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Won’t Someone Please Think of the Strippers?
By Lilit Marcus / December 31, 2008
In 2008, we saw many New York-based businesses close their doors forever, from Lehman Brothers to Radar magazine. However, while the troubles plaguing industries from finance to media to publishing to manufacturing have been widely reported, there’s been one major New York business -nay, institution – whose demise is ultimately telling and possibly prophetic: Scores. Yes, that’s right: the strip club. Yes, it’s the one Howard Stern talks about all the time on his show and where celebrities get busted cheating on their wives. And in 2009, it will be no more.
Why does it matter that a strip club is closing? For one thing, Scores is like the Rolls Royce of strip clubs. It’s not a Girls! Girls! Girls! or TomKittens off a rural highway in a state that allows either nudity or alcohol but not both. The women who work at Scores spend significant amounts of money every month in personal upkeep in order to project the image of being ‘perfect’ and sell more lap dances and trips to the champagne room than their coworkers. They must pay out-of-pocket for everything from plastic surgery to hair coloring to gym memberships to body waxes. If you’ve ever been to a high-end spa, you know that those services certainly aren’t cheap. In some ways, they are comparable to waiters at exclusive five-star restaurants, who have to project a certain style or image as well as be able to kiss up to rich patrons, name several wines that would go well with every entree on the menu, and remember the names and preferences of regular customers.The reason Scores is closing, but TomKittens remains open, is because the clients they cater to are the ones now digging through the rubble of Lehman Brothers and AIG. Normally, in times of economic decline, the sex industry (like the alcohol and tobacco industries) continues to thrive as unhappy and unemployed workers seek a little hollow joy. That’s why the failure of Scores is so shocking – it’s at the very top of its industry, and if they can’t keep the lights on, what hope is there for everyone else? And what hope is there for the secondary businesses (spas, boutiques, etc) who count Scores’ strippers as their clients and customers?
It would be easy to talk about the demise of Scores by celebrating its closure as a victory for feminism. But that would be unfair to the women who work there. While I’m a feminist, I’m not terribly interested in judging other women for how they choose to earn a living. I think that the United States could benefit from regulation of the sex industry, as it would not only bring in much-needed government revenue but standardize and clean up the industry and protect many of the women who willingly or unwillingly work in it. Unlike many of the white-collar employees who are now getting unemployment, severance, or some other kind of financial assistance as they cope with the loss of their jobs, the women of Scores are essentially out on the street. There are no pension plans for exotic dancers. Rather than criticize these women for the line of work they’ve entered, we should think more about what the closing of Scores means for New York. Our economy depends on all of us. As silly as it seemed for President Bush to go on television after 9/11 and encourage everyone to go to the mall, consumer confidence is a big part of keeping our economy going. You may not care about Scores and whether it continues to exist, but there’s something wrong with a country that hands golden parachutes to CEOs whose actions resulted in thousands of employees losing their livelihoods and yet won’t help the everyday workers – from strippers in New York to millworkers in Pennsylvania to automobile factory workers in Detroit – who might not have enough money to make it to next month.
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If Barbara Reader was somehow personally threatened by anyone with a financial stake in Scores, then the story behind that sounds like it would be an interesting one to hear.
Getting back to the point, Lilit’s apparently modern and enlightened (i.e. "libertarian" enough to be mainstream) opinion of the personal sex/ogling/fantasy industry is balanced by her recognition of it as hollow. But I think her diagnosis of its current state – at least to the extent that one can offer such a thing based on the disposition of one of its most high-end venues – is too narrowly economic in scope. Much like the 1920s, the nineties – as a cultural era that continued through to its protracted, current conclusion – symbolized greed and gluttony, and this mindset was exemplified by the sort of society embraced, in various forms, by both the Clinton and Bush II administrations. As far as how the celebration of the aforementioned vices impact lust, an interesting entry by one Jewcer Andy Selsberg in this space, hits upon that point as well.
Recent studies have revealed the psychological motivations that seem to shape our political biases. While conservatives appear motivated by a fear of disorder, progressives are motivated by a fear of a lack of purpose and meaning. With the current ushering in of a presidential administration that seems especially well-suited to address the lack of purpose and balance in American life – which became endemic after the fall of the left in 1968, when conservatives came to power in an effort to re-establish a forty-year reign of order – I suspect that our focus on mindless pursuits will now start to experience further marginalization as well. Among the meaningless memes in American life that will now make way for efforts to address more serious things: Growth for its own sake – predicated upon nothing more than the greed of a valuation system that ultimately became invisible and fueled by whatever illusions of wealth and desire one could plant into the minds of both consumer and merchant; Consumption for its own sake – see previous point; An aversion to the consideration of negative externalities in deciding policy, especially when not thought expedient by the relevant partisan analysis; And lust more generally – in its various and incredibly numerous (and not necessarily gender-specific) forms.
I am not surprised that these developments would coincide with the demise of that "vast wasteland" to which we were once (and not long ago) so firmly connected – brought to you by the idiot box, the boob tube, the very television set which so focused our attentions on appearances and fantasies in the first place.
after he was released from prison, I doubt you’d be so worried about it closing. Although, I suppose, ex-cons have to make a living, too. And Bernie Madoff did much worse financial fraud than this guy did. On the other hand, I have never been personally threatened by Bernie Madoff.
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