Their Hearts Belong to Daddy

Removing one's clothing in public for pay is a livelihood that is nearly as venerable as prostitution; and, like prostitution, it is almost entirely limited to women. What prompts the estimated 7,000 stripteasers in the U.S. to bare all--or at least nearly all--to a theater full of several hundred men? Seeking to answer that question, two Case Western Reserve University sociologists have reached some tentative conclusions. Writing in Social Problems magazine, James K. Skipper Jr. and Charles H. McCaghy report that the girls disrobe in public out of an unrequited need for parental--especially fatherly--love.

Public Nudity. They base their finding on interviews with 35 strippers. Some of their discoveries are on the obvious side. Given the right physical endowment, the initiate stripper finds the job professionally undemanding and very lucrative. All she is expected to do is to remove her garments serially until she reaches the locally permissible state of public nudity. Skipper's and McCaghy's subjects make from $200 to more than $1,500 a week at their work. Yet only one of them, they report, "had the talent, training or education to make more money at any other legal occupation."

More than the easy money attracts the stripper. The sociologists found that the girls share many traits that are almost prerequisites for the job: > Nearly all of them, for example, reached physical maturity early and recognized the market value of their assets. Said one girl: "Sure, after I bloomed I always dressed so people could see how big my breasts were. After all, a pair of 48s can make a girl feel like a real person. Everybody pays attention."

>Some 60% of the strippers interviewed came from broken or unstable homes in which the father was either absent or unreliable, or which had other disintegrating influences. Since they lacked the strong response that any daughter seeks from her father, the girls had to settle for substitutes. In baring their bodies to strangers, the strippers may simply be asking for the male attention and affection that their fathers never provided.

Suitably Equipped. A surprisingly high proportion of the strippers interviewed were first children. Behavioral science has long recognized the special stresses imposed on the first-born by parents who lack experience in child rearing. Confronted with stern and demanding disciplinarians, for example, the child frequently responds by feeling inadequate--and as a consequence unloved. In a young woman suitably well endowed, Skipper and McCaghy suggest, this sense of inadequacy can inspire her to purvey the only commodity whose value she is sure of: her body.

In this sense, stripteasing is a halfway station on the road to prostitution. Indeed, the authors report that some strippers moonlight as whores at $35 to $100 a trick to supplement their incomes. The high rate of lesbianism among strippers--which the girls estimated at 50% to 75%--is further evidence that the stripper still nurses the feeling of paternal rejection she experienced in childhood. "Strippers go gay," said one of Skipper's and McCaghy's subjects, "because they have little chance to meet nice guys."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.