ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, we center the voices of exotic dancers to analyze the relationship between exotic dancing and power at the micro level, focusing on dancers’ activities and interpretations of the career and interactions with customers. Analyzing the results through feminist theories of power we find dancers define power as access to socially desired resources, income, time, and social mobility, the ability to dominate the customer and control themselves, in particular, their self-definition. Dancers use strategic flirting, an aspect of emotional labor to gain power over the customers; however, the very mode of gaining power also inhibited their ability to create an authentic sense of self and control how others defined them outside the context of exotic dance. The data also reveal how women in the field recognize the exploitive nature of domination, even when they win. Understanding how women in the field of exotic dancing define and experience power can help us build a feminist theory of power that seeks and challenges systems of domination.
