56
‘Hi! I’m looking for a dance school...do you know where it is?’
A young, slender and tanned woman wearing a short white cotton dress smiled and approached me as I stepped out of my car, which was parked in front of a white hangar on the outskirts of Bologna. It was Saturday morning in late summer, and I was about to participate in a free taster event organised by Pole Dance Bologna; however, there was no placard or sign anywhere indicating the school’s presence in the area, not even on the gate corresponding to its address.
Smiling in return and assuming we were looking for the same place, I told Monica, ‘I’m going to the same place, let’s walk together’. Chatting, we passed the gate, entered a bare, asphalt courtyard and continued walking past an industrial car wash.
‘Excuse me, are you going to...?’
Monica and I turned toward the hesitant voice of a heavily made up, chubby woman seemingly in her mid-thirties. ‘Yes,’ I replied confidently, again assuming I knew what she was looking for, ‘we are also going there’. ‘Finally!’ Giulia sighed in relief, ‘It took me an hour to drive! But this is the nearest school to Ferrara…’ When I started preparing for my fieldwork in spring 2012, the commercialisation of pole dancing in Italy for fitness and leisure was in its nascent stages, as compared to other Western countries. For example, in the UK, pole dancing was being taught in a variety of venues, ranging from leisure centres to gyms (see, for example: Fitness First, 2015; Virgin Active Nottingham, 2015). In Italy, on the other hand, courses only ran in a few main cities in specialised schools. Bologna had the first such school in the entire Emilia Romagna region; and it was only established in 2009.
As we turned the corner, we saw a handwritten, A4 sheet of paper stuck on a white plastic door, indicating the school’s entrance. However, in contrast to the anonymous and slovenly appearance, the school was abuzz all weekend, as tens of young women – mostly in their twenties and thirties – moved in and out, up and down the building sampling the courses on trial. As I drove home on Sunday
57 night, I realised that what I had considered Giulia’s odd fancy was, rather, a sign of pole dancing’s impending commercial boom in Italy.1
********************
The image of Monica, Giulia and I shiftily walking towards a place that no-one dared to name, reveals the ambivalence entailed in the transformation of an activity associated with women dancing for money in male-patronised strip clubs, to one of women’s leisure and fitness. Hesitation signalled fear of being stigmatised, as lap dancers and strippers, with the gendered stigma of the whore, but at the same time, an unnamed desire catalysed such spatial crossing into the field of the abject feminine other.
Academic literature analysing pole dancing as a women’s fitness and leisure activity in Western countries situates the phenomenon at the intersection of the wider accessibility to, and glamour surrounding, recreational and commodified sex and the ascendency of postfeminism in media and popular culture (see for example: Lamb, Sharon et al., 2013: 166-167; Owen, 2012: 84; Whitehead &
Kurz, 2009: 228; Holland & Attwood, 2009: 166-167; Attwood, 2009: xiii-xiv;
Gill, 2009). However, these researches are exclusively focused on a few Western countries, where pole dancing’s mainstream appeal has a longer history (notably: US, UK, Australia) and postfeminism is relatively influential as a discourse.
Differently, the mainstreaming of pole dancing in Italy was taking place in a context characterised by a neat juxtaposition between good women (i.e. chaste) and bad women (i.e. promiscuous). As an activity still largely associated with the latter, and in a post-Sexgate scenario heavily marked by sexual and economic austerity, pole dancing brought a stage of ‘liminality’ (Turner 1985) to the forefront, wherein the tensions associated with the processes of women’s heteronormative subjectification became more visible. Exploring such tensions is this chapter’s objective, thereby analysing the significance of the type of
1 For example, two years after the beginning of my fieldwork Ferrara opened two pole dancing schools (Pole Dance Italy, 2014).
58 femininity consumed and marketed by pole dance entrepreneurs and teachers for the reproduction of heteronormativity.
I begin with a discussion of feminist scholarship debating women’s subjectivity and agency along the binary juxtaposing sexual objectification and empowerment. I focus, in particular, on the paradigm of women’s internalised oppression, showing both the paradigm’s usefulness in identifying the heteronormative constraints affecting women’s subjectification and the liberal biases underpinning the gendered self/other binary upon which this paradigm rests. Following on, I then discuss how domesticity and sexiness, gracility and muscularity blend in the desired and feared femininity that is both consumed and marketed by pole dance entrepreneurs and teachers in Italy. To conclude, I introduce the theme of respectability, and of the construction of the respectable feminine subject, which will constitute the backbone of subsequent Chapters 3 and 4.
