Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance [Paperback]

These are excellent essays by men and women about their experiences as strippers and customers. The essays are creative, interesting and personal in ways that will appeal to anyone searching to find out more about the experiences of those in the stripping business. I do agree that the last essay about the Lusty dancers fighting for unionization is the most hilarious to read because of the crazy wrangling over the use of one word!

Book Review: Flesh For Fantasy, Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance. Edited by Egan, Frank and Johnson. Review by George Albright, Esq. June 7, 2007

This book of essays are themed as the title suggests. For me the introduction is as important as the essays for it gives a way to understand what is to follow and how these three editors chose to articulate their grand framework.

A wonder of the book is that it was ever produced. It starts out. "Finding each other as colleagues and coeditors startled us with bolts of pleasure and recognition, though the creation of our threesome looked initially like a moment of Las Vegas luck, three sequined figures lining up against statistical probabilities."

Upon reflection they realized that they had been part of what they called "cadres of college-age feminists picking up our notebooks and our copies of feminist philosopher Judith Butler's, Bodies that Matter.....and driving across town to the local strip club to work our own personal understandings of .."

Egan, Frank and Johnson observe that they are a generation who have "inhabited the socially sanctioned forms of femininity as well as its margins". The narrator notes that "there is longing within us to pronounce to the world that as a post-civil rights generation-a generation of girl power and Girls Gone Wild- we can do whatever we want, including taking our clothes off for money. This longing stems from a utopian wish for a world ...."

All of the editors are former exotic dancers as well as now being academic feminists with the requisite PhD credentials and so much more. They have been there. They have danced the tune and on one hand they do not want to leave out the pleasurable, exciting and or transgressive aspects of exotic dance, yet having been inside the industry night after night, they surely shed some light on the negative, as well.

Egan, Frank and Johnson as a "collective of third wave strippers, want to explore deeply the issues surrounding, whose bodies matter, how bodies matter, and to whom. These women energetically offer essays as their own version of `lived theory' and `theory in the flesh" . They note that so many different interpretations and fantasies are given to and projected upon exotic dancers as they dance in the evocative lighting, the question remains after all is said and done, " Whose fantasy is this?"

Their answer follows no easy or well trodden path. "They note that like many third wave feminist anthologies that this book "..foregrounds ambivalence as a key characteristic of our position on sex work and complexity as the root of our experiences."

These authors note that there are "..painful realities about sexism and sex worker stigma..... this collection holds ....the utopian desire to declare the world safe for strippers and the realist corrective of reminding ourselves and our readers that stripping often hurts, us, physically ad psychologically.." They go on to say that they engage in the paradox of simultaneously being subject to and subversive toward existing systems of power. By so structuring they "..move the discourse on exotic dance beyond debate about whether dancers feel exploited or exercise agency,.."

"Male customers also face stigma and misunderstanding about their desires to visit strip clubs...." "The male contributors to our collection highlight the paradoxes of masculine privilege and the cultural stigma attached to those who get labeled as sick, desperate, perverts, or misogynists".... "We hope their writings bolster more dialogue on the complexity of interests that men have in the sex industry, physical, emotional, and economic.

The overarching purpose of the book is to bring a deep academic understanding of complex issues, combined with real world experience to the end that "..strip clubs and other sex-industry venues can become safe and sexy places that treat their workers fairly and their customers well. .... We are a part of a community that resists the compartmentalization of sexuality from the rest of our lives and desire to challenge the hypocrisy that surrounds commercialized sexuality. We are working toward a shared sense of ourselves as advocates of gender justice, sexual freedom, safe work environments, and the importance of erotic play. And we are not the only ones."

I note the dearth of material on the exotic dance club from the experience of the customer. I join Egan, Frank and Johnson in wanting to expand the breadth and scope of the conversation to the end that our sexuality may be experienced more openly and naturally. I too resist dysfunctional compartmentalization of our natures. To the extent that the exotic dance may contribute to the openness and acceptance of our full natures I yield to the allure of that venue.

Also of possible interest may be my own book: Enveloped by Venus. "One man's journey into the exotic dance world. Read about the emotions flowing from the warm embrace of Venus, feelings of intimacy and passion, as well as the sadness of the inevitable downfall of fantasy fueled relationships."

Sincerely, George Albright, Esq.

I really enjoyed this. A lot of my friends are dancers and the stories in here are so true to life. Sometimes they are a little out of place, as each is written by someone new- but you get a good all round idea of what its like to be a stripper.

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