumption, satiation is transitory and unsatisfying

—once is never enough. To this end, regulars must return to the club on a continual basis.

However because their relationship with their fantasy girl is just that—a fantasy—they

are ultimately left unsatisfied and must refocus their desire in another way or try to find

strategies that will aid them in their possession of the object.

Jack, a regular of mine for several months, e-mailed me daily, and repeatedly

asked to see me outside the club. Informing me that he would no longer pay me unless I

went out to dinner with him, Jack tried to force my hand. After his ultimatum was

refused, Jack stopped coming to the club altogether. Withholding of money occurred

when regulars’ felt anxiety and questioned their relationships with dancers. A litmus test

designed to test the authenticity of a dancer’s feelings, regulars felt if a dancer really

liked them she would agree to meet for free outside the club (a reasonable assumption).
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Dancers often discussed “losing a regular” as a result of “not seeing him outside the

club.”

Tom, a regular at Glitters, put it this way: “Well, if she really loves me then she

will meet me outside the club and then I will know it’s not about the money.” 50 Wanting

to see Keri outside the club, Tom invoked his monetary power over her in a way that he

thought would work to his advantage. Much to his chagrin Keri continued to decline his

invitations and Tom decided to stop seeing her. Henry utilized the same strategy with

Trena: “I just can’t come here anymore. I have to see her some place else and then I will

come back. I just, you know want to know if it’s real.” Unlike Tom who left the club,

Henry returned after a couple of weeks to see Trena; he just “couldn’t stand not seeing

her.”

Regulars used their monetary power over their “girlfriends,” to test the

authenticity of their affections. In the hopes of getting what they wanted, regulars

imposed various ultimatums: “See me outside the club or I will leave,” or “Go to the

movies with me or I will not pay you.” A tug of war between regulars’ wishes for

affective proof and dancers’ need for monetary stability, each side tried to persuade the

other with various promises (a secure future and a someday possibility respectively).

After realizing their fantasy girl would never be theirs, most regulars would severe their

relationships with dancers in one of two ways: they would either move onto another

dancer or leave the club altogether. Without fantasy the reality that their relationship was

based upon monetary exchange became too real, too painful.

The loss of their illusory connection and the fissures in their fantasies produces

grief and, at times, rage in regular customers. One regular Joe, in the hopes of getting a
50
Fieldnotes, 9/98.
 174

dancer fired, told the manager that ‘his girlfriend’ did drugs and prostituted herself

regularly. Another regular Mike, yelled obscenities at a dancer and was banned from the

club. Dancers at both clubs told stories of regulars breaking down in tears when they

realized they would never have a relationship with a dancer outside the club. Clearly the

materiality of regulars’ fantasies permeated their experiences in both clubs. Shaping the

understandings regulars had of their interactions with dancers, fantasy helped to create

intense pleasure in their relationships, however, when fantasies fissured regulars often

felt deep pain, grief and even rage.

Conclusion

Untangling the experiences of dancers and their regulars, illuminates the

complicated intersections of desire, fantasy and power. As I discussed earlier the

fulfillment of heterosexual desire is mired in a patriarchal culture where desire intersects

with gender inequality in such a way that men become subjects of desire searching for

female objects. Exotic dancers’ willingness to perform as objects and acknowledge men’s

desirability (emotionally and erotically), may be a strong factor in what lures regulars to

the clubs and keeps them coming back. Searching for connection in a capitalist context,

regulars imbue their relations with fantasy to cover over the contradictions that plague it.

Wanting prolonged connection, but within the parameters of the service dancers require,

regulars seek a lover who acts like a dancer, who will reflect his desirability and care for

him emotionally and erotically with little reciprocation. The context of their relations (as

consumer and service provider) as well as the hierarchy upon which his desires (her as
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the object who mirrors his desires) are built creates a situation where a relationship

outside the club is rarely possible.

Dependent upon a dancer’s recognition, regulars need her acknowledgement to

sustain their own position as subjects of desire. However given the rejection regulars face

and the subversive strategies dancer employ, acknowledgement is beyond his control.

Moreover through a dancer’s ability to provide and deny her regulars’ desires, she

produces anxiety and fear for him (Brennan 1993). It is this fear that promotes both grief

and rage, perpetuating a circuit of paranoid return where he simultaneously wants her

submission but fears her rejection (Brennan 1993). Disavowing her completely so that

she can never harm him, regulars try to reestablish their position of dominance (i.e.,

through monetary power) and cut off any possibility of mutual or equitable relations. As

service providers dancers offer regulars a form of relationality that is difficult to have in

other contexts, a performative connection steeped in the unproblematic reproduction of

his fantasy. For regulars she is safer than other women who may reject him outright.

However, this surety is unsustainable. As illustrated by men’s reactions to their “break

ups,” fissured fantasy render visible his inability to control her or their interactions. She is

beyond his possession, beyond his grasp and although he may know his requests are

unreasonable, the materiality of his fantasies and his desire for fulfillment make him

believe that she wants to be his (Brennan 1993). Dancers are never simply a passive

object; they resist, and thus reinstantiate his position as a desiring subject in search of an

object.
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Chapter 5

Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places

Stepping off stage, I noticed Marcus at his usual corner table. Twice a week he

would wait… drink in hand, cigar alight in the ashtray, looking nonchalant, as if he were

in a restaurant instead of an exotic dance club. Over drinks, we talked about our usual:

his work, his family in Latin America and my graduate education. At times, our

interactions felt like a surrealist 1950’s sitcom—me Joan Cleaver in a tight maroon

velvet dress and sparkly Lucite heels and him, Mr. Cleaver, sporting khakis and a button

down giving me my “pen money.” Feelings and finances mixed in complicated ways. I

liked Marcus and looked forward to our time together. Funny, smart and generous,

Marcus was a great regular. I viewed our relationship as mutually beneficial, a

friendship where dances and dollars got exchanged. Marcus, however, viewed our

relationship as something more.

During our last lap dance Marcus said, “I told my Mother about you.”

Shocked by this admission, I asked, “Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“But, why tell your Mother?”

Nervous words tumbled from his lips, “You know I love you. You are unlike

anyone I have ever met before. I want to be with you forever.”

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While these proclamations slid between us I thought, “What’s love got to do with

this?”

Emotion for sale and emotional investment blurred. Between his heart and his wallet my

labor was forgotten. Between my hips and my wallet I felt trapped; I knew he needed

some response. My face shifted to glass and mirrors as I replied, “Me too.”

