The Stripper Fixation

As a woman, one thing that I've never understood is man's obsession with strippers. Of course men surrounding themselves with naked girls seems pretty self explanatory, but the only reference point for woman kind of such behaviour is Gok Wan hugging chubby British women on E4 telling them to love their cellulite. Hardly a recipe for a trouser tent.
I've always found it difficult to understand exactly what the huge attraction is in having a woman flounder around you in her underwear for money; after all the idea of paying 50 quid to have some Eastern European man dangle his scrotum in my face seems less than appealing.

I decided to do something about my lack of knowledge on the stripping industry and find out for myself, as well as other women what the big fuss is about. Once my boyfriend came back from his lad's holiday in America he told me that he had received a lap dance from a woman in Vegas. On our anniversary. Perhaps this is me being too relaxed, but I couldn't help finding it funny. After all I had jokingly told his best friend to buy him one from me and he wasted no time taking me up on the supposed offer.

While my boyfriend and I were in Puerto Banus last week we spent a lot of time in the famous Marbella strip, which is essentially a place of promoters, tequila shots and of course strippers. Once we'd downed a few incredibly strong and reasonable cocktails from Bar 28 we ambled down the strip until we reached a lap dance bar with a sign outside reading 'All English Girls Available'. At first I thought this might be something of a waste, almost like eating fish and chips on holiday, but the boyfriend was shockingly unphased.

Once we sat down inside the girls started coming over to, I suppose, advertise themselves. Being a girl I typically ended up bonding and chatting with these half naked women about hair extensions and eyebrow waxing. This of course resulted in my boyfriend having that look of despair on his face that he gets when I spend too long in the OPI aisle of Brent Cross.
We then met a lovely girl who we got chatting to that actually turned out to be a Bristol student. She told us that it was an easy way to make money and she just didn't mind the work. The strange thing about it all was that this girl became easy to relate to and respect, young, pretty and doing a very hard degree - all things that you wouldn't associate with a pole dancer. I suppose this is because usually we think of pole dancers and strippers as almost faceless, nameless characters in order to create a sort of boundary.
This meant that by the time she took us into a private room to give us a 'couples dance' it was almost hard to not feel entirely uncomfortable. After all, I can't imagine any other situation in which I got to know a girl for half an hour and then watched her straddle my boyfriend. At least, not one that didn't involve a shotgun.
The whole time this girl was dancing on the two of us I could only think three things. 1: Try not to laugh, 2: My breasts are better than hers 3: When is this over?
Aside from all that the expression on my boyfriends face was absolutely priceless. The pure will he had to look like he wasn't enjoying it was just hilarious.

However much I couldn't ever imagine myself working in such a field, the more I saw this girl the more I realised how similar her life is to anyone elses. As we met up with the girls to go clubbing with them the following night, I saw the process of her finishing work, getting changed and getting on with her life. By the time she was all dressed you wouldn't even know if she was a stripper or a lawyer, which to be honest she one day could be.

The thing I'm interested is people's problem with strip clubs. For me, I think it is of course degrading to women and promotes smutty behaviour from men. However I can't help justifying that women's rights are all about choice, if a woman should want to take her clothes off for money then who is anyone to stop her. For men at least, one could say it only becomes smutty when it is a regular occurrence. It's one thing to go to a strip club at a Bachelor party or on holiday, but once that becomes your regular Wednesday night it's a little bit pathetic.

Some of my girlfriend's have asked me how I could possibly tolerate my boyfriend watching a woman take her clothes off, to which I have to ask: is it any different from watching porn?
Our boyfriends, husbands and male friends watch naked women they don't know take their clothes off at the very least once a week - and I am confident that without the 'hands behind your back' regulations of a strip club they are doing a lot more than watching in that instance.
Not only this, but girls have become very influenced by strippers over the years. Girls can buy raunchy underwear everywhere from Ann Summers to Marks and Spencers these days and in doing so actually recreate the stripper image. Aside from the look, pole dancing classes have become as common as spinning classes, and apparently are just as good for your abs.

So I still don't know if I fully see the appeal in strippers. I couldn't do it, and I don't know if anyone I know could either, but at the same time I probably wouldn't know if they did. I think like many other things of it's kind, in moderation can be a bit of fun, that is until you have to go to A&E explaining a pole dancing accident.

Thanks for reading,

Olivia Jane