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Strippers are intelligent!!
Hi all,
I'm really excited that we have had some recent posts regarding researching our industry. I posted on someone else's request for info about this industry.... I am a dancer, currently in grad school (MA) and in the process of applying to PhD psychology programs. I just got back from talking with someone who encouraged me that I should look into writing a dissertation about exactly what I want to -- DANCING. Now heres the problem....I have no idea what it is that I want prove, or how I can go about gathering info. Also, I know that alot of dancers might be weary of giving info....So, if anyone wants to give me some input on what I can study and what hypothesis can be made....I'm looking to write about something that will do some good for society in someway. And of course inform the community of things they dont know much about. Once this all gets underway, if any of you would be interested in being research assistants that would be so cool, I would absolutely LOVE to get others involved from across the U.S. (But I have to get accepted first obviously) Im nervous because nothing (academic) has been done on this subject before. And i'm realy scared that the commities will throw my application in the garbage or assume im a dancer. So by way of this post please :
A - Let me know if you know of any info on this subject(past research, studies, something that exists that I dont know about)
B - Give me your ideas for possible topics that I could study within this industry
C- Let me know if you'd be willing to provide info once the project gets underway
D - Let me know if you have any experience trying to get into school and being honest about what you do
E - Have you written any papers on dancing (and would u be willing to share? What were the professor's reactions?
F- What do you think of my idea? Do you think I have a chance of being accepted?
Cross your fingers for me. This is my passion....Ill be checking back again soon to read your thoughts opinions and advice. It is truly exciting to see how many people on this board help fight the typical stereotypes about dancing!!! Thanks in advance for all your help! Much love -- (and money) Cheetahchick :-*
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
You said you are in grad school for psychology- do you have an emphasis you are going for, such as counseling, clinical, experimental, etc? If you have an emphasis then you could somehow incorporate that into your hypothis. What do you ultimately want to do with your psychology degrees? Work with adolescents, substance abuse patients, do counseling, etc.... you should somehow incorporate your main interests into your paper. There are a lot of different research papers you could do with dancers as your main point of interest, but what aspect of psychology most interests you? This would be a good place to start in trying to figure out an idea for your study.
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Clinical....with a cognitive behavioral theoretical approach. I'd like to work with adults and adolescents....on a variety of presenting problems. Likely in an outpatient clinic, but I'm not sure yet....
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
You should try to incorporate that in some way. I have my Associate's degree and am currently going for my Bachelor's degree in Psychology, so I'm not very "advanced" yet, so I don't know how much help I'd be to you, but I'd love to help if I can.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
Okay, here's an idea. Somebody at a University in Ohio decided to prove that dancers aren't criminally sexual. They had a group of dancers, a group of convicted "flashers," and a control group. They tested each group and found that the dancers scored higher than the exhibitionists for exhibitionist tendencies, but normal for sexual aggression. Some other guy from Canada wrote a book (The Other Side of the G-string, maybe?) and challenged OH guys research because the women were tested in the club, while working. He thought that if they had been tested away from the club on their day off they would have scored normal for exhibitionism. As far as I know, no one ever followed up on that, and it would be interesting to know (a) if the score would change outside of the club or when we've had a few days off and (b) if you can correllate the score to the amount of time dancing.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
Thank you for this post. You are interested in *us* and did not flash some unscientific and flawed survey.
Interviewing women who have been in the biz for 2+ years and have taken their jobs seriously might help you bring a topic into focus.
What fascinates me is how I separate my stripper self for my own self, how I don't have a sex drive, why my self-esteem is tied into how customers critique me, what product I think I'm giving, and what effect on society am I making. I also wonder why customers come in in the first place.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
Thank you to EVERYONE that has posted so far!! Lena, do you know the name of the Ohio study or any information about it, so I could locate it? Was the book that challenged it written by a PhD student in psych? What about the book that was challenging it? (do u know the author or anything..?)I'm starting to think something along the lines of exhibitionism and voyerism.... Lizette, great ideas! When I propose something like this -- how could i go about about presenting how I know that strippers seperate themselves from "real self?" (cause I cant admit to working in a club)Any ideas for a specific research question?, and I need to have a reason for doing this that can show the admission committies that this research will benefit society in some way. Are you guys in school and what are you studying? Thanks
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I think the problem is that these studies are all so clinical, so the only people looking at them are people in the field. Joe Six Pack will never see a dissertation about the minds of strippers because he is watching E! and MTV, and I would rather that be the case because that is who we will run into every day. That is our boyfriend, his friends, our fathers, brothers....these are the people that I want to believe that strippers aren't all basketcases.
I think things are changing. It's great that mainstream television showcases very smart, attractive women like Jillian Barberie, Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy that are obviously attractive in a stripper way (dress, act, and look the part.) I think these type of women do more for our reputations than a paper would, unfortunately.
