Live Sex Acts

Dancing on shaky ground: the power-laden interactions between exotic dancers and their customers

“…In a similar way, exotic dancers themselves often see themselves not as personal service workers, with the attendant negative connotations detailed above, but as professional service workers (Chapkis 1997;Dallis 1995;Dudash 1997;Funari 1997). Chapkis'…”

“…What if marriage had been abolished because of its inherent oppressive elements, she asks rhetorically. She calls for a similar reform of the sex industry, starting with decriminalization (Chapkis 1997).…”

“…But not only do dancers face problems that seem universal to other workers, they also are able to tap into particular strategies to manage their work problems, just like other workers are able to do. The literature on exotic dancers as workers is based in large measure upon the experiences of the researchers as participants in the sex industry (Chapkis 1997;Dallis 1995;Dudash 1997;Funari 1997;Guidroz 1996;Hartley 1997Hartley , 1998Ronai 1992aRonai , 1992bRonai 1993Ronai , 1998Ronai and Ellis 1989;Snowden 1993). This section will begin with an examination of several different approaches to the study of exotic dancers as workers.…”

“…When researchers who are interested in exotic dancers tum their attention to the dancers status as workers, we should not be surprised, then, to discover that they examine aspects of work that would be common arenas of inquiry in the more conventional female occupations such as flight attendant, fast-food worker, nurse, or secretary. Thus, some of these recent studies on dancers as workers examine such aspects of work as their material working conditions (Chapkis 1997;Funari 1997;Liepe-Levinson 1998;Simeone 1998), which can vary widely. How the law affects the work and working conditions of exotic dancers is another topic of consideration by recent scholars (Fotheringham 1994;Gartner 1997;Hanna 1998).…”

“…A service worker is an employee who perfonns personal services for relative strangers (Hodson and Sullivan 1990) by interacting directly with them as clients or customers (Leidner 1993). There are different categories of service workers, and there is a bit of controversy concerning to which category exotic dancers belong (Ronai 1992a;Chapkis 1997). As we shall see, the different categories of service work overlap and weave together, making the task of locating exotic dancers within only one particular category difficult.…”