Going to stripclubs

In My Humble Opinion
1

Yesterday I just happened to be watching a rerun of ‘Two and a Half Man’ – the batteries of the remote were dead and…uhh…I was eating a hot bowl of pasta…and my leg is in a cast…uhh…I was also feeding a starving kitten, otherwise I would of course have changed the channel…, ok only some of those were true – where Charly Sheen’s character has just broken up with his Fiancee (Tottenham or Hammersmith or something) and quickly proclaims: ‘I’m off to the stripclub’, followed by canned laughter.

This is something I feel is pretty ubiquitous in American movies and TV shows and I was kind of wondering if it is really that common and accepted to visit such a place. Do men in the US openly admit to frequenting stripclubs? How does ‘the society’ view these people?

As background, I live in the Netherlands* where there hardly seem to be any stripclubs – I know of one in Amsterdam that almost exclusively caters to tourists; not to mention the Amsterdam ‘sexshows’ – and as far as I know, men that want to spend money on sex either buy porn (passive) or go to a prostitute (interaction). Unless you are maybe somewhere on holiday with a group of friends, no one ever really goes to a stripclubs; and definitely not for sexual gratification.

While there is off course quite a difference between stripping/lapdancing and prostitution, I can imagine how getting a lapdance can be seen as a substitute for going to a prostitute (also interaction). Given the illegality (and prices) of prostitution in most of the US that is. The price of going to a (relatively low end) prostitute here (and in Belgium and Germany) would probably be comparable to getting a lapdance (20 bucks + entrance fee, right?), so for a regular guy it’s probably the only option he has.

That being said – and in contrast to my perception of American mores about stripclubs -, visiting a prostitute (or being one for that matter) is a big taboo and there are very few people open about it; it is really not done. Dutch movies and TV shows would never have a character ‘go to the Wallen’ after being dumped, nor would dating a prostitute be common sitcom trope. So to repeat (and reformulate) the question: Is it really ok to go to a stripclub?

*there are some stripclubs in Hamburg/Budapest/Prague, etc. but these are (as far as I know) also mostly touristtraps. I believe the UK is the only place that has a fair amount of US-style stripclubs, and I have no clue how visitors of those places are seen within society.

2

Since the OP will probably call for opinions, let’s move this from GQ to IMHO.

samclem, Moderator

3

For what it’s worth, I’ve never really understood the attraction of it either.

But if you go occasionally with a group of friends and you don’t take it seriously, it’s considered only slightly scandalous. If you were going every day, alone, people might think you were a bit sad and/or creepy.

4

Sure, some do. It’s talked about pretty openly and shamelessly among the 18-23 crowd I hang with.

From what I can tell it’s mostly women who think it’s disgusting and guys will say the same thing if there’s a woman around.

5

Don’t forget the Moulin Rouge and Crazy Horse in Paris, but that does not seem to have the target customers as a US strip club

6

Whether it is “OK” depends on who you ask. I suspect that exactly the same is true of the Netherlands. You don’t think that anybody would do it because nobody you know would do it, but I imagine they are just as popular throughout the western world.

Basically, only certain puritanical types, primarily Christians and commuted feminists, have a problem with strip clubs. Everybody else essentially considers it none of their business. Most men have probably gone to a strip club a couple of times. It’s relatively common amongst young men. WAG is that probably 1 in 10 college students have been to a strip club. It’s also mandatory for a bachelor party to involve either visiting a strip club or hiring a stripper, so I suspect that most men have seen a strip show of some sort. Having said that, very few men go regularly. Realistically I suspect that most men would visit a strip club 4 or 5 times in their lives.

As for admitting it, yeah, most men would cheerfully admit it in the right company. It’s not the type of thing you’d talk about in the workplace, but it’s not something that anybody would be embarrassed about either. Once again, I suspect this is exactly the same as in the Netherlands, you just don’t associate with the right people under the right circumstances.

As for prostitutes, most men wouldn’t admit to visiting one, or if they do it’s usually part of a “I was so drunk” story. Visiting a prostitute is viewed as fairly skeevy. Not the worst thing in the world, but not something that you’d be proud of. Hard to say how many men visit prostitutes, but out of my circle of friends and acquaintances, numbering around 100, I know of one who had employed a prostitute domestically, and one who did so while abroad and drunk. That’s not to say that nobody else has, just that they don’t talk about it.

