Dance and Erotica: The Construction of the Female Stripper

Abstract

Over the past ten years I have become increasingly fascinated by the role of women in the sex industry, and this appears to have come about for two main reasons. The first is fuelled by an interest in feminism, and one of its central paradoxes of whether women are either fundamentally exploited or else empowered through the sale of their bodies for sexual gratification. The second, I am afraid, is far less noble. It is based on simple curiosity, and the somewhat illicit and taboo status of the British sex industry has clearly appealed to my inquisitive nature. As a nineteen-year-old, I would spend an hour or so nervously wandering around the red-light district of Soho as I peeked into sex shops, stared at the women who sat in the doorways of strip clubs, and collected the odd calling-card for ‘Lady Whip’ or the ‘Lovely Denise’ as a souvenir. It therefore came as a perfect opportunity to undertake some serious study into female striptease, when I was required to observe and analyse a ‘dance event’ as part of my research in dance anthropology.KeywordsSexual ArousalSymbolic OrderBorder CountryExotic DancingDance EventThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.