After Marcus left that night, guilt, anger and compassion interwove. His

admission changed him in my eyes, making him seem too vulnerable, too weak and too

attached. Telling his mother made the feelings he had for me seem more real than they

had ever been before. I did not want to hurt Marcus; however it seemed inevitable. The

contradictory and messy aspects of emotional and financial need grated against one

another producing complex interactions where exchange got absorbed by emotion.

Marcus’ experiences were not unique; many regulars expressed feelings of love in the

club. In regulars’ struggles to make sense of their affection for dancers, emotional

attachment and consumption merged.

During my time in the clubs, the most common phrase used by regulars to

describe their fondness for a dancer was, “I love her.” Perceiving their love as real,

regulars’ narratives wove together romance, insecurity and elation and with the

dissolution of their relationships, turmoil and despair. This chapter explores why it is that

men fall in love in exotic dance clubs. Focusing on the type of love regulars profess and

how it is related to larger psycho-social structures illuminates the limits of materialist

analyses of capitalist exchange, shedding light on how affect in particular capitalist

contexts undercuts both consumer and masculine power.

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Consumption and the Exchange of Objects

Consumer objects, for sociologists inspired by the work of Karl Marx, are

commonly thought of as inanimate artifacts, imbued with ‘use value,’ and exchanged in

discrete economic transactions (Marx 1971). According to Marx, the exchange of objects

for cash is foundational to a capitalist system which alienates its populous from their own

labor and the goods they produce (Marx 1971).51 Meaning is inscribed onto objects via

cultural norms, infusing economic transactions with moral and cultural estimations which

in turn impact which artifacts fall into acceptable sites of economic exchange (Ewick

1993; Koptyoff 1986; Durkheim and Mauss 1963). To this end, ‘acceptable commodities’

shift over time, usually designated as such due to their cultural definition—as infinitely

interchangeable; whereas unique or sacred objects fall outside of culturally normative

parameters (an ever shrinking designation within postmodern capitalism). Given these

understandings, research on consumption often focuses on inanimate objects, but rarely

on the dynamic and evocative qualities of consumer objects that can accept or reject their

consumers (Emmison 2003; Schor 1998; Koptyoff 1986; Bourdieu 1984).

A foundational premise in these models, is the one way relationship between the

consumer and the object he or she consumes. This conceptualization highlights how, for

example, a type of clothing may offer someone a particular identity or commodity self

(i.e., cool, rebellious or professional) (Ewen and Ewen 1982; Ewen 1988; Willis 1991).

This formation of the “commodity self” is predicated upon the cultural meaning attached

to the object (which is formed by the producer and marketed via advertising) thereby

51
However, as anthropologists have illustrated, the exchange of objects is a facet of all cultures (capitalist

or not) in one way or another (Koptyoff 1986). Given the context of this study, I focus on exchange and

theories of exchange in capitalist contexts.

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assuming defacto the ontology of the object as inert or passive (Ewen 1988). Cultures

impute use value onto an object, so that for example, what a water heater means in

Boston (a necessity) is very different from what a water heater means in Antigua,

Guatemala (a luxury item found in very few homes), as such what makes a commodity

shift meaning is a culture and not the object itself.

Emotional Consumption

Exploring the commodification of emotion and eroticism illuminates the messy,

contradictory and paradoxical facets of consumption. In so doing, consumption and the

interactions therein are re-conceptualized as dynamic and dialectical processes where a

consumer may engage in a process of emotional attachment—and thus emotional

consumption. In such cases, economic exchange merges with affection. As discussed in

earlier chapters exotic dance clubs, like other service industries, sell the emotional labor

of their employees. In so doing, owners require dancers “offer emotion as part of the

service itself” (Hochschild 1983: 5), which often produces non-reciprocal meanings for

customers and dancers. Given the affective underpinnings of such interactions, it makes

sense that customers in such venues may project a form of emotion that is typically found

in non-commodified relations (i.e., love relationships) onto commodified milieus (Flame

and Glitters).

Emotional consumption is the other side of emotional labor. Although one might

argue that men fall in love with their cars, this differs from emotional consumption in a

service industry. A car might be beautiful and run like a gem, but it is not involved in a

dialectical relation where it speaks, reassures, encourages or discourages the owner.

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Moreover, a woman may project meaning onto her favorite leather jacket, but the jacket

itself has no part in either reaffirming or dissuading her projection. Emotional

consumption involves an affective relation that emerges within social interaction. Owning

an object and consuming emotional and erotic labor differ significantly in that you can

own an object but you cannot own the person providing the service. Concomitantly,

emotion, desire and fantasy, inherently ephemeral and transitory, fade fast after an

exchange is terminated and thus are impossible to capture much less “own.” To this end,

property itself is displaced in this form of the service industry (Baudrillard 1981).

Transference

Transference offers a powerful framework for understanding the consumption of

service labor as a dynamic and intersubjective experience. Illuminating the complex

interactions between analyst and patient, psychoanalysts theorized transference to make

sense of the ways in which patients shifted the affect they felt in one context (or with

another person) onto their relationships with clinicians (Freud 1989; Lacan, 1977).

Traditionally, transference has been conceptualized as an effect of the dialectical

associations that take place between an analyst and a patient. However, I argue that

transference extends beyond the bounds of therapeutic relationships and is a foundational

quality of particular forms of consumption in the service industry. Unlike situations

where people fall in love with particular representations of movie stars (a particularly

popular phenomenon in our culture), the corporeal and intersubjective give and take

anchoring forms of consumption such as exotic dance renders visible the complex

interplay of affect, resistance and capital in our postmodern service economy.

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Attending to the affective components of consuming another person’s labor

elucidates production and consumption as polyvalent interactions where both participants

continuously reframe, reinscribe and project meaning onto their relations. By

reconceptualizing consumption, we can shift the focus from a one sided relation (that is

projected onto all forms of consumption) to a dynamic experience that is influenced by

both the emotional labor of the worker and the emotional investments of the consumer.

Emotional consumption emerges through social interactive and psychic investments on

the part of both parties. Highlighting these interactions provides a picture of how people

are subject to and subvert emotional labor, as well as an understanding of how consumers

may blur the distinctions between economic exchange and emotion. Viewing

consumption as a social psychoanalytic phenomenon provides a powerful explanatory

framework for understanding how and why regulars fall in love with dancers at Flame

and Glitters.

