Women, Stripping: Taking it On
Melanie Kolbeins
Femmes et strip-tease
Melanie Kolbeins apprehende ici les devats autour du strip-tease feminin
comme autant d'exemples d'un probleme plus vaste de categorisation. A
son avis, les discours contre ou en faveur de ce phenomene partagent le
meme presuppose: l' existence d'un desir «feminin» essentiel. Ce faisant,
les discours pro/anti-strip-tease participent Cl la regularisation de
construits socioculturels concernant le genre sexuel, la race et la classe,
ainsi que la beaute, le comportement, la moralite et la sexualite. «11 devrait
etre possible de critiquer le systeme de representation dominant Cl partir
d'un modele theorique qui remet en question les normes hegemoniques de
la feminite plut6t qu'illes reproduit.»
Contrary to my expectations, few feminist critics have specifically taken
on stripping, even in the context of theorizing pornography or the body.
When stripping has received critical attention, it has been largely within
debates known in the D.S. as the Sex Wars. This essay, in a sense, is not
about stripping but about how I see it being seen. Stripping is a variety of
ever-changing performances, not a simple or monolithic act. I cannot
assume uniformity among strippers or their audiences. I have already
excluded, for example, transsexual strippers, 1 male strippers, and sex
trade workers outside of Canada and the D.S. and their audiences for the
purposes of this discussion. However, without simplistically generaliz-
ing strip performances, it is possible to critique the ways in which a
market economy buys and sells gendered bodies, limiting their forms
and expressions. I chose to move away from the the pro-sex/anti-porn
lens 2 in favor of combining a materialist critique with a Butlerian notion
of performativity. I will argue that discourses on stripping tend to claim
an essential female desire in order to critique or defend the practice of
stripping. Stripping as a trade cooperates by generating desire for "real"
sex, and "real" or legitimated female bodies. Both reproduce restrictive
norms of femininity and female sexuality.
Women, Stripping: Taking it On . 47
Strip clubs explicitly cater to assumptions about femininity and
sexualized women's bodies. A stripper's attempts to control her repre-
sentation, for example, are often read by audiences and some pro-sex
critics as a real desire to arouse. In spite of strippers' insistence that their
representations onstage are the not-real, (according to field research by
Boles and Garbin and strippers' testimonies) audience members tend to
read for the real, assuming that the women are on stage because they are
nymphomaniacs or exhibitionists, stripping because they desire the
sexual attention. Theymay also assume that sex for sale on stage means
that sex is also for sale offstage when, according to performer testimonies
and articles on stripping, few strippers actually engage in prostitution.
This reading of strippers suggests the ways in which, to borrow Judith
Butler's words, "acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an inter-
nal core or substance" in the women onstage ("Gender Trouble" 336).
Stripping is not only performance; it is also performative in that it repro-
duces assumptions that the visible, unclothed female body is always
desiring.
Often objecting to, yet catering to, this desire for the real, most strip-
pers try to create an illusion of intimacy to increase tips. But in literally
bending over backwards, apparently to please her audience, a stripper
might be secretly checking her watch, as one Alberta stripper has admit-
ted (Church 11). Taking it off thus involves "putting on" a pretense of
real contact or sexual interest. This "put on" is a means of concealing,
which ironically generates audience desire to uncover the "real" woman
and does not necessarily protect the stripper. Heterosexual strip bars
purport to offer "available" women, and, significantly, nudity is not
revealing enough. As reporter Lynn Snowden, who stripped to write
about it, observes: "Guys often spend minutes at a time desperately
trying to get you to tell them your real name, as it seems more tantalizing
a secret than what's beneath your tiny strip of a G-string" (140). The need
to conceal, besides indicating the dangers for visible women, suggests
that audiences desire to uncover a hidden "real," to "know" the women
as well as deny the economic framework of the stripping context.
Stripping as a trade co-operates with medical and beauty industries
to create "real" and, as a result, abject bodies. Strip shows advertising
"no silicone" are becoming more and more popular, as if a performer
without breast implants is more honest, more "herself," or more intimate
with her audience. But the relatively new "no silicone" show does not
point to a freeing up of body types in stripping. While the desire for the
48 . Tessera
"natural" prevails, demand for a particular body type is increasing, and
the closer to the popular body ideat the greater the wage. Facial surgery,
liposuction, and breast implants are increasingly common. Not
any/body can strip. One stripper's recollection may illustrate this point.
