The Stripper

The rapid fire of images around on billboards and television, in film and social media, can make it feel as though the most prevalent of them are of sexualised bodies on display. This chapter unpacks a wide range of representations of strippers, demonstrating the differing attitudes and biases at work in them. A defining aspect of the stripper is her sexy dancing. She pole-dances, twerks and grinds in laps. This makes her ideal for featuring in pop-music videos. Strippers appear in different types of media, from the marginal to the mainstream, from headlines and brief ass-shaking images to full monograph memoirs. However, the majority of stripper images tend to show young, female, taut, often white bodies on display. Visual art has played a part in the over-emphasis of the exteriors of beautiful naked women, while neglecting to consider their interiority. The canon of Western art presents an excess of naked women.