Postmodern Love and Narcissist Longing

Zygmunt Bauman argues that individuals, severed from kinship and community

bonds, search for connection and love in the miasma of postmodern capital (Bauman

2003). Far from nostalgic, we want the surety of love and its rewards without being

tethered to its constricting responsibilities (i.e., monogamy, time, family). Caught

between these paradoxical desires and frequently dissatisfied, people search for satiation

in virtual venues such as Internet or ‘speed’ dating. Love is conceptualized as similar to a

commodity and to this end, love for postmodern subjects is supposed to be (but rarely is)

like the Persian rug he or she can get with the click of a mouse-- easily acquired.
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Although Bauman steers clear of the sex industry in his model, I contend that searching

for love in an exotic dance club fits within the model he proposes. Due to the confusion

between the logic of capital and commitment in postmodern culture, it makes sense that

regulars fall in ‘love’ in exotic dance clubs.

Lacan theorizes love as a function of narcissism and thus auto-erotic. As such

“it’s one’s own ego that one loves in love, one’s own ego made real on an imaginary

level” (Lacan 1988: 142). Paul Verhaeghe designates this form of love as being in love

(Verhaeghe 1999). Verhaeghe and Lacan both argue that narcissistic love functions

differently for men (as more sexual) and women (as more intimate), which produces

tensions and divisions in heterosexual relations (Verhaeghe 1999; Lacan 1988).52 Being in

love differs from what Verhaeghe terms love, which is steeped in mutuality and

recognizes and allows differences to emerge, thus overcoming the narcissistic barriers

inherent to being in love (Verhaeghe 1999). Given these distinctions, I would argue that

regulars are in love with their dancers.

Taking regulars’ proclamations of love seriously shifts my analysis away from

other theories of love, particularly ones informed by feminism, that require equity among

partners and mutuality as foundational qualities of love (hooks 2001; Irigaray 2003). In

these theories, love presumes equality and anything else falls into another category (i.e.,

infatuation, lust, etc); however, to assume that love functions only on a rational (I will

only love someone who is my equal) and/or political (my love is based the feminist tenets

of equity and is thus completely mutual) register misses the complexity of the various

52
It is important to note that both theorize the differences with regard to gender and love as a result of

language and thus culture. As such we must view this theory as descriptive, and not proscriptive. By doing

so, it illuminates gender differences, which emerge in a patriarchal context.

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manifestations of love. This is not to say that these theories of love may not be far more

desirable within romantic relations (clearly this is the case), but it is to say that we also

need to attend to the way love can operate in non-mutual and, at times, narcissistic ways.

Love and Masochism

A Gordian knot of affection, narcissism, commodification and postmodern

confusion, the love regulars feel is intertwined with another psychic phenomenon—

masochism. Masochism, according to Gilles Deleuze, has been falsely linked with sadism

in psychoanalytic literature (Deleuze 1971). As such “in place of a dialectic which all too

readily perceives the link between opposites (sadism and masochism) we should aim for

a critical and clinical appraisal able to reveal the truly differential mechanisms…” of each

symptom (Deleuze, 1971: 14). Masochism is not the other side of sadism, since a

masochist can exist without ever being in relation with a sadist. Masochists are “victim(s)

in search of a torturer;” however a masochist would dissolve a relationship if they ever

came in contact with a true sadist who would deny their subjectivity (Deleuze, 1971: 20).

The masochist seeks pain and relation, whereas the sadist has no interest in their victim

and seeks only pure violence. Masochism in this regard is understood as a social

psychoanalytic symptom and not a particular form of sexual expression

(sadomasochism).

Regulars seek love in an impossible context (exotic dance clubs), returning

repeatedly to a scene that causes them pain. The love regulars express is masochistic and

destined to fail; they search for love in a commodified milieu from women who perform
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a service (and thus can never offer them love in return) rather than from women outside

of a commodified context (who would be more likely to mutually engage and give love

back). Paradoxically, in his expressions of love, a regular hopes for requital from a

dancer who can not return his affection because of her performance as an object. As I

explored in chapter four, the degree to which a dancer can successfully perform as an

object of desire and male fantasy directly impacts her financial livelihood. As such the

requirements of emotional labor and her persona as an object of desire, deny regulars the

authenticity they want. It is her service as an object that is being sold—not her

subjectivity. In her performance as a dancer, she actively becomes objectified (something

which is often characterized as what men want) and blocks his desire for her to be a

subject. Wanting to believe that dancers love them too, regulars construct and perpetuate

fantasies of intimacy and connection. Concomitantly, when relationships end, regulars

express the grief and hopelessness of ‘lost love.’ After the end of his relationship with

Shelia (who he had been coming to see for eight months), Vinny openly cried in the club

and told me that “I feel like I am going through a divorce.... I loved her so much...I don’t

understand how she could leave me.”

Shedding light on regulars’ complex and nuanced experiences of love extends

Bauman’s postmodern analysis. Given the ways in which regulars look for love in

relations of capitalist exchange, doing so repeatedly at their own emotional peril,

provides a case study of how love in our postmodern culture fuses with masochism in the

hazy distinctions of emotional labor and emotional consumption.

Masculinity, Male Privilege and Privatization

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Nothing inherent in men makes them more prone to intertwine masochism and

love. Unlike some radical feminists who view male sexuality as inherently sadistic

(Dworkin 1987; McKinnon 1989) and the consumption of sex work as the natural

outcome of this form of sexuality, my exploration of regular customers relies upon a

conception of a particular construction of masculinity (heteronormative, middle class and

patriarchal). This form of heteronormative masculinity occupies a complex position--

simultaneously privileged and plagued by loneliness--within our culture. Although our

society perpetuates cultural privilege for men in both structural and interpersonal

relations and in ways that have serious effects on women’s lives, patriarchy also hinders

men (Farough 2004; Faludi 1991). Analyzing regulars’ disappointments, pain and

privilege renders visible the cracks and fissures in a seemingly monolithic state of male

domination as well as how our culture opens particular opportunities for men (economics,

promotion, access to various forms of power) while baring others (Kimmel 2000; Bordo

1999; Messner 1997).

