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17 January 2007
I have a hypothesis That every person, gay or straight, male or female, has a secret song to which they have already choreographed a stripper's routine in their head. →[More:]
And who can tell just by looking at someone that their stage-humping would be to The Meter's "Handclappin'," Dio's "Rainbow in the Dark," or the theme song to "Fame."
I hate to tell you this, but you're wrong. I've honestly never done any such thing, and attempting to do so is giving me a headache.
I'm just not... stripper positive. I'm sex, kink and fetish positive, but strippers just don't do anything for me. I could go for some vintage burlesque or a performed-for-an-audience kink 'scene', but strippers just don't do it.
It's weird, I've dated and slept with more strippers than I've actually been in strip clubs. (3, 1 and 0 respectively.) Yeah, I've never been in a strip club. Err, at least not while it was functioning as a strip club. I've been to techno/industrial/fetish clubs that were held in strip clubs, but the stages were being used for other things.
Yeah, I guess I'm a weirdo, but it just means your hypothesis is wrong. :)
Oh, I misread your question. No, I haven't done that, either, but if I had to it'd probably be Portishead or something from Ninjatunes, DJ Food or Theivery Corp., that kinda stuff.
I have never imagined a song/stripper routine for myself. That said, if you ever happen to catch me daydreaming, you can be pretty sure said daydream involves you and Animotion's "Obsession".
Bonnie Riatt's Tangled and Dark is the greatest strut tune ever written. Show me a girl who can strut, and I show you a girl who can make you forget all about girls on a pole.
Never been in a strip club. The idea of giving money to a strange woman just so she can shake her ta-tas in my face all the while thinking about everything and anything except what she wants to do with me is about as far from "hot" as I can imagine.
I have avoided going in strip clubs anytime someone has tried to get me to go. No thanks. I'd rather just watch porn, use my imagination or fucking dig in the garden.
The good ones aren't trying to shake their ta-tas in your face while making you realize they're not attracted to you. They're trying to entertain you, for money, and they can be very skilled at it.
When both parties at the strip club come in with reasonable expectations and ideas about what's going to happen, everyone can go away happy.
What loq and weretable said. And, while I'll grudgingly admit that a tiny subset of people might want to kiss me or make out with me or whatever, I refuse to believe that even a single person wants to see me strutting, lunging or stage-humping.
I came up in a time when strip clubs weren't as politically charged a subject as now. In Boston, the Combat Zone existed as a nationally recognized area, and it was pretty common to have guys in from Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, or Texas, for a user group meeting, or a sales show, or a technical training event, to suggest we go to the Combat Zone, when we asked where they'd like to go for dinner and drinks. So, I went there frequently, on expense account. Lucky me.
And I'd be less than honest if I said I didn't find Busty Russell and Chesty Morgan interesting, and that what I think of, when I remember great strip routines, isn't largely colored by women who could walk in time with music, with their whole bodies, more than by girls who can shake their booty to rap beats or do acrobatic moves on brass poles.
"Also, strip clubs depress me.
posted by seanyboy 17 January
You've clearly never seen a girl with a first rate change step and twirl routine work, my man. Had you, you'd know that cheetahs are slow, and panthers clumsy, and gazelles know nothing of bobbing, bouncing grace.
Oh, god, I hope I can remember that word for my next trip to the strip club. *repeats it to himself a thousand times*
Anyway, I don't think I've thought about a song for a stripping routine performed by me. But I have thought about the song I'd most like to see used by a stripper--and I think my answer would have to be one of Willie Dixon's blues standards, perhaps Spoonful or Hidden Charms (performed by Howlin' Wolf most likely).
If I can find a strip club that would use Also Sprach Zarathustra regularly, I'm there. And I know it's cheesy, but can I request Ride of the Valkyries? That would be way cool.
Bonus points for a strip club that would play Throbbing Gristle or Einsterzende Neubauten. That would be even cooler.
It's not the women in strip clubs that depress me. I'm all for pretty students being paid a shed load of cash for dancing.
It's the men. It's that nervous, trapped, desparate look they have overlayed with a stench of bravado. It's paying £30 for a naked girl to be near you. It's like a foreshadowing of the mid-life crisis. You can almost see the men thinking "If I had a really flash car and I didn't have to spend my hard earned wage on the damn kids, I could have her." I just don't get why anyone would do that to themselves. Of course, YMMV and I'm not saying this applies to you or yours. Maybe it's something to do with British strip clubs.
