ABSTRACT
A woman dances in the spotlight of a small platform stage. She moves her hands over her undulating body and then takes off her clothes. The male spectators stare. Some sit motionless, others solemnly hand her dollar bills or carefully place the money into the dancer’s G-string or garter belt. This generic act, this performance of gender and desire, has been variously labeled topless, bottomless, nude dancing, exotic dancing, erotic dancing, and striptease entertainment by such trade papers as Exotic Dancer, Canadian Stripper, Mentertainment, and The Go-Go-Gazette. It has been described as a representation of Freud’s primal scene, socio-sexual purgation, male degradation of women, female rebellion against the double standard-and an authentic instigator of vice and crime.1
