'Stripped'--Exotic dancers' lives are laid bare
Stripping exploits, empowers women

By Mark Coomes
mcoomes@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Bernadette Barton has written the academic equivalent of a bodice-ripper, only without the bodices -- or any other accoutrements, aside from high heels.

"Stripped: Inside The Lives of Exotic Dancers" is a revealing book about a revealing (and controversial) trade that focuses on a philosophical clash between old- and new-school feminism:

Are strippers exploited or empowered?

Both, Barton discovered.

"It depends on at what point you look at a woman's career," said Barton, an associate professor in sociology and women's studies at Morehead State University.

"In the beginning, it can be very empowering and exciting. But over time, inevitably, it is more exploitative."

Barton, 38, found that strippers can earn excellent money and that the attention and affirmation can be a big boost to self-esteem.

For a while, at least.

Eventually, most strippers suffer from burnout and boredom. Their sex drives plunge and their disdain for men rises. And they just get plain sick and tired of the heels -- especially the human kind.

"About three years is the general dividing line where women start to feel that the bad is outweighing the good," Barton said. "The main theme of the book is the toll that stripping takes on a woman over time."

Barton's book will be released May 28 by New York University Press, founded in 1916 to "publish contributions to higher learning by eminent scholars."

"They wanted something with some meat and some sizzle, which my book has," Barton said. "It is intellectually rigorous but empty of academic jargon. It's written in a very readable style."

Barton is a Framingham, Mass., native who earned master's and doctoral degrees in sociology from the University of Kentucky. She spent eight years writing and researching "Stripped," but spent only a little more than a year, altogether, hanging out in strip clubs from San Francisco to Hawaii to Lexington, Ky.

Here is some of what she found:

Most dancers earn $200 to $400 in a four- to six-hour shift. One of Barton's subjects made $3,000 a night.

The attention, when positive, is an ego boost -- even "psychologically healing," Barton said, for women who have been rejected or repeatedly told they are unattractive.

The decision to strip is usually a choice, not an act of desperation.

"Women in Western countries have other options," Barton said. "We're not talking about a girl from rural Thailand coming to Bangkok and entering the sex trade to support her family."

The stigma is a burden.

"Most women's parents don't know at first, but they can only fake it for so long," Barton said.

Male jealousies make relationships hard to sustain, sometimes driving women to experiment with lesbianism.

"But most of them, when they stop stripping, gravitate back to heterosexual relationships."

Most exotic dancers can't dance a lick, which was surprising and a little frustrating to Barton, who studied ballet until arthritis forced her to hang up her tutu in her teens.

"I hate to criticize anyone but, yes, it was hard for some of them to find the beat," Barton said. Some might ask, why do the book at all? Are strippers a worthy topic for serious academic inquiry?

"Of course they are," Barton said. "To say otherwise is to say that they are not even people; that their lives are not worth understanding; that their lives are worthless.

"I did this research because they are a marginalized group of women in our culture, and I'm a feminist and I'm committed to understanding the lives of women."

Sounds about right to me. I'd imagine that, just like many jobs, this would have a fairly high level of stress involved. Thanks for the update, maybe I'll pick up her book someday, when I finally get the motivation to read more.

her book is $65 as it is an academic text.

I'm not surprised by this. I don't think it'll shock anyone that strippers burn out after awhile. There's nothing worse than a stripper who won't shut up about her life. I'm paying her to tell me how buff I am, not about how she's only 3 credits away from a general studies degree at Montclair State.

Strippers are not really paying their way through college.

On an ironic note, "Bernadette Barton" is actually a pretty good stage name.

that is really fucking funny to me...her name totally oozes catholicism.

most strippers i've met have drug/alcohol issues, were abused as children, and look way better in the blacklights than in the daylight

Strip clubs are the lowest of the low. And I am a person who has been to a couple of dozen in my six years. I never get how people enjoy them. You have girls that you generally do not respect because of their line of work, pretending to like you in a sexual way, and you cannot do a thing about it with the exception of giving them more money to blue bone you some more. It is like paying to spend a week in hell. Plus I feel sorry for them, I feel sorry for myself...... It is just a sad situation and anyone who enjoys strip bars is pretty gay when it comes down to it. It is paying money to someone to pretend to love you, and you do not even gat any. Plus it is one of the nastiest things in the world. I have known three people who went into the industry, and their lives took a direct turn to the south shortly after.