G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.30 (648 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0822329727 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-10-15 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Based on her experiences as a stripper in a city she calls Laurelton—a southeastern city renowned for its strip clubs—anthropologist Katherine Frank provides a fascinating insider’s account of the personal and cultural fantasies motivating male heterosexual strip club "regulars." Given that all of the clubs where she worked prohibited physical contact between the exotic dancers and their customers, in G-Strings and Sympathy Frank asks what—if not sex or even touching—the repeat customers were purchasing from the clubs and from the dancers. At the same time, she shows how the dynamics of male pleasure and privilege in strip clubs are intertwined with ideas about what it means to be a man in contemporary America.Frank’s ethnography draws on her work as an exotic dancer in five clubs, as well as on her interviews with over thirty regular customers—middle-class men in their late-twenties to mid-fifties. She finds that the clubs provide an intermediate space—not work, not home—where men can enjoyably experience their bodies and selves through conversation, fantasy, and ritualized voyeurism. She considers how regular visits to strip clubs are not necessa
One question she does not address is economics: how do middle- and working-class men justify spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars a night at these clubs? Of appeal exclusively to a handful of academics, this work is not recommended.Ina Rimpau, Newark P.L., NJ Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Unfortunately, this rigorous approach has robbed her thesis of its inherent bathos and humanity, resulting in a tedious, laborious read weighed down with academic jargon. . She also includes some of her own fiction, which does not enhance the reading pleasure. Her conclusions are not enlightening: although it upsets their wives and girlfriends, men continue to frequent s
"meh" according to Christine Myhaver. interesting research read.. Understand the book for its actual theme Michael Booker While this is obviously adapted from academic material, Frank uses her experience as an exotic dancer to dig into the question of why men frequent strip clubs.I'll grant that, superficially, this is a darned easy question to answer.Still, one of the real strengths of the book is that Frank was able to see past her academic preconceptions and d. An Extremely Anthropological Disection Of The Male Psyche I've read a number of books dealing with this genre, but this was (by far) the most dry. It is extremely clinical, and reads more like a doctoral dissertation than a book. That's not to say that there weren't some interesting points made in the book, but you REALLY had to dig through the anthro jargon.Franks cites other source a lot -- more th