"...Maybe it's something to do with British strip clubs."
posted by seanyboy 17 January
Unfortunately, it's not the nation, but the times. Strip clubs are the purist forms of capitalistic endeavor. Nothing that doesn't pay survives more than a week. When the weak line up to pay, the paid can be pretty weak.
The good news is, that not all performers yet cater to the desperate, nor are all venues filled with the hopeless, proffering sweaty bills to manipulative people. Ya gets what you pay for, and what you don't, when what you pay for is the ultimate in business transparency.
"Leben Heisst Leben" by Laibach. Any other song would be too easy.
What, no Laetherstrip? ;)
Ya gets what you pay for, and what you don't, when what you pay for is the ultimate in business transparency.
What I would be paying perfectly good money for is a big old pair of blue balls. I don't need any help with that.
Seriously, that phrase reads to me like "The ultimate in transparancy of all possible financial exchanges is when you light your money on fire."
Which, I suppose, is also true. That doesn't make it sane.
Granted, I'm the child of a Woman's Libber, having grown up in a society much more sexually equal than what it was 30-40 years ago, in an age of pervasive media technologies. The very concept of having to go somewhere and pay for porn and/or prurient sexual titillation is totally foreign to me.
When both parties at the strip club come in with reasonable expectations and ideas about what's going to happen, everyone can go away happy.
Exactly. People shouldn't knock unless they've tried it. There's beer and big screen TVs and naked women ... what's not to love? Besides, a strip club is only type of bar where I can sit all by myself and not feel self-conscious about it.
Bonus points for a strip club that would play Throbbing Gristle or Einsterzende Neubauten. That would be even cooler.
a long time ago i knew a stripper who used to perform at a local club's "goth night", and she used to use "yu gung" as "her song" every once in a while. (she's a lawyer now)
my stripping song would be "szycag" by venetian snares
At the Ritz (pic of stripper, so maybe nsfw), in Baltimore (which was used for the strip club front in season 1 of The Wire) one of the women used to strip to AC/DC. As an antipodean, I appreciated that.
Upon further reflection, if I were some kind of pretty girl, and I stripped, y'know, professionally, I'd probably opt for one of the many pop songs that refers obliquely to incest or jailbait or another taboo along those lines ('Young Girl,' 'Seventeen,' etc.). Like they say, it's just good business.
I could go for some vintage burlesque or a performed-for-an-audience kink 'scene', but strippers just don't do it.
loq, I appreciate the neo-burlesque stuff because the fashion sense, music and humor is more my taste and I can appreciate the transgressiveness behind the 'kink' stuff, but ultimately it's all the same thing (oooh boobies!) dressed up in different trappings, if you ask me, so why draw lines.
Not only is the whole thing overrated, and a sad indication of our completely skewed and juvenile approach to sex in Western culture, it's awfully hard to care enough about it either way to muster the energy for a debate. Overall, the energy would be better spent justifying some other form of mutual exploitation.
Burlesque is a little bit more fun and entertaining, because it mocks the conventions. I mean, what paulsc says about cheetah-style writing may be an interesting performance for you to watch, but it's a pretty contrived way to behave, not something women do as a matter of course or natural inclination. Burlesque creates its humor by taking that to a degree that lets the performers express the basic ridiculousness of the whole idea.
what's so ridiculous about it? Sometimes it's just nice to see a strange naked woman in the flesh. It's even nicer if you can have a beer at the same time. Me and my friends have even brought our wives and girlfriends along and everybody had a good time. One time my friend Frank, who grew up in Scotland and his missus came along. At some point he asked in his heavy Scotch burr 'Aye, what's a lapdance?' He learned soon enough.
Girls who are cool with their guy going to strip clubs are hot.
I'll say "Under the Rotted Flesh" by Cannibal Corpse, or maybe "Graveyard Slut" by Darkthrone. All worked out right in the ol' noggin. The trick is to leave enough room for improvisation.
It's a slippery slope, and it comes down to censorship of the arts. Is all stripping art? No. Is some? Maybe. Does it mess with your head? Indubitably. But all performance is potentially political, and artists need freedom to bare it if it's called for. The Full Monty on Broadway. Desdemona opposite Andre Brauer in Othello. These things are hard to do, but I've had good upstanding actor friends in these and similar situations. This is an art question, not a politics question, in my opinion, and as such, I get out my Debbie Allen Stick and say AGAIN! ONE TWO THREE FOUR.
sad indication of our completely skewed and juvenile approach to sex in Western culture
Name a culture that didn't appreciate naked ladies. Sad? Yeah, well, pretty much every business transaction is sad on some level. Juvenile? Eh, so what.
