Life In Strip Nation
Here on ErosBlog I ignored, as I tend to, the annual frenzy of “concerned” journalists fretting about how Halloween has morphed into “Dress Like A Slut” day, ohnoes! To me, the phenomenon is obviously just a manifestation (on Halloween, how appropriate!) of the ghosts of Saturnalia and Carnival, which we in the Puritan Protestancies had taken out and shot centuries ago. I approve, as I do, of all liberating influences. Hell, I approve of nekkedness in general, so how could I glower all dour at skimpy costumes?
Surprised I therefore was to find ChelseaGirl from Pretty Dumb Things fretting on the same topic, although I’ll cheerfully grant that she did it with more thoughtfulness and nuance than any print journalist I’ve ever seen tackle the subject. Most interesting and useful in her post, I thought, was her description of a memetic landscape she calls Strip Nation:
Because this trend … also speaks to the seduction of what I’ve come to call Strip Nation.
Strip Nation is the place where little girls wear body glitter for fun, where pole dancing is a fitness pursuit, where chicks have standing appointments for monthly Brazilians, and weekly tans, French manicures and matching pedicures. It’s the place where women purposefully show bra straps and g-strings. It’s where average women have the lower-back tattoo, body piercings, and t-shirts that read “Diva” It’s the where women get breast implants, labiaplasty and anal bleaching. It’s a place where family restaurants have waitresses wearing orange short-shorts, and where drag-queen restaurants have banana deep-throat contests, and where eighteen year-old girls win them.
Strip Nation is where we live now. It’s not a bad place to live. Strip Nation gives us Carmen Electra and body butter. Strip Nation lets us shake our booty with abandon. Hell, Strip Nation, combined with Hip-Hop Nation–it’s a unified country of dual principalities–has given us the word “booty”. Without Strip Nation, we’d still be pogoing and wearing flat shoes and high-waisted pleated pants.
Strip Nation can be a lot of fun, but it’s a deeply problematic kind of fun. I am proud to have been a stripper, but I know that stripping is best kept in the strip club because stripping is about serving up a fantasy based on the most simplistic heterosexual male’s formulation of an uncomplicated woman. Most simply, Strip Nation provides a dreamscape based on a model of a two-dimensional woman and men’s desire for them. And while that is all well and fine for an eight-hour strip shift, it has major issues when it goes rampant, out into the streets, and disseminates like a virus into the culture at large.
I wonder how much women choosing to dress like a stripper for Halloween–whatever the flavor of the specific fantasy–isn’t centered on an unquestioning slide into the happy amnesia of Strip Nation: a place where men will be men, women will be girls, and no one need have a thought cross their untrammeled brows. I wonder how much the Naughty Nurse, the Sassy Satan, the Wanton Witch, the Reform School Drop Out, the Pirate Wench, and all the heaving bosom, exposed thigh rest, has more to with the prefeminist nostalgia that Strip Nation embodies. I wonder how much the naughty Halloween costume hasn’t less to do with getting one’s freak on as it does with doing so in a way that feels like you don’t have to think about it when you do.
Tomorrow, Halloween will just be a bunch of garbled stories and memories, gone for another year, But we’ll still be living in Strip Nation. Look around you, it’s everywhere. Fun, yes. But at what cost?
I think the description of Strip Nation is spot on, but I’m having trouble parsing out the objection. It seems to be something in the nature of “real life is more complicated than that”, but every cultural expression we have is idealized in one way or another; Strip Nation is a fantasy space almost by definition, and it seems odd to me to ask “at what cost?” when the full achievement of the fantasy lies as much out of our reach as do the golden shores of Brigadoon.
“You wouldn’t like to eat nothing but candy and ice cream”, warned our mothers, and we didn’t believe them. If we really lived in Strip Nation, we probably wouldn’t enjoy that either; a steady diet of oversimplified sex is probably not much better than a steady diet of high fructose corn syrup. But what’s really going on here is a whole bunch of cultural expressions reaching toward Strip Nation, but which are counterbalanced by so many other cultural anchors and drags that we’ll never reach the Strip Nation Shangri La, nor indeed get anywhere close to there. We don’t live in Strip Nation; we don’t even live next door to Strip Nation. All we do is live in a place where we can, sometimes, get away with acting as if we do live in Strip Nation.
