Overview

Playing the Supporting Role draws on interviews with strippers and strip club management to bring to life the daily routines, personalities, conflicts, and challenges of managing and working in the erotic dance sector. Strippers may be the main attraction of strip clubs, but their work is bolstered by people who are rarely meaningfully considered: those who organise, supervise, manage, or coordinate the labour of erotic dancers, including managers, bouncers, and disc jockeys. Playing the Supporting Role contends it is essential to explore the managerial layer in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the power relations and working conditions in the erotic dance sector - and, consequently, distinguish banal or beneficial from unfair or exploitative sex-industry labour practices. Focusing primarily on third parties in the erotic dance sector, this book examines who these individuals are; how they manage clients, workers, security, and stigma; the services and resources they provide; and, in turn, strippers' experiences and perceptions of these practices. Through qualitative interview data with third parties and strippers from two Ontario cities, Playing the Supporting Role ultimately advances an understanding of third-party work as gendered, classed, and racialised occupational performance in a stigmatised labour sector that is simultaneously over- and under-regulated.

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9781487548940

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Reviews

"""Law delivers a groundbreaking study of the power relations and working conditions in strip clubs. Weaving together data collected and analysed through qualitative interviews, symbolic interactionism, and institutional ethnography, she provides a provocative analysis of the worker-manager-customer triangle of interactive service work. Her findings challenge the misleading and incomplete cultural representations of the sex industry. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in a fuller understanding of the industry."" - Frances M. Shaver, Professor Emeritus, Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University ""Third parties in sex industries are rarely a topic of serious analysis and research, yet Tuulia Law successfully turns our attention away from salacious depictions and stereotypes to examine the everyday operations of people who organize, supervise, manage, and coordinate Ontario's erotic dance sector. The study is a vital contribution to sex work studies, as it complicates our understandings of erotic dance as sexual labour and probes deeply into work relations and conditions within the strip club industry. Playing the Supporting Role is an immensely readable and informative book, which humanizes not only strippers but also other employees, managers, and business owners, all of whom are equally as central to the industry. A very timely and highly commendable study."" - Kamala Kempadoo, Professor Emerita, York University, and co-editor of Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition and White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking ""Tuulia Law's masterful new book debunks stereotypical narratives about strip clubs by engaging directly with erotic dancers and workplace managers, bouncers, and DJs. It is an invaluable contribution that foregrounds the voices and lived experiences of people who are too often stigmatized, dramatized, and sensationalized. Playing the Supporting Role is an essential read for anyone interested in socio-legal and labour-oriented perspectives on sex work."" - Emily van der Meulen, Professor of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University"

Author Information

Tuulia Law is an assistant professor of criminology at York University.

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