Alcohol use and workplace safety among female exotic dancers

Negative Effects of Alcohol on Exotic Dancers

The Exotic Dancers industry

Club Atmosphere

Alcohol Abuse

Alcohol Abuse and Sexual Exploitation

Depression and Suicidality

Embodiment of Female Exotic Dancers

Forcing Alcohol in Clubs

The Exotic Dancers industry

The Exotic Dancers industry, represents a large division of the multi-billion-dollar sex industry (Bernard, 2012). The sex industry includes all profitable businesses or institutions that hire sex workers, both lawfully and unlawfully. Go-go dance, burlesque, striptease, cybersex, pornography, and prostitution are a few occupations that fall under the broad sex industry umbrella (Janseen, 2013). Inside its numerous subdivisions, Exotic Dancers and adult entertainment are projected to be the two main divisions that use alcohol to keep the women under control (Allen, Lovejoy-Johnson, Holloway, Robbins, & and Woods, 2009). Hanna (2013) assessed that illegal adult entertainment for example prostitution earned over $15 billion in 2000 in the U.S. alone. U.S. legal adult entertainment, for example exotic dance clubs, grossed over $16.2 billion in 2000 (Jackson, 2009).

Empirical observations of female exotic dancers (FEDs) have revealed several commonalities. These themes included high prevalence of alcohol and other substance use, career-related stigma and volatile club environments (Conrad, 2005). Club environments have been established to overlook or add elements of stress, pestering, drugs, alcohol, peer pressure, owner/management pressures, and monetary enticements accessible in interchange for unsafe behaviors (Janseen, 2013). Career-connected shame has been well-defined as shame, disgrace, prejudice or labeling in joining with eccentric qualities or jobs, such exotic dancing (Daniel Linz, 2012).

Club Atmosphere

Most of the time the club atmosphere is full alcohol. In spite of the numerous legal deliberations that exotic dance clubs and patrons must abide by, clubs linger to appeal to a variety of personalities that can contribute to a volatile environment (Hanna, 2013). The typical club environment is frequently comprised of patron pressure to exchange fantasies or sexual pleasures for cash, alcohol and other drugs, management pressure, peer pressure, and harassment (Jackson, 2009). Founded on qualitative explanations, Bradley (2007) proposes the mainstream of female exotic dancers will involve themselves in risky behaviors, for example alcohol or drug use, as a way of coping with instable club environments. Many female exotic dancers have knowledgeable sexual, emotional, and physical violence (Janseen, 2013), which is recognized to be a forecaster of drug and alcohol use as a ways of forgetting or continuing pain (Farrmond, 2016). Drug and alcohol use is a common incidence among club patrons as well to female exotic dancers.

A number of female exotic dancers have exposed appealing in 'rule-bending' behaviors for example, flirting, giving open mouth kisses, allowing customers to touch their breasts or backsides, rewarding erotic fantasies, as well as performing sexual activities if a client is willing to pay a high enough price (Conrad, 2005). Moreover, patrons have been found to instigate rule-bending behaviors. Dancers have described 'forceful attempts' by patrons such as propositioning for sexual favors or touching the dancer against their will (Janseen, 2013). Another level of 'rule-bending' involves club management. An interview with a manager/owner of an exotic dance club revealed the gentleman not only supported 'rule-bending' behaviors of his dancers but also linked the club's prolonged existence with the amount of physical contact between dancers and club patrons (Janz, 2013). Each of these acts clearly violates club policies and municipal codes; however, many female exotic dancers continue getting involved in law breaking behaviors on condition that the acts prove to be well-paid (Jackson, 2009)

Alcohol Abuse and Sexual Exploitation

A mainstream of the women, nevertheless, report they were requested to achieve sexual acts on men related with the strip club for money during and after alcohol consumption. Customers and pimps recurrently offer women alcohol in order to get them drunk (Daniel Linz, 2012). The purpose for all of this is Fourteen (77%) women from the review define they are propositioned for prostitution on a day-to-day foundation by customers, three every week, one (5%) each year. Female exotic dancers made some commentaries that clienteles ask them "Do you date?" all through the night. "Countless...too many too count." The men would then offer them some kind of alcohol to losing them up a little. The point was to get them drunk and then get them into prostitution to get sex off of them.

