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Stripclubs, Part 1, Typical Stripclub Activities
Stripclubs According to
Strippers:
Exposing Workplace ual Violence
Part 1, Typical Activities
Ó Kelly Holsopple, 1998
holso002@tc.umn.edu
Kelly Holsopple is a co-founder of the Metropolitan
Coalition Against Prostitution in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Currently, she is
a Program Manager for the Freedom and Justice Center for Prostitution Resources,
Volunteers of America, Minnesota. She is the author of Pimps, Tricks
and Feminists.
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this paper is to investigate women's experiences in stripclubs
and to describe the activities in stripclubs from the women's point of view. The format
approach is collective story narrative with the author as part of the collective voice.
The research was inspired by the author’s experiences in stripping over the course of
thirteen years. The author’s intention is to examine the conditions of stripclubs by
describing the fundamental way stripclubs are organized. The description features bar
activities focused on stripper-customer interactions, survey data on ual violence in
stripclubs, and women's thoughts on stripping.
THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
Stripclubs are popularly promoted as providing harmless entertainment and as
places where respectful men go to watch and talk to women (Reed 1997). Stripclub customers
are described as normal men who use stripclubs to avoid ery and therefor find a safe
outlet for their ual desires in balance with their marital commitments (Reed 1997). In
contrast, stripclubs are criticized for being environments where men exercise their
social, ual, and economic authority over women who are dependent on them and as places
where women are treated as things to perform acts and take commands from men (Ciriello
1993).
Stripclubs are organized according to gender and reflect gender power dynamics in
greater society. "Gendered spaces are social arenas in which a person’s gender
shapes the roles, statuses, and interpersonal dynamics and generates differential
political and economic outcomes and interaction expectations and practices" (Ronai,
Zsembik, and Feagin 1997:6). Stripclubs are more specifically organized according to
gender inequality, which is perpetuated by gendered spaces and consequently ualized
(Ronai, et al 1997). The typical stripclub scenario displays young, or partially
women for fully clothed male customers (Thompson and Harred 1992).
The entire analysis of stripclubs is located within the context of men’s
domination over women. When organizations are produced in the context of the structural
relations of domination, control, and violence, they reproduce those relations (Hearn
1994). These organizations may also make explicit use of gendered forms of authority with
unaccountable and unjustifiable authority belonging to men (Hearn 1994). The stripclub
elicits and requires direct expressions of male domination and control over women (Prewitt
1989).
In order to dominate or control and secure men’s domestic, emotional and
ual service interests, male dominated institutions and individual men utilize violence
(Hanmer 1989). Furthermore, male dominated institutions and individual men "forge
alliances and strengthen the notion of group masculinity and power through forced access
to the female body" (Brownmiller 1976:211). Stripclubs turn acts of violence against
women into entertainment and enterprise for men. Men associated with stripclubs use force
and coercion to establish ual contact with women in stripping and inflict harm upon the
women. Violence against women is identified as physical, ual, emotional, verbal, and
representational, but all violence from men against women should be understood as ual
violence (Hearn 1994). This definition and the concept of a continuum are useful when
discussing ual violence, especially in stripclubs. Continuum is defined as a basic
characteristic underlying many different events and as a series of elements or events that
pass into one another (Kelly 1987). The common underlying element in stripclubs is that
male customers, managers, staff, and owners use diverse methods of harassment,
manipulation, exploitation, and abuse to control female strippers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Despite a substantial amount of research on the topic of strippers, stripping, and
stripclubs, none focuses on ual violence in stripclubs perpetrated against strippers.
Instead the studies focus on sociological and psychological profiles of the women and the
women’s strategies for interaction with customers. Articles that focus on the women
investigate the cultural space of the female dancer, her performance and auxiliary
roles, test identity theory within the socially devalued role of the exotic dancer, and
explore the effect of self-discrepancy on stripteasers’ emotional stability (Forsyth
and Deshotels 1997; Reid, Epstein, and Benson 1994; (Peretti and O’ Connor 1989).
