The women in porn and the strippers in clubs are often the same. The ‘dancers’ in strip clubs are often porn stars who go on tour around the clubs and do feature performances to bring publicity. Adult Video News tells us, for instance, that Carmen Hart, who is a Wicked Pictures contract girl, has taken many titles in exotic dancer awards competitions, such as ‘Exotic Performer of the Year’ in 2007 (Nelson X, 2008, p. 80). Sunny Lane, is a dancer for the Déjà vu chain who tours under the title ‘The Girl Next Door Goes Hardcore’ and has appeared in porn movies such as Big Wet Asses 13 (Nelson X, 2008, p. 80). She is now an ‘adult feature’ on the strip club circuit after starring in an Eminem music video in 2003.
Sometimes strip club chains diversify into porn, when they have not evolved out of the porn industry. Thus the Spearmint Rhino chain, which is now international and has a branch in my city of Melbourne, has its own film studio to produce pornography (Nelson X, 2008, p. 82). John Gray, founder of Spearmint Rhino, has 6 convictions in the US for offences ranging from carrying a concealed weapon to writing dud cheques, for which, collectively, he received a suspended sentence, 68 months probation and periods in jail (Blackhurst and Gatton, 2002). He explains in Adult Video News that “[a] lap dance is not a hardcore sexual product like an adult video, they are radically different businesses. But, there’s enough synergy between the two that one could gain a lot of ground by dealing in both industries” (Nelson X, 2008, p. 82). He gives, as an example, the showing of the porn star, Jenna Jameson, in club bathrooms with Jameson saying, “Hi, I’m Jenna Jameson with Spearmint Rhino. While you have your dick in your hands, let me tell you about my new movie and some of the upcoming events at the Spearmint Rhino” (Nelson X, 2008).
Cross marketing
Porn and strip clubs are not only frequently created by the same market pimps and players, but they are generally promoted together, with the clubs acting as free billboards for porn. Thus the AVN Website, though it started as a mouthpiece of the porn industry, is now heavily involved in marketing strip clubs. There is, for instance, a strip club review section on the Website. The way the clubs are promoted can provide fascinating glimpses into the way the industry understands the motivations of the buyers. The advertising slogan of the ‘upscale’ strip club The Lodge in Dallas, for instance, is ‘Take back your balls’. The club ran a local TV commercial “in which a timid husband hesitantly tell his wife he’s going out with the guys. So she pulls out a key hidden in her blouse, unlocks the wall safe and takes out a box labelled, ‘Mike’s Balls’. With a disapproving look on her face she reluctantly hands them over” (The Lodge, undated, Website link no longer active). It seems reasonable to assume that this club sees men as wanting revenge or compensation for the fact that the women in their lives are no longer subservient, and may even be critical of their use of the sex industry. I call the practice in which men seek compensation for the better opportunities that women now enjoy in the public world, and the fact that they may rebel against unwanted sexual subservience in the home, the outsourcing of women’s subordination (Jeffreys, 2009).
Conclusion
The basis of this burgeoning industry is the abuse of the bodies of women and girls. Governments derive taxes from the industry, as do local councils. Tourism, entertainment and fashion industries cross promote their products and make profits. Meanwhile the industry creates harms not just for the women in the porn, in the clubs and in the brothels, but for the status of all women. The sex industry constructs the model of what sex is, i.e. the servicing of aggressive male dominant sexuality. It makes it harder for women to create egalitarian relationships with men. The pornography and strip club industries deliver the subordinate sex class to the male ruling class in the form of bodily orifices to be stuffed, swollen and distended anuses to be stared at, naked bodies to be ogled. This industry of women’s subordination and men’s revenge stands right in the middle of the road of women’s progress towards equality and it is growing and diversifying as we speak.
Bibliography
Bindel, Julie (25 March, 2010) ‘Iceland: the world’s most feminist country.’ The Guardian,
Blackhurst, Chris and Adrian Gatton (16 September, 2002) ‘A gangland killing, lap dancers who are said to sell sex and the criminal past of the man behind the Spearmint Rhino empire’ Evening Standard, London.