Subjectification between objectification, empowerment and desire
Feminist scholars researching pole dancing unanimously report that students claim the activity as ‘empowering’ and ‘sexually liberating’ (Donaghue &
Whitehead, 2011: 446; Holland, 2010: 99; Holland & Attwood, 2009: 180-181;
Whitehead & Kurz, 2009: 240). However, opinions vary on what drives students’ perception of empowerment, questioning the assumptions underlying the production and circulation of this feeling, as well as its durability across time and space. For some scholars, pole dancing’s homosociality presents an opportunity for women to cultivate and experience a genuine form of empowerment. Women ‘perform for each other rather than servicing men for money’ (Holland & Attwood, 2009: 170; see also Holland, 2010: 3), while also possibly accessing ‘a fantasy of a woman who is able to be sexy and take command “by doing what she wants… rather than what she thinks she has to do”’ (Holland & Attwood, 2009: 180). In contrast, Owen considers pole dancers as consumers of a service produced by a ‘dispersed, invisible patriarchy’ (2012:
80), which is ‘historically coincident with, and arguably contingent upon, the
59 material expansion of lap- and table-dancing clubs on the North American model’ (ibid.: 84). Other feminist writers share Owen’s dismissal of pole dancing, as they posit the activity to be an ‘equation of empowerment and liberation with sexual objectification’ (Walter, 2011: 6; see also: Levy, 2006).
For Donaghue & Whitehead, homosociality is a smokescreen that enables a
‘plausible deniability that pole dancing might “really” be about turning men on’
(2011: 452).
At the core of this debate lies the definition of what it means to be a woman within a heteronormative framework, wherein she’s bound to embody the other of man. In the writings of Freud and Lacan, femininity is defined as a lack of the penis and its associated power, to which the phallus itself is (albeit illusorily) conflated (Grosz, 1990: 116). Conceived by psychoanalysis as naturally castrated, woman develops a number of ‘reactive strategies’ to seduce the bearer of the phallus in order to ensure that ‘even if she doesn’t have the phallus, she may become the phallus’ – i.e. his object of desire (Grosz, 1990:
132). Accordingly, she performs a ‘masquerade’, as
she retains her position as the object of the other’s desire only through artifice, appearance, or dissimulation. Illusion, travesty, make-up, the veil, become the techniques she relies upon to both cover over and make visible her ‘essential assets’. They are her means of seducing or enticing the other, of becoming a love-object for him […] a mode of access to the phallic. (Grosz, 1990: 132) According to Laura Mulvey, ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ is what connotes women’s image, role, and aesthetics in mainstream movies, and reflects men’s role as the holders of the desiring (male) gaze that women are styled to please:
in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. (Mulvey 1975: 19)
However inherently relational, as it entails a viewer/subject and a viewed/object, the male gaze can also be internalised by women (Bartky, 1990:
27). The concept of women’s ‘internalised oppression’ originates in Bartky’s
60 comparison of the experiences of alienation lived by workers under capitalism and women under patriarchy. According to Marx, human labour is the ‘free and creative productive activity that should define human functioning’ and when capitalist production appropriates it, ‘workers suffer fragmentation and loss of self’ (ibid.: 32). However alienated though, workers may try to resist, but Sandra Bartky notes that women instead not only comply with the requirements of alienation, i.e. their ‘sexual objectification’ to please men, but also find it
‘pleasurable’ (ibid.: 36-37). The ensuing female narcissism – i.e. a woman’s fascination with her aesthetics – stems from women’s internalisation of their phallic role, which is performed through a specific feminine embodiment and range of bodily practices – e.g. moulding body size, posture, and display (ibid.:
65-68). Consistent with Foucault’s analysis of ‘panopticism’ (1977), Bartky argues that ‘the disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere’, both ‘dispersed and invisible’ (1990: 74-75).
Reading a woman’s care for, and work on, her appearance and desirability as expressions of internalised sexual objectification only would, however, imply that she ought to give up the pleasure of being desired by an-other in order to truly be herself. This assumption, however, is problematic for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the notion of authenticity implies a capacity for judgement (impossibly) outside the very power that produced us in the first place. As cogently argued by Judith Butler in her analysis of the ‘paradox of subjection’ (1997: 4), ‘subjection signifies the process of becoming subordinated by power as well as the process of becoming a subject’ (ibid.: 2). No subject can exist outside the power that produced her/him and, at the same time, the agency of the subject ‘appears to be an effect of its subordination’ (ibid.: 12). Hence, agency is inherently ambivalent as ‘the power assumed may at once retain and resist that subordination’ (ibid.: 13). This insight is further compounded by Saba Mahmood’s critique of the liberal biases underlying Western feminists’
assumptions of agency, as necessarily entailing ‘resistance to relations of domination’ (2001: 206-207). Accordingly, women’s agency cannot be
61 conceived within an either/or framework – e.g. power vs. resistance, objectification vs. empowerment – but as inherently ambivalent (ibid.: 13).