I don't think strippers are necessarily intelligent. I think we can be smart, but I think we are just a general cross-section of women.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
Well, I'm writing the paper as a psychological dissertation. It is not exactly a paper on the intelligence of strippers. I just titled my post that because I was saying that a stripper is capable of going on for a PhD. And I'm excited about the people on this site who are responding, who are all educated. It is a fact that there is a lack of research on this topic. I'm hoping that psychologists who are treating dancers and want to get a better understanding of the industry will read it. It is hard to treat something that you know nothing about. I'm sure other people would read it. Think about it -- there have been tons of stuff done on rapists and not only rapists read it. Same goes for exhibitionists and voyerism. I need to concentrate on what kind of question can i ask about this population that would produce research that would somehow better society.Thanks again =)
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
Woo-hoo for graduate school strippers! Both my best friend and I are in grad school and dancing.
I'm always interested in stripping's affects on relationships, most especially when it has to do with trust (because that's one of my own issues, obviously). Sometimes -- when I'm working as a dancer -- I find myself thinking untrusting things about my boyfriend, and then when I stop dancing, I go back to trusting him again. But there's other things, too... most notable the lack of libidio we all talk about. Why don't we want to have sex when we work in the sex industry? That would be good to know, god damn it!
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If you do a search in any academic article finder you should be able to find it.
The seperating from self question can be based on role strain... a sociological idea that our identities are based on the roles that we play, and when the roles differ too much from our perception of ourselves it caues us stress. Do a search, you'll find stuff about it.
You could also use the concept of "emotional work" and compare several groups... say, strippers, crisis counselors, and psychiatrists.
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Ok so Ive been looking for research FOREVER (well, years) on this subject and now all of the sudden stuff is coming up. Perhaps I typed in something different this time. (or maybe im just more motivated now that im coming closer to aplication time) It looks like there actually have been some studies done in the field of sociology. I still havent found any psych research though. WOw, so now that i know stuff actually has been done, it might be even harder to develop a unique thesis......hhhmmmmmmmm.
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ps - im really curious as to what u girls are studying, what your personal research interests are and if u feel comfortable sharing where u go to school. (i understand if you dont wanna post that piece though)
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I go to Naropa University (Oakland campus) and also went to USC Film School. I've been thinking about doing a "stripper documentary" forever because all of the one's I've seen suck ass and don't convey the reality I've experienced. That's not exactly research, but it's close.
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Yes, I have some info for you. There's an article call "Stripping the Myths" that was in the Lexington Herald-Leader which detailed a book that is coming out next March, I believe, called Stripped "Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers." It was written by Bernadette Barton, who is an Associate Professor at Morehead State University in KY. She had a small sample size, 38 participants. Mostly because she kept going to the strip clubs and interrupting the girls trying to interview them when there was money to be made. Typical outsider, thinks that unlike Doctors and Lawyers our on the job time isn't valuable. The write up in the H-L was interesting. I have also written several papers-MS Criminal Justice-on my ten year work experience as a dancer-and have gotten a warm reception by a female professor. I did have a sexual harassment problem on the job. I was granted an academic graduate assistantship and on my very first day of my job two of my classmates (a cop and a retired one) went in and made sure to tell my boss, a former 1960's era old school retired Alabama police officer, what I used to do for a living and that I was "bad people." Well, it ended up in a fuss and surprisingly I found support from the Dept chair who adopted a daughter out of childhood prostitution from another country. I can send you what I have written.
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Hmm. I am now pondering starting a mailing list called "Grad School Strippers" just for the hell of it. Balancing dancing with higher education is really a major part of my life right now. :-)
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Yeah, I had the sexual harrasment thing for the first time this semester. I wrote a great paper about customers (the sex industry: socioeconomic status and roles) and then my professor asked to see naked pictures of me. When I explained to him how innapropriate that was he told me that if I danced for him I could have an A in both the classes I have him for. Arrgh! Then I found out that he's been asked to leave another university for sexually harrassing the students. As soon as I get my legitimate A from him I'm reporting him.
I'm a psych student at a crappy state university in PA. Dancing, going to school, and studying sociology have all lead me to decided against grad school. Instead, I'm renting out my house and moving into a school bus so I can travel and dance a few months out of the year and skip the whole rat race thing. :-)
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
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Originally Posted by Lizette
What fascinates me is how I separate my stripper self for my own self, .
This may fall more into the psychiatry category, but how about discussing dissociative tendencies and their prevalence in dancers as compared to a control group of women in the same age bracket?
There is a lot of crap floating around about how dancers are mainly sexual abuse survivors, and by association have miraiad dissociative disorders. Many of us separate dancing from our normal lives, but whether this is useful or not, and whether we are more prone to dissociatiion than the general population, would be an interesting topic to study.
I may be mistaken, but I believe there is a dissocation scale that rates the severity of the dissociative symptoms. If you had dancers and a control group answer questions about possiblie dissociative tendncies, you might get a pretty interesting result.
