Strip Club: Gender, Power, and Sex Work by Kim Price-Glynn (2010)

In the midst of Girls Gone Wild culture, in which stripping is made to seem effortless and women’s naked bodies are cast as easily replaceable, Kim Price-Glynn enters the Lion’s Den. The Den, a seedy strip club in a small, white, working-class town in the Northeast, is a far cry from the glamorous media images… Continue reading Strip Club: Gender, Power, and Sex Work by Kim Price-Glynn (2010)

Transnational Desires, Suzana Maia (2012)

There was something surreal about reading Susana Maia’s Transnational Desires: Brazilian Erotic Dancers in New York during down time in the strip club where I now work. Perhaps because I was reading about Astoria strip clubs while in an Astoria strip club, Maia’s ethnography hit close to home. Maia and I are both social scientists;… Continue reading Transnational Desires, Suzana Maia (2012)

Unequal Desires by Siobhan Brooks (2010)

Unequal Desires is a long overdue work that (finally!) focuses on race as central in the lives of strippers. While some of the literature on stripping focuses on race as a footnote or tangent, for Brooks, race is the central concern. Everything from everyday micro-level issues (hiring decisions, shift availability, and stage sets) to the… Continue reading Unequal Desires by Siobhan Brooks (2010)