Male Strippers and the Toll of Exotic Dance

While researchers have looked at the impact stripping has for female exotic dancers, very little attention has been given to the consequences the profession has for male strippers. In this research, I draw from 22 in-depth interviews with male exotic dancers and 18 months of fieldwork at a strip club to examine the extent to which male strippers experience “the toll” of exotic dance. Specifically, I focus on dancers’ interactions with customers, their experiences with stigmas, the impact stripping has on their romantic relationships, how they negotiate boundaries with patrons, and the consequences stripping has for their self-esteem. Overall, I found that patriarchal privilege and the sexual double standard significantly mitigated the toll of the profession.

Constructing Eroticized Latinidad: Negotiating Profitability in the Stripping Industry

Through the analysis of an 18-month ethnography at an exotic dance club located in the Northeastern United States (referred to as Playpen), I uncover how Latina exotic dancers manage their participation in exotic dance by deploying constructions of Latinidad as embodied cues. I focus on Playpen’s weekly event, “Latina Night,” to demonstrate how racialized, sexualized, and gendered constructs relative to Latinidad are produced and regulated in this exotic dance setting. Study participants draw on embodied markers to negotiate how their bodies are read. Those markers include nationality-based appeals, time elapsed since migration, and the ability to express constructions of Latinidad through dance performance. I draw on intersectionality as a conceptual tool, filtered through a sensibility to Latina/o/x lives and experiences, to analyze the nuances of racialization as experienced by Latinas. This approach destabilizes the U.S. black–white racial binary and opens intersectionality to a more nuanced understanding of the production of Latinidad. By approaching racialization as an embodied phenomenon, I elucidate how bodily markers, beyond skin color, become imbued with racialized meaning and condition racialized erotic capital. No less important is how participants draw on racialized, gendered, and sexualized tropes to benefit racialized erotic capital.

SENI TARI DALAM PANDANGAN ISLAM

Humans in their daily lives cannot be separated from art. Art is a form of aesthetic expression towards human existence as a servant. Expressions of beauty that are expressed through beautiful movements, will give birth to exotic dance. Speaking of dance, in general, the negative prejudices of both dancers and dances are generally generated. This is interesting to study when drawn with the flexibility of Islamic teachings and the core of Islamic teachings themselves, namely tauhid.

Miss Exotic World

Neo-burlesque has been praised by dance scholarship as a body positive, feminist, safe space that has celebrated difference and argued for a broader spectrum of beauty, gender representation, and orientation. Since the inception of the movement, performers have made the pilgrimage to the Burlesque Hall of Fame pageant, and now claim titles such as Best Troupe, the King of Boylesque, and Miss Exotic World. Utilizing an ethnographic methodology, by way of participant observation and interview data, this chapter examines the author’s experience of serving as a judge at this pageant. It analyzes performers’ efforts to “authentically” recreate this mid-twentieth-century form of exotic dance and argues that such attempts can perpetuate historic prejudices with regard to body size, sexual orientation, and race. Additionally, it suggests that the process of competition often normalizes and regulates this inclusive performance practice, and is fundamentally at odds with the supposed philosophies of the neo-burlesque community.

The (non)use of alcohol in topless establishments: Protection for women or gender policing?

This article considers current and proposed restrictions placed on the adult industry in Chicago in order to explore the attempts made through legislation to control legal forms of sex work, specifically exotic dancing and burlesque. I focus specifically on the recent debate within the city of Chicago as to whether or not alcohol should be allowed in places where women are topless. While exotic dance is often discussed as a type of exploitation and a cause of urban blight, burlesque is uniformly discussed as positive and empowering, which affects discussion around the introduction of alcohol into each respective club. I conclude by discussing the possibility that the differentiation between exotic dance and burlesque may be a false dichotomy, and that regulations need to be talked about in conjunction with individuals who work in these industries, instead of the assumption that politicians have the laborers’ best interests in mind.

Practicing Anthropology Under a Legal Umbrella

Surprised to be asked to apply to exotic dance the sociolinguistic/semiotic theory and ethnographic methods I used to study the relationship between dance and society in African villages and cities, American theaters, and elementary school playgrounds and classrooms, I have been an expert court witness since 1995. I worked with 63 different attorneys on 132 cases in 29 states, the District of Columbia, and 39 cities and counties related to the First, Fifth, and Fourteen Amendments, labor law, taxes, and even murder. I explain how exotic dance is a form of dance, art, and communication.