My anthropology teacher once told me about the case of a graduate
student (or possibly a fully credentialed anthropologist -- a woman -- who
became a stripper in a sleazy strip-bar (in San Francisco?) and wrote
an ethnography about the low-lives that inhabited the place.

Unfortunately, upon being pressed for the title of the book, my
professor was unable to remember it.

Can you?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 Mar 2005 06:36 PST

Are you sure the prof wasn't thinking of Gloria Steinem getting hired
as a Playboy Bunny and writing a subsequent rather famous exposé?

Even if that's not it, it's still a great story...

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Clarification of Question by gnossie-ga on 24 Mar 2005 06:44 PST

No, it wasn't the Gloria Steinem thing, with the "meat" thing.  I know that story.

No, it was a bona fida ethnographical study.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 24 Mar 2005 10:45 PST

This book that matches perfectly, with the exception of the location -
it didn't take place in San Francisco:

"In 'G-Strings and Sympathy,' Katherine Frank takes an important first
step in investigating, reporting on, and beginning to truly understand
one segment of these paid-sex consumers -- men who are regular
customers at non-contact strip clubs. Frank, when she was a graduate
student in anthropology, worked as a stripper at six different strip
clubs in a large Southeastern city (she refuses to identify which one)
over a period of six years, 'both as a means of earning extra cash for
graduate school and as part of a feminism theory project investigating
female objectification and body image.'

She began as an anti-porn activist, a student of feminist anthropology
'interested in the links between power, gender, and sexuality, and
concerned about the 'culture of objectification' that [she] believed
influenced women's experiences.' When she began working as a stripper,
however, Frank quickly found that her preconceptions about the
dynamics and power relations involved in that work were contradicted
by her experiences at both upscale 'gentlemen's' clubs and lower-tier
'dive' bars. She became interested in the men who she met at the
clubs, particularly her regulars, and decided to do an extended study
of them for her doctoral dissertation in cultural anthropology at Duke
University. 'G-Strings and Sympathy' is the product of that study."

http://www.ejhs.org/volume6/book24.html

If this is the correct book, I'll be glad to gather more information
about it for you.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 24 Mar 2005 10:46 PST

Oops, I'm sorry. I did not see that you'd already rejected "G-Strings
and Sympathy" in a comment below. Please excuse my blunder.

How comical

- perhaps it was she

An anthropologist needs to have an open mind toward the people she
studies.  To use words such as "sleazy" and "low-life" indicates that
she is not being very tolerant of other "societies".  Not a very good
professor, IMHO.

mymessybedroom.com/columnshow.asp?id=78

This site will tell you about it, and amazon seems to have the book.
The answer for all times to the question:  "Why is a nice girl like
you here, doing this?"  "I'm an anthropologist."

Sounds like "Thunder La Boom" by Anne Steinhardt, but that's a novel.

Might be one of these
ivy league stripper by heidi mattson
real live nude girl by carol queen
bare by elizabeth eaves (This book is the only one I've read it can
get a bit much at times proceed with caution)
strip city by lily burana

I heard an interview with this woman on NPR! Terri Gross interviewed
her. Check out npr.org.

Good Luck!

There is a woman, anthroplogist I believe, who was a stripper through
graduate school and wrote her thesis on who goes to strip clubs and
why. She has gone on to investigate the swinger lifestyle. She gave a
lecture at my college last year, but her name is escaping me right
now. I'll ask my room mates they might remember. I also remember that
she was a tall striking blond, go figure.

What was fantastic about the story, was  that she hailed from
Minnesota or the like, and went to this strip club, by introducting
herself as a BIG TIME stripper, and was paid a sum of $50 a week or
day or something unheard of just to show up.  It was rather good, and
while she was waiting to dance, she would study in the back. As I
recall, the woman is a lesbian as well....Anyway, I emailed whyy where
the show is produced and asked for a response according to the story.
If I get  a reply, I will post it here.

G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire. 
 
Franks, Katherine. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. 344p., $19.95,
softcover. ISBN: 0822329727.

The oddest thing....

Katherine Frank's book, "G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars
and Male Desire," is virtually the exact description of the book I'm
looking for.

...but I don't think it's the book.

You see, the reference that got me hunting for this book comes in the
opening pages of Richard Barrett's "Culture and Conduct," which was
published in 1990.  In that book, he refers to an anthropologist that
went "undercover" as a stripper.

But Frank's book, as published by Duke University Press, has a mint
date of 2002.  This can only be the book if Duke was actually issuing
a reprint of something that was originally published before Barrett's
book.

here is what I received:
That was writer, director and former exotic dancer Julia Query who
appeared on Fresh Air on Nov. 6, 2000.   She had made a documentary, "Live
Nude Girls, Unite!" about a group of strippers in San Francisco who fight
to start a union. She is also a performance artist and stand-up comic, who
started dancing as a way to pay the bills.

And an interviw with the lass:
She was a graduate student but....

http://www.iusw.org/respect/query.html

Gnossie!
Maybe your teacher and Barrett as professionals knew of Frank's
academic study long before she published it as a book.  It seems
likely that she would want to gain some distance from her work and
maybe establish herself before she went public with it.  Or maybe Duke
only was interesting in publishing it after she had become established
in her field.  And maybe San Francisco instead of a city in the the
Southeast was named in the book for a related reason ....

Although I don't think it's the right person, the reference above to a
"tall striking blond" reminded me of April Masini.

http://www.askapril.com

She's definitely worth a mention in this thread, and she _IS_ studying
swingers.  She has asked several related questions here at GA under
the name of highvoltageblond-ga

~~Cynthia

Sorry Gnossie, I too was thinking of Katherine Frank.

Yeah, it's kinda weird.  Thanks for helping, everybody.

If I had a copy of the Franks book handy I could check the dates of
her fieldwork, but I am abroad at the moment.  This also prevents me
from typing in the passage in Barrett that pre-dates Franks by over 10
years.  (Barrett was both my professor and the author of the book, and
though he could remember a ton of useful information, he was never
able to recall the title of the study he had in mind.)

Anyhow, one idea:  if anybody knows how to get in contact with Franks
herself, she would, it seems to me, know of any previous study in that
particular field.