I hereby announce I'm moving away from my former support of pole dancing and stripping for your average lady not on the street. I've been thinking a lot about how stripping and other sexual displays have seeped into mainstream western culture, and I think they're spoiling what used to be a good time.
This weekend I found myself fascinated by the Girls Gone Wild ads all over cable. They do look pretty hot. Except every now and then, when a sweet young thing is being encouraged to lift her top, you notice her pupils are dilated, you can't miss her slight drunken teeter, and you read panic and entrapment all over her, even as she goes ahead and lifts that top. Because she's been dared to, she thinks she's flying in the face of convention, she thinks it's liberating. Mostly she thinks "whatever." I read up on the GGW mogul - who's a genius - because he's tapped directly into that Gen X/Y aesthetic of whatever and made millions. Smart. But girls, you gotta learn that the achievement of that T-shirt, getting that camera gaze to fix on you - that isn't flouting convention, that shit's been happening for years. That isn't power, honey. It's the precise opposite.
The stripper pole aerobics thing plays into this too. Because pole dancing isn't exercise or art - or if it is, it's a smattering of exercise or art within a whole of titillation, display, and objectification. Lessons are billed as an expression of femininity and sexuality. But pole dancing culturally refers to prostitution. Why do I, Miss Average Girlfrend, feel any compulsion, desire, or need to refer to prostitution? I honestly don't think I do. This coming from me, who lined up "exotic dance" (stripping) lessons for a friend's bachelorette party. Which was super fun. But okay, you learn to roll your hips and slide down a wall. What does your guy offer in return for the girl's display? 9 times out of 10, nothing. Approval. Pfft. Who needs that? No, seriously. Who does?
Men think pole dancing and stripping are sexy, and why wouldn't they? Objectification and humiliation are always fun when you know the tables will never be turned on you. But go ahead, turn the tables, just to see. Yep. Just as I thought. Not sexy. Men stripping, men dancing while stripping - to me, not sexy. Comedic, maybe. It's all just so terribly simple-minded.
As are traditional bachelor/ette parties. The men's parties are just dopey - I really don't know where idiocy is topped. I've heard stories of strippers who were really prostitutes which freaked the guys out, serial vomiting, horrible cases of the DT's that last days. More importantly, of the last 2 bachelor parties I've heard about in the last 2 months, nobody ever said they actually had a good time. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Traditional bachelorette parties - it's women imitating men, and it feels false. I've done it before and I'll attend in good graces, but it's kind of boring and totally non-titillating. Mauri offered a true re-vision of/to the bachelor/ette party. Invite every last one of your exes - the good, the bad, the what was I thinking - out for cocktails. Just you and them, and lots of drinks. Now *that* is a rite of passage.
By the by, go ahead and strip. Install a pole in the bedroom. Hit the skin bars. Be my guest. I'll never forbid my partner the strip clubs on bachelor weekends, I won't picket, I don't care, live and let live. I may think you benightedly unoriginal though.