Dating prostitutes is not a common sitcom trope anywhere that I am aware of. There is a certain cache to having a brief fling with a stripper, and that turns up in sitcoms, but as in real life very few men would have a serious relationship with a stripper, Aside from gangsta pimps and wannabes, nobody would think it was a good thing to be in a relationship with a whore, and that is the basic stance of sitcoms.

I also suspect that there are far more strip clubs in the Netherlands than you are aware of. In my experience they are common in large cities worldwide, and most small cities and large towns will have at least one. But the thing is that they aren’t normally located in the main street, or if they are they they are discrete in announcing what they are, often for legal reasons. Strip clubs tend to be fund in the seedier end of entertainment districts. I’m guessing they are common enough in red light districts in the Netherlands too.

7

Of course, it varies with the group of people you are around, but as hogarth says, it’s mostly only seen as slightly naughty, especially as a social activity. While it’s not a common activity for me, I’ve been to a few myself, with my husband.

My daughter also takes/teaches pole-dancing for exercise (just pole dancing), and her classes sometimes take “field trips” to clubs for the students to show off their skills. These women are all standard, average, middle class women, and most of them have friends and family there to cheer them on. It’s really not considered outre’ at all.

8

Up here in Canada, contact dances are legal and the decision making them so only drew negative comments from the typical Andrea Dworkin types if I remember correctly.

I remember a friend freely talking about the fact that he’d been to a stripclub. He wouldn’t tell me what he got thrown out for, though.
I get the impression that stripclubs are often the place of bachelor parties although that may just be an unsubstantiated notion or representative of what used to be done. But there is definitely the idea that guys can/should go to a stripclub/order a stripper for the bachelor party.

9

Quoth Blake:

They were going to be Full-bore Feminists, but the judge took pity on them.

10

Yeah. I’d say that, from what I see of US strip clubs on the telly, in those naked chicks happen to be dancing as a pretext to stick their crotch in your face ; whereas at the Crazy Horse dance performers happen to have their tits out. The difference is subtle, but it’s there.
Definitely no suggestion nor rumors of hanky-panky/lapdances/backroom fucking going on at the Crazy or the Moulin Rouge, either.

There are actual, sleazy-ass strip clubs in Paris, mind you. Just not those two :p.

11

I believe that I am one of those “commuted” feminists referred to above. My opinion of guys who go to strip clubs is that they are young, or don’t know how to get a girlfriend, or desperate, or all three. Strippers and strip clubs used to be very taboo not very long ago, and hoochie coochie dancers, fan and bubble dancers, and women who posed in the nude were regarded as scandalous. The appeal of going to a strip club, or having a stripper at a bachelor party, was in good part because it was forbidden fruit…and we all know that forbidden fruit is the sweetest. There were also laws against such dancing and performances as well.

The climate has changed, though. Back in the 80s and 90s, it seemed like every R rated movie had a scene in a strip club, or a scene where a woman stripped. It’s like it was an item on a checklist…the story really didn’t call for such a scene in most cases, but it was thrown in to make sure that the guys (and the occasional lesbian) got their eye candy in that movie.

Nowadays, I think that most people wouldn’t be shocked that a guy was going to a strip club, but rather feel that he was desperate to see some titties. Young men, say in their early or mid twenties, might think that they are being very daring and cool and rebellious by going to a strip club. However, I view it as a way to spend a lot of money very quickly, without having anything much to show for it afterwards.

12

There are certainly a lot of them in parts of the US. The area north of Tampa must be close one per capita (I think because its illegal to have them in the city, but still).

I always kind of wondered who their clientele was as well. Going to one for the novelty value in College or for bachelor parties seems to be a common thing, but the thing about novelty value is that it wears off after one or two trips, and people don’t get married very often, so I can’t imagine thats supporting that many strip clubs.

I have a vague suspicion that a lot of them are fronts for brothels, but maybe there’s just more people desperate to see some live boobs then I would think.

13

We must travel in different social circles. Most of my friends would have no problem talking about it. But no one would say “visit” a prostitute. You visit your grandmother. :slight_smile: And it would always be hooker, not prostitute. if you wanted to make it sound a little more classy, you would say “professional”.