Bureau of Business Research, IC2 Institute and the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (2009) ‘An Assessment of the Adult Entertainment Industry in Texas’. University of Texas.
Busama (n.d.) ‘Busama Entertainment’,
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATWA) (December, 2010) ‘Not Just Harmless Fun: the strip club industry in Victoria’. Melbourne, Australia.
Coy, Maddy, Miranda Horvath and Liz Kelly (2007) ‘It’s just like going to the supermarket’: Men buying sex in East London. Report for Safe Exit. Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University, London.
Eden, Isabel (2007) Inappropriate Behaviour: Adult venues and licensing in London. The Lilith Project, Eaves Housing, London.
Frank, Katherine (2002) G-Strings and Sympathy. Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire. Duke University Press, Durham and London.
Hanna, Judith Lynne (1998) ‘Undressing the First Amendment and corseting the striptease dancer’ The Drama Review Cambridge, Mass. 42 (2) pp. 38 (32).
Holsopple, Kelly (1998) Strip Club Testimony. The Freedom and Justice Center for Prostitution Resources: A Program of the Volunteers of America of Minnesota. 2825 East Lake Street, Minneapolis MN 55406.
Jeffreys, Sheila (2009) The Industrial Vagina: The political economy of the global sex trade. Routledge, London.
Jeffries, Samantha and Mark Lynch (2007) ‘Female Striptease in the Sunshine State: A Description of Queensland’s Live Adult Entertainment Industry and its Regulation’ Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal,
Justin (7 October, 2010) ‘The Benefits of Exotic Dancing’ Busama Blog,
Kipnis, Laura (2003) Bound and Gagged. Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America. Duke University Press, Durham.
Liepe-Levinson, Katherine (2002) Strip Show. Performances of Gender and Desire. Routledge, New York.
Montgomery, Dave (3 October, 2005) ‘Industry trying to take its image upscale.’ Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas).
Nelson X (August, 2008) ‘The Evolution of the Gentlemen’s Club’ Adult Video News,
Schweitzer, Dahlia (1999) ‘Striptease: The Art of Spectacle and Transgression’ Journal of Popular Culture 34 (1) pp. 65–75.
Tyler, Meagan (2009) ‘Active Service. The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of Women’s Sexuality in the West’. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University of Melbourne, Melbourne.
Ward, Helen and Sophie Day (2004) ‘Sex work in context’ in Sophie Day and Helen Ward (Eds) Sex Work, Mobility and Health in Europe. Kegan Paul, London, pp. 15–32.
___________________________
1 See also
Stella
Dancing Pornography
It didn’t take long to learn how to switch it on, to spin around the brass poles that rose from the centre of the many podiums, to gauge the worth of the crowd, to give it just the right amount of energy. Too much and you wouldn’t last the night, too little and you wouldn’t pull the cash. It didn’t take long to learn to copy the narrow definition of sexuality that made money on the floor, to assemble a costume of fuckability, become a real, living, purchasable manifestation of pornography. It took longer to learn to hustle, to leave aside my humanity and erect that false facade of happy whore, to become th
at simpering shallow shell of a woman we call a stripper: part air hostess, part sex slave. But it happened, and within a few shifts I was no longer a woman, certainly no lady, but one of ‘The Girls’.
The diamond-hard world of glittering disco balls, fluorescent lit podiums, brass poles, booze and the constant thumping bass turned on at 10 am in time to catch the lonely lunch crowd. The regulars, those poor fuckers who we learned to sneer at, to pretend superiority over, to dissemble the reality of their power to purchase us with money earned in a real job in the sunlit world outside. They came to spend their lunch money on a moment’s attention from a purchased pussy, while they ate the free meal provided by the club. Sober, these guys were harder to fleece, but being regulars, they would buy a dance if they didn’t manage to see enough for free to satisfy them. You had to work efficiently to sort the wheat from the chaff and not waste time with the men who were just there for free food, a free look and to pretend they were living inside one of their well worn porn clips.
