Neon Wasteland: On Love, Motherhood, and Sex Work in a Rust Belt Town

by Susan Dewey

Overview

This path-breaking book examines the lives of five topless dancers in the economically devastated “rust belt” of upstate New York. With insight and empathy, Susan Dewey shows how these women negotiate their lives as parents, employees, and family members while working in a profession widely regarded as incompatible with motherhood and fidelity. Neither disparaging nor romanticizing her subjects, Dewey investigates the complicated dynamic of performance, resilience, economic need, and emotional vulnerability that comprises the life of a stripper. An accessibly written text that uses academic theories and methods to make sense of feminized labor, Neon Wasteland shows that sex work is part of the learned process by which some women come to believe that their self-esteem, material worth, and possibilities for life improvement are invested in their bodies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520266902
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/07/2011
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Susan Dewey is Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and adjunct in International Studies at the University of Wyoming. She is the author of Making Miss India Miss World: Constructing Gender, Power, and the Nation in Postliberalization India and Hollow Bodies: Institutional Responses to Sex Trafficking in Armenia, Bosnia, and India.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
2. Feminized Labor and the Classed Body
3. Everyday Survival Strategies
4. Being a Good Mother in a "Bad" Profession
5. Pseudointimacy and Romantic Love
6. Calculating Risks, Surviving Danger
7. Body Work and the Feminization of Poverty
8. Conclusion

Notes
Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Dewey contributes to a growing wave of qualitative research on the sex industry."—Choice

Editorial Reviews

Dewey contributes to a growing wave of qualitative research on the sex industry.

Choice

"Dewey contributes to a growing wave of qualitative research on the sex industry."--Choice

"Fresh. . . . As keen as it is thorough. . . . Neon Wasteland is a provocative, highly readable analysis."--Social & Cultural Geography

From the Publisher

Fresh. . . . As keen as it is thorough. . . . Neon Wasteland is a provocative, highly readable analysis.

Social & Cultural Geography - Kate W. Read & Yasmina Katsulis