Customer Reviews

Behind the G-String: An Exploration of the Stripper's Image, Her Person, and Her Meaning

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This book is too expensive for the contents. The book covers why women strip in clubs, then it goes on through many chapters of explanations, but in the end it tells us that it's because they make good money and fast. The book goes on to explain a strippers percetion of her job, then it goes on to tell us that strippers go through greatlengths to justify what they do and how they blame society, x-relationships, family and others, but never themselves. The book goes through many interviews, all of which are very much common and related. A good girl strips to finance her education, to support her children after her man leaves her or to support a drug habit. Or the most common, but not admitted, just for the money. This good is well written, but the story about all these stippers are all the same in this book and on every television review or movie. I wish this book would have covered something new, useful or insightful.

My thoughts are that this book was way over priced for its contents.

The concept of a man trying to write a book discussing anything about the trials and tribulations of women in the Adult Entertainment Industry is tiring and long winded. The interviews are all the same. You could save yourself the time, spend the same money in a club and interview the dancers yourself. I was recommended to read this book for its historical element in context to pole dancing and burlesque. I found a few funny tidbits of information none of which I believe to be totally factual and not fabricated from the male point of view.

This book was supposed to be a book-length study designed to explore the stripper's "image, her person, and her meaning". In the first half of the book, the author explores the dancers' working conditions, the pros and cons of being an exotic dancer. In the second half of the book, the author decides how and why the dancer has become mythologized by men in today's day and age. The author constructs an extensive binary between the dancer as an ideal, "...ever available, infinitely gratifying, monolithically sexual, and physically ideal..." and as a demon who displays her sexual power only to refuse the men to whom she is this object of display (113-125). The author interviews a small number of dancers for this research of which he never identifies the exact number, and while the first half of the book is fairly inclusive of their thoughts and ideas, the second half is practically devoid of anything except the author's personal theorizing.

In one of his chapters, the author allows the women in his study to describe the benefits of exotic dancing as an occupation. Many of the dancers interviewed report feeling a stronger sense of self; these women have become more sure of themselves as women, and feel that a certain amount of personal growth has occurred as a result of stripping. For many women, a greater sense of satisfaction with their physical bodies is reported, and women also remark on a heightened sense of confidence that pervades their daily lives.

Thus it is evident that many of these women derive a sense of empowerment from being dancers. The following chapter includes a lengthy discussion of the scarring psychological effects of stripping, thus undermining some of these women's statements.

Fascinating and authoritative sociological study of strippers and stripping. Based on exhaustive interviews. Well-written and thoughtful book for anyone who wants to better understand both the day to day life of strippers and the psychological underpinnings of the world of the strippers and their patrons.

Pornography and adult entertainment has truely grown within the last few years. Everything is pretty much accepted, so it's no surprise that more and more books are being written on topics such as these. My problem with this boko and many like it, is that they're all written along the same lines. There are hundreds of strip-clubs throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada. This book covers interviews with strippers to find out why they strip and how they feel about it. All the answers are the same, too bad. It should cover interviews on the men that visit these clubs. Why do they visit these clubs, what do they think about the strippers, how much are they willing to spend, etc. Since all these stripper books are the same, I was hoping someone would cover interviews with the patrons instead of the stripers. Overall, this book was not worth reading.

The interviews were a little interesting, the book was well written and structured, however it does not discuss the relationship of prostitution to stripping, pervasive influence of government and/or organized crime nor the long term effects such exploitive use of a strippers beauty may have had on their relationships since. The concept seems to need a little more in-depth exploration. I also felt that the critical, feministic theory is limited to only a few paragraphs and it should have been covered more thoroughly. I don't think this book does much to challenge a persons preconceptions or prejudices.