Stripping in Tough Times

While I also have an employment problem, I've never gone so far as to consider stripping as a means of getting extra income- mainly because I just don't have the cans for it.
However, if the thought has crossed your mind, you're not alone. One journalist, who has a distaste for the overt pornography in culture wrote a blog detailing her look into stripping as a new career move. Journalists are in trouble these days, so can you blame her?

She writes,
"Stripping is a tricky topic for me, a feminist enamored of Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, and the history of "womyn's lands." Taking your clothes off can be the ultimate symbol of caution-to-the-wind liberation. But if you're doing it because that's the accepted mark of being sexy and successful, then that's a different game. And for more and more women, that's the reason. With raunch-culture ever on the rise, sex appeal isn't just one of the many cards a girl can play; it's the ultimate trump, no matter how smart or talented she is....

And it's pervasive. I have a picture of Diablo Cody on my wall -- an article actually. It's from the New York Times and profiles Cody and her three best writer pals, all of whom command seven figures per feature-film screenplay, or close to it. The article talks about how hard they work and the fun they have. And it makes sure to underline how "gorgeous" the four women are, exuding "four distinct styles of glamour." It's not that I'm objecting to admiring beauty (though not every culture requires this of its celebrities). It just seems to me that the message being delivered to young women isn't that the hot women can be smart, it's that the smart women need to be hot. Stripping is not just a potentially lucrative side job; it's a step toward a storybook ending. And that's a tricky message to be faced with at a time when so many markets are laying off smart girls (and guys)."

Side note: This journalist also interviews her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend who is a stripper. Glutton for pain? Perhaps, but it is an interesting article about the difference between empowerment and exploration and raises the question (at least in my mind), by having more permissive attitudes towards stripping, are we embracing the male fantasy or just following our own facination?