Other articles about the women are concerned with contingencies for women’s
initiation and commitment to the deviance of striptease and with techniques topless
dancers use to manage the stigma of a deviant occupation (Skipper and McCaghy 1970;
Thompson and Harred 1992). Studies focused on stripper and customer relationships analyze
counterfeit intimacy utilized by strippers and customers in interaction and performance
and compare stripper and customer interactions with mainstream negotiation and sales
strategies (Boles and Garbin 1974; Enck and Preston 1988; Ronai 1989). Although most
studies mention male ual violence and exploitation, the research regarding stripping
fails to investigate and account for the problem of ual violence in establishments that
feature female strippers. The gap is the rationale for my study.
METHOD
Data for this research were obtained through interviews, a survey, and the
researcher’s participant observation while involved in stripping (Berg 1998; Babbie
1998; Lofland and Lofland 1984). Women in this study stripped in the local stripclubs in
the Midwest metropolitan area where the researcher lives, in local nightclubs in the same
area, in metropolitan and rural stripclubs and nightclubs across the United States, at
private parties, in peep shows, and in saunas. The stripclubs featured a variety of
attractions including topless dancing, dancing, table dancing, couch dancing, lap
dancing, wall dancing, shower dancing, and bed dancing. In addition, some clubs had
peepshows, female boxing and wrestling with customers, offered photographs of the dancers,
or hired models and actresses as headliners.
The study was conducted in two phases. In 1994, I conducted free-flowing
qualitative interviews for one to four hours each with forty-one women while I was still
involved in stripping and compiled participant observer notes about the activities in
stripclubs. The women ranged in age from nineteen to forty years old and were involved in
stripping from three months to eighteen years. All of the women identified themselves as
Caucasian.
In 1996, I proceeded to design a twenty-six-question survey according to themes
derived from the interviews to investigate ual violence in stripclubs. My
long-time involvement in the strip industry allowed an association with strippers that was
invaluable for administering in-depth surveys regarding sensitive issues. The surveys were
administered face-to-face to insure the information was indeed from the women in
stripping. Again, the surveys and consequent discussions lasted from one to four hours.
Many women explained that they had never talked about their experiences so extensively
because no one had ever asked them the right questions. Participants were asked to say
whether they had experienced different abusive and violent actions in stripclubs, to
estimate how often each action happened, and then to identify which men associated with
stripclubs perpetrated the action. The categories of men were defined as customer, owner,
staff, and manager. Since I exited stripping, snowball sampling was employed to recruit
the eighteen participants for the survey (Babbie 1998). Participants in the survey were
asked to pass on postcards to other women. The range of ages was eighteen to thirty-five
years old. The age of entry into stripping ranged from fifteen to twenty-three years old,
with a mean age of eighteen years and ten months. The length of time the women in this
study were involved in stripping ranged from three months to eighteen years with an
average length of six years and seven months. Women predominantly identified themselves as
Caucasian. Only one woman identified herself as Hispanic. Twelve of the women described
their ual orientation as heteroual, two as lesbian, and four as biual. The survey
data was analyzed on the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (Norusis 1988).
After the data was compiled, a focus group of 4 women currently in stripping and
with no prior association with the study positively evaluated the relevancy of the study
and approved the collective story (Berg 1998).
Statements in quotations throughout this paper are derived from the 41 interviews
and the interviews that often followed the administration of the 18 surveys.
PART 1: TYPICAL STRIPCLUB ACTIVITIES
Recruitment
Women find out about stripping from a variety of sources. Upscale stripclub
franchises recruit in new cities by having managers and imported dancers scout in
nightclubs. Most women find out about stripping from girlfriends already in stripping,
male associates, the media, and some from prior involvement in prostitution. One woman
told how she loitered in and around urban stripclubs to pick up customers when she was
fifteen and how her pimp eventually drove her to small town strip bars because those bars
admitted her and hired her. Someone else got involved in stripping through an escort
service for bachelor parties. Another young woman who went to a gentlemen’s club to
pick up her friend recounted her recruitment as an eighteen-year-old. She waited at the
bar, was served alcohol, and the owner asked to check her I.D. Instead of censuring her
for drinking, he told her she would make $1000 per week and pressured her to enter the
amateur contest that night. She won the contest, $300, and worked there three weeks before
being recruited into an escort service by a patron pimp.
