The film “Live Nude Girls Unite” written and directed by Julia Query and Vicky Funari, documents the process that a group of exotic dancers and staff workers went through to fight for fair wages and working conditions by unionizing. Their message was that sex workers were being stigmatized as inferior, submissive people, not worthy of humane treatment. They rejected the notion that their line of work wasn’t “real” work. The women in the film demonstrated through their determination and ability to organize that they were in fact smart, hard-working individuals deserving of the same protection from abusive labor markets as any other occupation.
The workers were employees of a peep show theater called “The Lusty Lady” in San Francisco which fought their efforts with one of the city’s most notorious law firms. The dancers argued that they were victims of racial discrimination, unfair pay, and were being subjected to an invasion of their privacy by customers using video cameras. They sought help from the Service Employees International Union to navigate them through the complex system of bargaining and negotiating a contractual agreement with the employer. In the end, not all their demands were met, but their actions paved the way for other exotic dancers to unionize as well.
The thesis of this film relates to the course in that it demonstrates the idea that society is unjust in how it treats those labeled as deviant. Author Jennifer L. Dunn of “Everyone Knows Who the Sluts Are: How Young Women Get Around the Stigma”, explains the negative impacts of stigmatization. She states, “Not only do we demean such persons, but we treat them as unworthy of our respect and regard, and in this way, Goffman said, “we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce [their] life chances.” (Calhoun, Conyers & Thio,Readings in Deviant Behavior,p.207). This rationale resonates in Jennifer K. Wesely’s “Exotic Dancers: Where am I Going to Stop?” where she writes about the sexual objectification of women’s bodies and how this line of work may relate to identity conflict. The individual and the behavior become one and the same; her master status in the eyes of society and sometimes, her own self-image becomes what she does, not who she is. The dancer is no longer regarded and respected as a mother, daughter, student, or even wife; she becomes merely a sexual object. While society, in general, may not respect sex work (although the demand would suggest otherwise!) or regard it as a noble profession, those who work in the industry do not deserve the stigma associated with it. It’s that stigma that can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy (Becker, Howard S.; Calhoun, Conyers & Thio, Readings in Deviant Behavior). Their life chances become limited because of their inability to remove the label that both society assigns and they themselves have relegated to.
One argument that the film addressed was the various reasons why the women chose to be a part of the sex industry. Some of the women were struggling single moms, many held college degrees, and others could not find work in their original professions. I got the feeling that the majority did not particularly enjoy the work, felt pressured to perform more intrusive sexual acts, and seemed to do it as a sort of last resort because of limited alternative options. If I were to design a study, it would be similar to Wesely’s in that I would conduct interviews with women who engaged in sex work of varying degrees. I would try to find correlations between motives for entering the industry, past sexual histories, the range of work they performed, and how they transitioned into other professions in order to determine if inequalities that women face to meet their basic needs are a significant factor in this industry. My hypothesis is that Merton’s Strain Theory (Calhoun, Conyers & Thio, Readings in Deviant Behavior, Ch3) will be demonstrated in the outcome; women with more strain will resort to working in the sex industry (innovative means) to attain the goals shared by society.