Robert Putnam argues that with the privatization of the public sphere,

opportunities for engaging in community oriented social interaction dwindle (Putnam

2000). Between the confines of work, the lure of the media and being stuck within the

walls of suburban homes and condominiums, relationships are increasingly difficulty to

come by. Concomitantly, cultural norms surrounding acceptable masculinity intertwine

with homophobic fears, to make support networks suspect and almost taboo (Bordo

1999). The combination of privatization, dominant discourses of masculinity and

homophobia fuse leaving men few venues for strong interpersonal connections. As

chapter one illuminates, exotic dance clubs work to fill this gap. Flame and Glitters are
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spaces which feature nude women solely for the pleasure of male consumption, and

therefore actively seek to create and perpetuate a patriarchal service industry. To this end,

exotic dancers mix eroticism and the therapeutic service of listening to a customer’s

problems (Murphy 2003; Egan 2002, 2004; Wood 2000; Rambo-Ronai 1999, 1998,

1992).53 As Katherine Frank contends, “[i]n [a dancer’s] interactions with a regular, then,

a dancer is also trying to produce for him the subjectivity of a man who is worth being

listened to regardless of the money that he pays her” (Frank 1998: 200 emphasis in the

original). Given the structure of exotic dance as a service industry it makes sense that

some men might be apt to return for the services provided and ultimately fall in love.

Exotic dance clubs provide overworked, lonely and upper-middle class men

guaranteed relationality and eroticism. Regulars’ upper-middle class status offers them

privatized connections others must live without. Paradoxically it is this lack of access to

other sorts of (non-commodified) relationship that promotes a blurring of affect and

consumption ultimately bringing regulars pain.

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Slipping off the tongues of regulars into the ears of dancers, the word love figured

prominently in the interactions at both clubs. During an interview one night, Vinny talked

to me about how much he loved Shelly. After meeting Shelly for the first time, he knew

“she was something special.” Away from her, he felt “lonely,” which is why he came to

53
It is important to state that many dancers employ strategies of resistance to the patriarchal goals the

owners set out to create. For more on strategies of resistance see Egan 2003, 2004; Liepe-Levinson 2002;

Nagle 1997; Queen 1995.

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the club “to keep her company” so often. When I asked him to describe his feelings, he

said,

Vinny: I love her. I could spend the rest of my life with her. I just want

to make her happy. Get her away from this place...you know make a life

together. She deserves that.

Danielle: Do you see…a um…future?

Vinny: Yeah. I know I can make her happy.

Danielle: Uh huh.

Vinny: Happiness is hard to come by. When you find someone special, someone

you love, you hold on.

Vinny’s narrative elucidates the elation regulars’ feel in their interactions with dancers.

Vinny wants, “to spend the rest of” his life with Shelly, getting “her away from this

place” so they can start a “life together.” Like Vinny, other regulars drew on discourses

of love to make sense of and legitimate their relationships with dancers. In so doing, they

employed the language of courtship and romance (as opposed to the cold descriptors of

the market place) to make sense of their feelings.

When discussing his time in the club, Mark’s narrative mirrored Vinny’s,

Danielle: So how often do you come to the club?

Mark: We have a date twice a week.

Danielle: Outside the club?

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Mark: No, but as soon as her schedule slows down we are out of here.

Mark’s use of “date” validates his time in the club as a form of courtship as opposed to

consumption. Katherine Frank in G-Strings and Sympathy argues that regular customers

incorporate various strategies to separate themselves from other men in the club (Frank

2002). By applying romantic phrases and the logic of courtship, regulars distinguish

themselves from the “perverts,” “jerks” or “asshole customers” who come to the club.

Utilizing romantic discourses protects regulars (as lovers and not fools or deviants) and

their feelings, perpetuating the belief that they are engaged in romantic interludes and not

the service industry.

Love and Fetishism

Fantasy and narcissism intertwined in regulars’ statements. Dancers offered them

something “they never thought was possible” in a place like this—love. Henry, a regular,

expressed his love for Trena in this way,

Henry: You know I have never felt this way before, not even with my wife. It is

incredible because I love her and she loves me. I am so lucky.

Danielle: Um Hum.

Henry: I am the luckiest man alive. She makes me feel so special...I just hope I

make her feel the same.

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Fantasy shapes Henry’s love and his perceptions of Trena in two ways: he fetishistically

occludes her emotional labor, and he fetishizes Trena herself. Henry’s denial of Trena’s

labor resonates with Marx’s theory of the commodity fetish. Marx contends that

commodities come to possess magical qualities and that the labor involved in the

production of commodities gets erased in the process of consumption (Marx 1971).

Although, Marx limited his analysis to inert commodity objects, his theory can be applied

to erotic labor where a similar erasure takes place. Regulars fail to recognize that a

dancer’s performance and the emotions and eroticism she engages are part and parcel of

her job. One might say that all customers, regardless of whether they are cursory or

regular, engage in this form of fetishism. However, the difference between the cursory

customer and the regular customer lies in the fact that exotic dance is a form of

entertainment for the cursory customer who recognizes the performative qualities of a

dancer’s labor. Whereas, the regular projects authenticity onto the dancer’s performance

and views himself as unique and different from other customers (Brewster 2003; Frank

2002; Liepe-Levinson 2002; Erickson and Tewksbury 2000). As Henry’s experience

shows, Trena makes him feel special in ways even his wife has been unable to do.

A second form of fetishism further complicates the relations between dancers and

regulars. Regulars fetishize dancers in order to dispel the anxiety they experience in their

interactions at the club. Fetish objects, according to Freud, safeguard against the anxiety

produced by the confrontation of female genitalia (which according to him are inherently

lacking) and the resultant threat of castration (Freud 1927). In light of Freud’s

unacknowledged sexism and his own lack of recognition that his understanding of female

genitalia was garnered vis-à-vis the social, I expand his notion of the fetish.54 I contend
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that an exotic dancer is a fetish because she, as a commodified sexual object, initially

staves off the threat of female reprisal and rejection. She is a fetish because her

subjectivity is irrelevant. Unlike the relationships some regulars have with their wives

that are fraught and complex conglomerations of love, anger and frustration, dancers are

archetypical “whorish wives.” Dancers perform eroticism and provide intimacy, but do

not ask regulars to wash the dishes or pick up their laundry. Their interactions are all

about the regular and his satisfaction, as a result, the phrase “I love you” really means, “I

want you to love me” (Lacan 1977).

