Strip Club

Gender, Power, and Sex Work

277 pages

Published 2010 by NYU Press.

ISBN:
978-0-8147-6781-8
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In Strip Club, Kim Price‒Glynn takes us behind the scenes at a rundown club where women strip out of economic need, a place where strippers’ stories are not glamorous or liberating, but emotionally demanding and physically exhausting. Strip Club reveals the intimate working lives of not just the women up on stage, but also the patrons and other workers who make the place run: the owner‒manager, bartenders, dejays, doormen, bouncers, housemoms, and cocktail waitresses.

Price‒Glynn spent fourteen months at The Lion’s Den working as a cocktail waitress, and her uncommonly deep access reveals a conflict‒ridden workplace, similar to any other workplace, one where gender inequalities are reproduced through the everyday interactions of customers and workers. Taking a novel approach to this controversial and often misunderstood industry, Price‒Glynn draws a fascinating portrait of life and work inside the strip club.

2 editions

A New Sociology of Work Classic

Price-Glynn has delivered a masterpiece, with this book belonging in the canon of work sociologies. Here, she provides a deep, holistic look at the strip club as a workplace, combining rich ethnographic field work with historical and macro background and even economic analysis of club cash flow. By revealing the pressures of this unconventional, stressful, and socially isolating work, Price-Glynn provides insight into not just this but other fields that share some of these characteristics. The shifting dynamics of pay for strippers (from employees to independent contractors to having to pay to perform) also demonstrates how less prestigious work can serve as an early warning of changes to come to other workplaces in the future. Overall, however, this work is incredible in its own right, getting into issues around gender, social norms, workplace safety, and so much more. Highly recommend

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