Female exotic dancers say that prostitution is influenced and suggested by management and alcohol consumption. One dancer new to stripping was astonished that she was not making enough money to taker her clothes off, so the woman asked the manager for his advice on getting more tips. He proposed turning tricks and said he could assist her in setting up some dates. Management are the ones that set up theses tricks, says it is good for business, and obligates women to turn over money from prostitution to the club. Women say prostitution is promoted even though owners tell women they would be punished if they turn tricks. Some strip clubs are notorious for encouraging prostitution. "You have to be a 'whore just to even work there." (Conrad, 2005)

Female exotic dancers revealed that they were recruited into prostitution through stripping. Even though the strip business markets stripping as something besides prostitution, some female exotic dancers consider prostitution as an addition of stripping and stripping a type of prostitution (Hanna, 2013). The research displays that pimps season female exotic dancers first with stripping and then turn them out into escort services or brothels for more income. Sugar daddies, Tricks, drug dealers and pimps, in the strip club pursue to involve women in prostitution by using alcohol and substance abuse. Another female exotic dancer said that soon after she turn out to be involved in stripping, a pimp who postured as a client in the strip club tricked her into an escort service by guaranteeing that she could make more income in less time just by escorting businessmen to dinner (Bernard, 2012). The woman agreed in order to feed her crack addiction and alcohol usage as her addiction got worse she slipped all the way down from aristocrats' clubs to high end escort services to street brothels to street and crack house prostitution.

Not only are women in stripping pressured by customers to perform sexual acts on them, owners, managers, and staff pressure the women to perform sexual acts on them, their relatives and associates, on vice officers and police officers. Female exotic dancers make the pressure could range from being forced into dancing for the proposed with an anticipation to put on a show that the men like. They also try to make sure that they get special treatment, extra time, and sexual interactions, to getting involved in prostitution (Allen, Lovejoy-Johnson, Holloway, Robbins, & and Woods, 2009). Strippers, like other women and dancers in worker-management relationships, reply with obedience to orders from management and others with power (Janz, 2013).

Depression and Suicidality

Alcohol consumption among female exotic dancers has led to some depression and also suicide. Exotic dancers experience depression when they drink too much. Some even have suicide thoughts. An examination of traumatic symptomatology in a specific populace would not be whole short of also looking into the rates of depression, by reason of the high rates of 32 comorbid exhibitions. Major depressive disorder or, depression, is characterized by the presence of one or more major depressive incident wherein a person experiences a diversity of indications which may consist of depressed mood, reduced interest or pleasure in things that were beforehand thought to be pleasant, appetite changes or weight, sleep conflicts, and uselessness among others (Jackson, 2009).

Owing to the fact that depression often happens independent of other disorders, it can be unnoticed as a factor of the trauma sequelae. However, the consumption of alcohol has been proven to trigger some of these disorders. As an alternative, depression among female exotic dancers has a strong association with trauma as it is the most usually diagnosed pathology following a traumatic occasion that took place in their lives. By their nature, traumatic events often cause individuals to question their pre-existing beliefs about themselves, others, and the world. This dissonance among a person's beliefs and his or her experience not only reduces trust in others, nonetheless possibly will impair one's skill to trust oneself leading to a continuous feeling of being insecure. As expected, such changes possibly will cause a person to feel hopeless, depressed and in some circumstances unhappy.

Embodiment of Female Exotic Dancers

Self-harm behaviors, such as alcohol use and disordered eating patterns are typical of a disembodied state of being foe those in the exotic dancing business (Hudson, 2015). Research shows that alcohol plays a role because the women drink to overcome the embodiment. This may yield anxiety and shame in regards to the body, escorted by a decline in interceptive consciousness (Disembodiment overwhelms one's self-care skills, silences inner discourse, and disrupts associations. This raises one's tendency to achieve the body from the "outside," whereas permitting for a degree of protection and control (Farrmond, 2016). On the other hand, embodiment or the "experience of commitment of the body with the world," includes personally-professed experiences in addition to the social contexts and structures in which they create (Janseen, 2013). This construct signifies the range of experiences linked to one's commitment of the body with the world, extending from personified agency, joy, self-care, attunement with the female exotic dancer's body, and functionality, to bad body image, alexithymia, or dissociation, (one's exertion in experiencing, articulating, and explaining their expressive experiences; (Conrad, 2005). Personification further defines the interconnectedness of culture and body, accounting for the sway of complex social structures, for example the patriarchy, on one's experience of their personified self (Allen, Lovejoy-Johnson, Holloway, Robbins, & and Woods, 2009). Many of the important ideas of embodiment are parallel with objectification theory, which particularly recognizes women's emphasis on their appearance as a strategy that is learned. This strategy arises as a technique to cope with challenges in an objectifying culture that excessively values womanly beauty and comportment over any other feature (Hanna, 2013).