“Legitimizing Love and Courtship”

Utilizing romantic discourses, James discussed his relationship with Jenny in this

way,

Well, we fell in love. It was crazy, we just clicked. She knows about my

life and I know about hers and we just work…she is sexy and she cares

about me. I think it’s pretty crazy for something like that to happen here

but it did. She makes me feel complete…. I never get that at home. So I

make sure she is taken care of I am hoping that at some point she won’t

54
Many feminists have lodged criticism against Freud specifically and psychoanalysis in general (See

McKinnon 1989). Like other feminists (see Clough 1994;Williams 1999; Grosz 1994), I view

psychoanalysis as a powerful explanatory framework for feminism. This does not mean a wholehearted

acceptance of its premises; rather this form of feminism takes seriously the unconscious and its

mechanisms while exploring the limitations of some of its assumptions. As such, it is possible to employ

Freud while going beyond him.

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have to work here because that would make her happy and I want that but

for right now this is good.

Jenny offers James something “he never gets at home.” He knows, “its crazy,” but “they

just click” and she makes him feel “complete.” James’ narrative illuminates the

intersection of romance, chivalry and the elation regulars feel when their relationships

with dancers are going well. Fantasizing a future together, James makes sure Jenny “is

taken care of” and waits for the day “she won’t have to work here because that would

make her happy.” Sitting in the dressing room later that evening, Jenny and I talked about

James, who according to her is, “You know the typical, he thinks he’s in love with me.”

Not sharing the same feelings as their regulars, dancers when interviewed never

shared a desire for a relationship outside the club. This is not to say that this is

impossible, I am sure that this has occurred (see Frank 1998; Ronai Rambo 1998, 1992)

—however, I never saw it happen at Glitters or Flame. Many dancers expressed feelings

of friendship and affection for regulars, but they never used the word love. Dancers’

feelings, fraught with the repeated demands of intense emotional labor, moved between

expressions of care and statements of frustration. As Trena, put it, “I care about the guy—

he is a nice guy, but I don’t think I could ever think of him as anything other than just a

customer.”

Jack, one of my regulars, discussed our relationship in this way:

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“I love you and one day we will be together. We will have breakfast in the

morning and make love all day. It will be amazing. I can not wait until you quit

this place.”

Jack had been a regular for three months. He scripted our future after an evening of lap

dances and discussing his problems at work. Jack wanted an attentive, erotically

interested woman who focused all of her attention on him. He wanted the impossible-- to

shift contexts (from commodified to non-commodified) while maintaining the same

interactions (the emotional and erotic labor I provided). Doing so would assure his unique

status, his position as a lover as opposed to a customer paying for a service. Jack, James

and Henry, during various interactions, proclaimed that their relationships “were

different” from other customers due to the authenticity of their feelings of love. They

were in “relationships,” not commodified exchanges. However, all three expressed

doubts at one point or another hoping that they were more than just “a customer.”

The love Jack, James and Henry proclaimed was real. If a person were to read

parts of these interviews out of context they would think these were men discussing

girlfriends and not dancers. Verhaeghe argues that loving allows for differences and

mutuality to take place between two people, whereas narcissism plagues individuals who

are in love (Verhaeghe 1999). Being in love is about the self and as such the other’s

subjectivity becomes irrelevant as their job is to love you and bolster your ego.

Extending Verhaeghe’s theories of love to a commodified context and as an act of

emotional consumption shows how regulars’ are involved in a circuit of narcissism in

their desire to be loved by dancers. Regulars search for surety, wanting to be loved by a

commodity. To this end, dancers become objects of recognition that regulars procure in
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the clubs. However, because their recognition is an effect of monetary exchange, this

service cannot ultimately extend beyond the walls of the clubs.

Love garnered through dancers’ strategies of recognition mirrors the dialectic of

desire discussed in chapter four. Fragile and tenuous the love regulars feel relies on the

acknowledgement of a dancer, which can cease at any time. Given the narcissism and

dialectical quality upon which recognition is predicated, dependence threatens the surety

regulars long for in love (Lacan 1989).55 Fetishizing dancers and their labor safeguards

55
Lacanian psychoanalysis refers to this phenomenon as a result of the master’s discourse (Lacan 1977).

The discourse of the master functions as a fantasmatic site wherein the subject believes that he is master of

himself and also master of the other (Lacan 1977). However, this is never possible, as his attempt at

mastery is dependent upon the slave and is therefore always tenuous.

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regulars against the anxiety rejection provokes. She is picked for what she does not

have--subjectivity. She is a hazy mirror through whom regulars seek acknowledgement in

their desire to be loved.

Masochism and Rejection

Henry: “You know I love her right?”

Danielle: “Of course.”

Henry: “But I just have to see if she really loves me. That’s why I have to leave. If

she loves me she will want to see me outside the club. I just want to make sure

that I am more than a customer.

Exploring affection in the clubs illuminates the ways in which love and

masochism intersect for regular customers. At the beginning, he enters the fantasy laden

space of club and it is here that the spectacle of her on stage excites him. This could be

due to particular corporeal attributes (i.e., big breasts, nice legs, or hair length) or due to

the persona she enacts on stage (i.e., the innocent in white, a vixen in red or a dominatrix

in black leather). Either he will call her over to him or she will go to him because he

looks interested. At the beginning, their interaction is charged with eroticism. He desires

her and she “hooks him” by making him feel unique, special, attractive and interesting—

she offers him the fantasy of sexual arousal and intimacy. Getting more than he bargained

for he forms attachments and finds connection in “a place like this.” Providing a utopian
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space, regulars are treated like “real men” by sexy women who offer uncomplicated

attention and reflect their desirability.

Looking for love in all the wrong places, regulars fall for dancers and masochistically

hope for impossible futures. The coupling of love and masochism unfolds on multiple

levels. First, the regular is a masochist because he loves a dancer for what he does not

have access to her complexity and subjectivity. Second, although he seeks to fetishically

occlude the dancer’s labor, he is plagued with anxiety that he is nothing more than just a

customer. Although the regular knows on some level that he is just a customer, he

returns to the club seeking more assurances and continuing to spend more money. The

regular always wants to know that he is her love object and is thus eventually always

victim to her rejection, rejection that inevitably happens when his demands become too

much for her to handle or when repeated requests to see her outside the club never

succeed. Third, although he thinks he wants the dancer to be his lover outside the club,

this too is faulty because if she were outside the club the service and thus fantasy she

provides would dissolve and leave him again dissatisfied. For these reasons it is

impossible to theorize the regular’s love for his dancer without understanding its coupling

with masochism.