Yvette Paris describes an obese barmaid taking to the stage and strip-
ping, "looking very sensually at the horrified patrons" (82). When an
excited man eagerly jumped onto the woman, the bar owner intervened,
and, disturbed by the spectacle, "everyone drank in silence for the rest
of the night" (82). Paris argues that this display of the female body, and
the response to it as grotesque, are outside both the codes of the stripping
context and the norms of desire. Stripping's regulation of body forms
and norms of desire problematizes the notion of stripping as a matter of
choice.
The question of choice, controt and limiting representations becomes
crucialwhen considering racial dynamics. In the articles and testimonials
I read, strippers and audience, desired and desiring bodies, were
assumed to be (or visually represented in photos) as white, revealing a
desire for a very particular "real" woman. The woman as object of desire
orbody to be "rescued" byantipom activists is often assumed tobewhite.
Moreover, the common binaries in sex trade debates-freedom versus
oppression, pro-sex versus anti-pom-fail to recognize multiplelevels of
difference and power. As Katie King argues, gay/straight splits in
pom/anti-pom debates dangerously limit those debates and assume
particular, limited subjects. According to King, "other differences"
besides gay and straight "that cannot be imagined as opposites may be as
salient or more salient" (83). If a dancer were not identifiable as white or
were costumed as exotic Other (eg. geisha or genie), the situation of the
body being viewed would then bring with it questions of the effects of
white supremacism,and materialand socialinequity,aswellas questions
ofgenderor sexual orientation.
In her critique of Jenny Livingston's film, Paris is Burning, Bell Hooks
questions the subversive potential of black male drag noting that "a
racialized fictional construction of the 'feminine'...makes the represen-
tation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation
as gender...[T]he idealized notion of the female/feminine is really a
sexist idealization of white womanhood" (147). Analyses of stripping
that assume a white performer similarly suggest that a "racialized
fictional construction of the 'femininew is at work. Futhermore, like drag
queens, strippers perform what Hooks calls "an idealized fetishized
Women, Stripping: Taking it On . 49
vision of femininity that is white" in part by drawing on and reproduc-
ing (stereo)typical Western images and icons of femininity such as the
vamp or schoolgirl and white movie stars (148).3 Given that certain
women's bodies have been specularized as "naturally" or predomi-
nantly sexual, stripping in its traditional context works to perpetuate
this imaging of race as well as gender.
The notion that stripping is a woman's"choice" frequently appears in
defences of women working as strippers. Playwright and stripper Janet
Feindel insists that "stripping is a good part time job for an
actress...except for the stigma" (Kirchhoff G8). More commonly, strip-
pers, such as a graduate student I spoke to, tend to emphasize that they
are working for the good pay. While such prostripping arguments may
counter images of strippers as abject or troubled, they often assume a
consistent working condition for strippers. Strippers, however,
frequently testify to the unreliability of employers and venues. Thus the
argument of free choice involves a belief in a kind of real in itself: that
individuals choose their jobs on a level playing field. If claiming an
image of strippers as victims is not an adequate basis for a critique of
stripping, it is still possible to show how the rhetoric of "choice" in sex
trade defenses oversimplifies the economic variables of stripping as a
trade. Job requirements and regulation of performance and costume as
well as, in some provinces, mandatory licensing, regulate the economic
and artistic control of how and where a stripper's body appears.
Regulation of stripping suggests that what a stripper does is in fact
juridically and economically determined rather than a matter of indi-
vidual "choice" or control.
Can stripping ever represent a subversion of regulatory norms? Anti-
porn discussion about how female strippers are perceived frequently
assumes that female subjectivity is inherently determined in relation to
the male, or that being an object of desire is inherently bad. ForJill Dolan,
lesbian striptease is a viable site of subversion because it operates
"outside" of male desire and heterosexist norms. In hoping to subvert
heterosexist norms, Dolan claims a "female desire" which has appar-
ently been absent, faked, or constructed in heterosexual representations
of woman and sex. Dolan explains that support of lesbian stripping is a
move to make visible what has been covered up or rejected:
... the lesbian pro-sex position vis-a.-vis pornography and sexual
fantasy is in some respects an effort to recuperate the lesbian posi-
50 . Tessera
tion within feminism.... The antisex morality of the antiporn move-
ment threatens to render lesbians not only marginal to feminism,
but totally invisible. (Feminist Spectator 60)
Dolan argues of "straight stripping" that spectators "buy control over
the gaze," but she excludes lesbian strip performances from this econ-
omy because the latter have the potential to explore "sexual and gender
fantasies of representation" (Feminist Spectator 67). Stripping
defender/ stripper Debi Sundahl suggests that gender play is a major
component of lesbian striptease. Lesbian strippers are "not limited to
ultra-feminine acts only; they could be butch, they could dress in mascu-
line attire" (178). For Dolan also, "the artifacts of gender as shifting, less
clearly readable values is part of the arousal in lesbian striptease"
(Feminist Spectator 79). Dolan extrapolates to argue that "lesbian subjec-
tivity creates a new economy of desire...Rather than gazing through the
representational window at their commodification as women, lesbians
are generating and buying their own desire on a different representa-
tional economy" ("Desire" 113). Instead of "male desire" driving repre-
sentations of women, presumably "female desire" is doing so. The all-
female, lesbian composition of the audience seems to be crucial for, as
well as the site of, the "different representational economy."