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well a great many dancers are sexual abuse survivors - whether the number exceeds, or exceeds significantly the number for women in general would be more at issue. Not to mention the fact that my suspicion is that a lot of the studies are including behaviours and instances that occurred AFTER women begin dancing - and "consent" is a hazy issue when you are doing things for money. Like, we've all had unwanted touch in the club, some of which we have acceded to and some of which we have not. We have all succumbed to pressure (please don't even bother telling me that you have NEVER been pressured or succumbed to it - if you really are one of those three dancers, you'd just blend in with the white liars anyway) in ways that would, in any other environment be called sexual assault or sexual exploitation - however I think that we'd all be surprised to have it defined as sexual assault or exploitation (at least in the legal or socially normative sense). At the most expansive I think we could define it as "grey zone". So taking those incidents, yes you will have a very high proportion - somewhere abouts of 100% - of dancers who experience sexual abuse; that doesn't make it an accurate reflection though.
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Something I've often thought about is what causes dancers to be "sucked into" the stripper lifestyle. I use the term "sucked into" because when I first started dancing, the main reason my boyfriend was upset about it was because he was worried that I would get sucked into the stripper lifestyle of drugs and prostitution (in his words). Now that he knows more about the industry, he knows that most strippers aren't drug addicts and prostitutes, but that some are. I wonder what types of personalities and backgrounds are most at risk for getting into drug abuse and addiction. I know many strippers who recreationally smoke pot, but I wouldn't consider them as being "sucked in" and then I know drug addicts who are sucked into it and are basically only working to support their habit. I'm going to school to eventually be a substance abuse counselor, so this topic is very interesting to me.
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What a fascinating thread. It seems one correlation to stripping is a high psychological literacy. One idea, extending on Colleen's and others, might be to compare dancers to persons working in non-sexual sales, as there seem to be lots of similarities in terms of personal distancing and separating out the 'self'. Another might be to compare to other roles within the spectrum of sexual service providers- compare to say escorts, or within the sprectrum of dancers, from the no-touch stage dance and talking end to the high contact lap dancing end. Just a couple thoughts from a non stripper.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
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Originally Posted by thechaosfairy
Hmm. I am now pondering starting a mailing list called "Grad School Strippers" just for the hell of it. Balancing dancing with higher education is really a major part of my life right now. :-)
That would be really cool. I wish I knew other grad school dancers. There's definitely no other strippers in my program and I've yet to meet any other grad student strippers in the two clubs I've worked at.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
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Originally Posted by Lena
Yeah, I had the sexual harrasment thing for the first time this semester. I wrote a great paper about customers (the sex industry: socioeconomic status and roles) and then my professor asked to see naked pictures of me. When I explained to him how innapropriate that was he told me that if I danced for him I could have an A in both the classes I have him for. Arrgh! Then I found out that he's been asked to leave another university for sexually harrassing the students. As soon as I get my legitimate A from him I'm reporting him.
Um . . . if he was going to give you an A for fulfilling his requests . . . he will almost certainly give you a lower grade for NOT doing so, no matter the quality of your work.
You want to do something in the way of documenting the incident NOW, rather than at the point where he can say "well, she got a C, she's just grousing and picking on me".
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by colleen
This may fall more into the psychiatry category, but how about discussing dissociative tendencies and their prevalence in dancers as compared to a control group of women in the same age bracket?
There is a lot of crap floating around about how dancers are mainly sexual abuse survivors, and by association have miraiad dissociative disorders. Many of us separate dancing from our normal lives, but whether this is useful or not, and whether we are more prone to dissociatiion than the general population, would be an interesting topic to study.
I may be mistaken, but I believe there is a dissocation scale that rates the severity of the dissociative symptoms. If you had dancers and a control group answer questions about possiblie dissociative tendncies, you might get a pretty interesting result.
As far as dissociation, I view it both as a tendency and a learnable skill. I know a number of people who have definite personality shifts in various areas of their lives. (As an example of how something can not be a disorder, a reaction of sadness to a sad event is not a disorder; depression is a reaction that occurs incorrectly, or in incorrect proportion to the situation -- But I digress.) I did not have the ability to seriously step into a persona until I met these people and consciously practiced some of their techniques.
Now I'm able to do it to some extent, and it means that dancing does not have very much negative emotional impact on my life. Or on the life of the persona-self who does the dancing -- she's much better suited to it than I am, I'm kinda gruff and act like a boy and don't like certain kinds of attention from strangers. She loves the attention. She's me, but with a few edits. More female, more inclined to partying. Once I forgot to put on my perfume and realized I hadn't fully shifted over (sometimes that's my "cue") -- and customers were reacting differently to me. I went "whoops" and got in the back and put on some perfume. :-)
Addendum, slightly ranty:
I studied psychology in college for two years, but my realization that mental health science is WAY, WAY, WAY barking up the wrong tree with regards to what dissociative mental quirks can be and what they can mean (i.e. the rigid insistence that multiple personalities ONLY occur in certain specific forms, and ONLY as a result of abuse, and anyone who says otherwise is pretending -- !) was part of where I decided, fuck it. I'm'a be a writer.
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Re: Strippers are intelligent!!
hehe im'a be a lawyer after i finish undergrad. Goodluck chaosfairy!