Pressures and Performance

One regular, Bryan, professed his love for me by stating that I was “the nicest woman

he knew.” He thought that I was “old fashioned,” “liked all the same things” he did and

“would make him happy.” It was these qualities that made him fall in love. His reactions

were a combination of fantasy and a reaction to the stories I told about my goals and life
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aspirations. Keeping regulars interested while trying to maintain some level of

interpersonal distance, dancers wove stories for regulars, peppering them with half truths

and, at times, lies (Frank 1998). During my time with Bryan, I told him that at some

point I wanted children in my life (true); however, he projected from this information that

I was old fashioned (most definitely false). Bryan’s feelings were the result of fantasy

and my emotional labor as opposed to the more complex dynamics that occur in a mutual

relationship outside of a commodified context.

Bryan wanted an exotic dancer outside the club, one who would listen attentively to

his stories, nod in agreement at his assessments of the world and perform eroticism on

demand. He certainly did not want a feminist who would challenge his views and who

would require equal participation in all aspects of a relationship. Shocked and confused,

regulars were taken aback whenever I revealed my feelings, challenged offensive

statements, or refused their world views. “Disappointed” and disillusioned, one regular

stopping coming to see me after we had a disagreement over issues of race.

Many dancers discussed the challenges of keeping regulars happy. Jenny said,

“sometimes I really enjoy the conversations I have with my regulars and sometimes I just

shake my head and smile…I mean what the hell I am going to do, tell them they are

assholes?” To keep regulars coming back, dancers intertwine fact and fiction in their

presentation of self (Barton 2003; Frank 1998, 2002; Wood 2000; Ronai Rambo 1992,

1998, 1999; Scott 1996). These interactions do perpetuate intimacy, however

performative it may be. Regulars’ perceptions are mediated by the presentation of self,

offered by the dancer as well as “a sort of hallucinatory operation of thought”--fantasy

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(Andres 1999: 4). Emotional labor intertwines with fantasy, enabling regulars to believe

that his feelings are requited and not the result of commodity exchange.

Far from dangerous or pathological, fantasies are a common feature of our everyday

lives. People fantasize all the time, about winning the lottery, or having a better job, or

finding the perfect partner. Most often these fantasies are harmless, and we see them for

what they are, wishes as opposed to actualities. Fantasies, whether in the form of a

daydream or a projection onto another human are never completely solid, like a virtual

reality game that feels very real, something on the edge of your vision will interrupt its

potential and make a totally “real” experience falter. As fantasy intertwines with

fetishism and emotional labor in the clubs, fantasies start to feel more “real” and regulars

perceive their relations with dancers as more authentic. In order to protect their

relationships, regulars engage in strategies to maintain their fantasies as long as possible,

making sure that they are, “more than just a customer.” Seeking the reassurance of the

dancer they love, regulars increasingly ask for time outside the club or other forms of

proof (e-mail, personal information or phone calls) to confirm that their love is requited.

In so doing, regulars bring about the dissolution of their relationships.

Lost Love and Fissured Fantasies

Looking for reassurance, regulars try to secure their fantasy futures. Wanting

connection, he seeks love and a form of erotic transgression (the merging of the ‘I’ and

‘you’ that love provides), while steadfastly maintaining his position of autonomy. Given

these contradictory desires, the anxiety a regular feels can never be quelled. Returning to

her once, twice or more a week this interaction repeats, his desire and her performance;
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however, no matter how many times she reassures him he ultimately feels no satisfaction.

Their relation can never be enough, because he wants what she lacks. Her recognition of

him is anchored to her performance as an object. She can never provide authentic

connection, because she is paid to acknowledge him and thus love him.

Dancers meet regulars’ needs (making them feel desirable and loved), however in so

doing they render visible the lack and loneliness that brings regulars to the club in the

first place. Baudrillard theorizes, ‘the fascination with strip-tease as a spectacle of

castration derives from the immanence of discovering, or rather seeking and never

managing to discover, or better still searching with all available means without ever

discovering that there is nothing there’ (Baudrillard, 1993: 110). I would argue that

Baudrillard is right—however, only in part. The cursory customer fits into this category,

but with regulars this recognition of nothingness exists, and moreover, it is this

nothingness to which they cathect and become attached. She could be anyone because she

is no one and she is everyone—this is the structure of synecdoche—the structure upon

which his desire and love relies. Given the narcissistic underpinning of being in love she

can only ever be an object, because as soon as she stops recognizing him (an inevitability

when she refuses his requests), his love will collapse. A dancer in these interactions is not

a subject who loves another subject. Because of her position, she can never satisfy the

regular’s need to be loved. This is the source of anxiety. Regulars’ relations with dancers

are stuck within the circuit of transference as opposed to mutuality because the

materiality of the situation always interrupts love’s possibilities. This ritual takes on a

masochistic function with regulars searching for something that is impossible (mutuality)

and knowing on some level that this will always be the case. He returns for rejection until
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finally he can not take it anymore...and the discourse of lost love begins to emerge.

Jacques Lacan offers theoretical insight into this phenomenon when he states, “I love

you, but, because inexplicably I love in you something more than you -the objet petit a

(the object of desire) --I mutilate you” (Lacan, 1977: 254). In other words, because he

only loves an object, he mutilates her position as a subject thus insuring his own

rejection.

Conclusion

We are inundated with messages about love. Romance novels, music, television and

film craft narratives of love at first sight and the “power of love.” We are told that love

conquers all and that love is all we need. These romantic and sentimental discourses

buttress against a culture where divorce rates are skyrocketing, the public sphere is

shrinking and our relations are becoming more distant and more virtual (Putnam 2000,

Bauman 2003). Amid these seemingly paradoxical cultural messages, love as Bauman

theorizes, morphs into something else—a one off experience sought for what it offers

(connection), but rejected for what it requires (commitment) (Bauman 2003). Ever

elusive, most of us are left unsatisfied.

In the midst of these contradictions and challenges, regulars found connection in the

commodified milieu of Flame and Glitters. Unlike cursory customers, who may find their

interactions with dancers as fun and titillating forms of adult entertainment, regulars

blurred the lines between affect and consumption. Employing discourses of romance and

courtship, regulars wove narratives of love, commitment and the future. In their
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sentimental expressions, economic exchange was made hazy by fantasy creating a

context where love and masochism fuse.