In a typical hiring scenario women respond in person to a newspaper ad promising
big money, flexible hours, no experience necessary. As an audition the club manager asks
the applicants to perform on amateur night or bikini night, both of which are particularly
popular with customers who hope to see girl-next-door types rather than seasoned
strippers. The manager will make a job offer based on physical attributes and number of
women already on the schedule. Clubs portray the job requirements as very flexible. Women
are told that they will not be forced to do anything they do not want to do, but clubs
overbook women so they are forced to compete with each other, often gradually engaging in
more explicit activities in order to earn tips (Cooke 1987).
Working Conditions
Women in stripping are denied legal protection relating to the terms and
conditions under which they earn their livings (Fischer 523). Most strippers are hired to
work as independent contractors rather than employees. Most strippers are not paid a wage
(Mattson 1995), therefor their income is totally dependent on their compliance with
customer demands in order to earn tips. More often than not, the strippers have to pay for
the privilege of working at a club (Cooke 1987; Forsyth and Deshotels 1997; Prewitt 1989).
The majority of clubs demand that women turn over 40 to 50 percent of their income for
stage or couch rental and enforce a mandatory tip out to bouncers and disc jockeys (Enck
and Preston 1988; Forsyth and Deshotels 1997). Usually a minimum shift quota is set and
the women must turn over at least that quota amount. If a woman does not earn the quota
and wants to continue working at the establishment, she owes the club and must pay off
that shift’s quota by adding it to the quota for the next shift she will work. The
stripclubs may also derive income from promotional novelty items, kickbacks, door cover
charges, beverage sales, prostitution, and capricious fines imposed on the women. As
independent contractors, strippers are not entitled to file discrimination claims, receive
workers’ compensation, or unemployment benefits (Fischer 1996; Mattson 1995). Club
owners are free from tax obligations and tort liability. Owners pay no Social Security, no
health insurance, and no sick pay. Some club owners require strippers to sign agreements
indicating that they are working as independent contractors and many clubs require women
to sign a waiver of their right to sue the club for any reason.
Although strippers are classified as independent contractors, the reality of their
relationship to their supervisors is an employee-employer relationship. Regardless of the
agreements claiming independent contractor status, clubs maintain enormous control over
the women. The club controls the schedule and hours, requires strippers to pay rental
fees, tip support staff large amounts, and even sets the price of table dances and private
dances. Clubs have specific rules about costuming and even dictate the sequence of
stripping and . For example, by the middle of the first song the woman must remove
her top, she must be entirely by the end of the second song, and must perform a
floorshow. All this regardless of whether customers are tipping her or not. A club may
further influence dancers’ appearances by pressuring them to shave off all their
pubic hair, maintain a year-long tan, or undergo surgery for breast augmentation. At
clubs, it is common for the performers to be shaved clean, giving them an adolescent and
even childlike appearance.
Clubs also exert significant control over the strippers’ behavior during
their shifts by regulating when women may use the bathroom and how many of them can be in
the dressing room at one time. Some clubs do not provide seating in the dressing room and
forbid smoking in that room, thus preventing strippers from taking a break. When a woman
wants to sit down or smoke a cigarette, she must do so on the main floor with a customer.
Clubs enforce these rules through fines (Cooke 1987; Enck and Preston 1988; Ronai 1992).
Women are fined heavily by club management: $1 per minute for being late, as much as $100
for calling in sick, and other arbitrary amounts for "talking back" to customers
or staff, using the telephone without permission, and touching stage mirrors. Women are
fined for flashing, prostitution (Enck and Preston 1988), taking off their shoes, fighting
with a customer, being late on stage, leaving the main floor before the DJ calls her off,
not cashing in one dollar bills, profanity in music, being sick, not cleaning the dressing
room, using baby oil on stage, dancing with her back to a customer (Enck and Preston 1988)
and being touched by a customer.