Hence, if no-one is external to the power that produces us, and if we detach agency from prescriptive ideals, judgement on anyone’s autonomy, dependence, – or internalised oppression – ought to be tamed; we should instead embark on a more nuanced discussion of degrees. In this vein, Diana Meyers suggested ‘to detoxify narcissism’ (2002: 145), shifting the focus from the outcome pursued (e.g. beauty, desirability) to the conditions of pursuance,2 and enabling the exploration of women’s self-defined ‘narcissistic commitments’ (ibid.: 147).
Secondly, the paradigm of internalised oppression both presupposes and reproduces a neat, gendered binary juxtaposing men and women. Men are painted here as the bearers of the sexually objectifying gaze and women as passive, sexualised objects plundered of agency and responsibility. This view is consistent with the position of ‘woman’ in heteronormativity, as posited by Freudian psychoanalytic theories, that conceptualise women’s passivity and objectification as naturally flowing from their lack of penis and associated phallic power.
‘Intersubjective theory’, conversely, envisages subjectification as always stemming from the relation between two subjects, wherein domination is ‘a two-way process, a system involving the participation of those who submit to power as well as those who exercise it’ (Benjamin 1990: 5). Criticizing Freudian theories’ intrinsic biological determinism, Jessica Benjamin traced the origins of women’s passivity and objectification in human beings’ psychic development, starting from the ‘conflict between dependence and independence in infant life’
(1990: 7-8). The conflict begins as the infant seeks to establish an autonomous, independent subject position detached from, and recognised by, the mother – the human out of whom s/he was born and to whom s/he was long attached for nourishment (ibid.: 19-20). Separation from the mother is the condition for the
2 For example, questioning whether such a pursuance condemns one to live in a permanent state of dissatisfaction (ibid.: 121-2), asking to what extent such is a feminine duty only, and suggesting to democratise narcissistic agency through focusing on attractiveness (vs. beauty) (ibid.: 145).
62 child to enter the social, and yet s/he longs for that feeling of wholeness, which signifies re-incorporation, dissolution, and loss of boundaries. Initially ‘all infants feel themselves to be like their mothers’, however ‘boys discover that they cannot grow up to become her, they can only have her’; hence, boys experience ‘a break in identification’ (ibid.: 75). Both loved and feared, the male child struggles between his desire to be the object of his mother’s love, thereby returning to the original plenitude with her, and his fear of being absorbed back into her (ibid.: 19-20). When this perennial tension between dependence and independence becomes unbearable, the psyche reacts through ‘splitting’ (ibid.:
50).3 Hence, the male child pursues differentiation and independence through domination of a subject (i.e. the mother), who is therein reduced to an object; a behavior from which the objectification of women stems (ibid.: 77).4
Crucially, such a subjectification process relies on and reproduces a liberal view of the subject as autonomous exactly because s/he is detached and self-sufficient; a view that many feminist scholars have criticised for its role in perpetuating women’s subordination to men (see for example: Bordo, 1993: 4-5; Seidler, 1987: 82; Young, 1985). However, feminists scholars’ critiques that the pleasure women articulate in feeling desirable in the eyes of men constitute an expression of women’s own internalised objectification, as highlighted in the context of scholarship on pole dancing, seem to reproduce some of these same liberal biases. Here, the feminist, normative goal of autonomy (vs. dependence from a desiring male audience) seems to be an attempt at pursuing subjectivity through denying the intrinsic relationality of being, beginning with the ambivalent process of longing and fearing separation from the mother.
Domination, in this case, is not pursued by objectifying the other (as in the male child’s objectification of his mother), but instead by suppressing the desire for the other, the longing and struggling to be the object of his/her desire. Hence, the feminist goal of autonomy seem to rely on a reversal of the gendered
3 In Chapter 1 I discussed ‘splitting’, male sexuality and the good/bad women binary.
4 The problem of differentiation for the girl child is ‘almost as the mirror image of the male’s: not the denial of the other, but the denial of the self […], not to emphasize but to underplay independence’, thereby re-enacting ‘their early identificatory relationship to the mother’ (ibid.:
78-79) who lacks subjectivity and agency (ibid.: 78).
