I’m not sure if I agree with writer Gregory Wakeman that “Cinema has often looked to honor these characters...” though.
It seems more to me that Hollywood bigwigs like to make movies with strippers in them to draw in an audience. And then the studio heads are drawn to the scripts that fantasize strippers as not only totally hot, but also amazing humans.
That way, a man can fulfill his absolute desire—to have a woman who is sexually adventurous and also a real sweetheart and someone you would actually want to bring home to mom during the day. But once nighttime comes—watch out! She’s ripping off that bodice!
Actually, I've had GF's that were "sexually adventurous and also a real sweetheart and someone you would actually want to bring home to mom during the day." They do exist.
ReplyDeleteDid you notice that the photo you posted with this article shows a woman not at a strip club? It looks like a convention of some sort. Nobody is paying attention to the poor woman.
ReplyDeleteI remember days when I felt like I was naked and invisible...
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, that is true...we do exist.
As a guy, I probably am a little unusual in that I was 53 before I first visited a strip club, and then as much for curiosity as to tweak an increasingly apathetic libido. The rep of strip clubs, as was the frequent translation of it and occasional exaltation of it in film, was well known to me though, and as such also informed my curiosity. When I was in my 20's, I mostly dated older women (twice as old or more) who liked to watch *me* strip in a private show so to speak, perhaps for the same reason I now find strip clubs fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI still don't have much experience with strip clubs, having sampled exactly three so far, and each once. But what I crave most at such clubs is something the business model is designed to discourage if not prevent. And no, I am not talking sex. I am talking about social intercourse between men and women.
From what I've observed so far, the main dance hall chair-side chit-chat with the dancers seems authentic, but clearly the women are under some time and mercantile pressure to sell the high-priced private "dance". As a result the strippers chair hop between sets drumming up business for the expensive "private dances" which essentially are brief and rigidly-timed petting sessions (no contact with or exchange of bodily fluids, of course). The timing of those encounters is such that if you simply wanted to talk, you'd need the wealth of Bill Gates to have a decent conversation.
Perhaps most clubs are simply a marketable version of Erica Jong's "zipless fuck", but without the fuck. What I would think would be far more interesting is something more like the ancient Geisha tradition in which there are women who are paid to be great conversationalists-entertainers, and men who sit around chatting them up, all with the possibility of physical intimacy ala "private dance" still present, should both parties be interested, but simply as a subordinate rather than main line menu item.
I still enjoy being mesmerized by the sight of a nude woman, don't get me wrong. But the curtain of intimacy, and hence enjoyment, goes beyond just sight and touch.