So you say you wanna dance?

In the long cultural war against a puritan and patriarchal establishment, nude dance clubs are outposts on the frontier of the current conflict. Exotic dancing is antagonistic to family values and community standards, the building blocks of culture. The strip bar attracts strange elements and fuels depraved appetites. Unsurprisingly, the general public often assumes strippers to be women of low character, low intelligence, and low moral standards. Strip joints and strippers themselves are linked to the underbelly of society, where crimes, drugs, and prostitution thrive.

Most civilizations have achieved superiority by putting on their clothes (Langner, p.71, 99). A stripper removes hers. This explains why strippers are assumed to be uneducated, and why strip joints are physically exiled to specific areas such as red light districts. They take the hard won gains of civilization to sanctify sexuality with love, flesh with intimacy, biology with poetry, and turn them carnal again (Scott, p. 134). Sex along with exotic dancing, more than anything else, threatens the precarious structure of social order. Subverting the intellectual rationale of civilization, flesh without intimacy antagonizes the carefully outlined boundaries of the "norm." Exotic dancing appeals to the primal and irrational, like the worst of popular culture. Is that true? I beg to differ.

The occupation of exotic dancing has remained one of the most intriguing of all maligned occupations. The term "exotic dancer" has many synonyms: "stripper," "strip teaser," "table dancer," "go-go dancer," and "adult entertainer." One must understand that the world of exotic dance varies by dancer, club, patron, and regulation. Diversity and complexity include dancer's physical appearance, motivation, background, and income.

Performers vary educationally, from Ivy League and other college students and graduates (in such subjects as sociology and nursing), to professionals (such as law school interns, certified public accountants, and stockbrokers) to high school dropouts. Some performers have danced in prestigious ballet and modern dance companies or competed in gymnastics, while others have had no previous formal dance training. Exotic nude dancers may or may not support boyfriends, husbands (Giobe 1993), or female partners. Some dancers are battered by their male companions and are forced to dance, although most do not surrender volition. Some dancers are on drugs, but most are clean. Some dancers "hook" (prostitute), yet most do not (some clubs fire women who go out with customers). Dancers may be single, married, or single mothers supporting their children. The women dance for the money (like most jobs), but some also enjoy dancing, asserting their feminine sexuality, seeking power, or trying to bolster self-esteem. Dancers may like or dislike men.

What are your thoughts on exotic nude dancing? Would you be fine if your relative or someone close to you would be an exotic nude dancer? Should exotic nude dancing be allowed?

Joey Negron