Negotiating Feminist Politics in the Third Wave: Labor Struggle and Solidarity in Live Nude Girls Unite!

Abstract

This essay examines Live Nude Girls Unite!, a documentary about female exotic dancers' successful efforts to unionize. The film rhetorically exposes an alternative perspective on the ideological evolution, and contradictions, that represent third-wave feminism by complicating the notion of gender oppression and the responsibilities of coalition politics. Through these women's analyses of their political situation, the film rhetorically addresses complex issues, including the complicated distinctions between victimizer and victim in contemporary gender politics, women's appropriation of sex work and capacity for labor activism, and the dominant culture's attempts to regulate working women's private and public lives.

Keywords:

• Coalition Politics
• Collective Action
• Feminist Rhetoric
• Third-Wave Feminism
• Negotiation

Notes

See, for example, Roiphe (1993), Hoff-Sommers (1994), and Wolf (1993). For a rhetorical analysis of these books from an academic feminist perspective, see Gring-Pemble and Blair (2001).

For more information on post-feminism and third-wave feminism and its representations in the media, see McRobbie (2004); Shugart (2001); and Shugart, Waggoner, and Hallstein (2001). For a greater discussion of the relation between the second and third waves, including continuity and difference, see Bailey (1997).

For more on the work of second-wave documentaries, see Borda (2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer L. Borda

Jennifer L. Borda (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University, 2002) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of New Hampshire.