Stripping the Illusion Lap Dancing: Exposing the Reality of ... - Object

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Object: Challenging Objectification Empowering? “If you regard having fleeting sexual power over men, for about 1 second then yes, (this is the moment when you actually get him to agree to dance), but this power disappears the second you start removing your clothes for him.” „Alexandra‟ 7 “A lot of people would drink a lot to get through it... Or people would turn up for work drunk. 90% were drunk by the end of the night. So they were more vulnerable [...] I don‟t think anyone feels empowered.” „Sarah‟ 8 “I don‟t think that topless dancing is empowering for women - it is empowering for men. And it's not just sexual - these men like being in an environment where women give them lavish attention, laugh at their jokes, flirt with them and ultimately get their tits out for them. Women in the 'normal' world are not usually so biddable. The difficulty is that it feels empowering, because you feel that you have something the man wants. I think most of us don't take the trouble to distinguish between whether this power is real or just a feeling, an illusion. And let's face it - if you're a woman working in the lap dancing industry, for whatever reason, it's a hell of a lot more comfortable to believe that you're empowered than to believe you're deluding yourself. As Mary Wollstonecraft so distinctly put it in 1792, "the illegitimate power which [women] obtain by degrading themselves is a curse." „Joanne‟ 9 7 OBJECT interview 8 Ibid 9 From the forthcoming book Stripped: The Reality of Lap Dancing. Jennifer Hayashi Danns with Sandrine Leveque. 4
Object: Challenging Objectification “After a few years of watching and learning, I decided that the men have always got the power. They run the industry, they hire the dancers, they stock the bars, they produce the currency, they choose who dances for them, they decide who goes home happy, they pay. And as lovely as it may be to think that you are making them pay, that they are paying for the pleasure of your company- the only reason anyone is there at all is because the men are the ones with the money – and therefore, ultimately, the power.” Ex-Waitress in a Lap Dancing Club 10 “It‟s not empowering, it‟s very disempowering. It‟s harmful... It‟s very dangerous to define yourself through the eyes of these men who are buying your body. I see that now- I wish I could get other women to see it.” „Angela‟ 11 “For all the „we-love-it‟, „it‟s empowering‟ talk, I think that most women who do it don‟t feel anything positive about it. You just feel you can‟t make money any other way, that‟s the most important thing about you... you are a sexual object, and that‟s what men want, and that‟s all you are.” „Ellie‟ 12 “With us, [men] didn‟t feel the need to pretend that we were “equal”. We were there to be used and they carried on like to them it was obvious that women were inferior to men - discussion closed. [They acted like] we were “all the same”, easily interchangeable, one substituted for another in a blink of an eye and also a nuisance when we talked.” „Tatyana‟ 13 10 Ibid. 11 Walter, N., 2010. Living Dolls. London; Virago Press. p.61. 12 Walter, N., 2010. Living Dolls. London; Virago Press.p.45 5
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Stripping the Illusion Lap Dancing: Exposing the Reality of ... - Object

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