ABSTRACT
Is anything really subversive about women’s engagement with erotic dance? This chapter explores what, if anything, is potentially ‘radical’ or ‘subversive’ about the LoveLads male strip show. It begins with looking at the history and context of the LoveLads show, before moving on to consider two main issues: women’s interactions with each other in the audience and their friendships or ‘bonding’ practices, particularly through their alcohol consumption practices, and, second, women’s interactions with male dancers. By looking at women customers’ experiences and my own observations of their interactions in the venue, together with some of the male dancers’ comments regarding their interactions with, and assumptions about, women customers, the chapter seeks to highlight some of the key ways in which the show potentially subverts heteronormative roles for women. I theorise women’s alcohol consumption and their viewing of male striptease by drawing upon differing feminist conceptions of the ‘gaze’, and through critiquing normative constructions of bodies in the venue, to argue that women’s attendance at, and activities within the show do challenge ideas about normative ‘feminine’ behaviour in some key respects. However, I argue that while women’s interactions with other customers at the show, and their experiences of watching and interacting with male dancers are different to their experiences in more mainstream leisure venues, the subversive potential of the show is limited. The ways in which the management at the show, the dancers’ routines and the strategic facilitating of alcohol consumption, construct an atmosphere of faux ‘empowerment’ will be discussed, together with the limits to the stability of the ‘female friendships’ that are forged. The chapter will interrogate the ‘postfeminist’ subjectivities that women customers may be adopting (Gill, 2009; McRobbie, 2004), highlighting that women’s performance of heterosexual femininity within this venue is intimately linked to ideas about the requirement of young women to be seen to be ‘actively’ sexually desiring.
