ABSTRACT
A Russian-Estonian woman is dancing in an erotic bar in Tampere, an expanding former industrial town, which now rides on the high tide created by boom in information technology. It is late evening and the bar, where the woman dances, is small and cozy. There are several Finnish men seated around the stage, watching her as she strips herself and dances completely naked in front of them while simulating phallic sex.1 They have come to see an “Eastern girl” perform their erotic fantasies. There are no Finnish women either dancing or in the audience. There is a Finnish woman tending the bar, and this is the usual way the gendered and ethnicized labor is organized in bars like this; there is also a Finnish male bouncer. After her dance, she slips into her G-string and goes around the bar asking for tips. The men obey her and give her the usual 20 FIM (C3.50), slipping it into her G-string. This is a moment of touch and also small talk. The woman smiles and flirts and advertises a private show – a dance especially for “you.”2 She makes the movements and gestures that one would associate with the stereotypical image of the female in heterosexual sex. The men seem to be pleased; they are getting their money’s worth. And what about her? In two weeks she has made 9,000 FIM (C1,500) for herself, even after all expenses have been paid and cuts taken by the bar and by her own manager. This is the kind of money that would have been impossible for her to make, let alone save, back home in Tarto, Estonia. After working for three weeks, she will go back, finish her degree in clothing design, then hopefully go on to a medical school and maybe some day work abroad for “real.”
