JieYing (Theresa) Tan Strip clubs are popular forms of adult entertainment in the contemporary United States. In Katherine Frank’s novel G-strings and Sympathy, she uses her experience as a stripper in different strip clubs in Laurelton to provide a fascinating insider’s account and explore the motivations for customers to visit strip clubs. Through interviews with different costumers at the clubs, we are able to see that many individuals become strip club regulars for different reasons; some to relax and escape expectations, and others to show power and masculinity. Some see visits at strip clubs as ways to express masculinity and power. Frank expresses in the novel that strip clubs helps costumers “ restore a sense of masculinity by providing …show more content…
Men are often expected to maintain a façade of assertive masculinity, which means that they are often pressured to dominate and stay powerful over women. For some individuals, the ability to spend significant amounts to buy dancers’ time and attention increases their feelings of power and masculinity. It can be seen as a ways to perform masculinity by spending money on dances, the greater the amount means the greater the power the individual has. Therefore, strip clubs help “boost egos and restore a sense of masculinity” (Frank 147). Strip clubs are another popular institution that allows for competition among men. The deal at the clubs is to pay dancers for dances, so the competitions are mainly economic related, because some like to show off the amount of money they can spend. As described above, the more a customer is able to spend over others, or if they are able to afford strip clubs that is more high-end, the more masculine they are and the more power they have. So money is often associated with power and