One limitation of Dolan's argument is that it contrarily claims that
lesbian stripping represents "female desire," while insisting that it
subverts categories of gender through play with gender roles. This
emphasis on claiming a "real" lesbian desire in part disrupts the notion
of "play" with categories of gender and sexuality that critics like Dolan
and Sundahl insist upon. Dolan assumes that lesbian strip acts are not
just simple mimicry of gender constructs but rather, as Judith Butler
argues of gay and lesbian identities, "running commentaries on those
naturalized positions as well" (Gender Trouble 23). But the artifacts of
gender Dolan refers to are not necessarily a g-string that can be taken on
or off at will. "Play" with stereotypes of masculine or feminine can rein-
force their power as norms / referents even as it exposes them as such.
Another limitation appears when Dolan assumes a fixed strip show
and knowable desire on the part of the spectator and stripper, and she
assumes "mutual interest" in lesbian striptease with the performer and
audience equally gratified. In doing so, Dolan overlooks the economic
exchange, apparently arguing that a kind of "real" "exchange of desire
between women" takes place ("Desire" 112). Dolan does not complicate
Women, Stripping: Taking it On . 51
her defense of stripping by examining how lesbian stripping might
commodify desire if it is a subset of an already regulated economy in
which contact and sex play with the audience are profitable, and tips
make up a large portion of strippers' wages. Sundahl's defense oflesbian
stripping relies on a rhetoric of "equal access" to sexual entertainment
and raising women's economic status and power within existing sex
trades, rather than subversion of them (78). The fact that the stripper
and audience do not represent heterosexual desire may not guarantee
that the strip shows are "outside" of heterosexist/racist systems of
representation.
It is important to remember that Dolan speaks from a particular pro-
sex position. She admits her utopianism and the limitations of her
defense of stripping when she concedes that "there is no universal
lesbian spectator to whom each lesbian representation will provide the
embodiment of the same lesbian desire. Sexuality, and desire, and
lesbian subjects are more complicated than that" ("Desire" 113).
Significantly, Dolan's position enables her to counter condemnation of
lesbian representations of sexuality, and it envisages women's desire
beyond negative appropriation. Moreover, Dolan's focus reminds us
that the context of stripping-where it happens and who is watching-
influences whether any forms of stripping subvert norms of femininity
and female display. Analysis should acknowledge the different ways
that bodies are seen and by whom. Going to a strip show to be aroused
by nudity is, I think, different from going in order to be aroused by
assaulting the performer physically. As Dolan suggests, desire and
subjectivity are complex, not fixed, but perhaps, to borrow performance
artist Karen Finley's phrase, a "constant state" in which we are always
projecting and seeking, and like a state, regulated in the ways in which
our desire(s) can be represented.
Laura Melnychuk's self-reflexive essay "Teasing Out Striptease"
attempts to "effectively attack the exploitative conditions that surround
and constitute the sex industry" as well as "redeem and elevate sex trade
workers as strong and powerful women" (60). Melnychuk's approach is
based on deconstructing her own investments in her arguments about
stripping as well as acknowledging strippers' personal histories and
avoiding"a monolithic, generalized description of each stripper's situa-
tion" (64). Such an approach seems an effective way of avoiding norma-
tive constructions of women and stripping. Melnychuk's essay
constructs an imaginary stripper who responds to her analyses, and
52 . Tessera
deconstructs her desire to know "the stripper." Neverthless,
Melnychuk's last question of the stripper is "How can I [know you]?",
and the fictional woman responds: "By 'working through my story and
hearing my voice...before you begin to write" (68). At this point "the
stripper's" response seems to be that of a knowable, "real" woman, not
the writer's construction. Following her advice, whose voice will be
heard and "worked through"? Onestripper's recorded experience will
never "cover" all others. The approach Melnychuk employs in writing
about striptease effectively illustrates how entangled any attempt to
analyze stripping is in the desire to know, categorize, generalize, and
rescue women, as well as speak for others.
