Managing the stigma of topless dancing: a decade later

Abstract

A decade ago we (Thompson and Harred 1992) conducted ethnographic interviews with over 40 topless dancers in seven Gentlemen's Clubs in a major metropolitan city in the Southwest with a population of approximately one million people. Our research focused on how the dancers managed the stigma of their deviant occupation. We found that while the dancers used a variety of stigma management techniques, for analytical purposes they could be collapsed within two "umbrella categories": dividing the social world (Goffman 1963); and rationalization and neutralization (Sykes and Matza 1957). This study replicates that study a decade later. The research for this current study was conducted at five gentlemen's clubs, three of which were included in the earlier study, and two additional clubs that were currently considered the most exclusive gentlemen's clubs in the city. Our findings, while different in specifics, were generally quite consistent with those a decade earlier. Topless dancers still managed the stigma of their deviant occupation by dividing their social worlds and using traditional techniques of neutralization to rationalize their behavior. Additionally, in this study, we found that they relied heavily on cognitive and emotive dissonance to reduce the emotional strain of the work and to alternately embrace their role as dancer and distance themselves from it as the situation seemed to dictate.