![](https://d3ilqtpdwi981i.cloudfront.net/9PdUaP5clvlTVw27jCezYjUND3M=/425x550/smart/https://bepress-attached-resources.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a5/55/65/a55565c4-854d-473a-a6e5-dbcafe028060/thumbnail_BPFile%20object.jpg)
Unpublished Paper
Staged Sexuality: A Dramaturgical Analysis of Erotic Dancing
Master's Project, Purdue University Department of Sociology
(1998)
Abstract
This research comprises an ethnographic study of female erotic dancers in a single erotic dance club. Using Erving Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical analysis of the social construction of the self as my theoretical basis of inquiry, I examined the dancers’ staged performance of a self. I interpreted the erotic dancers’ performances as constructed fronts intended to fulfill the heterosexual male customers’ fantasies of the ideal sexual female. Operating with this assumption, I observed how the erotic dancers created and maintained the ideal sexual female through the manipulation of setting, appearance, manner, and impression management techniques. Lastly, I discuss the implications these created fronts have for the social construction of female sexuality.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring 1998
Citation Information
Swygart-Hobaugh, A.J. (1998). Staged sexuality: A dramaturgical analysis of erotic dancing. (Unpublished master's project). Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.