Is Stripping a Feminist Act?

A popular narrative about sex work, earnestly discussed in Women's Studies courses throughout the nation and represented in countless "I stripped my way through college!" memoirs, is that adult labor is automatically, and by definition, feminist.

The argument goes like this: By using sexual stereotypes professionally, by "owning" them (using them consciously), and by "subverting" them (choosing which stereotypes to exaggerate and which to discard), a sex-working woman is participating in a feminist reclamation of both personal and economic power. Her deliberate use of gender-drag turns wearing a g-string and gyrating on stage -- or behind glass -- from an act done merely to pay her rent into a strong, assured and transgressive statement more akin to political performance art. You can't objectify me -- I am objectifying myself, shrewdly and self-consciously, in order to obtain power through money, and control through being considered sexually desirable.

It's almost as if sex work is the most feminist thing a women can do -- because if women are objectified every minute of every day against our will and without any personal benefit, why not grab the reins on that process and make a decent living wage at it? If women's bodies belong to everyone, some feminists argue, why not be the ones to profit from our own bodies instead of being consumed for free?

If we're going to be forced to sell regardless, we may as well name our own prices and take comfort in pocketing our own net gain. It beats working a minimum-wage job forty hours a week while performing a second, unpaid, full-time job as visual erotic entertainment for society at large, simply by existing as a female in the world. Why not demand payment for that second shift?

And, as it turns out, that second shift pays far more than minimum wage -- and all you have to do to claim your paycheck is to agree to perform a ritualized acknowledgment of your status as entertainment by revealing your body or performing sexually. Goodbye polyester smock and plastic nametag -- hello tuition payments!

This was my view of sex work when I started stripping in the mid-90s. I'll admit it: I was a Nouveau Feministe. I thought sex work was exciting, real, raw, and powerful. I enjoyed shopping for fishnet stockings, ornate wigs, false eyelashes, and the other assorted accoutrements of my new profession. Why not? I figured. It wasn't like I felt less sexually objectified working as a waitress. I was young and angry. I wanted reparation for all the times I'd been stared at, yelled at, touched without consent.

Also, I wanted to control the desire I'd been denied as a fat and homely child. I wanted to be the Hot Girl for once in my life! I wanted to feel that power, even if it was a joke that only me and my coworkers were in on, made up of fake hair and makeup and seven-inch platform heels. I loved the idea that by giving men what they wanted in a way that was so completely stylized -- a portrayal of sexual pleasure and abandon so overstated it became insultingly ridiculous, or so I thought -- I was taking my customers' money and using it to fund my life as a feminist. I bought groceries, paid my rent, traveled, read, took walks, took naps. For the first time in my life, I was making a living wage. It felt powerful and important.

Meanwhile, my mother -- an old-school 1970s-era feminist -- believed that my work was actively harming feminism. Never mind that I was finally able to afford an occasional meal out and pay my utilities without worrying about an overdrawn checking account for the first time in my life. To her, no amount of money or lack of financial stability was worth what I was doing: selling myself and other women out. She loved me, but she found what I was doing to be politically untenable.