Despite the stripclub’s representation of a dancing job as flexible,
strippers attest that their relationship with the club becomes all consuming and
everything associated with being a stripper interferes with living a normal life. And
despite the common perception that a woman can dance her way through school, many
strippers report that their jobs take over their lives. Long and late hours, fatigue, drug
and alcohol problems, and out of town bookings make it difficult to switch gears. Not only
do the women spend a significant amount of their time in stripclubs, the activities and
influences from the club environment permeate their personal lives and detrimentally
effect their well being. Although stripclubs are considered legal forms of entertainment,
people unassociated with the industry are unaware of the emotional (Peretti and
O’Connor 1989; Ronai 1992), verbal (Mattson 1995; Ronai 1992), physical (Boles and
Garbin 1974), and ual abuse (Ciriello 1993; Ronai 1992) inherent in the industry.
Despite claims from management that customers are prohibited from touching the women, this
rule is consistently violated (Enck and Preston 1988; Forsyth and Deshotels 1997; Ronai
and Ellis 1989; Thompson and Harred 1992). Furthermore, stripping usually involves
prostitution (Boles and Garbin 1974; Forsyth and Deshotels 1997; Prewitt 1989; Ronai and
Ellis 1989; Thompson and Harrod 1992).
Stripper-Customer Interactions
Main Floor
Stripclub activities are offered in public spaces or private rooms or other
isolated parts of clubs (Forsyth and Deshotels 1997). The typical stripclub scenario
presents young, or partially women mingling with fully clothed male customers.
They circulate through the crowd, encouraging men to buy liquor, drinking and talking with
men, and soliciting and performing a variety of private dances (Prewitt 1989; Ronai and
Ellis 1989). Women describe their role in the stripclub as hostess, object,
prostitute, therapist, and temporary girlfriend and say they are there to entertain and
attract men and business for the owners.
Women who work at small strip joints say they can hang out, order in food, and
play pool during their shifts. On the other hand, women who work at gentlemen’s clubs
have to hustle photographs and drinks and are required to sell promotional T-shirts,
calendars, and videos. They can be mandated to sell the items with private dances. For
example, the dancers buy T-shirts from the house mom for $8 and sell them for $15. So for
$15, the customer receives a T-shirt and 2 $10 table dances. Strippers at gentlemen’s
clubs are further informed by management that they are not allowed to buy their own
drinks, that they have to be sitting with customers, and can never turn down a drink, even
when their drinks are full.
Stage
Women report dancing on stages as cheaply constructed by laying plywood on the
benches of restaurant booths to stages covered with kitchen linoleum to wood parquet or
marble stages in a few upscale clubs. Some stages are elevated runways so narrow that
strippers say that cannot get away from customers on each side touching them, especially
when they are kneeling down to accept a tip in the side of their g-strings/t-bars or when
they have their backs turned. Stages can also be sunken pits with a rail around it and a
bar for the customers’ beverages. During a set, a stripper may do striptease,
acrobatics, dance, walk, or squat to display her genitals. Generally the progression for
striptease begins during the first song with the woman wearing a dress or costume covering
her breasts and buttocks. Over the course of a set of 2 or 3 songs she will remove her bra
and in clubs, her g-string/t-bar. Some clubs feature floorshows in which women crawl
or move around on the floor posing in ual positions and spread their legs at the
customers’ eye level. During a floorshow, a dancer changes her movements from upright
to positions on her knees and squatting in a crabwalk in order to ‘flash’
tipping customers. "Flashing" is pulling the g-string/t-bar aside, revealing the
pubic area and/or the genitals. Dancers describe this as "doing a show" for
paying customers. Ordinarily, a dancer only positions herself in front of tipping patrons
(Prewitt 145). Customers who fail to tip are ignored. Audience response can be expressed
by clapping, hooting, barking, whistling, amount of money tipped, or complete silence
depending upon time of day, state of inebriation, excitement over the musical selection,
or the appearance and abilities of the stripper.
On stage, some women’s thoughts wander, while others’ focus on angry
desperation. "I daydream about nothing in particular to pass the time of 12
minutes." "I’m thinking about how good I look in the mirrors and how
good I feel in dance movements." "I tell myself to smile."