Twenty dollars for a song’s worth of simulated sex out on the club floor. Fifty dollars for a Fantasy Dance: 3 songs’ worth of private stripping in a seedy room downstairs, choose from nurse, schoolgirl or cheerleader. It sounds like easy money – one dance every half an hour and over the course of a 12-hour shift you’d have made some significant money. Some days I walked out with $800, some days I barely made $80. Most shifts I pulled between $150 and $250. Every day was long. Every day was hard. Every day someone forced me in some way – either licked, bit or poked me, sometimes even penetrated me, held me down, hurt me. Then there was the verbal degradation, by the customers and even ourselves. ‘Come here bitch and dance on this’, ‘oh yeah, let me be your little whore’. They cut in, those words, they get inside you. That internalisation of slut slut slut.
Every day I was afraid that I would lose my job. There was no security; if the house said ‘Go’, you went. Once I gave my house fee to a bar girl who was doing the books, but failed to sign for it as I was being called to the podium to dance. She said she would enter it and I could sign later. When I returned to sign, she said I hadn’t given her the money. I protested, but no one would believe me. It was the moment of truth for me: she was believed because she was a real person with a real job. I was just a stripper, a whore, probably a junkie and, no doubt, a thief. I had to pay again or leave the premises. The realisation that I was a stripper now, not a person, was wounding.
People seem to think that strippers work in some kind of protected and controlled environment. That they call the shots, backed up by the authority of the establishment and security staff. That the punters are the underdogs, the manipulated victims of those money-grabbing women who flaunt their sex appeal for cash and never have to pay out. Some strippers themselves perpetuate this myth, I’m not sure whether it is to justify their trade to the world, or to themselves and each other. Sometimes you do feel powerful, twirling around that pole like a dancer in a music box, captivated audience at your feet, but moments later, groped, pinched, and forced, that illusion is quickly broken.
Downstairs we were ‘allowed’ to open our legs, and we dangled this promise in front of the men like Rolex watches from the inside of a jacket. “Come downstairs where I can dance just for you, three songs and you have me all to yourself in the wildest fantasy dance you’ve ever wished for …” The suggestion was always there, the suggestion is always there, when you are buying a woman, that you can script your own porn. Why wouldn’t you get confused in the heady euphoria of purchasing a person, a person barely clothed, pretending the opportunity to take those stupid pieces of skimpy clothes off for you was the best thing that had happened to her all night? Minutes later, closed off in a room dimly lit and decorated like a bedroom, with her breasts pressed against your face and her naked vagina hovering above your erection, why wouldn’t you think it was okay to force what you wanted on her? Why would you even think you were forcing her?
Downstairs in that carefully constructed porn world of flimsy fantasies, so intent on imitating the kitsch stereotyped scenarios watched on pay TV, in offices on desktop computers, on DVDs smuggled home, in clubs on large screen TVs, seen in newsagents, milkbars, calendars, on billboards … why wouldn’t the delusion deepen and widen to subsume reality? That’s the point, isn’t it? Aren’t we all supposed to want to be porn stars?
Where I worked we took turns to dance on the podiums. It was part of our freelance ‘contract’ which we had to fulfill in order to operate within the club’s rules. Once every couple of hours I would step up onto the podium table and dance around the brass pole, creating that image of free pussy and wanton sexuality that such clubs foster to draw their custom in. For 15 minutes I would rub myself up and down that senseless piece of metal, hoping that someone would pay me to take my g-string or bra off so that I could make some cash. On a crowded night, when men would stand 3-deep around the podiums, this could be a lucrative way to draw in some extra customers. On a bad shift, it was a time when you were just the centre of attention of a bunch of tightwads looking for an opportunity to make themselves look macho in front of their mates. The ugliest and most sexually violent crowds were those men who were there for each other rather than the women, seeking moments to prove their masculinity, their virility, to themselves and each other, fuelled by alcohol, fear and testosterone. On those nights, even inside the club it felt lawless, intimidating, and unsafe.
