Posted on 01/14/2004 11:25:20 AM PST by quidnunc
As the mother of teenage boys, I like to think I have a vague idea of what the young males in my life consider "cool." I have a little more trouble keeping up with teenage girls and so I rely on my friends, their mothers, to keep me current on what the adolescent female of the species considers the hot new trend.
Here it is in two words: stripper poles.
One more time.
Stripper poles.
It was friend and fellow journalist Mara Tapp who delivered the news and sent along a recent report from The Nation — just to prove she wasn't kidding.
She was not.
Authors Alison Pollet and Page Hurwitz write "in case you haven't tuned in to teen or tween media lately, stripping has gone mainstream. Teenagers of the new millennium have grown up watching college students give lap dances on MTV's "The Real World," they've listened to Christina Aguilera's album "Stripped," they've taken cardio-strip class at the gym, perused the mall for thongs and flavored body glitter, played video games that feature strippers on their Xboxes and Game Cubes …"
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Here's the rest of the article:
I started asking around. "Know anything about stripper poles?" I queried my nephew, a college student. Without missing a beat he said, "Sure, one of my friend's fraternity brothers has one in his house. Aunt Carol, don't look at me like that."
I guess there must have been something about the expression on my face. Next, I asked a young, college-age woman what she knew about stripper poles. "Well," she said carefully, "I've danced on one. "But," she added quickly, "I didn't take my clothes off."
This, it turns out, is not your grandmother's stripper pole.
"It's not so much about sex," the young woman said, "it's about power. I'm not doing this for some guy, I'm doing this because I'm in charge of my body and how it looks and feels. It's fun. It's neo-feminism."
Not your mother's feminism. And that, actually, is the point.
Every generation does something to shock and horrify the one before. It seems positively prehistoric to invoke the image of Elvis scandalizing the nation with swiveling hips but it's the same thing. Adults were aghast at the raw sexuality. Kids were crazy for it.
It's not that parents are wrong for worrying about how we present sex and sexuality to our children. And we are awash in erotic images as never before. A nearly naked J. Lo wearing what looked like a small silk scarf to the 2000 Grammy Awards. Abercrombie & Fitch selling soft porn along with torn denim pants. "Cat In the Hat" thongs for precocious preteens.
But as adults, we need an honesty check of our own.
First, a little time travel back to our own youth is in order. I don't know about you but I can remember wearing a micro-mini skirt so breathtakingly short that it made sitting down just about impossible. My mother gasped when she saw it. My father told me to go put on some clothes.
Second, lets admit that as adults we send kids all kinds of mixed messages. Many of us are just as focused on our own bodies as our children are on theirs. And whether we are eating only protein these days or doing yoga or learning on "Oprah" that a little bump and grind is good exercise, we're not just talking about health here, we're talking about sex. And being sexy.
Which takes me back to teenage girls and stripper poles. Since reading The Nation article, I have since found other stories and references to this "trend." And Web sites where you can buy them. Portable stripper poles. Stationary ones with footlights and smoke machines. In the true spirit of American capitalism, just ask for it, they've got it.
But I have yet to find a preteen or teenage girl who owns one or has tried one. Maybe it's not as huge a trend as the trend spotters think.
What it is, though, is a symbol. Some of the girls I've spoken with tell me the same thing my young college friend did. This so-called stripper chic to them is code for "womanpower" or neo-feminism if you will, a way of saying "I'm in charge of my body and my destiny."
At the risk of sounding like their mothers, as a reporter who has known a stripper or two, and as a card-carrying feminist, I would offer a small and admittedly unsolicited bit of advice. Feeling sexy is a wonderful thing. So is feeling empowered. But in a world where women earn 76 cents for every dollar a man makes, power is far more elusive than you think. I know a few strippers who would agree.
Are they still peddling this BS statistic?
Actually, this figure is fraudulent. When you compare apples and apples -- ie, men vs women with the same job, same education, same training, same number of years on the job, same number of work hours per day, same number of work-days per year, etc, etc.. women make 99 cents on to a man's dollar.. in other words, virtually identical.
The income disparity is because women, on the average (please do not waste bandwith flaming me about exceptions that you happen to know), work fewer hours, take more time off, and choose less demanding and less dangerous jobs. It's not because of discrimination.
Crapola. The basis for this bogus statistic is that women leave the workforce to take care of and give birth to children. If women work at the same job a man does and devotes the same amount of time to it, she earns the same amount.
Feminism is evil. The goal of feminism is to destroy the family and have the socialist state raise children. To help accomplish this goal, morality and the natural family need to be destroyed.
Pretty good summary. Wish I'd read it before I wasted my time reading the article. This comes from the "pick a shocking topic, and mail the rest in" school of journalism.
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