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Bare : The Naked Truth About Stripping
Elisabeth Eaves
a closer look at the way sexuality is viewed in our culture; what, if anything, constitutes "normal" desire; the ethics of swapping money-or anything else-for sex; and how women and men navigate the perilous contradictions and double standards
Seal Press
September 2004
312 pages ISBN: 1580051219 Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
It began when she was a teenager with an awareness of her
body and the reaction other people had to it. It continued
with the realization that women's bodies often gave them a
strange power over men. As an adult, it became a
fascination with professional sex workers, leading to a
plunge into their world. And when Elisabeth Eaves left the
world of peep shows and private dancers for the more
socially acceptable career of international journalism, she
found she could not put that fascination behind her. Her
experiences had left her with too many questions and too
few answers. So she returned to the world she had left
behind. Now, in this candid and insightful book, she
recounts her firsthand experience of stripping and gives us
a new understanding of women's sexuality and contemporary
sexual mores.
Bare follows the author and her fellow dancers through
Seattle strip clubs and bachelor parties, exploring in
riveting detail Eaves's own motivations and behavior, as
well as those of her coworkers, as they make their way
through the sometimes exhilarating, often disturbing world
of stripping. Grounded in an understanding of the intricate
dynamics of exchanging sexual services for money, Eaves's
narrative examines the ways in which the work affects the
women: how they negotiate the slippery boundaries between
their jobs and their "real" lives; how their personal
relationships are altered; how they reconcile themselves—or
don't—to the stereotypes that surround their profession;
whether the work is exploitative or empowering or both. In its unstinting honesty, Bare demands that we take a
closer look at the way sexuality is viewed in our culture;
what, if anything, constitutes "normal" desire; the ethics
of swapping money—or anything else—for sex; and how women
and men navigate the perilous contradictions and double
standards that make up today's socio-sexual conventions.
The stories Eaves tells—outrageous, funny, sad, and deeply
affecting—provide an engrossing and unforgettable look at a
group of women who have a lot to reveal, not only about one
of America's largest and most taboo industries, but about
the restrictions, joys, and hypocrisies of the world in
which we all live.
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