Abstract
Based on 13 months of ethnographic field work, this research interrogates male customers' motivations for patronizing strip clubs as well as gendered functions of strippers' labor outside of sexual arousal. More broadly, this research examines the relationship between male customers, masculinity, and female strippers' labor. The author makes the argument that strip clubs provide a “safe space” for male customers to experience emotional intimacy and receive “stripper therapy.” Through their labor, strippers fulfill the emotional needs of male patrons and enable them to express their emotions, often concerning that which compromises their masculinity. The hypersexualized, masculinized environment of the strip club, however, shields customers from the fear of being “insufficiently” masculine or failing to adhere to masculine ideals of stoicism and self-control. Thus, this research highlights the extent to which men rely on strippers' labor to meet the demands of masculinity and cope with the pressure it exerts.
TopIntroduction
Jet’s Place1, located in Hanksville, was the first strip club the researcher patronized for this research and one of the clubs they patronized most frequently – well over two dozen times. Jet’s is nothing like the strip clubs featured in movies and music videos. Customers are not brandishing cash to summon strippers to give them lap dances and they very infrequently throw stacks of cash on stage. On several occasions, strippers and customers alike described Jet’s as a local bar that happens to have strippers and poles. Within a few weeks of frequenting Jet’s for this ethnography, the bouncers no longer checked the researcher’s ID or charged her admission, the majority of service staff and strippers knew her name, and one of the bartenders stopped charging her for drinks. The researcher was a regular of sorts.
When the researcher first entered Jet’s on the evening of Friday, May 5th, 2017, a handful of customers were seated at the bar and two were seated at tables in different corners of the club. None were seated around the stage. Throughout the night, very few customers sat at the stage, and never more than one at a time. Those that did approach the stage sat for a short period of time before returning to their seat at the bar. When the researcher returned on Sunday, May 14th, roughly half of the customers gazed at the stripper on stage from their seat at the bar. The other half were paying no attention to the performance. Some were talking to the bartender, some were scrolling through their phones, and some were talking to a stripper.
When Lilly, a 22-year-old, Latina stripper, exited the stage, she introduced herself to the researcher; the two spoke for roughly an hour before she introduced the researcher to Craig. Craig looked to be white and claimed to be in his 60s. Straight away, Craig said he wasn’t a “typical” customer so he wasn’t sure he could be of any help.2 The researcher replied that she wanted to speak with both typical and atypical customers. Craig said he was a former professor and a current therapist. He said that a number of strippers at Jet’s had given him the phone numbers of their boyfriends so that he could speak with them as a therapist.
The researcher did not prompt Craig to start talking about why he patronized Jet’s or strip clubs more generally. He started musing on the question himself. He said he initially came out of “curiosity.” He admitted that “nudity” must have played a role. He said that he had not been in a relationship for some time and that “at my age” he would like to keep the “part of me alive” that appreciates the “female body.” He concluded that coming to Jet’s may have been about “titillation” at first, but now he comes to socialize. Eventually, he said that he would need to think more about why he comes. He wondered out loud if he was “part of the problem.” The researcher asked Craig what he meant by that. He said this was part of the sex industry and he wasn’t sure if he was helping to sustain the sex industry and just making “these guys over here [gesturing to the managers sitting at a table to our left] rich.” Craig said that, unlike other customers, he could distinguish reality from “fantasy.” He said that the “fantasy” was gone for him and that he does not pay for lap dances. Craig claimed later in the conversation that the best strippers will make “eye contact” with you during their performance and make you believe “you’re the only man in the room,” even in a room of two dozen people. Evidently, Craig did not consider this part of the “fantasy.”
From the time Craig arrived, to the time they parted ways, the researcher did not see Craig so much as glance at any of the strippers performing on stage. He sat at the bar, ordered water, spoke with a stripper for a few moments, and then spoke with the researcher for nearly an hour, all while facing away from the stage. This conversation with Craig on the researcher’s second visit to Jet’s marked the point in which she realized that patronizing strip clubs is not always or exclusively about sexual stimulation.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sex Worker: A person who sells their erotic labor for monetary or material gain.
Masculinity: A place in gender relations, the practices through which individuals engage that place in gender, and the effects of those practices on individual lives and larger society; though associated with people assigned male at birth, individuals of all sexes may embody the practices and discourses which comprise masculinity.
Emotional Intimacy: An element of interpersonal relationships that is characterized by some degree of the following qualities: self-disclose, emotional expression, support, trust, physical intimacy, mutuality, and closeness.