Kipnis, and Saunders, and genitals. Oh, my.
Cory Stewart
Online Post # 4
In George Saunders’ short story Sea Oak, the main character works at an all-male strip club called Joysticks, where the strippers’ performance and bodies are rated on a scale beginning at “Knockout” and ending with “Stinker.” The amount of money the employees make in a single night is directly dependent on how well the performance compliments the figure and pleases the customers. The main character is consistently rated as “Honeypie,” and unfortunately, one of his co-workers is fired after consistent ratings of “Stinker.” This relates to Laura Kipnis’s essay concerning Reading Hustler, particularly to an idea she borrows from Stallybrass and White, which sets up a parallel “between the lower bodily stratum and the lower social classes—the reference to the body being invariably something social.” Of course, the main character’s (undead) Aunt Bernie forcefully tells him to show the matrons of the establishment his genitals for more money, in order to increase the family’s social class and make for herself a propitious new beginning as the dominant matron of the house.
According to Kipnis, the idea of the “classical body—a refined, orifice-less, laminated surface—is homologous to the forms of official high culture” and its values which that body represents. Such a body is unattainable to the average person, and certainly not possible for anyone else in the story but the ubiquitous Thomas Kirster, the only stripper with a “Knockout” rating. He is not, in his minor role, portrayed to be a person associated with the values of high culture except inside of the fictional world of “Joysticks.” He is socially and economically successful, but certainly rivaled in economic success by Sonny Vance, who shows his genitalia for extra cash because he is saving to “buy a Faxit franchise,” and increase his social position outside of the club. By the end of the short story, the main character understands that his lower body is the key to his social, and therefore economic success within the “Joysticks” community, and a way to climb in socio-economic status outside of it.
Word Count: 340
Kyle Guadagno
Brittany Wilson
POST #4
Growing up in Fort Lauderdale Florida I learned about Hustler at a young age. Whenever my family and I took trips to the beach we had to pass an enormous Hustler store. My mother would always inform me that this was “a nasty store” and I should never indulge into those types of activities. After reading Kipnis’ article I can understand her claims. I do not agree with the claim that the upper class is embarrassed by sex. The location of this store is in an upscale area of Fort Lauderdale beach. Many of the frequent visitors always seem to be wealthy males. In the parking lot all you see is Mercedes and BMWs.
I found it interesting that my mother referred to the store as “a nasty store”. I feel that many women are not open to pornography. Knowing what I know now I was forced to question my mother on why she referred to this store as nasty. She said, for a young inquisitive child that was the best answer she could think of. My mother has no problem with the store she just feels that it is in a bad location. The store is filled with lights and open windows. It catches a lot of attention and sits on a main street. It is extremely hard to miss. She feels that this seems to attract children more than adults. This then opens a can of worms for parents who have to explain what the store is. She feels that it should be less flashy. Adults know what the store is so the bright lights and windows are not necessary. I have no problem with pornography or the store. As a young adult I cannot relate to my mother. Maybe one day when I have my own children this will make more sense.
Daniela Aguilar
POST #4
Laura Kipnis makes a lot of interesting points in her article (Male) Desire and (Female) disgust: Reading Hustler. In it, she makes a distinction of how the bourgeois class is the one determining the acceptable objectification of the female body. I found this particularly interesting because this observation can be applied to more than just Hustler magazine. The female body objectification can be seen in our culture in advertisement everywhere. Most things these days are sold with a woman’s body as part of the equation. This even includes advertisement for charities related to breast cancer that caters to society’s obsession with breasts and thus gets money by claiming that it would “save the tatas” or “save second base.” This particular movement reduces women to a single body part that in most cases has to be removed in a mastectomy in order to save the woman attached to them in case of cancer. Moreover, with technology like Photoshop, the policing and objectification of women’s body has come to a point where the advertised bodies are so perfect, they are humanly impossible to exist. For example this GIF shows how the picture of an already beautiful woman is manipulated into “perfection”:
The Photoshop phenomenon is rampant these days. Every magazine and advertisement uses it to “fix” the flaws in their models. This is turn creates an unrealistic body goal for millions of girls who are already from birth taught that their value in society depends on how aesthetically pleasing they are to males instead of their intelligence, personality and moral fiber. Here the magazine executives as well as the advertisement executives that in charge of the publications of these photoshoped images are the bourgeois class that is in charge of policing what is acceptable to objectify in women in order for them to properly represent the “classical body” and the ones that erase the “low” culture that has a “grotesque body.”
Andrew Reynolds
Liz Dunne
POST 4
Brittany, I grew up in the Fort Lauderdale area as well, so I know that Hustler store you’re talking about! And let’s not forget the Pure Platinum strip club that is situated literally half a block away from the Solid Gold strip club. I think the nature of the sex/sexual entertainment industry in Ft. Lauderdale supports some of Kipnis’s ideas, namely her thoughts regarding the apparent intertwining of social standing and sexual practices, and the supposed differences between high class and low class sexuality.
For example, there are a lot of small, fetish shops with, let’s say punny names, situated in rundown shopping plazas in the city. They are often situated near pawn shops you have to buzz into, markets that sell ethnic food, and crappy looking cash advance stores. Basically, these fetish shops that cater to sexual tastes that supposedly “deviate” from what the upper class restrictively deems publicly acceptable, are accordingly lumped with stores that reflect other aspects of society that upper class citizens might traditionally and unjustly look down upon, like other or minority cultures, and poverty. It’s as if the fetish shops are made out to be entirely foreign and synonymous with undesirability and low incomes. It’s like the supposed “dirtiness” of the surroundings serve to immediately shame anyone who enters a fetish shop.
