Strip Club by Kim Price-Glynn

Author:Kim Price-Glynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2010-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Cynicism and Alienation

Many strippers adopt a cynical attitude toward their work. Recognizing the societal stigma, these women emphasize lucrative rewards as adequate compensation for the job. Fast, easy money—that is the veiled promise that strip club work conventionally holds for many women. On the surface, this may seem to be true. While stripping and cocktail waitressing are skilled jobs, they require little experience, education, or formal training. They provide employment that can be part-time, and often lucrative, especially when compared with other part-time jobs that do not require previous experience or training. Behind the normative assumptions that stress the relatively high income of strip club work rests the often contradictory relationship women have with erotic labor. While strippers frequently cite economic need and the promise of lucrative returns on their labor as their reason for entry, there are other factors at work.

What is missing from the economic explanations is that women may use these rationales as a means of coping with stigmatized and emotionally demanding work, basically arguing that the ends justify the means. If women are entering the stripping industry out of economic desperation, they might reconcile a whole range of costs based on the promise of economic rewards. Moreover, if the economic rationale seems plausible—this job pays disproportionately more than other available employment options—strippers may further justify the tradeoffs of stigma, physical strain, and emotional stress for pay. For example, Tamara explained that stripping allowed her to work one day a week: “It’s very tiring, but I do like the money when I come home. I only have to go in once a week. I guess I could be making a lot of money if I worked more shifts, but it drains so much out of me.”

Many of the women I interviewed found that their work was lucrative, though earnings were inconsistent—typically between $150 and $300 on an average weekday shift and more on weekends. Since strip clubs have seasonal attendance swings, with high attendance during “stag season,” when bachelor parties dominate the club, and just before the winter holidays, workers who rely mainly on tips for their income can expect considerable ups and downs. Strip clubs, like other businesses, are subject to ups and downs in the broader economy. The region in which the club is located also affects tips. The Lion’s Den was near a small city, so it could not attract the quantity of business one might find in a major metropolitan area. Not surprisingly, strippers report greater earnings in larger cities. Earnings also vary from stripper to stripper. One stripper may have a particularly charismatic personality and attract a greater number of patrons, or a stripper may be the only one of a particular physical type—such as the only brunette—and corner the market in that category, or a stripper may move more quickly than the others from one patron to the next. Simply asserting that strip club work is lucrative without analyzing the worker, club, and region leaves much to be explained.

In an attempt to reconcile the costs and rewards of stripping work, Scott A.

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