I had never considered what went really went into my job emotionally, physically, or even socially until I learned about how we as a society gender bodies through specific lenses. My job is a very feminine gender performance that is seen through a lens of sexual promiscuity and exoticism. In this position I feel empowered and I see it through a frame of sex positivity and even consider it to be feminist— this is a position of physical and emotional labor that most of our society doesn’t acknowledge. In addressing the themes that intersect I hope to better explain what it means to be an exotic entertainer.
“Embodiment, a phenomenological term, is the experience of having and using a body; […] how we see and feel changes through new modes of inhabiting our flesh (Mears 2011, 108).” In Ashley Mears’s Pricing Beauty, she analyzes what it means to commodify a look and what having ‘the look’ means in a capitalist society. While I’m most certainly not a supermodel, I do rely on using my body and ‘look’ to make money. I have to embody a specific persona in my environment in order to capture the attention of patrons in the club; I use my body like a chameleon uses it’s, by camouflaging into someone’s desired fantasy for that evening. Being an exotic dancer is like learning a very specific trade—it requires total immersion once in that environment; eventually this becomes ingrained within the body, it will be a second nature that you’re able to turn on and off. In my images I display physical images of specific beauty looks that are required for the transformation to take place. Dressing the body in the specific clothes, makeup, etc is a learned craft. The image that is created for a shift is cultivated for the expectation of financial gain.
My job is considered appearance based work; this would categorize as the work done on our own bodies—to modify our looks and physical appearance for financial means. With dancing this is ritualistically expressed through doing my hair, makeup, picking out lingerie, shoes, etc. The labor that is being done once at the club is performance based, in that not only is dancing/pole work being done, it’s emotional labor as well. In order to excel at this job it is imperative that you remember your clients’ names, their partners’ names if given, children, life stories, jobs, etc to maintain a consistent relationship with that specific patron. This is done to reinforce a connection that goes beyond just simple physical attraction, it expands the fantasies that they have when coming into the club which reinforces economic gain. “Trautner (2005) found that the body was a central tool with which the women dancers were able to accomplish classed expectations of feminine sexuality. Dancers dressed and groomed their bodies in ways that expressed either working- or middle class expectations of beauty (Barber 2008, 457).” In both of my facial images, my makeup is done in a way that accentuates the stereotypical white female image; my blue eyes are lined with black liner to accentuate the shape and color, my lips are painted red to stand out, and my hair is blonde and tied back so that my face is front and center. These are symbols of middle class beauty; with this image it embodies a raced and classed ideal of femininity, sexuality, and capital.
Sex positive feminism; aka pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, pro sexually liberal feminism, is a social movement that started in the 1980’s. It was a response to the anti-porn feminist movement from scholars such as Catherine Mackinnon. The central theme is that of sexual freedom—this is essential to women’s freedom. “There have been two strains of feminist thought on the subject. One tendency has criticized the restrictions on women’s sexual behavior and denounced the costs imposed on women for being sexually active. This tradition of feminist sexual though has called for sexual liberation (Gayle Rubin, 1984).”Sex work has been consistently criticized and stigmatized within our culture. While some people see it as immoral and degrading, I see it essentially just as a job. While it is emotionally and physically investing, so are other jobs that are labor based. In connection to exotic dancing, I come at it from an extremely sex-positive perspective. I see the exercising of sexuality to be an empowering position that enables me to have agency over my body. As an independent contractor I get to call the shots, that places me in a position of power over a position of oppression. I don’t understand nor see a need for condemning exotic dancers or sex work in general if agency is present.
