The Chicago Tribune
By John D. Thomas, Special to the Tribune.
Sleazy and easy. That about sums up the opinion most people have regarding strippers. In her new book, “Bare,” which focuses on her stint as a dancer at the Lusty Lady peep show in Seattle, Elisabeth Eaves peels away that prejudice to present a naked look into the profession. A former journalist for Reuters with a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, Eaves infuses her account with compelling reportage and academic inquisitiveness. We recently chatted about “Bare” with Eaves, who speaks at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at Barbara’s Bookstore, 1350 N. Wells St.
Q. Why did you decide to strip?
A. When I was a teenager, I really chafed against all the rules about what girls should or shouldn’t wear, should or shouldn’t say. Don’t talk about sex, don’t have sex or you’ll get a bad reputation. Those constraints really bugged me. And the first time I went to a strip club, I was fascinated and mesmerized and thought ‘Wow, these women don’t have to obey the rules.’
Q. What is the biggest misconception about strippers?
A. I don’t know how many times complete strangers have asked me when I have talked about strippers whether these women were sexually abused. That is a common stereotype I didn’t find held true. Only one of some 20 women or more I interviewed told me that was the case. People don’t even know what the statistics are in the general population, but my guess is that it is not dramatically more among strippers.
Q. What was the hardest part of dancing for you?
A. There is an initial shock when you start working and realize that all these men are masturbating, but I really found the Lusty Lady pretty easy. I am pretty OK, with dancing around and being looked at, if I feel safe and they can’t get at me. So I did not find it that difficult.
Q. What was the best part of stripping?
A. There was a really great camaraderie, and I really liked the other women and had fun. Maybe I just have a fascination with the seamy underside of things, but I also felt like I was learning things that I wouldn’t know otherwise. I wouldn’t have known this whole world existed, and I was kind of fascinated by it. Sometimes I came across psychological tics that customers had and I would start to wonder, how does someone get a foot fetish? So it was kind of fascinating.
Q. Will you ever strip again?
A. No, I will not work as a stripper again for money. I don’t like the social ramifications of stripping. Basically I have a problem with this idea across society that women can be bought. I don’t just see it in the sex industry, I also see it in people’s attitudes about the fact that men should buy women dinner, that women have to have a diamond engagement ring and that men should have more money and they should spend it on women. These ideas mold women’s personalities. I have a big problem with that and I think stripping contributes to that idea in a big way.
Q. But do you miss it at all?
A. Yeah, sure, I do have moments. It’s fun to get up onstage and be the center of attention and feel sexy and desired. There is something appealing about it and I still understand and sympathize with that. So sure, there are moments when I think it’s pretty cool.
Q. Would you recommend stripping to other women?
A. I would certainly not give an across the board recommendation because I think, as well as what it does to society, it poses practical risks for the woman doing it. If you strip for too long you get a big gap on your resume. It’s a young woman’s job, and it’s based around how you look at a certain age. So you are going to have to stop and if you do it for five or ten years and you haven’t done anything else, what are you going to do next. So I think it is a risk.
Q. What did stripping teach you in general about men?
A. A lot of girls are raised with the idea that men’s sexuality is this very big, terrifying, dangerous thing, like men rape. And working at a strip club you actually come to see men’s sexuality as something that makes them weak. You see it as a much more benign force. I often saw my customers as kind of pathetic, but I never saw them as scary. So I think it tended to de-terrorize men’s sexuality in a way I think can be kind of healthy for some young women.
Q. What did it teach you about yourself?
A. In the end it taught me that I can disassociate myself from the way people see me. I had kind of an obsession with either being a sex object or whether people were looking at me sexually, and that was very conflated with my identity. Now I am less concerned with whether people see me as a sex object and I think that is healthy. I should have known that, and maybe I knew it intellectually, but I learned that my identity doesn’t have to be wrapped up in how people see me.