Masochism is not something we usually equate with love. Love has been theorized as

a site where transformation, transgression and authority can be broken down (hooks

2001; Irigaray 2003). Love is conceptualized by these authors as separate from and

outside of the bounds of capitalism. These theories ignore the complex ways in which

love can emerge within particular commodified contexts. I contend that when love and

commodification merge, feelings of affection become more complicated--as evidenced by

the relationships between dancers and their regulars. The club provided regulars

connection and love without responsibility. As feelings grew stronger so did requests for

non-commodified interactions. Although a regular seemed to want his relationship

outside of the club, if a dancer were to see him in a non-commodified context, she would

fail him. Outside, she would be a lover (subject) and not a dancer (object). In this

transition she would move from a person offering an uncomplicated service (her

emotional and erotic labor) to someone who makes demands and rejects his narcissistic

desires. Regulars did not want wives, girlfriends or mistresses—they wanted dancers.

Regulars at both clubs, drawn in by the emotional and erotic labor of dancers and the

alchemical quality of fetishism, confused the boundaries of consumption and affect.

Engaging in forms of emotional consumption, regulars experienced immense pleasure in

their interactions with dancers, feelings they had not experienced “even with their wives.”

Concomitantly, with the disillusion of their relations, regulars felt the despair, turmoil

and pain of heart break. Given the narcissistic attention garnered through their
 201

interactions actions with dancers, it is no wonder why their time in the club felt so

wonderful.

Emotional consumption involves a transferential circuit between the consumer and

the service provider. Lacan argues that, “transference does not refer to any mysterious

property of affect, and even when it reveals itself under the appearance of emotion, it

only acquires meaning by virtue of the dialectical moment in which it is produced”

(Lacan 1977: 225). Emotional consumption is a result of fantasy production on the part of

the consumer in a dialectical relation with the person providing the emotional labor

required in a service industry. Emotional consumption gives sociologists the tools to

examine consumption as a polyvalent interaction between a consumer and a service

provider. By including the affective aspects of consumption, we can broaden the scope of

our analysis of production and consumption in an ever-expanding service economy. A

particularly crucial endeavor, as capital and privatization erode the public sphere, a result

of which will undoubtedly be the increase of emotional labor and the concomitant

blurring of capital and emotion on the part of consumers (Egan 2005; Putnam 2000).
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Conclusion

Lessons Learned Under the Black Light

My last night at Flame ends, much like my first night began, with an hour and ten

minute drive. Hair reeking (some toxic combination of cigarette smoke, alcohol and Leap

perfume), handbag full of dollars, and dictating my fieldnotes into a tape recorder, I

make my way back to my apartment in Jamaica Plain. My exit from exotic dance feels

disappointing. I am not sure what I wanted. Bells and whistles? A sense of overwhelming

relief? Balloons and a farewell speech? Mostly, I feel a combination of sadness,

excitement and anxiety because my adult life, as a university professor, is about to begin

and with it a whole new set of pressures (publication, tenure, teaching a three-course-

load and student loans), which seem far more daunting than dancing ever did. This

transition means the end of my exotic dancing forever, although people may tolerate a

graduate student doing this type of research, a university professor doing it is something

else altogether… ethnographic ingenuity transforms into irresponsibility and bad

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publicity. Turning onto the 95, tears start flowing, lightly at first, and then torrential. And

I wonder aloud, “Will I ever have an opportunity like this again?” To be in the thick of

such a complex, contradictory and fascinating place? The next day, as I start

transcribing my notes from the night before, I am struck when my garbled, crying voice

echoes across the living room, “Shit. This is really hard to give up.”

“I’d lie down in front of an oncoming train to defend a woman’s right to strip for a living.

But that doesn’t mean I grant rubber-stamp approval to the business.” –Lily Burana, Strip

City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America

Interactions between dancers and regulars are far from simple. Caught between

the social strictures and privileges of gender, monetary exchange, the dialectics of desire

and the subterfuge of performance, dancers and regulars negotiated their relationships

with one another at Flame and Glitters. Taking place within such nuanced social forces,

binary categories such as powerful and powerless frequently became fuzzy and gave way

to dense complexity (truly a sociologist’s dream). Given these dynamics, ethnography

offered something other forms of inquiry could not—the opportunity to watch and listen,

to participate and observe and to jump feet-first into this milieu (Atkinson and

Hammersley 1994; Denzin 1997). Ethnography allowed me to understand the tug and

pull of power, resistance, gender, desire, capital and affect at play between dancers and

their regulars. To examine and experience the way, for example, emotional and financial

need can grate against one another in an exotic dance club. Ethnography helped me

render visible the ambiguity and contradictions of dancers and regulars without

stigmatization.
 204

Beyond Good and Evil

Trying to place dancers and regulars experiences into binary categories of

either/or, felt like trying to squeeze a circular object into a square hole—impossible.

Interview transcriptions and fieldnotes contained too many contradictions and much too

much ambiguity for the confines of binary logic. Making sense of the relationships

between dancers and regulars meant I had to wade in the murky conceptual waters of

both/and. I moved my analysis beyond the boundaries set by categories such as

virgin/whore and dominance/repression; in the hopes of understanding how dancers can

both use their status as objects and feel objectified by it and how regulars can have

material power and masochistic tendencies.

I have tried to avoid romanticizing dancers as completely liberated women or

deeply wounded victims. Moving between power, exploitation, resistance and complicity,

dancers are both damaged by their work and find pleasure in it. Dancing for dollars was a

pragmatic fiscal option for certain dancers and the last option for others; was college

tuition for some and drug money for others. Dancers’ lives and experiences cannot be

reduced to a simple categorical delineation of either/or. Rather women’s understanding of

their job and their relationships with regulars flowed and changed, shifting over days and

sometimes over hours. Liminal and complex, dancers’ narratives illuminated the limits of

binaries and evaded dualistic flatness.

Regulars’ and their experiences also refused easy categorization. Desperate and

compassionate; regulars were both privileged economically and “played” by dancers.

Highlighting regulars’ experiences at Flame and Glitters, clarified that power was
 205

anything but monolithic. Regulars expressed power monetarily through their access to

erotic services and their ability to withhold money. However their narratives of

dependence, confusion, pain, and loneliness illuminate the fragility of that power.

Regulars expected service with a smile, to be treated “well” and receive the benefits of

customer status and they felt vulnerable and hurt in their relations with dancers. Stuck in

the paradoxical position of being customers while feeling like lovers, regulars were mired

in the dissatisfaction (and masochism) of paying for love. Exceeding my initial

expectations, some regulars were wonderful and kind, and others were mean and spiteful;

most moved between these designations. The ambiguity of their position as

customers/lovers provoked anxiety for regulars and unlike dancers, none of them found

agency in their liminal position. Although regulars sought connection and love, they were

plagued by contradiction which was resolved by either leaving the relationship or the

club altogether.