63 subject/object binary, implying that women can only achieve subjectivity by dominating (their attachments to) men.
Hence, I, conversely, emphasise the centrality of desire, the vulnerability intrinsic to losing one’s place as the object of the other’s desire, and the relational constitution of the subject. According to Lauren Berlant, Lacan does not explain sexual difference through biology, and notably possession/lack of the penis. Hence, Berlant points instead to the gendering of the ‘anxiety’
intrinsic to desirability: women wish to embody men’s object of desire and men wish to ‘possess’ women to confirm their status as (male) subjects (2012: 57).
Such anxiety requires constant ‘performativity’ (Butler, 1990); at the same time, however, desire for the (m)other is intrinsic to processes of subjectification and simultaneously contributes to weaving social relations. As Henrietta Moore states: ‘Desire is elliptical in its nature, it works by attaching individuals as subjects to its negation or denial, and through that process constitutes both the subject and the social’ (2007: 20).
In the next section, I begin to discuss how women pole dance entrepreneurs and teachers’ narratives blended empowerment and dependence on a desiring male audience, the pleasures of desirability with multifaceted fears of stigmatisation.
Pole dancing between homosociality and heterosexual desirability
Academic literature mainly focuses on analysing pole dancing as a form of consumption. Set in the UK, the only work discussing pole dancing in labour terms depicts it as an expression of the ‘“resurgent patriarchy” (McRobbie, 2009: 85) of neoliberal capitalism’ (Owen, 2012: 80), wherein women are positioned at the bottom of the production process:
What emerges is a sense of an industry in steady expansion, inserting itself into existing economies, with training performed by precarious, female, freelance workers. And, far from constituting grassroots, “anti-establishment” initiatives, these operations mime the logic and business models of multinational capitalist enterprise. (ibid.: 88)
64 At the time of my fieldwork, however, Italy’s prevailing business model was significantly different, typically consisting of a small enterprise run by a woman in her late twenties/early thirties, who was herself also a teacher. As their customer base expanded, women entrepreneurs employed additional women teachers and collaborated with freelance women professionals to widen the courses on offer. For employees, teaching pole dance was often part-time; a job they could pursue as either additional work or alongside university studies.
While the money was insufficient to live on, they nonetheless considered the work well paid;5 in addition, and more important to this study, most of my interviewees considered teaching pole dance to be an extension of a pleasurable activity.
‘Sincerely, I lost my mind for this discipline’6, said Francesca, a woman in her early thirties and a pioneering pole dance entrepreneur in Italy, ‘So, I thought, what the hell. If I lost it, many others will as well, because I’m no fool, right?’
Francesca now owns and runs a pole dance school where she, herself, teaches an advanced course. Intermediate and beginner courses are taught by a core group of women employees, who are sometimes assisted by ad hoc professionals. Like Francesca’s, most schools I visited complemented pole dancing courses with a range of more or less regular and/or ad hoc courses in
‘sexy chair’, ‘sexy flexy’,7 Burlesque, circle, trapeze and aerial silk. As the owner of one of the first schools in Italy, Francesca desired and was able to establish collaborations with newly established ones. ‘We are a network’, she explained as we sat in the plain kitchen of the flat she had rented after breaking up with her boyfriend, who was jealous of her success.8
5 The pole dance teachers I interviewed were paid eighteen-twenty Euros per hour, which is three times the average pay of a waiter, and two times that of a shop assistant.
6 I discuss the ambivalences of her use of the term ‘discipline’ in the following section.
7 The brochure of Pole Dance Bologna (2012), for example, described ‘sexy chair’ as a blend of
‘the art of a sensual dance with vigour and physical strength aided by a chair’, and ‘sexy flexy’ as a combination of ‘floor work, stretching and static positions of strength’; the use of high heel shoes with ankle strap was recommended for both courses. Most schools also organise hen parties, including mini-stagings of pole dance, Burlesque, or the ‘polesque’ hybrid (Pole Dance Italy, 2012), akin to what happens in the UK (Holland, 2010: 32).
8 ‘He truly engaged in a competition with me’, she recounted, ‘work-wise he was dissatisfied, so I couldn’t share anything with him, no joy, no travel, no going out […] so eventually we split’.
65 Girls contact me and if I like them (not technically, that’s something that can
65 Girls contact me and if I like them (not technically, that’s something that can