Susan Dewey - Neon Wasteland. On Love, Motherhood, and Sex Work in a Rust Belt Town

ON LOVE, MOTHERHOOD, AND
SEX WORK IN A RUST BELT TOWN

SUSAN DEWEY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2011 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dewey, Susan.

Neon wasteland : on love, motherhood, and sex work in a rust belt town /

Susan Dewey.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-26690-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-520-26691-9 (pbk : alk. paper)

1. Sex oriented businessesSocial aspectsNortheastern States

Case studies. 2. Women dancersNortheastern StatesCase
studies. 3. WomenNortheastern StatesSocial conditionsCase
studies. 4. WomenFamily relationshipsNortheastern States
Case studies. 5. Self-perception in womenNortheastern StatesCase
Studies. 6. FemininityCase Studies. 7. Northeastern StatesSocial
conditions. 8. Northeastern StatesEconomic conditions. I. Title.

HQ18.U5.D49 2010
155.3'33dc22

2010020856

Manufactured in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

For Denise and Melanie,
with much love and great respect

Preface

Power can be invisible, it can be fantastic, it can be dull and routine. It can be obvious, it can reach you by the baton of the police, it can speak the language of your thoughts and desires. It can feel like remote control, it can exhilarate like liberation, it can travel through time, and it can drown you in the present. It is dense and superficial, it can cause bodily injury, and it can harm you without ever seeming to touch you. It is systematic and particularistic and is often both at the same time. It causes dreams to live and dreams to die.

Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters

There are some lines that, once you cross them, you can't go back again, Cinnamon said to me backstage over the dull throbbing of music pounding outside the door. She was explaining how it was impossible for her to leave her job as a topless dancer, not only because it was the sole source of economic support for her daughter, but also due to her perception that she was somehow psychologically altered by her experiences onstage. Sex work clearly does change one's perceptions of the world, largely because of the elaborate social and institutional processes that combine to undermine women's efforts at exercising autonomy. Yet how do some women come to perceive sex work as the most desirable option out of a limited menu of life choices? Why did Cinnamon, for example, remain convinced that topless dancing was the only job open to her? The fact that such a job has the potential to generate a higher income does not in itself adequately explain why certain women make the decision to sell their sexual labor rather than take a lower-paid but considerably lower-risk job, while others do not.

Sex work is part of a learned process by which some categories of women are conditioned to believe that their self-esteem, material worth, and possibilities for life improvement are invested in their bodies. This is notably similar to the way that women outside the sex industry also come to see themselves as what feminist theorist Judith Butler has famously termed embodied subjects (1993). This deep connection between women and their bodies regardless of class status or professional affiliation underscores how gendered performance is a critical element of sexual labor. Women who dance at adult establishments know that their self-presentation appeals to deeply entrenched stereotypes about women, and they deliberately choose to enact stage roles that they hope will elicit more money from their clients. Topless dancing is thus distinctive from other forms of sex work, in part because of its legality, but also because of its association with more creative forms of stagecraft.

Feminist scholarship on the body as a site of female agency and self- expression underscores the complicated set of behaviors and beliefs that sustain the linkages between women and their sexualized bodies. odds underscores that topless dancing is a complicated form of labor that warrants a unique form of analysis. What follows is an attempt to document what dancing topless means to the women who do it to support themselves and their families in a social environment that in every way clearly signals to them that they have transgressed norms regarding proper femininity and motherhood.

It was August 2002, and I was walking into Vixens for the first time. The dim light yellowed by cigarette smoke felt warm, and the presence of others made me feel safe after an unnerving walk through the poorly lit parking lot. A small rectangular wooden bar with a hollow center occupied the center of the building, which looked more like a large room once I was inside. The bartender was a dark-haired woman in her thirties who did not return my smile, although a man sitting to her left winked at me. Onstage to my right, a bare-breasted woman in a sequined thong was half-heartedly twisting her body as she held onto a metal pole. I did not know then that she moved slowly because she was trying to distribute her energy evenly over the eight-hour shift she expected to work that night.

Partially clothed women hovered near the bar smiling at fully dressed men in their thirties and forties; occasionally a dancer led one of the men into a small curtained room to the left of the stage, near the entrance. Once inside, I later learned, the woman would stand between the legs of the seated man and dance for the duration of a song, usually about three minutes. She would be paid ten dollars for this, three of which she would give to the manager for the privilege of working there as part of a curious labor practice in which dancers are legally known as independent contractors. This system considers dancers entrepreneurs in their own right and not only frees management from paying them, but also mandates that women in some establishments pay management part of what they earn in tips as reimbursement for providing a space for them to work.

A few clothed women sat at a table in the back, and I introduced myself. It's slow tonight, one complained, too many girls. Indeed, there were more women in the room than men, although then I did not know that this was part of a labor practice that employs almost no fulltime workers in order to avoid paying any kind of insurance or benefits and also ensures a greater variety of performers with a wide range of audience appeal. One of the women, whom I later came to know as Diamond, showed me inside a small closetlike space behind them, in which fifty or sixty brightly colored semitransparent garments hung above boots and strapped sandals with five-inch heels. Each cost between eighty and two hundred dollars, and management encouraged dancers to buy several before starting work. This is an expensive job in the beginning, she said, smiling wryly. You have to be patient until you start making money.