Have you ever seen or heard of a stripper massaging a guy’s crotch or reaching under his shirt during her lap dance?
Yeah, me neither. But that’s basically what goes down when the lap dance is being given the other way around- a man stripping for women.
Contrary to the expectation that male strip clubs would serve an audience appreciative of the female voice and the horror of stripping as a social construct, male strippers grope and grab like the common cat-caller would. While I’m girl-power all the way and think there needs to be an equivalent offered to all genders so as not to exploit women’s bodies, objectification remained central to the message of the male strip show.
Women were pulled on stage and swirled around in chairs, the strippers teething for money in the customers’ bras. This rubbed me the wrong way (no pun intended), considering, unless you’re in some sort of private room, female strippers don’t actively mimic sex acts on men. That would be weird.
And yet, we hooted and hollered and ignored our discomfort with the fact that there was a theme of submissiveness and male dominance that prevailed through the men’s performances. They approached women with their penises too close for comfort, and picked women up from their seats, legs wrapped around chests like a common Seth Rogan film party scene.
The more I analyzed the situation, the more I wanted to revolt against what I saw and participated in. Just like in the real world, all this fake flirtation and physiological glorification just did more to empower men’s ego. I can’t say I’ve never wondered how badass I would feel riding that poll on stage myself, but I have a feeling I wouldn’t walk away from it with the satisfied ‘Big D**k Energy’ that seems to emanate from male strippers. And I can’t help but think that has a lot more to do with societally accepted hyper-masculinity than we want to believe.