I really don’t know how I found myself, at 23, dressed up as a schoolgirl, smacking my naked buttocks with a wooden ruler and chewing gum. It wasn’t where I imagined I’d be. I also hadn’t imagined taking the school dress off in a very small room, the chairs around the walls filled with charged-up, drunken men, pumped up with the insane belief that buying a dance from a stripper means that you own her, you can do what you like with her, and that she should shut the fuck up and take it. I hadn’t seen in my future a time when I would be passed around that room, dry fucked and felt up, hit with the ruler, frightened and fragile like a rabbit in a petting zoo. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, my future. I was smarter than that, but there I was, becoming further enmeshed in this foreign world, a long way from the offices and restaurants I’d previously worked in, and further still from the tertiary qualifications I knew I could achieve.
I guess it started a couple of years before when, after leaving a violent relationship with nothing, I’d answered an ad in the paper for ‘glamour’ modelling, or soft porn photography, and been published in a couple of those tacky porn mags for some easy cash. Stripping didn’t seem so far from that – it was just the image of your body that was consumed, not the body itself, yes?
So while out drinking with male friends we found some flyers in a pub and they wanted to go and have a dance. I was curious, so we went. In my memory it seemed exotic – the lights and costumes made the women look beautiful, raunchy – pornographic. Stilettos and wigs, fake tans, wide white smiles and knowing looks echoed the images many of us have seen in porn flicks. One of the girls came and asked me if I was interested in working there. She talked up the working conditions and the money she made and before I knew what I was doing, I had taken the number, spurred on by the encouragement of my male friends. A couple of the blokes had dances and then we went home. I thought about it for a month or so and when my personal circumstances began to pinch harder, I rang and organised to go in. I mean, if I didn’t like it, I could just stop and go back to waitressing, right?
I scored speed to cope with the stress of my first shift. While speeding, and while it was all optional, I can almost say I enjoyed it. I liked being looked at, I liked feeling sexy, and the provocative flirting came easily. An experienced girl took me in and introduced me around the floor, using my newness and my naivety as fresh bait to secure herself more cash, dancing doubles with me, the ‘new girl’. I made a couple of hundred bucks that first night and felt powerful. I agreed to come back. I quit my day job. I was a showgirl.
The euphoria didn’t last long. The tired
ness, the agony of dancing for so many long hours on those ridiculous heels, the sheer length of the shifts, took their toll and I quickly grew weary of the vacuous world of the club. Some of my earnings went straight back into my costumes as the right look pulled more cash. A long, blonde wig could add $50–100 a night to your earnings; thigh-high PVC stiletto boots, another $50–100; new costumes, imported stripper shoes, proper stripper bikinis for sexy disrobing; acrylic nails, tans; all that Barbiefied junk popularised by those mindless porn flicks. For the career showgirls this included surgical procedures like boob jobs, often funded in part by the club, offered to promising girls who lacked that silicone contour that pornography has taught men to desire. The cost of keeping up was high. My days became caught up with grooming and sleeping, my nights with performing at the Club.
My relationships suffered; I was becoming more and more isolated. I started using heroin to soothe the pain, all of the pain: the physical pain of my deteriorating knees and back; the emotional pain of being nothing, negative space, dirt, slut, whore, stripper, junkie. The fear and desperation rose. I just couldn’t afford to lose my job. I couldn’t afford my heroin habit without it, and I couldn’t face dancing without the heroin to buffer the ugliness and pain. My life became one tiny circle that revolved around dancing and scoring. But I never caught up with those debts. In fact, they grew as my life shrank. I was depressed, and desperately miserable.
There was very little socialising or support among the women in the club. Everyone tended to keep to themselves, but I did make friends with one other girl – she called herself Kelly. She had been a prostitute before she stripped and I was drawn to her positive attitude and upbeat persona on the floor and we sometimes worked together in double acts on slow nights. It was nice to know one other person there by her real name; that little intimacy meant a lot. Listening to her stories made me realise how thin the veil was between the stripping and prostitution worlds, with many of the women moving between the two. We were instructed by the management to refer men who were looking for prostitutes on, down the chain, to a brothel not far from the club. I wondered if there was a connection, as many men seemed to come to the club to ‘warm up’ before moving on to a brothel (see also Jeffreys, this volume).
Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry Page 24