Overall, you're making a lot generalizatins there that could use some fleshing out. (For the record, it's probably been a year since I've been to one, but my birthday is coming up. I don't really think strippers are "all that". I prefer a different type on woman generally, even for objectification purposes, but they're still darn pretty and beggarsold married guys can't be choosers.)
I've not bared all on stage, but I have played a stripper and pole danced, and worn skimpy stuff. I got paid for doing it. It was hard. I considered it pursuing my art. I've also met strippers who consider themselves dancers and choose their material verrrrry carefully - talented girls. Yeah, what happens to them down the line, implants, etc. But if even some of these dancers are self expressing, then I can't condemn the whole thing out of hand.
I've not bared all on stage, but I have played a stripper and pole danced, and worn skimpy stuff. I got paid for doing it. It was hard.
This points up an (apparent) difference between genders. There's a genre of online porn called "CFNM" which stands for 'Clothed Female, Nude Male' which consists of pictures of guys dancing naked before crowds of crazed females. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure the audience for this kind of porn is mostly straight men who (fantasy-wise) project themselves in the place of the naked guy.
I say this because, the females I know who enjoy porn seem to enjoy looking at other women best (even if they're heterosexual) and the audience for pics of naked guys solo seems to be mostly gay men. Maybe it's cultural, maybe it's wiring. But as I've been told before, my experience isn't everyone's so I could very well be totally off-base.
the audience for pics of naked guys solo seems to be mostly gay men.
Well, for me, I look at pics of naked guys solo not because I'm gay, but because it turns me on how not turned on I am by them. It's complicated, I know.
I am one of the women jonmc describes, apparently. I am hetero and I like watching porn sometimes and I find myself looking mostly at women or what's done to them :). I find men sexy when I touch them and I kiss them or when they attract me mentally -regardless of the stage of nakedness or physical appearance.
My experience with the few strip clubs I have been (in New Orleans during the graduate school years) is that I found them being interesting but mostly depressing as well. I was put off by the decadence of the places (run down, dirty, cheap beer) the very bad quality of dancing but I was mostly put off by those customers who were drunkenly obnoxious. I do remember though some performers and how elegant their dance was (again regardless of the stage of nakedness and physical stature).
Many times when I go past a "gentlemen's club" on West Side Highway in the lower 40s(?) here in NY I make a mental note that I really do want to visit with a date some day. If the atmosphere, the food and the drinks are good, the performing is nice and the people are civil, I might go again.
and my song is "You can leave your hat on" I know it is cheesy. Now, I am embarrassed.
"... The very concept of having to go somewhere and pay for porn and/or prurient sexual titillation is totally foreign to me."
posted by loquacious 17 January
Your PC hat is obstructing your view of reality, loq. Here in Jacksonville, some of the most successful strip clubs are right next door to big boat dealers. I suppose it's a result of some arcane zoning laws, but it isn't just one or two clubs, next to one or two boat dealers, it's a bunch of each, in that locational nexus. I was talking about that with some guys when I first moved here, and they all speculated that boys who buy boats have the cash for strip clubs, and that the clubs provide a cool place to wait on your boat, when you bring it in for service. Actually, I think there are lots of cultural similarities between strip clubs and marinas, but I'll save my theories and field research into each for other threads, where they're on topic.
I will say that, in some clubs, the whole point of being there is conspicuous consumption, in the flawed, broad sense that Thorstein Veblen coined the term. Some clubs operate on a cash flash basis, where guys come in with big rolls of bills, and girls walk around wearing money, and the girls and the guys have fun playin' money tricks with each other. Other clubs, you never, ever, see currency, and only the newest of the newcomers have to pop out their credit cards regularly. Those clubs make a big thing of catering to regulars, and girls there go out of their way to remember details about individual guys, and work that with them, as part of the game in those clubs. If you really wanted to see a routine you worked out in your head danced in reality, and had the time and scratch, you could probably "produce" it in those clubs.
Like boating, strip clubs may not be a game you like, but you don't have to play, and people that do, aren't necessarily stupid, or sexist, any more than people who blow several hundred bucks, or even a lot more, attending pro football games, or going to boxing matches, are dopes or losers.