Highlighting the liminality of regulars’ and dancers’ experiences grounded

poststructural theories of power, subjectivity and gender. Often accused of

abstraction poststructural theorists, such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler,

have faced charges from popular leftist scholars such as Noam Chomski of navel

gazing and nihilism (Chomsky 2005). Although this charge is undoubtedly true in

some circumstances, I contend that the conceptual frameworks offered by

poststructuralism provide powerful sociological tools for untangling ambiguous,

contradictory and paradoxical sites of social interaction. Patricia Clough theorizes

that poststructuralism is dedicated to the “act of untying” complex social forces,

“by means of the repetitions of the act of tying it” (Clough 1992:12). With this
 206

end in mind, poststructural theories in their attention to ambiguous nature of

power, the multiplicity of subjectivity and the performative aspects of gender

fostered the “untying” and “tying” of this cultural milieu.

Resistance and It’s Boundaries

Exotic dancers enacted resistance on a daily basis. Their savvy forms of resistance

shed light on how techniques of power can not guarantee their own outcome. According

to Foucault power produces both oppressive as well as resistive possibilities (Foucault

1977). Aleatory in their operation, even the most totalitarian modes of power are not

seamless and show how resistance is anything but futile. As such, “dominance, no matter

how multidimensional, can never be complete and is always contradicted by resistance”

(Hardt and Negri 2004: 54).

Dancers activities in the club demonstrate the tug and pull of power and resistance

in the midst of their everyday lives at work. In their use of covert (i.e., slipping money

under the table, or performing submission) as well as overt (i.e., using their regulars)

practices, dancers illuminate gaps in the power relations at play in the club. They render

visible how resistance can jam the mechanisms of social control in small, but important

ways. This is not to say that the resistance dancers employ is always efficacious (far from

it), but it does show how those who are in marginal positions can negotiate and reinscribe

hegemony on a repeated basis.

Dancers described feeling “powerful,” “stronger,” “like [they had] a say,” when

they engaged in strategies of subversion. Far from falsely conscious, dancers felt agency

in the clubs. However I argue that most forms of resistance enacted by dancers rarely
 207

went beyond the individual woman and thus had little-to-no-effect on the structural

inequities faced by women workers at the club. Dancers mainly utilized covert forms of

subversion (i.e., mimesis) meant to go unnoticed by customers. Covert resistance enabled

dancers to garner distance, “protect” themselves in their interactions and still make

money. These strategies helped dancers create a more comfortable and hospitable

workplace, something not to be undervalued in exotic dancing. However, problematic

working conditions such as ever increasing stage fees or other “fees to work,” largely

went unchallenged. With the exception of music choice, dancers showed little interest in

collective action. Undoubtedly a result of the transitory nature of exotic dance combined

with fear of management fines and dancers’ reliance on the income Glitters and Flame

offered, dancers steered clear traditional labor actions such as striking, work stoppage or

unionization.

Dancers strategies of subversion illuminate one way resistance can take place

within confining and repressive work conditions. Resistance is far from uniform it molds

to the confines within which it is situated. Actions that may appear small and

insignificant, such as fooling individuals in another language, faking feelings, using

customers to challenge owners should not be invisibilized or viewed as individual

distractions. Exotic dancing did give several dancers a sense of power that extended

beyond the club. These women told me “that [they] feel more confident than they ever

had before.” Many women also discussed leaving bad relations, having a stronger sense

of self and feeling “more powerful” as a result of dancing.

Therefore to view exotic dancing only through a structural lens misses the

complexity of experience dancers articulated in their interviews. To this end, analyzing

 208

both personal and structural shifts together may be most useful in future research.

Investigating how resistance operates in both micro and macro fashions across the social

landscape is particularly crucial in our contemporary cultural milieu (Egan 2005).

Enabling us to explore how resistance is made manifest in the most unexpected ways.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Feminist sociologist, Wendy Chapkis argues, “The subject of commercial sex

allows for no final conclusions; instead there is an urgent need for productive

conversations across locations within the trade and beyond it” (Chapkis 1997:213). I

could not agree more. With the completion of this exploration it is my hope that my

analysis of space, subjectivity, politics, desire and affect will spur such “productive

conversations.”

Highlighting the dynamics of production and consumption at Flame and Glitters

offers sociologists a fruitful case study of how capital, affect and gender intersect in our

increasing service economy. Far from pathological, interactions between dancers and

regulars shed light on the effects of increasing privatization and the consequences of

postmodern fragmentation. Unraveling the intersections of affect and consumption in

exotic dance clubs, may provide a window onto other forms of “emotional consumption”

in our consumer landscape.

Illuminating female agency in seemingly oppressive sites, such as sex work,

fosters a critical exploration of the ways in which inequality and resistance are manifest

in women’s lives (both inside of and outside of the workplace). Taking women’s

strategies of subversion seriously moves theorists beyond the stalwart of false

 209

consciousness (which necessitates a vanguard’s expertise) and provides a sociological

vision of how women workers negotiate the social cartographies of their work on an

everyday basis. Through listening to women’s struggles we can use their experiences and

visions to broaden the sociological study of resistance.

Finally, it is my hope that my analysis of the rich and complex interactions at

Flame and Glitters expands sociological understandings of what exotic dance means for

the women who do it and for the men who consume it. Having conversations on the

improvement of working conditions, will render visible one of the biggest challenges

facing exotic dancers—the owners. Katherine Frank rightly points out that increased

legislation is no answer, as regulations impeded dancers’ autonomy and their earning

capacity (Frank 2002). Interestingly, contrary to discourses of sexual essentialism which

espouse the dangers of mixing eroticism and capital, regulations and fees often harm

dancers far more than their regulars ever could. Expressing eroticism in the public

domain is not usually the issue that keeps dancers up at night, rather negotiating stage

fees, state laws and stigma from society at large weigh far more heavily on their lives.

Shifting the focus to working conditions is particularly pertinent with the increasing

corporatization of exotic dance clubs and the corollary loss of artistic autonomy with the

“McDonaldization” of the sex industry (Frank 2002; Hausbeck and Brent 2000).

Destigmatizing this form of women’s work, produces conditions where conversations

across the industry, its various interest groups and feminist activists can occur without

sanction or stigma, which women working in this field both need and richly deserve.
 210

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