When I was in high school I went to a party at someone’s house and there was a stripper there. I was about 17 at the time and I think the girl was pretty similar to me in age. She was wearing nothing but a thong and high heels. I was totally disgusted. The boys were all standing around ogling at her naked body, and I remember one of them saying to another as they walked upstairs away from her, “Make sure you take a shower. I am sure she is really dirty.” It was so degrading, and I was so angry because I felt like she was betraying female kind by letting such stupid boys say things about her like that.
I want to discover why women do this, and how they think of themselves when they are doing it. I have heard that many women advocate it as liberating, and yet others are sucked into it through drug addictions at a young age. Are many women who decide to become strippers, immigrants who are trying to earn more money, or are they simply bored middle class females who want to try something fun and new? I want to be able to understand why many of these women choose a career that is so repulsive to me.
Do the women in the strip clubs remain overly loyal to their employers like the merry maids, or Kenny in the slaughter house? As Schlosser states, “While Kenny Dobbins was recuperating, Monfort fired him. Despite the fact that Kenny had been with the company for almost sixteen years, despite the fact that he was first in seniority at the Greeley plant, that he’d cleaned blood tanks with his bare hands, fought the union, done whatever the company had asked” (Schlosser, 190). Do they care about the men who watch them and pay for lap dances? Many employees seem to stay blindly loyal to abusive employers, and strippers seem like a prime candidate for abuse.
Do these women feel discriminated against or labeled as whores by society? Many of the strippers must feel unease when someone asks what they do for a living. Do they feel they cannot reveal to their friends and family what they do with their time? Low wage workers in many situations feel inadequate and discriminated against. For example the Merry Maids are not even allowed to ask the people whose house they are cleaning for a glass of water. It is as if the company wants the homeowners to feel that the maids are not on an equal footing to them. For example Ehrenreich says, “Maddy assigns me to do the kitchen floor. OK, except that Mrs. W is in the kitchen, so I have to go down on my hands and knees practically at her feet” (Ehrenreich, 83). Do strippers feel the same way as a merry maid when they have to squat down for the men in bars or give them lap dances in private rooms, or is it somehow empowering?
Are strippers able to unionize or are they prevented from unionizing like fast food workers. Schlosser gives an important example proving this when he states, “Tom and Mike Cappelli closed the St. Hubert McDonald’s on February 12, just weeks before the union was certified…Local union official were outraged” (Schlosser, 77). Strippers are, no matter how strange it seems, working, and as workers they face economic issues just like everyone else. It is important that they are paid a minimum wage and have the rights to unionize just like everyone else.
Do employers in the strip club industry value their employee’s bodies? Places like slaughter houses and restaurants definitely don’t based on the information from Ehrenreich, Shipler and Schlosser. Ehrenreich says, “I start tossing back drugstore-brand ibuprofens as if they were vitamin C, four before each shift, because an old mouse-related repetitive-stress injury in my upper back has come back…thanks to the tray carrying” (Ehrenreich, 33). Is it a better situation for women’s bodies in strip clubs or worse? It could be worse let’s say in terms of diseases that may be passed between employees and customers, but better in terms immediate violent dangers like back injuries or getting cut by a knife in a slaughter house. For example Schlosser says, “again and again workers told me that they are under tremendous pressure not to report injuries” (Schlosser, 175). Do they hire based on how a women looks like the women from Shipler’s book who did not get promotions because as Shipler puts it, “The people who got promotions tended to have something that Caroline did not. They had teeth” (Shipler, 52).
What age are most strippers? As Schlosser states, “The labor structure of the fast food industry demands a steady supply of young and unskilled workers” (Schlosser, 78). Are strippers teenagers, like the fast food workers? They should be over 18, but that does not necessarily mean they are. Does the strip club industry target a certain age group with drugs, or other ploys to attract a certain kind of low wage worker?
Some strippers do make above minimum wage, but a large percentage struggle to survive. These are the strippers that I will focus my paper on. I am really interested in this topic because I feel a connection to these women. I could just as easily be in the same situation as them, and I want to illustrate that strippers, as low wage workers, are taken advantage of, and should have more respect in society.
No comments:
Post a Comment