02.05.06

Go ahead and lap dance all you want. See if I’m bothered

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:24 pm by Sarah

I can’t believe I’ about to give Stringfellow’s more free publicity, joining the outraged residents and concerned councillors who have helpfully advertised the opening of his new lap-dancing club in Dublin. Eamon Dunphy has been having a great snigger all week and I presume his largely male audience was sniggering along with him.Personally, I couldn’t care less about this seedy enterprise; if this is what men want, let them have it. How pathetic do you have to be to get a kick out of the whole table-dancing experience? Yes, she’s beautiful. No, those aren’t real breasts. True, she has no pubic hair. The fact that this appeals to you says more about your infantilism than her innate attraction.

Yes, she’s smiling and gyrating for you but, er, you’re paying her. And this gives you a sense of power? Makes you feel important? Could somebody explain to me one more time how men got to rule the world?

I’ve never understood the susceptibility of males to visual stimulation. One peek at a suspender belt and they’re off. Visual just doesn’t do it for women. We’ve always been more verbally stimulative. So they have their strippers and we have our romance novels. This is how good-looking women end up married to very plain men. When the reverse happens, I’m not sure what’s going on. Give us a glass of wine, lead properly while dancing, have something to talk about, and we’ll quite willingly fall in love with you. Give them large, jiggly tits, lots of hair on their heads (but nowhere else) and watch them swoon.

One can’t help recalling one of the many great scenes in This Is Spinal Tap, the fake rockumentary about an English heavy metal band on tour in America. A woman from the record company tells the band members that there’s a problem with the new album cover. They feel the image of a naked woman wearing a leash and dog collar is sexist. The band members look confused and one says: “Sexy? What’s wrong with being sexy?” One man’s sexy is another woman’s sexist.

If I’m left in peace with a good book and some warm pyjamas, men can do what they want. Don’t even think about suggesting that they wouldn’t go if we did the odd stupid dance for them at home. The paying is important and the higher the price the better. I doubt if Salome did the very first lap dance. But ever since Herod handed over the head of John the Baptist as her reward, paying has been crucial to the deal. It eliminates the annoying obligations of guilt and gratitude that sour normal relations between men and women. What was most interesting about Herod was that he didn’t want to kill John the Baptist at all, but he was in front of the lads and didn’t want to look soft. So it was off with his head and on with the dance.

Paying lets men believe that the naked women clinging to poles, or writhing on table-tops, sat down with a career guidance teacher and made a legitimate choice. I don’t buy into the argument that just because the girls are making money it’s okay. I know we live in a capitalist world, but profit- making doesn’t legitimise everything. The post-feminist argument about women being empowered because they take money is rubbish. If it confirms their status as sexual objects, then it’s not good for women.

Who decided that sexual liberation meant handing over 30% of your earnings to Peter Stringfellow for the privilege of thrusting your genitalia in the faces of pin-striped executives? The idea that a reasonable man could find this charade remotely erotic is risible.

But the men tell themselves that the girls love it. Sure, they smile and chat to the boys. They are obviously having a great time and why wouldn’t they? Aren’t they in the company of thoroughly respectable middle-class men who primly follow the “touch ‘n’ go” rules of dance clubs. That’s the great joke about lapdancing. On the one hand, the men are there to get an eyeful. On the other, they have to be cool and pretend that they don’t really care.

You thought etiquette was confined to the golf club? No, when the boys go anywhere together there are rules, and titty bars are no different. The last thing you can actually do is look excited when your girl is doing her little dance for you. This confers an air of respectability on the venture. Oh, and be sure to praise the food. Eating at Stringfellow’s is the new reading-the-articles-in-Playboy.

Then leave your credit card at the bar and knock back the Moet, because drinking champagne negates the sleaze. It turns a bunch of dirty old men leering at young, foreign, naked women into harmless corporate fun. Ah, the corporates. In my past life as a PR girl, I often arranged corporate entertainment for important executives. In those days it was golf, dinner and plenty of booze. I suppose the current generation of girls will be asked to book a leopard-skin table at Stringfellow’s. If they object, they’ll be called prudes. They might be stupid enough to go, and validate the supposed respectability of the night out. They might be stupid enough not to go and get pushed out of the boys’ club that remains corporate Ireland.

You can be sure that a few women will go along for a bit of fun and tell themselves its all great gas. The lapdancers won’t be the only females engaging in pretence. Like most women I can be counted on to maintain an amused countenance in the face of abject humiliation. But any woman who light-heartedly dismisses the sight of her husband or boyfriend being surrounded by nubile naked women is lying; primarily to herself.

The risibly named “girl power” movement sought to make women one of the lads. If you could drink like a man, curse like a man, and have casual sex like a man, maybe they’d let you into their club. Peter Stringfellow might let you into his, but trust me girls, lowering yourselves to their standards will not find you the kind of equality you were looking for. You have to have a member to get into the real member’s club – ” the boardroom. Pretending not to be bothered by strippers is not the key to corporate success.

The frustration of the locals is understandable. The planning laws in this country are really quite odd. A county council can tell residents what trees they can and cannot plant. They can dictate the colour of roof tiles and refuse planning permission to shops of certain sizes. Yet apparently there are helpless to prevent the opening of strip club in a residential area. However, the concerned residents need not be too concerned.

I can’t see it surviving in Ireland. These kind of places depend on droves of US businessmen and builder’s conventions to make real money. Peter Stringfellow might be able to pull in the celebrities and keep out the Stag Parties in the London venue. Apparently it’s quite the thing to be photographed with the freakish looking perma-tanned party man. But this is Dublin and despite our illusions we are a backwater. It’ll never last. In the meantime, off you go boys. Honestly, I couldn’t care less.

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