Erotic Performance and Spectatorship by Katy Pilcher

Author:Katy Pilcher [Pilcher, Katy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781317393740
Google: jQx6DQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-11-10T03:24:24+00:00

Dare to look? The politics of ‘gazing’ at male bodies

Picking up on the idea of a ‘gaze’, and the politics of looking within the venue, I want to explore here women’s experiences of watching male striptease. Feminists have long debated the utility of the concept of the ‘gaze’, and as I pointed out in Chapter 2, critiques of Mulvey’s (1989) original conception of the gaze have challenged the notion that ‘looking is an act of possession’ (Smith, 2007:158), and the ways in which the exercising of a sexualised ‘gaze’ has only been understood as a masculine subject position (Stacey, 1994). As Evans and Gamman (1995) argue, there is no ‘ubitiquous’ single gaze in the viewing of erotic imagery. This opens up the possibility that the women customers at Love-Lads might ‘look’ at, and identify with, naked and semi-nude male bodies in a variety of different ways. Smith’s (2007:45) critique of the concept also interestingly points out that ‘gazing’ is not a purely visual response, but rather in the case of viewing erotic imagery (or as I would argue, erotic entertainment more widely), a range of sensory responses are possible.

LoveLads certainly represents one of the few commercial leisure spaces in the UK where semi-nude male bodies are presented for women to look at and potentially enjoy. While normative heterosexuality positions men as ‘the pursuers and women the pursued’ (Montemurro, 2001:299), through presenting men’s bodies to be looked at rather than as men being the ‘sexual scrutinizers’ themselves (Liepe-Levinson, 2002:9), the male strip show certainly presents the possibility that women attend such an event as sexual pursuers. Women customers spoke about their positive experiences in viewing the male dancers. Vanessa, for example, said that she ‘loved the show … highlight – male nudity!’ and commented that the dancers were ‘very pleasing to the eye’. Olivia similarly comments upon the desirability of the dancers: ‘the [LoveLads] show is fun, friendly, funny with gorgeous men thrown in who can ask for more?’ One woman commented at the show to me after watching a male dancer squirt cream on his chest that ‘I just wanted to lick it off him, mmm’. Interestingly, some of the women’s comments detail their ‘looking’ at the dancers, but also describe their interactions and sometimes their conversations with the dancers. Wendy stated that ‘their physical appearance was yummy but they were also nice to chat to’, and Olivia said that ‘the male dancers are physically attractive but they are also funny and friendly’. What is interesting is that in their descriptions their pleasure in these experiences is not just in being able to ‘bear’ the look, to borrow Mulvey’s (1989) term, but also to experience, as Smith (2007) argues, a more fully-sensory experience in which they can speak and interact with the dancers. These examples suggest that women customers at LoveLads can experience interacting with men that they find physically attractive and approachable. The show facilitates this sense of approachability, and a multi-sensory interaction, through the ‘photography’ period at the end of the show, where women can have their photograph taken with dancers.

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