Abstract
This chapter shows how academic researchers frame strippers and stripping according to the competing logic of victimization and deviantization. The discourse of ‘commodification of the body’ is a vocabulary that, within the cultural contexts surrounding sex, suggests that either something shameful or exploitative occurs when sex becomes a commodity. When sex, or the idea of sex, is exchanged for currency in the marketplace, sex and the body become commodified and a discourse is generated which structures much of how we as a culture ‘look’ or ‘gaze’ at exotic dancers. Dancers use ‘the sensual exhibition of one’s body for financial remuneration’. Deviance/pathology exemplars were found within the context of criminology, law, and medicine. Pro-sex feminists and others drew on the exploitation/liberation frame by claiming that the women who danced for a living were in fact exercising power and freedom when they worked in the sex industry.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Body/Embodiment |
Subtitle of host publication | Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis |
Pages | 125-140 |
Number of pages | 16 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781317173441 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780754647263 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2016 |