“We were all monsters” the nameless narrator tells us four sentences into Hooked by John Franc. The “we” refers to nine men who live in a city where prostitution is conveniently legal and when the men learn this fact, they begin a downward, hooker-hopping spiral of frightening velocity that ends in the most melodramatic plot… Continue reading John Franc Wants Us Hooked (2011)
Tag: books
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)
Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing (2011)
Jennifer Hayashi Danns says she wrote Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing “to give a voice to women who have direct experience of lap dancing but are often unheard, and to peel away some of the gloss surrounding this industry”—a laudable goal in an age in which pole-dancing classes are offered at every gym… Continue reading Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing (2011)
Diablo Cody’s Candy Girl (2005)
I was outed the other day as a stripper. I tracked down everyone involved in the gossip chain, found the weak link (who sent me an apology letter), and then asked one of the recipients of this hot morsel of Big News in a Small Town out to coffee. She told me she was surprised… Continue reading Diablo Cody’s Candy Girl (2005)
The Early Erotic Review or Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies (1757)
Harris’s List is an 18th century catalog of London prostitutes complete with (real) names, addresses, and descriptions of each, and it proves to me just how much men throughout the ages have loved reviewing prostitutes. They love it today, they loved it 250 years ago, and my guess is that even most Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient animal cave… Continue reading The Early Erotic Review or Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies (1757)