Reinforcing Gender Roles at the Male Strip Show: A Qualitative Analysis of Men who Dance for Women (MDW)

While stripping has been an attractive topic among sociologists for several decades, much of the existing research concentrates on women who dance for men (WDM) and men who dance for men (MDM). In this study, I use qualitative methods to understand the experiences of men who dance for women (MDW). I spent 18 months at a strip club that I call “Dandelion's,” and conducted 22 in-depth interviews with male strippers. Specifically, I explore how the male strip show reproduces traditional, stereotypical gender roles in two main ways: dancers’ physical interactions with customers, and their hypermasculine presentations of self.     

The Self-Concept as a Side Bet: How Stripping Enhances the Self-Views of Men who Dance for Women

Because stripping is considered a form of “dirty work,” it has the capacity to negatively influence exotic dancers’ self-definitions. While some researchers have looked at the ways in which stripping impacts the self-concepts of women who dance for men and men who dance for men, there have been very few studies of the self-views of men who dance for women. Using qualitative methods, I examine how stripping shapes the self-concepts of male strippers. Overall, I found that the positive effect on dancers’ self-definitions was an important side bet that kept them committed to the occupation.     

the gentlemen in the club: a typology of strip club patrons

Research on professional stripping and strippers has traditionally focused on characteristics of strippers, interactional strategies, and normative processes of the stripping environment. Essentially, no previous research has addressed the characteristics or roles of patrons in strip clubs. Drawing on data collected via covert participant observations in two gentlemens clubs in a major Midwestern city, this analysis addresses this gap in the literature. Using dramaturgical analysis, strip clubs and their patrons are assessed with an emphasis on identifying interactional patterns of patrons. Based on patrons individual actions and interactions with dancers, the present study supports the construction of a six-category typology of patrons. Discussion includes analysis of how the homosocial, ultra-masculine context of the setting affects and illuminates patrons motives for frequenting strip clubs, the social commodities provided by strip clubs, and relative power within strip clubs.     

Distancing and Solidarity as Resistance to Sexual Objectification in a Nude Dancing Bar

ABSTRACT

Drawing on observation and interviews in a mid-Atlantic nude dancing bar, I examine front-stage customer-dancer relations as well as dancers' discourse among themselves backstage. I use James Scott's theoretical framework regarding subordinate group resistance strategies to analyze dancers' attempts to resist customers' harassment. On the micro-level dancers exercise agency, reconstructing their identities within the larger context of macro-level oppression. Dancers' front stage tactics include spatial distancing, verbal one-liners, physical aggression, calling on customers, and united action with other dancers. Backstage, dancers reframe the public text, articulating their own identity construction by creating a social site for solidarity and desexualizing the body.     

Identity Construction,Self Perceptions,and Criminal Behavior of Incarcerated Women

Using symbolic interactionism and labeling as theoretical frameworks, identity status formation has been studied primarily with students in school environments, and very little is known about how people in other situations perceive themselves. This research examined how 104 young women convicted of felony offenses viewed their personal and social identities, and explored whether previous criminal behavior predicted how women saw themselves at this point in their lives. Having a prior conviction and being involved in drug use and sales predicted the likelihood that women would see themselves as criminals, but property crime did not. Implications of the findings were discussed.     

Rule-Making and Rule-Breaking: Strip Club Social Control Regarding Alcohol and Other Drugs

Through fieldwork and interviews, this research addresses internal and external social control of drug and alcohol use in “Mell's Belles,” a strip club in a working-class northeastern city. I describe a variety of internal social control techniques used to regulate alcohol and illicit drugs, and then note the impact of external social control on the strip club, including police raids and general surveillance. Strip clubs have an unpredictable, laissez faire approach to rule enforcement, enforcing rules only when necessary. External social control uses legal power to infiltrate Mell's Belles over petty ordinance breaches, and ultimately, drugs. As an underclass population engaged in deviant work, strippers and patrons are unequipped to contend with surveillance regimes.     

Four categories of women who work as topless dancers

Many involved in the feminist debates over sex work have polarized the construction of women in the sex industry as either victims of exploitation, or free agents who choose this work. This study examined the life circumstances of 30 women who worked as toplesS dancers to determine, how, if at all, the polarized debates reflect the realities of the women in this study. Four catagories of women who worked as topless dancers emerged: (1) survivors, (2) workers, (3) non-conformists, and (4) dancers. These categories suggest that there is a continuum of experience with varying degrees of choice, and demonstrate the limitations of dichotomous thinking when it comes to understanding the lived experiences of women in the sex industry.     