"I think about getting high and that I am making money to get high."
"I am giving these guys every chance to be decent, so that I don’t have to be
afraid of them." "I am filled with disdain for the customers who do not
tip, but sit and watch and direct you to do things for no money." "I
think of how cheap these fuckers are, what bills I need to pay."
Private Dance Activities
Private dances are usually performed in areas shielded from the larger club view
(Forsyth and Deshotels 1997, Prewitt 1989). As a rule, the private dance involves one
female dancer and one male customer. Private dances are situations where women are often
forced into acts of prostitution in order to earn tips (Forsyth and Deshotels 1997;
Prewitt 1989; Ronai and Ellis 1989). Men masturbate openly (Peretti and O’Connor
1989), get hand jobs (Forsyth and Deshotels 1997), and stick their fingers inside women
(Ronai and Ellis 1989). Men with foot fetishes have been known to suck on dancers’
toes.
A variety of private dances are promoted in strip clubs. Table dancing is
performed on a low coffee table or on a small portable platform near the customer’s
seat. The woman’s breasts and genitals are eye level to the customer. Couch dancing
for a customer entails the dancer standing over him on the couch, dangling her breasts or
bopping him in the face with her pubic area. Lap dancing requires the woman to straddle
the man’s lap and grind against him until he ejaculates in his pants. A variation
involves the woman dancing between his legs while he slides down in his chair so that the
dancer’s thighs are rubbing his crotch as she moves. Bed dancing is offered in a
private room and requires a woman to lay on top of a fully clothed man and simulate ual
intercourse until he ejaculates. Shower dancing is offered in upscale clubs and allows a
clothed patron to get into a shower stall with one or more women and massage their bodies
with soap. Wall dancing requires a stripper to carry alcohol swabs to wash the
customer’s fingers before he inserts them into her vagina. His back is stationary
against the wall and she is pressed against him with one leg lifted. Peep shows feature
simulated or actual acts directed by openly masturbating customers. Customers sit in a
private booth and view the women through a glass window. Live shows involve 2 or more
individuals engaging in simulated or ual activity performed behind glass or on a stage.
Customers openly masturbate while watching the show from the audience or through an
opening in a private booth.
During private dances women are conscientious about their boundaries and safety.
"I don’t want him to touch me, but I am afraid he will say something violent
if I tell him ‘no’." "I was thinking about doing prostitution
because that’s when customers would proposition me." "I could only
think about how bad these guys smell and try to hold my breath." "I spent
the dance hyper vigilant to avoiding their hands, mouths, and crotches." "We
were allowed to place towels on the guys’ laps, so it wasn’t so bad."
"I don’t remember because it was so embarrassing."
Dressing Room
Women describe a range of types and qualities of dressing rooms. Strippers are
expected to change clothing in beer coolers, broom closets, and public restrooms. Some
stripclub dressing rooms are nice with lights, mirrors, vanities, and chairs, and are
equipped with lockers, and tanning beds. Other clubs have make-up mirrors but no chairs or
ashtrays to prevent dancers from lingering. Women complain that too many dressing rooms
are down isolated halls or in the basements of establishments and that they have to scream
for help when customers intrude. Some are so damp or filthy that the women cannot take
their shoes off. Other dressing rooms are so frigid that dancers carry small space heaters
to and from work. The dressing rooms are used to change costumes, drink, do drugs, do hair
and make-up, iron costumes, do homework, bitch about customers, avoid customers, talk
about problems, hang out. In strip joints and rural bars, women lay on blankets or inside
sleeping bags between sets and nap and read.
The greatest response to questions regarding preparation for work was
"drink". Women drink while getting ready to go to work and they drink while
doing their hair and make-up once in the dressing room. Women who work at juice bars
that do not serve alcohol or at bars that do not allow women to buy their own drinks
report that they stop at another bar on their way in and "get loaded". Between
stage sets and private dances, women drink some more, clean themselves with washcloths or
babywipes after performing on a dirty stage or being touched by a lot of men, apply
deodorant, and perfume their breasts and genitals.
Stripclubs, Part 2, Survey Data
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