She Got Herself There: Narrative Resistance in the Drug Discourse of Strippers

ABSTRACT

There has been ample literature on strip clubs regarding interactions between strippers and patrons, power and social control, and how dancers manage their identities as stigmatized workers. Few studies have explored how dancers grapple with their doubly deviant identities as dancers and as drug and alcohol users. Through interviews and fieldwork, I explore how dancers frame their drug use. At times, dancers stigmatize other dancers by using damaging stereotypes to “other” sister workers for drug abuse. At other times, strippers do not malign other dancers for drug and alcohol use. Instrumental or recreational drug use is relatively unstigmatized.

Acknowledgments

I thank Emily Brissette, Christine Zozula, and (anonymous) reviewers for reviewing earlier versions of this article.

Notes

¹ Sources for information in the table are the author’s field notes and tape recorded interviews.

² Neal Shover, talking about crime, identified “life as party” as “enjoyment of good times with minimal concern for obligations and commitments external to the person’s immediate social setting.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melissa F. Lavin

MELISSA F. LAVIN is an Assistant Professor at State University of New York, Oneonta. She received her B.A. in 2003 from University of Colorado at Boulder, and her Ph.D. in 2011 from University of Connecticut. Her areas include crime and deviance, medicalization, symbolic interaction, qualitative methods, and gender. She serves as an Associate Editor for Deviant Behavior and Humanity and Society.