Exotic Dance Club Analysis

In this essay I am going to talk about how organizations and occupations are always gendered and classed. Even though exotic dance clubs depict negative connotation, one can learn essential information through observation regarding feminism through these clubs, including but not limited to, social class, gender, and attractiveness. I chose this article because I thought it would be interesting to gain knowledge about how exotic dance clubs are set up to grab male’s attention.
There are three hypotheses that Mary Nell Trautner (the author), explains which includes social class, gender, and image of attractiveness. These elements have tremendous effect on how the exotic dance clubs are formed, and how they can grab men’s attention towards to …show more content…
This method is called observation. The name of the clubs are, The Oasis, The Hourglass, The Treasure Chest, and Perfections Showclub and they are the busiest, most well-known, and most popular clubs in Pueblo. The third hypothesis is image of attractiveness, this element is very effective due to the fact that it can draw attention to the audience. As stated in this article, in the Perfections and The Oasis, the body types are restricted. For instance, there are not many overweight, women with short hair, older women, women with strong musculature, or nonwhite women. Half of the dancers in each middle class clubs have breast augmentation and the rest of the them have natural breasts. Almost all of the women wear their hair styled in some way like curley, gelled, or sprayed, however they all wear their hair loose. Sometimes the dancers decide to style their hair like ponytails and pigtails to complete their school girl costume. All of the women wear makeup and most of them wear heavy eye makeup such as glitter, eyeshadow, and eyeliner. As it was mentioned in the article, most of them have long fingernails painted in light or Neon shades that lights up in the club. According to a dancer that Mary interviewed, the reason why women pay more attention to makeup and hairstyle is because the amount of money they earn from the customers is conditioned on how sexy and attractive, and feminine they look …show more content…
This means that women have the power of do almost anything to grab male’s attention. The dancers at The Oasis and Perfections accentuate their eyes to convey an invitation to just observe, they are meant to see and to be seen. According to Mary, “the red lipstick that accentuates the lips of the dancers at the working-class clubs oozes sensuality, fire, and excitement. In a sense, the dancers draw from two different yet equally stereotyped images of femininity: the good girl (who looks but does not touch, "innocent"in her sexualized schoolgirl outfit) and the bad girl (who falls outside the hegemonic beauty ideals and flaunts her exaggerated sexuality).” What she is trying to say is that women have the power to do work in either the working class and the middle