If you grant that, is it really fair to ask “at what cost?” The only cost I see is to the competing memetic landscapes that are losing mindshare in competition with Strip Nation. I’m talking Burqa Nation, Chador and Hajib Nation, Barefoot And Pregnant Nation, Nice Girls Don’t Nation, It’s Dirty Down There Nation, Leave The Lights Off Nation, Twin Beds Nation, Save It For Marriage Nation, the entire constellation of memetic spaces in which skin must be covered, dancing must be restricted because it could lead to shagging, sex is strictly controlled, and women are (in one sense or another) chattel, not free to make their own sexual decisions.
Here in the brave new century, Strip Nation is out-competing all of those memetic spaces. Is it perfect? Heck no. Is it better? I can’t see how it isn’t. At what cost? I, for one, don’t much care, unless the cost is higher than the rolling human tragedy of the repressive memetic spaces Strip Nation is competing with and struggling to displace.
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The problem is not that it is a fantasy, but that it is “based on the most simplistic heterosexual male’s formulation of an uncomplicated woman.”
It’s a fantasy for a tiny part of the population that has practically all of the social power. It’s not a pleasure-affirmative philosophy for overweight black women on welfare. It’s a fantasy that relies more on power than on pleasure, because it only serves some of the people some of the time, and everyone else is either a useful wanking object or ignored. Fun, pleasurable relations that aren’t fraught with degradation are achieved in spite of this dynamic, not by any means because of it.
Sex-positivity would be one thing, but that is not what Strip Nation is about. The mere confusion of stripping — an extremely one-sided, commodified interaction — and pleasure in your analysis says a lot.
I disagree. I think that the Strip Nation devalues women. Or maybe it simply reallocates our value to our breasts and our lips, our willingness to be nothing but nymphs and playthings.
I see the value of it – the increasing comfort women are taking in our bodies, and in the way we accept greater responsibility than ever for our sexual desires and the realisation of those desires, among other things. I think it makes us more relaxed, more playful, and those are good things, but I see the cost involved too.
A woman who fails to act the slut, at least on occasion, fails to be recognized as a valued member of this new society. She may be denied jobs, raises, premium housing, prompt service, or other opportunities because she is not willing to use her body as currency.
Is it all bad? No.
But to me there is certainly a cost involved, and it isn’t one to be taken lightly.
Still, especially when compared to some of the other memes you listed, it isn’t an entirely bad place. Maybe, as we come to populate it more fully, we’ll find ways to balance the costs and benefits.
I think that if all men (and women) were as willing to consider alternate viewpoints as you are, Bacchus, we’re well on our way.
(and, as always, I enjoy your writings, whether I agree with them or not. ChelseaGirl’s too!)
Bacchus,
Thanks for noticing my attempt at nuance. I’m not suggesting–as I think I expressed in my meandering definition of Strip Nation–that it’s all bad. I think stripping and its attendant carnivalesque performance of sex can be incredibly freeing for both men and women (and for men and women who are straight, gay or somewhere in between).
I’m merely suggesting that it’s a problematic endeavor, this moving of the crepuscular strip world into mainstream culture. It’s problematic because most people do not think as you do, or as I do, however much we might disagree on some issues. Most people tend to lapse into the good girl v. bad girl dyad and they stop thinking there. And that stopping is the issue.
This post was the first of what I hope will be a series of posts about Strip Nation–and therefore the very best I could hope for from it would be that it would generate some discussion and thought. No new thought is going to be particularly complete, and I admit I have work to do.
Thanks for making me think and for adding to the process.
kissykiss,
chelsea g
Christina, your power arguments appear to have unstated premises with which I suspect I disagree, so I’ll leave them alone.
However, I do feel safe in denying that my analysis confuses stripping with pleasure. For one thing, where does the word “pleasure” even appear in my post? Nor does the “Strip Nation” construct have all that much to do with stripping per se; rather, it’s an exemplary memetic label for a much larger concept and set of behaviors and attitudes. Thus I see you accusing me of “confusion in my analysis” of two things I did not analyze, one of which I didn’t even mention.
Justanother, thanks for your feedback. We do disagree, but your comment is a shining example of the pleasant way to disagree with somebody’s blog post. ;-)
I see the Strip Nation phenomenon, like the slutty Halloween costumes, as being a woman-driven phenomenon. I disagree that failure to participate puts women at any sort of disadvantage; indeed, I see it is a voluntary and enthusiastic reclamation of sexuality by women who have been told all their lives that “being a slut” (being sexually free, making their own sexual choices) was bad and dangerous and wrong. Does reclaiming from repression the power to act as sexually expressive free agents have costs? Sure it does — the same costs that liberty in all its forms always has.
