| This study reports on qualitative data collected through extensive interviews with ten women, currently living in San Francisco, who self-identified as past or present exotic dancers. All had worked as exotic dancers at various venues in multiple cities in the United States. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the way female exotic dancers experience, construct and understand their lives (i.e. identities, desires, conflicts, and behaviors) in relation to dancing. The secondary purpose of this research was to explore the ways that female exotic dancers experience mental health care. This study utilized a relational, qualitative, "feminist voice-centered" method of data analysis geared to study subjective lived experience (Brown & Gilligan, 1992). Unlike traditional research, the methodology used in this study called for consultation between coresearchers and the primary researcher to clarify information shared during the interview.;Using the voice-centered relational method of analysis, themes emerged that provide special considerations for psychotherapists to take into account when working within this community of women. The primary finding was the pervasiveness of whore stigma within the internal and external worlds of coresearchers. The secondary finding was that stigma plays a fundamental role in the therapeutic process. Specifically, coresearchers described the ways that they construct their lives around the experience of stigma as they debate whether and when to disclose their work, develop a hypersensitivity about trust, and isolate from society and the people they love most; they do this to protect themselves from the sting of the experience of stigma, and find themselves isolated from their core self. Suggestions derived from the data are offered to enhance therapeutic effectiveness for this under-researched population.;This project took special care to understand the conscious choice to engage in the exaggeration of gender dynamics at play in strip clubs. Special care was also taken to consider the psychological impact of the discriminatory sanctioning of some expressions of female sexuality over others. This work provides insight into the role of strippers in contemporary society, and also into possible psychological effects of societal belief systems about proper female sexuality. |