Claiming a "real" female desire in order to suggest that women can
operate "outside" existing systems of representation could continue to
generate limited and self-contradictory debates not only about stripping
but also about other women's concerns. Such claiming reproduces what
Judith Butler terms a "regulatory fiction"; in other words, a phantasmic
but controlling notion offemale desire that would disallow many critics'
utopian gestures towards "stripping off" limited representations
("Gender Trouble" 339). But avoiding generalized claims for femininity
does not preclude a material critique of how female bodies work and are
used. Although stripping as performance is unfixable, it does have
measurable material effects in reproducing hegemonic norms of femi-
ninity and in naturalizing sex work as women's work, as I hope this
paper has demonstrated. As Teresa Ebert argues, "gender and sexual-
ity...are the effect of labor performed by, on, and through bodies as
historically determined by the division of labor and the unequal access
to economic and social resources" (40). It should be possible to analyze
the levels of material effects on different women's bodies, without repro-
ducing some notion of transcendental gender; in other words, to
continue to critique specific sites of female representation within a
theoretical framework that will challenge hegemonic norms of feminin-
ity rather than reproduce them.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. "Striptease." What is Dance? Ed. Roger Copeland and
MarshallCohen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983. 512-14.
Boles, Jacqueline and Albeno P. Garbin. "The Strip Club and Stripper-
Women, Stripping: Taking it On . 53
Customer Patterns of Interaction." Sociology and Social Research 58.2
(1974): 136-144.
Butler, Judith. "Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytic
Discourse." FeminismfPostmodernism. Ed and Intro. UndaJ.
Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. 324-340.
- . Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion ofIdentity. New York
and London: Routledge, 1990.
Church, Usa. "Life in the Skin Game." Calgary Herald 3 June, 1990.
Sunday Magazine Insert sec.: 6-12.
Dolan, Jill. "Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat" Acting Out: Feminist
Performances. Ed. Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan. Ann Arbor: U of
MichiganP, 1993. 105-118.
- . The Feminist Spectator as Critic. Theatre and Dramatic Studies 52.
Ann Arbor: UMI Research P, 1988.
Ebert, Teresa. "Ludic Feminism, the Body, Performance, and Labor:
Bringing Materialism Back into Feminist Cultural Studies." Cultural
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Hooks, Bell. "Is Paris Burning?" Black Looks: Race and Representation.
Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992. 145-56.
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Kirchhoff, H.J. "Lowering the Veil on the Bump and Grind Trade" The
Globe and Mail 6 April, 1989: G8. 145-156.
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69.
Meyer, Morris. "Unveiling the Word: Science and Narrative in
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Paris, Yvette. Queen of Burlesque: The Autobiography ofYvette Paris.
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Snowden, Lynn. "The Naked Truth about Strip Joints." Esquire
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54 . Tessera
Thanks to the members of "Reading Cultural Scripts: Feminist Theory
and Performance," Dr. Susan Bennett, and the participants of the
Corps/Corpus Conference, Universite de Montreal, for their responses
to versions of this paper and to S.s.H.R.C.C.
Notes
1 See Morris Meyer's excellent essay.
2 Discourses on stripping not only point to how femininity and sexuality are
apparently in a constant state of being controlled and regulated, but also
that they tend to operate well within this desire to control and regulate. The
ability to own and market the marked female body through fields of repre-
sentation, whether they be feminist critical texts or erotica, is often taken as
a given. Both anti-pom and pro-sex debates about stripping-that it is a
chosen profession that offers economic and artistic freedom or that it repre-
sents an overarching oppression of women-fail to recognize how the
polarity may reproduce the existing norm of women-as-property.
3 Many strippers argue that the costume before removal is as important if not
more than exposure of the body in "teasing" the audience, or as Roland
Barthes argues, "the whole of the striptease is given in the very nature of
the initial garment" (513). The body exposed is linked to the costume
recently removed. The costume helps, not only to cloak a "real" nude body,
but also to project images of the ideal feminine onto the stripper. Aided by
costume, heterosexual stripping in particular performs a very limited range
of identities for women. It creates a "feminine," and as Judith Butler argues,
"femininity is thus not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of a
norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of
discipline, regulation, punishment" (232). Because she is on display
sexually, in costume or "out," the stripper does not subvert norms but
rather represents "what she is supposed to be."
Ce texte a ete presente pour la premiere fois dans le cadre du Sixieme colloque
annuel des etudiantes et etudiants des deuxieme et troisieme cycles de
l' Association canadienne de litterature comparee (<<Corps/Corpus. The Body of
Literature/Literature of the Body»), tenu au Departement de litterature
comparee de l'Universite de Montrealles 31 mars et 1er avril1995 et organise par
Marie Lessard et Craig Ireland.