The alternatives to liberty, however, strike me as having far heavier costs, as I tried to suggest in my catalog of competing repressive memes.
i’m not convinced Strip Nation is necessarily the dominant meme in western culture but although it is extremely pervasive it is blue collar and viewed, I suspect with good reason, as deeply suspect because it oversimplifies extremely womens “place” in the 21st century and certainly ignores womens aspiratations but it is an integral part of the semiotics of our century. We judge harshly women who commodify their bodies, not always but often. The memetic conflict between judging a person based on their appearence and judging a person based on their character and intellect runs very deep. The first is a part of our biological/ape heritage. Just as there is a conflict between who is the alpha male: the strongest or the smartest. The result is a complex discourse of memes. Dominace, as of several million years ago, was no longer simply about physical strength — the alpha male needed physical, social and intellectual attributes in a shifting mix depending on the needs of the moment in order to triumph. To be an alpha and be dominant a woman needs a similar mix of physical ( in this case a mix of facial beauty and the body – the primary sexual characteristics ) social and intellectual attributes. Dominance can also shift radically depending on the context and it is a rare human who can be dominant in the majority of contexts. We all compete, or at least interact, in shifting spheres and are constantly being evaluated by our peers (whether there is any fairness involved is an open question but it is a constantly evolving dynamic).
Chelsea, you’re most welcome. Actually, I was clear that you didn’t think Strip Nation was entirely bad — where I got lost was in your first cut at what you think the problems with it are. To me, the freeing part of it seems incredibly important, so much so that other concerns pale by comparison.
I’m still not sure I fully understand what you see as the problematic part. It sounds like you’re saying that the residents of Strip Nation will suffer from the condemnation of folks who see Strip Nation signifiers and immediately assume / condemn: “Bad girl!” To which my reaction is, so? The condemnators have always been with us, they find something to condemn in humanity no matter what the rest of us do. So I don’t really see why this makes a Strip Nation sensibility problematic.
I look forward to seeing the next installments!
(Thanks, Bachus, that’s exactly what I was striving for)
After reading the comments, I feel need to re-evaluate my own response.
I think the costs I’m seeing are more about the transition from our current situation to a Strip Nation (or anything similar) than entirely inherint in the destination. And, as you say, everything has a price, including reclaiming our freedoms, and those prices are often well worth paying.
Is the slut movement women-driven? Yes and No. Women are unquestionably the ones who voluntarily adopt increasingly slutty personas, but I would argue that we do it for the associated societal benefits. My direct experience tells me that dressing to show off my “attributes” results in noticeably different treatment out there in the world; sometimes to detrimental ends, but far more often in ways that are beneficial to me.
As a result, I’m faced with the daily decision of whether the potential rewards of tarting up outweigh the unavoidable discomforts. (As a rule, slut clothes aren’t warm, cozy, comfy or durable.)
Every day I face the decision of how much I’m willing to prostitute myself to the men and women who will likely treat me better as a result of my wardrobe and actions.
This is a major cost that I’m not sure men are consciously aware of, especially men who don’t tend to discriminate for or against women based on physical appearance.
For as long as we maintain an imbalance in what constitutes “attractive” (thin, blond, rich?), and while we still place more worth on sex appeal than on smarts, we act in ways that are untrue to our own potential for nobility.
Ok, nobility sounds a bit pretentious.
But while we’re still quantifying beauty in such restrictive ways, the Strip Nation is still restricted to the few who can squeeze into the mold, and is still populated by those who are willing to sacrifice more than I think it’s fair to ask. (that’s “we” as a society, btw. I get the impression you have a far broader and more embracing view of beauty than the average guy)
When everyone is free to embrace her/his inner slut, and no one feels compelled to do so for the societal advantages that (I think) are currently present?
Then I’ll be a full supporter of Strip Nation.
I dislike the idea of a “strip nation”. I dislike the idea of any of these “nations”. I’m of the opinion that a good blend of everything is best. It’s the whole forbidden fruit and necessity is the mother of invention thing. Would we even have glory holes if it weren’t for the Catholic church? Besides that I have to agree with the whole two dimensional woman aspect of “strip nation” is kind of lame. Quite frankly the people I know who seem to be stuck in “strip nation” annoy the heck out of me. Men and women alike. There’s more to life than one night stands and a cosmetically altered physique. More often than not it’s the imperfections that are so fun, for me at least.
This is my first post here, but I have been reading and digesting on Erosblog for about three years now.
I would like to point out that Strip Nation is most likely a direct result of the fact that society has general standards perpetuated by the media that are hard to maintain.