Are work stressors related to employee substance use? The importance of temporal context assessments of alcohol and illicit drug use

In this study, the author explored the relations of 2 work stressors (work overload and job insecurity) to employee alcohol use and illicit drug use. The primary goal was to explore the importance of temporal context (before work, during the workday, and after work) in the assessment of substance use compared with context-free (overall) assessments. Data were collected from a national sample of U.S. workers (N = 2,790) who took part in a broad cross-sectional survey on workplace health and safety. Consistent with past research, the results fail to support a relation between work stressors and overall measures of alcohol and illicit drug use. However, the results support the relation of work stressors to alcohol and illicit drug use before work, during the workday, and after work. These results provide support for both the stress-induced substance use and stress response dampening propositions of the tension-reduction hypothesis. When exploring the work environment as a potential cause of employee substance use, these results underscore the importance of measures that assess alcohol and illicit drug use in terms of their temporal relation to the workday.     

‘Close,not close’: Migrant artists negotiating transnational mother-daughter intimacies

The feminisation of migration is contributing to growing awareness of the transformation of familial subjectivities and emotional terrains as a result of transnational movements. The emotional lives and identities of women have often been at the forefront of these investigations. However, the female roles investigated are largely limited to those of mothers and domestic workers. In this paper, we explore how another gendered identity has also been transformed by international migration: that of the daughter. We avoid repeating analyses of the gendered experiences of domestic workers by drawing on an analysis of research conducted with young female artists who are first or second-generation migrants. Reflecting on research interviews and examples of their work exploring mother-daughter relationships, we consider how independently mobile young women navigate the emotional and geographic distances in their intimate relationships with their mothers, both within and beyond their artistic works. We argue that the navigation of ‘close, not close’ relationships with their mothers shapes their gendered subjectivities by informing the social and cultural identities they enact across the distances of generations on the one hand, and of nations, on the other.     

Exploring female dancer’s emotions and coping experiences following deselection: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to (a) explore female dancers’ experiences of emotions following deselection and (b) examine the coping mechanisms used by dancers to overcome these emotions.MethodsTwo one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten female dancers (aged 20–26, average career length M = 6 years) from dance forms including ballet, jazz, commercial, and contemporary. Data were collected and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis by Smith (2009).ResultsDancers experienced a rollercoaster of emotions including disappointment, confidence impacts, and embarrassment, as well as changes in their feelings towards dance. To deal with these emotions the dancers often avoided their emotions, used dance as therapy, and sought social support as coping mechanisms.ConclusionsDancers’ emotional experiences of deselection seem to negatively influence the social identities of the dancer and the levels of motivation they held towards dance. Findings highlighted the importance of coping with these emotions, and suggested future sport psychologists should apply interventions to assist with this and the regulation of emotions to prevent dancers from dropping out.     

Between Recognition and Mis/Nonrecognition: Strategies of Negotiating and Performing Identities Among White Muslims in the United Kingdom

This article explores white British Muslim experiences of, and strategic performative responses to, the (mis/non)recognition of their seemingly incompatible religious and ethnic identities. Based on in-depth interviews (N = 26), it highlights how the different identity categories they hold relate to one another, influencing processes of perceived recognition in interactional contexts. White British Muslims perceive their ethnic and religious identities to be (mis/not) recognized in complex and contradictory ways. Their identities are affirmed, denied, erased, and/or incorrectly ascribed, sometimes simultaneously, by relevant others in different contexts. Performative strategies such as the adoption, maintenance, or removal of identity markers are used consciously and agentically in attempts to take back control over how their identities are (mis/not) recognized. At times deliberate performative acts leading to misrecognition are orchestrated by white Muslims themselves to not only minimize the risk of experiencing possible harm or marginalization but also to transgress and challenge norms. They also assert their multiple identities as a response to (mis/non)recognition and claims of their identities being incompatible, regardless of the repercussions that may result in them being placed at the margins of, or excluded from, their ingroups.     

Topless dancers: Managing stigma in a deviant occupation

This paper describes and analyzes how topless dancers manage the stigma related to their deviant occupation. It represents approximately nine months of limited participant observation and ethnographic interviewing at seven topless bars in a major metropolitan city in the Southwest with a population of approximately 1 million people. A structured interview schedule was utilized to obtain data from over 40 topless dancers in six different clubs. In addition, free‐flowing interviews were conducted with at least 20 other dancers, numerous waitresses in the clubs, one club manager, two assistant managers, and four former dancers still associated with the clubs (as bartenders, waitresses, or admission takers). This study indicates that two of the most common stigma management techniques used by topless dancers are dividing the social world as outlined by Goffman (1963) and techniques of neutralization described by Sykes and Matza (1957), especially denial of injury, condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties. Dancers further rationalize their participation in a deviant occupation on the basis that it is harmless, temporary, fun, good exercise, and easy money. Suggestions are made for future research on topless and nude dancing and stigma management.     

