The Sunday News
Nkosilesisa Ncube, Sunday Life Reporter
MY mother is a devout Christian and like most women her age, her religion allows her to be slightly more judgemental about worldly issues than most people.
When she caught wind of a new adult entertainment joint opening in town a few months ago, she may have lost it a little.
She gathered all her church friends for an all-night prayer over how this wretched world was going to waste. They then took a holy oath to never be caught dead anywhere near the place and seemed to forget that the bodies of the entertainers were temples of the Lord.
While religion seems to be a major reason why women (who make up most of the Christian community) shy away from strip clubs, it certainly is not the only reason why they do.
A heartbreakingly honest married woman says the main reason why she steers clear of such places is because of her own insecurities.
“I am mostly afraid of going there and meeting the kind of girls that my husband would cheat on me with,” she says.
True to her fears, there is a certain strength that comes with a woman who fully owns her sexuality. Most men are drawn to this strength.
It takes a distinct kind of woman to stand stark naked in a room full of strangers and bend over backwards in ways that are mostly only imaginable.
It cannot be easy for the average woman to sit in a crowd of men leering at another woman while she (the average woman) sits among the men.
To the average woman, a stripper or exotic dancer symbolises everything that they cannot be. A stripper is the embodiment of the great body that a plain Jane does not have, the killer dance moves that a 50-year-old housewife cannot, in spite of her best efforts possess and the kind of confidence that the shy girl next door can only dream of.
The exotic dancer stands to highlight the flaws of the average woman; her laziness to go to the gym and have a toned up body, her up-tightness which makes her as stiff as a board and her general lack of confidence in herself.
Few women can compete with that and choose to stay as far away from the subject of their competition as possible.
From a feminist point of view, women do not visit adult entertainment spots because they do not want to be part of objectifying a fellow female.
Strip clubs thrive on presenting the dancers as objects of pleasure for men in the audience to drool over. The average feminist will not join men in objectifying another woman nor will she celebrate a woman who chooses to be the object of men’s lust.
The rest of the female population stays away from such areas because of the general misconception that a strip club is a brothel. Most females view strip clubs as dens of iniquity where all sorts of dirty deeds are performed.
It really isn’t as degenerate as that, strip clubs are legitimate entertainment spots.
Strip clubs survive on a look but do not touch policy and where there is physical contact, it’s quite limited.
Also, unlike a brothel where one pays for the services of a particular sex worker, with strip clubs, payment is made upon arrival at the club to see (and not touch) all the dancers available on that particular day.
A free spirited twenty something-year-old said she would really love to go to a strip club but has no business watching other females taking off their clothes.
“I would really love the strip club experience, but I have not heard of any male strippers locally. I cannot go to watch female strippers because I also have everything that they are flaunting, if there were male strippers, I would absolutely go,” she said.
The stereotype that only women can work as exotic dancers pushes away women who would like to watch men strip. Another thing that keeps women from visiting strip clubs is the fear of being labelled.
When a woman leaves her house, in the middle of the night, in the blistering cold to witness another woman dancing provocatively, most people will understandably assume that she is homosexual or in the least, slightly attracted to other women.
@nkocykay