Once a girl reaches the ideal weight, body type, skin color, and purchases the necessary tattoos, piercings, and skimpy clothing to match that of the media archetype she is trying to portray, the only thing left to do is to flaunt it obscenely to obtain the effect equal to the monetary and physical cost that went into creating that image.
If we didn’t have to work so hard to keep up with the “norms” of media, maybe we wouldn’t be so hard pressed to take our clothes off and show the world what we’ve got.
Yeah. I see this phenomena as woman driven but also not. I think that to an extent, ladies buy into this idea under the false assumption that there is some kind of good-naughty, boring-fun, repressed-sexual dichotomy. Yeah it is fun, you get attention, etc, but can you opt out? I think that the answer isn’t always yes. I think that Strip Nation becomes internalized and a personality crutch and suddenly ladies are stuck with a meme that is only sometimes functional. And I think there is definately a power aspect. Absolutely. And that can become kinda lame sometimes too.
Mother nature has given us the miracle of the orgasm to drive us to reproduce. We can’t help it. We are hard-wired that way. Few of us have sex with the actual intention to reproduce every time we knock boots. In order to enjoy that grand feeling of climax, we make ourselves as sexually attractive as possible. Sexual attraction is built around signs of health and reproductive readiness. The youthful, smooth-skinned, high-breasted, rouged, puffy-lipped, long shiney-haired, flexible, flat-bellied, curvy-waisted, long-lashed “pole girls” of Strip Nation are models of female reproductive health and sexual readiness. Flaunting their femininity is a natural activity in attracting the greatest number of potential mates to choose from. Repression of women and of sex may come and go as time marches by, but that drive will be with us long after any of the readers here are dead and gone. Your analogy using a diet of candy, ice cream, and high-fructose corn syrup was spot-on. For me variety is the spice of life and the women in my life don’t always follow the above mentioned model, however I must admit picturing Andrea Dworkin as a pole-dancer is an image I’d rather not have burned into my brain.
Putting my two cents into the mix: I don’t know that this “Strip Nation” is generally a good thing or a bad thing, however, it does give many people that feeling of being noticed and desired when normally they may not. I’m not trying to say that women must dress “slutty” or skimpy to be noticed – and men as there are a lot of the same types of costumes for men – but just to get that feeling of empowerment. In a society where so many of us work long hours, take fewer and fewer vacations, and the bottom line constantly pokes us in the ribs who can blame some people from releasing all that pent-up tension in more and more risque and attention-grabbing ways? Many times there is little thought put into it other than, “This’ll be great fun!” This means very little thought on the affect of that decision on society as a whole. If we all walked around naked all the time, we’d probably be a little less excited about seeing the same thing in a bedroom. That’s not the society that we live in. Individuals have a set of moralistic rules, societies have another and sometimes they don’t match up. Accept that fact and we can move on. We will never get to a place in time where we all agree on the same set of morals and we all accept the same things. We’re a world of individuals trying to live in the same place.
“labiaplasty and anal bleaching”
ouch.
Deanna’s comments on media ideals is well taken, but I also see some diversity in the media ideals themselves, albeit stereotypical ones (your black booty girls, the saucy redheads, hot Latinos and the like).
I think it’s interesting that so many people responded to this post talking about sexuality as empowerment. Viva second wave feministas!
My only real worry about the Strip Nation mentality is perhaps a silly one, but one that I often think about. Given that so many of our thrills have to do with brushing up against our taboos, where will our arousal find those lovely whiffs of the forbidden when everyone’s arse is bleached?
*chuckles*
Doxie Chaste’s comment: “…where will our arousal find those lovely whiffs of the forbidden when everyone’s arse is bleached?” brings to mind a good point also addressed recently on a popular nationwide late night radio broadcast. The guest one night spoke of the great and largely little-known strides made recently in military circles with holograms, nano-technology, and high-tech camoflage techniques. One developement allows for a skin on military planes, vehicles, weapons, and uniforms that is rather like a computer monitor that projects an image of the background or some other shape or object, and it was pointed out that soon we will be able to project an image of ourselves to others where we can be virtually any body type we desire, and we can change that image day to day, or even moment to moment depending on current circumstances. One might walk down the street as a caucasian in a schoolgirl uniform at 105 lbs., then upon turning the corner decide to be a 120 lb. black nurse or pole-dancer to attract a specific male pedestrian …or even change genders! Are we ready for the lunchtime army of Britney Spearses, Lindsay Lohans, and Paris Hiltons on the sidewalks of our major cities (who may in actuality be grandmothers or even grandfathers) who’s panties may appear or disappear at will?
