Strip

The exotic dancer exists in popular culture most often as scenery. When she is allowed to speak, she does so to the male protagonist and is either the conniving woman attempting to relieve the hero of the cash in his wallet, or fallen woman in need of rescue. She is rarely named, existing only as a backdrop, red lights flashing on pliant flesh like a crime scene. She is white, blonde, slim, with large breasts. She is stripper Barbie, plastic porn. Strip brings nuance to a subject that is often overlooked, ignored, or otherwise silenced. To all readers of human culture interested in the anthropology of what it means to be a sex object in modern America, this book is about much more than stripping. It argues that gentlemen’s clubs are a microcosm that distills the female experience of patriarchal culture. On the body of woman is written male desire. In the eyes of woman, gazing at the male, culture can truly be seen.

Advance Praise

Catlyn Ladd gives us a compelling and dramatic view into the world of desire. Her journey, mind and body and heart, takes the reader into her experience as a voyeur without judgement and with critical insight. The book is raw, dangerous, sensitive, and real, like the life Ladd portrays. It reads like social science with a storyteller's heart.

- Michelle Auerbach, author of The Third Kind of Horse and Alice Modern