Not in mixed company, but in an all-male situation, no problem at all.

I would be shocked, SHOCKED, to find it to be so!

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There is an unpublished paper by a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse economics professor, In Da Club: An Econometric Analysis of Strip Club Patrons, which reports that 20.68% of American men and 4.22% of American females visited a strip club in the past year. The figures are from the National Health and Social Life Survey, as reported by Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., & Michaels, S. in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 1994).

15

“‘Hooker’, Cyrus! When the’re dead, they’re just Hookers!”
–Sterling Archer

16

Your suspicion is suspect. There are basically no strip clubs that can be compared to American strip clubs in the Netherlands (nor in Germany). In the red light district of Amsterdam, you have the Casa Rosso, which is more an erotic theater than a strip club. In Hamburg, you have the Safari (similar to the Casa Rosso) and a table-dance bar (Dollhouse). Some bigger cities have a red-light district (Bahnhofsviertel in Frankfurt, Steintor in Hannover) but none of those has a strip bar.

Nothing here can be compared to a typical American strip bar (women dancing in the nude, lap-dances, tipping the dancers, pole-dancing, usually food and drinks available). The red-light districts of most cities consist of brothels and sex-shops and little else. Smaller cities don’t even have a red-light district.

17

2 1/2 Men is so very far from reality that you can pretty much take it as a Reverse Guide to American Life. If it happens on the show, it doesn’t happen in real life, unless you actually ARE Charlie Sheen.

Yes, strip clubs exist. Yes, rather more of them than you’d expect. Most men go to them only when someone’s getting married (it’s a common, cliched Bachelor Party destination.

Are there men who go regularly? Yes, but it’s a minority of men providing the majority of business. There are a lot of “regulars” at strip clubs. Is it something you’d talk about at dinner with your mother present? Absolutely not. It’s something that, if you talked about it at work, there’d be good grounds for a Hostile Work environment sexual harassment lawsuit.

Women are a bit different, as unfair as that sounds. Just like homosexual people reclaimed the word “queer” and made it a word of empowerment, middle aged housewives have begun to “reclaim” the entire concept of stripping. They’re cleaning the concept up (removing most or all of the actual stripping, and concentrating on the dancing aspects) and making it a thing of power and strength and beauty. There are pole dancing classes offered in strip malls, at mainstream gyms and even at some community centers/park districts. “Burlesque shows” and “burlesque classes” are becoming more popular, and are something of an amalgam of classic burlesque and modern pole dancing.

It wouldn’t even be unheard of, in some social circles, for a group of women to go to a male-dancer strip club, and THAT could be talked about at the family dinner table, with much laughter and high fives between the women, and sheepish silence from the men. The unspoken assumption is that women don’t go for dirty nasty gross sexual gratification, but for pure fun and laughter and self-mockery.

Yes, it’s a double standard. No, I don’t see it changing any time soon.

18

Almost everything in this paragraph is wrong.

Pop culture would have you believe that strip clubs are much more universally frequented than they are.

19

Thanks for the answers. I was just refering to the Charly Sheen verhicle because it sparked this thread, but it is something I’ve seen in TV and movies a lot. I just thaught about The Wrestler as example, but that is probably to show how sad the main character’s life is. In the media at least, it seems it is a fairly ‘normal’ thing to do.

Just to be open, I am fairly familiar with the adult business in the Netherlands and Germany. It is mostly from knowing how few people are open about participating in it (even with close friends), that this question came up. The strip club in Amsterdam is in the La Vie en Rose btw, you have to walk through a few of the small window allies to get there…I believe this club tries to be an American style club with lapdances etc., allthough I’ve never been.

From the answers it seems that going to a stripclub is similar to just walking through the red light district (in Amsterdam). Something almost every guy will end up doing a few times, and definitely during bachelor parties. But few get much further than seeing a sexshow (from a distance) in such a group happening. Most other districts are really focussed on actual prostitution and here you see far more indidviduals (much more businesslike as well).

20

Have things changed that much since the 1960s? In The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth’s German hero’s girlfriend is a stripper (which is how they met). Forsyth wrote his book circa 1970. I’ve certainly seen strip clubs in London.