I think a large problem is that for a lot of people such things are totally dichotomous, it’s all black and white – there’s no greys. If you don’t fit into one meme, you are automatically lumped into an antithetical one. “Sexually free woman” does not necessarily equate to “slut into anal bleaching” – but for a lot of people it probably does. I can completely understand that many women are thankful to live in a time (or Nation) that allows them to freely explore their sexuality, but at the same time do not wish to be thrown in with that extreme end of the dichotomy. Sadly a lot of people, unlike yourself Bacchus, or Chelsea Girl, refuse to accept that a person is never entirely one thing or it’s opposite, but a collection of disparate elements that can never be contained in one memetic category. Equally sadly, that’s how our society operates and there’s not much we can do about it, but i think that’s what Chelsea Girl meant, extracting yourself from a normative category and enthusiastically embracing a subversive one can often result in a different, but equally restrictive kind of normativity. The real challenge is to break down ALL memetic codes, not pick the best one to set up above the rest. Hah hah, i won’t hold my breath! But i agree with you too Bacchus, sometimes it is just necessary to take the good with the bad if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, but we have to be careful not to become locked into a normative dichotomy.
Dr.Whiplash, your last comment frightens me a great deal. If humanity were to ever hit such an extreme in my lifetime I’d retire my penis in the most permanent way possible. /
I’m with justanothergirl’s second comment. It’s easy to see this as 100% sexual empowerment, and my God do I ever wish it was. But at the same time, thinking of my actual experiences… there are some very definite social benefits to going along with it (more positive attention and approval from both sexes, feeling and being treated like you fit in, and other such things which are less comfortably achieved during normal life) and some drawbacks if you do not participate (feeling invisible, unattractive and uncool).
I think it’s often more of an institution than a meaningful personal choice, and I’m not sure it extends past being another sheep in a sexy costume and into more fun in bed, better sexual communication, less shame, less of a tendency to slag off women for their sexuality (etc, etc) in everyday life.
Note that I’m most definitely not saying it harms any of the above either. I’m sure on an individual scale it can go either way. But I also find it difficult to see it as a sign of sexual enlightenment, much though I would love to think that was the main factor.
I think perhaps the harm, the costs associated with Strip Nation, are precisely because it is female driven. If men tried to make us dress like sluts for them, unless it was specific men we were open to playing those games with, we’d more than likely band together and forget that feminism was ever considered a dirty word.
It’s the things we do to ourselves to fit in, to be liked and appreciated, to be desireable, those are the cost. Because of those, instead of a game, and a freedom, the ‘strip nation’ ideals become the norm in our society. Playing slut is fun when you do it by choice, but it isn’t fun, or liberating when you have to do it to be normal – because then you have to do something more extreme to get attention. Eventually, that sort of spiral goes too far, and there is a backlash against it, and everything goes back to repression and shame.
Besides, a little mystery is a good thing. When long skirts were required wear for women, a flash of ankle was enough to excite a man (or so say the period romances). Now, ankles are commonplace, and you need to flash rather a lot of leg to have the same effect.
You need to have a balance, in a culture, and the cost of not having that – which is what strip nation seems to be about, in some ways, to me – is see-sawing between extreme liberalism, and extreme conservatism, as well as a loss of personal freedoms, and a devaluation of female sexuality.
That’s what I think, anyway :)
Stripnation, as I see it, isn’t about the forefront of the discussion. And frankly, the woes of the trendsetters are immaterial to me.
As a male, I’ve never been particularly concerned with external forces teling me how to be a human. And as females, the same applies. Conformity is just retarded.
That said, what is rather gorgeous about the Stripnaton is that it is the first time in my 40 years that a woman’s sexuality is uniquely considered their own. Not the one dimensional script that supposedly is male fantasy.
It is possible to be smart, and powerfull and slutty. And to own them all, and transform between them, rather than having to pick one and exploit it.
It’s part of the pendulm swing that encompasses all of what it is to be human. The cost is only suffered by those who regard stripnation as a cultural fad and chose “stripper” as their personea.
But for the larger culture, it means the madonna’s are whores and to draw those distinctions is to increasingly be the guy in a white hood, trying to muster a lynching in the suburbs.
It never made sense to me, the label of whore, slut, etc. I’m a whore and a slut and a human who snuggles. So why is that bad?
Stripnation seems part of that cultral pendulum swing that recognizes humans are the pendulum. And all is ok.