חושפות טפח ומסתירות טפחיים: בחינה וניתוח של תת-תרבות החשפניות בישראל

Background: Most studies of striptease have focused on the sole stripper and concentrated on her motivations to become a stripper, the various interactions that occur between her and her customer, and how she challenges her negative stigmatization. Aims: The current study aimed to examine the socialization processes of women strippers into the world of strip clubs, and to analyze their norms and behavior patterns from a social/cultural perspective. Methods: This qualitative research was based on semi-structured interviews with 10 women who had been working as club strippers for periods of six months to five years.Main findings: Club strippers experience technical, emotional, and mental socialization processes. They create unique and informal norms and codes of behavior, have ambivalent interactions with their clients, peers, and club managers, perform in a hierarchical subculture, and develop an ethos expressing a collective and functional attitude toward their occupation. Conclusions and implications: (a) Successful socialization into the subculture of club strippers helps them reduce emotional, mental, and cognitive dissonance; (b) The ambivalent relationships between club strippers and club managers force strippers to initiate an informal system of norms and codes that aim to protect them; (c) False intimacy helps club strippers obtain empathy and warmth; (d) The subculture of club strippers serves as a platform for generating and designing social systems, as well as for achieving various needs and desires that they failed to realize in society at large.