When the women drink, it causes them to look at their bodies as imperfections. In fact, the women drink to try and drown out the depression of having a body they might not be accepted. There is a general accord among researchers that pressures for skinniness or the attainment of a body ideal is a main risk issue in the development of negative body regard and potential chaotic eating patterns (Jackson, 2009). Sources of these idealistic expectations are produced not only by mass media, but also by close social interactions, for example professional environments requiring a lean figure (Hudson, 2015), or perhaps exotic dance establishments. Janseen (2013) labeled a ballet school environment participating to young women's problems with being able to receive their body's. The problem is that these women do not receive their bodies in a positive image. The pressure from the industry causes these women to modify their bodies but at the same time, they are not comfortable doing it. The alcohol helps them to adjust through the process. Both the processes of body surveillance and objectification serve to distance women psychologically from their physical self, and are indicative of the features of disembodiment.

Theory

Similar to the explanation of the construct of 'Embodiment' inside the area of social critical theory by Merleau-Ponty. The current investigation is chastised in critical theory. More, linked to the emphasis on the experiences of exotic dancers in relation to patriarchal arrangements, the inquiry is grounded in feminist theory (Allen, Lovejoy-Johnson, Holloway, Robbins, & and Woods, 2009). This viewpoint is concerned with inquiry concentrated on agency, power associations, shifting positionalities, voice, individual experience, and socially composed awareness (Conrad, 2005). Feminist theoretical frameworks are divided, permeating various perspectives including liberal, Marxist, socialist, radical, postmodern / post structural, psychoanalytic and existential (Hudson, 2015).

Even though, as was established by Mojab and Gorman (2001), "the striking diversity of feminism is superficial" for the reason that underlying all changes of feminism is "the question of patriarchy and how it needs to be taken care of" (p. 287). The existing investigation aims to explain specific experiences of exotic dancers in regards to how alcohol plays a negative role in their lives. Strip club establishments differ, and the experience of exotic dancing is likely shaped by different types of clubs, leading to varied meanings for the women involved (Bradley-Engen, 2009). In line with this position, the current investigation aligns with the post modernistic example of critical feminism as it theorizes realisms of exotic dance as relative and plural, and reliant on the social connections of those involved.

Forcing Alcohol in Clubs

Some clubs allow and enforce alcohol usage more than others like Baltimore Exotic Dancing Club in Baltimore, Maryland. As said by the new study, sex work took place in most of the Block's exotic dance clubs like Baltimore. The most often described dissimilarity among dance club staff was the level of honesty and reply of alcohol use and sex work that happened inside. Researchers made the point that a range in the apparent "classiness" among the institutions, which was mainly founded on the price of sexual transactions, the honesty and acknowledgment of alcohol use, the spotlessness of the club, and the physiognomies of exotic dancers.

Exotic Dancers' wages were founded on their selling "drinks," which built-in the literal sale of alcoholic drinks in addition to the functioning of sexual acts. The drink-founded payment system endeavored to make certain that the club received the majority of the payment for every transaction that happened inside the club. Moreover, exotic dancers were charged for music being played during the time of their dancing. Even though a lot of dancers mentioned they did not want to involve in sex work when they began dancing, the continued social pressure in arrangement with the financial appeal were powerful. However, alcohol was used to persuade the dancers to take part in illicit affairs with the clients. Most of the time, it was enforced by the manager.

At the Baltimore Club, most dancers reported financial reasons to sell sex. Once the alcohol was introduced, it made it much easier for the women in this club to fall to the sexual schemes. Many women reported that high alcohol levels caused them to participate in behavior that was not their usual way of acting. Financial deficiency and instability were continuous realities in the lives of many exotic dancers. At the club in Baltimore, even minus pressure from management, a strong reason to sell sex was distinctive inside the disparate payment in pay for sexual acts as associated to merely dancing or selling a drink (Daniel Linz, 2012). Most dancers stated consistent condom use and sex after alcohol consumption. Some clubs reportedly charged dancers among $2 to $3 for each condom before Baltimore started issuing free condoms through its Needle Exchange Program.