Managing the Toll of Stripping

This article examines three psychospatial boundary-setting strategies exotic dancers rely on to manage the difficulties of working in strip bars: what the author elaborates as the “toll” of stripping. These include setting personal rules, “othering” of fellow performers, and creating a dancer persona. Dancers set rules to personally determine the amount of sexual and emotional contact they are willing to have with customers to prevent workplace exploitation and manage the toll of stripping. Othering involves constructing oneself as superior to one's peers, and the dancer persona provides an internal boundary that separates the “authentic” from the stripper self.