Then you have a place like the Solid Gold strip club which has a searchlight out front that they beam up into the night sky like it’s the Oscars. It’s huge and looks super swanky, and almost every taxi in town has an ad for it, an ad featuring a Photophopped sleek, blonde, white woman whose cleavage is super played up and the center of attention. This club seems to offer “traditional” entertainment, and even the name imparts a sense of economic elevation. It is therefore deemed acceptable, nothing to be ashamed of like the hole in the wall fetish shops are depicted as being, and is frequented by more affluent people.
Autumn Holcomb
When Kipnis discussed Betty Ford’s mastectomy, it reminded me, like Daniela, about the “Save the Ta-tas” slogan. Many modern feminists hate the slogan because it reduces the very real, life-endangering problem of breast cancer into a something that is just about saving the breasts. This isn’t a completely new concept, and if you want to think about a recent example of society being focused on breasts, when Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy in March because she had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer, men were outraged. (Here’s a comic that relates the mastectomy to a literal ticking bomb http://rosalarian.tumblr.com/post/50452207989/tickingtimebomb)
Because the article linked the mastectomy and porn, it also reminded me of a news article I read a little while ago. Pornhub.com had a fundraiser last year where if a user clicked on the tags “big tits” or “small tits” and watched those videos, proceeds from the views would go to the Susan G. Komen foundation. At its base, feminists might not exactly appreciate this method of fundraising because it sounds like it is reducing the woman, yet again, to just her breasts. Personally, I think the idea is phenomenal, because it raises awareness and money in a creative way. However, when they went to donate the money, the Susan G. Komen foundation refused to take it. (Article from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/pornhub-komen-donation-breast-cancer-month_n_1939648.html) I could not believe it when I read that they just flat out rejected money for their charity. If you are trying to help people, you need as much money as you can get in a legal fashion. Pornhub.com did not give up, and went on to donate the money to another breast cancer organization.
One of the things I wish Kipnis had elaborated more on was the stance of pro-porn feminists and ant-porn feminists. She briefly mentioned that some feminists did not like porn because it made the woman an object, but I know that some feminists approve of pornography because it is a method of sexual expression. These feminists believe that sexual liberation is part of women’s liberation as a whole.
Allyson Flynn
POST #4
I don’t come from Ft. Lauderdale, but reading the part in Liz’s post where she described the difference between the two types of strip joints/ sex shops rather reminded me of the part in Kipnis’ article where she explains the difference between a magazine like Hustler and magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. Just as Liz explained the difference as being a matter of class, resulting in differing levels of shame, so too does Kipnis explain that the type of sex and related images depicted in Hustler are non-normative and therefore are considered less acceptable or more gross. She also writes that Hustler, unlike Playboy and Penthouse, is dedicated to a focus on the lower stratum. It seems almost as if she claims that because such low depictions exist, society might believe magazines like Playboy are okay (since an individual could possibly claim “it’s not as if I’m reading Hustler..”). I feel like this is another mirror of the undesirability of lower class sexuality that Liz spoke about in her post. And maybe, because the lower class sex shops exist, the swanky strip joint is more able to establish itself as a reputable business. This all supports Kipnis’ argument that all aspects of the lower class lifestyle are considered, by those of the upperclass (or as here, by the bourgeois) undesirable—including, and especially sex. Therefore, regardless of the actual sexuality being depicted, because it is of lower caliber than the “normative” sexuality of the upper class, it is necessarily marginalized and considered disagreeable.
I rather liked Kipnis’ point of view, because, as demonstrated by Liz’s post, the issues addressed regarding class and sex have real world implications. I thought that by discussing sexuality in matters of class, Kipnis was able to deal with more variations of sex more inclusively—it seems that sometimes, when addressing sexuality from a feminist standpoint, the issue becomes very black and white with little room for deviation.
Donald DeBevoise
Angela Minucci
We had a provocative discussion in class about sex, gender, and sexuality yesterday in class. This discussion reminded me of an interesting conversation I had this weekend with a friend of mine about whether lesbian strip clubs existed. I believed that they do exist and she believed that every strip club was a lesbian strip club, which being someone who has frequented strip clubs, I guess she could attest to. Through a quick Google search we found out that they do, in fact, exist. Now, I bring this up because it made me think of how we perceive who goes to strip clubs and how this ties into Kipnis’s article.
When I think of who goes to strip clubs, I first think of middle class to upper class men. I don’t generally think of women visiting of frequenting those establishments. Now this brought up the question: Why only men? And the even worse realization, why does it feel weird to think of women as patrons but when I think of them as workers it isn’t weird? Have I been culturally programmed to think of this as normal? I’m honestly not sure.
Predominately, strip clubs are owned, run, and enforced by men. Strip clubs are also usually placed in places that are a little run down, usually not in close proximity to places with people or homes higher up on the economic ladder. They are perceived of lower class. Most people who strip for a living aren’t doing so because they want to, like any other job, it’s a way to make a living. Kipnis spoke about the idea of lower class and high class. How the bourgeois people may look down upon the lower class and how morality is handed down from the higher class. Stripping or working in pornography aren’t innately considered “bad” until we are told so by society.
word count: 311