I was put off by the decadence of the places (run down, dirty, cheap beer)
run down, dirty and cheap beer=decadence? Just call me Caligula. and the 'obnoxious' customers are usually guys at a bachelor party or fratboys on a toot. the 'regulars' generally act like they're in an art museum, in my experience.
(seriously, I don't trust those 'gentleman's club' joints. places that cater to our base urges shouldn't be nice and cozy. I like my sleaze sleazy. otherwise, it just strikes me as an excercise in denial)
jonmc, the guys I know who have taken it all off in plays have both had a very very difficult time with it. It's a very trusting and generous thing to do. Whatever your gender and whatever the circumstance, you are putting your body and what you do with it out there and people will judge it. I know it's a different situation, but you lumped my experience in with everything else to begin with. Your generalizations are taking this from bad to worse, I'm afraid. This is one of those whole lotta shades of grey, everyone make your own choices thing if there ever was one.
Your generalizations are taking this from bad to worse, I'm afraid.
Well, that's why I put in all the 'in my experiences' and 'apparentlys.' I realize that my experiences aren't everybody's. Just offering my 2 cents like always.
I've been to the local strip club twice. Once, the group I was with got flagged after about fifteen minutes and we had to leave. (My BIL was very drunk, but quite harmless). The second, we were approached by a stripper who handed us a note letting us know that she had could not speak due to severe laryngitis. I handed her a few bucks and told her I hoped she felt better soon. Not erotic, but very funny.
I've never been in a strip club (I once sat outside reading a book while my brother visited his stripper girlfriend), but I don't care if other people go either.
I don't have any moral issue with them or people enjoying them, but I don't need to go to know that it is not something that I would find enjoyable.
I do not even like hanging around in bars. I hate them actually. I also hate Hooters, nightclubs and I hate anywhere that is smoky. And I hate beer. Well almost all of it anyway.
My favorite burlesque stripper is Empress Theodora. It's way too late, and I'm way too lazy to restate the story here, so this is a link to my short blog entry about her. (the "Theodora and the Politics of Sex" link has disappeared into the ether, so here's a google cache.) Anyway, she turned out to be a powerful feminist in ancient times, and I believe that her early experience is the reason. (She probably didn't have stripper/prostitute at the very top of her "things I want to be when I reach puberty" list.)
But my point was that this topic is too lame to argue about.
I got that the first time. The original version of my coment acknowledged that point but I struck it because it seemed too snarky. But since you reiterated it:
It's pretty cheesey to call something that other community members have said they enjoy "a sad ... skewed and juvenile ... form of mutual exploitation" without any rationale for your position. To do so while positing that the entire topic is too stupid for you to waste your energy on is just plain rude (and, if I may say, un-Miko-like).
It's hard for me to apologize for being saddened by the reality that taking off your clothes and dancing is the most remunerative work a woman in this country can find outside the professional elites. It's hard for me to feel bad about saying that that situation just doesn't seem ideal, particularly respectful or mature, or a desirable cultural aspiration to me.
But I'm sorry if I sound extra snarky or mean and should probably have just stayed out of this thread. I really don't want to pick this fight today.
However - hey, I do have strong opinions, and whether it's Miko-like or not, I also have off days and quick reactions, like everyone else. Sometimes I do just want to sling an opinion and then step out. But sorry if my tone offends or if I'm not up to the usual dissertation.
It's hard for me to apologize for being saddened by the reality that taking off your clothes and dancing is the most remunerative work a woman in this country can find outside the professional elites.
Why? If there was a similar opportunity for men, I'd be filling out applications like you wouldn't believe.
(and there's also the fact that some people are exhibitionists. It's not out of the realm of possiblity that some strippers might get a thrill out of their work. look at all the amateur porn online.)
Okay. I will stay out of this thread too. I have some pretty definite opinions, but do not want to aggravate/offend/hurt people I like (e.g. Miko). So. Ciao.
It doesn't bother me that people want to do it, or want to look at others do it. It bothers me that it's a commodity. And commodification of this behavior can only occur in societies that have suppressed sexuality and created double standards.
Or in societies where there's a difference between the supply of women who both want to dance naked in public and the demand to see women dance naked in public. Arguing that it the primary cause is repression is bizarre, because that puts the onus on women who don't dance to do so in order to shift the supply.demand dynamic.
(And this thread was actually inspired by Pants Off Dance Off, which, so far as I know, doesn't pay people at all, and definitely not well if it does)
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