The Dialogical Dance: Self,Identity Construction,Positioning and Embodiment in Tango Dancers

Argentine tango is a complex phenomenon, involving music, dancing and lifestyle, today practiced by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. This is already a good reason for psychology to make it an object of study. Besides, studying tango could also help to develop a dialogical way of theorizing and a dialogical methodology, taking into account both the genetic historical and eso-systemic dimensions and the individual experiencing. As any other product of human psyche, tango creates an universal and abstract representation of life starting from very situated and individual acts. Such institutionalized representation, which is at the same time epistemological, ethical and aesthetical, becomes a tradition -that is the framework distanced from the individual immediate experience- within which the meaning of the experiences to be make sense in return. To illustrate this epistemological and methodological stance, a history of the development of tango as dialogical social object first is sketched. Then, an ethnographic study about the Self actuation in a community of Italian tango dancers is presented. Results show how participants construct and actuate their identities in a dialogue between their I-positions inside and outside tango community.     

Consuming Male Identities: Masculinities,Gender Relations and Alcohol Consumption in Aotearoa New Zealand

The excessive and public consumption of alcohol with other men has been a traditional indication of manliness in Western cultures for many years. However, over the last two decades, this association has been eroded, in part through increased consumption by women. Within the gender‐relational context of this increase, we empirically explore ways in which particular (friendship) groups of young men and women (re)construct masculine identities. The male participants demonstrated greater discursive flexibility in enacting their gender identities through alcohol consumption compared with earlier NZ research although also greater constraints on change compared with more recent UK research. A minority of men constructed themselves as atypical in that they did not like rugby, beer or consuming vast quantities of alcohol. These men were all in professional occupations, and we speculate that their social class and financial status may enable them to negotiate alternative demonstrations of masculinity. We conclude that these findings could be explicated through an examination of national gendered identities that arose out of a pioneer culture, and the commodification of gender identities through alcohol consumption. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex Rules: The Edicts of Income in Exotic Dancing

This research examines how dancers view the rules that are intended to control/regulate the interaction between customer and dancer. Rules from a variety of clubs are examined. Data were gleaned from interviews with 133 female dancers in several cities and level of clubs. Data from dancers indicate these rules, in practice, allow dancers to control their sexuality and activities and thereby benefit in the form of income.     

Slicing White Bre(a)d: Racial Identities,Recipes, and Italian-American Women

This article focuses on Italian-American women and on how they construct, understand, and maintain their ethnic identity in relation to Whiteness and White privilege. Since language cannot serve as symbol for these women because speaking Italian was often forbidden in their homes, or spoken only between adults in covert communications, they often must cling to other symbols of Italianness in order to preserve their sense of gendered ethnic identities. I argue that one such symbol is food, wherein participants manipulate recipes and use food to navigate and negotiate being both Italian and American, Whiteness, femininity, and social class. Implications for therapy about how we understand our multiple identities in relation to others as part of larger systems of power and privilege are explored.     

临时知识型员工自主性动机激发：关系导向人力资源管理建构及其作用机理

快速变化的技术需求使得人才外部化, 人才共享成为组织获取技能型、知识型人才的重要方式。共享经济背景下的人力资源管理属于新兴研究领域, 企业在管理临时知识型员工面临很大挑战。由于身份的外部性、临时性, 员工关系基础薄弱, 临时知识型员工专业能力发挥受限, 工作场所关系需求受阻, 导致自主性动机不足, 影响绩效产出, 而传统对外部员工的契约型管理难以解决以上问题。针对嵌入团队工作的临时知识型员工, 研究基于关系型协调理论探索关系导向人力资源管理实践构成。在此基础上, 结合自我决定理论探讨关系导向人力资源管理实践提升临时知识型员工绩效的作用机理, 验证从自主性动机来源、自主性动机激发到自主性动机结果的路径机制。对关系导向人力资源管理实践内容和效用探讨有助于深入理解临时知识型员工的管理, 为共享经济背景下新型用工管理实践提供启示。     

Surrender to win: how adolescent drug and alcohol users change their lives

Adolescent drug and alcohol addiction is a serious problem in the United States. However, some addicted adolescents do quit drinking and using drugs. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of seven young adults who managed to surrender their addictions and, for anywhere from five to fifteen years, construct sober identities. The participants came from highly dysfunctional homes, began substance use as children, and were polydrug users. A series of catastrophic life events led them to Alcoholics Anonymous, where they were exposed to self-reflective prayer, a cadre of recovering adolescents and, in particular, adults who offered detached nurturing. This provided the support they needed to confront their addictions through the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.