Nearly Naked in the Club
And It Felt Completely Safe
We used to go to a “lifestyle” club on a regular basis. Every weekend had a different theme. One night was men’s shirts and I wore one of James’ that was half unbuttoned, with a pretty necklace, a thong and some strappy high heels. Another night was black and white lingerie. On the fetish night I wore a cupless vinyl boustier and sky high black boots. I’ve always enjoyed dressing up for theme parties but this was particularly fun because I could wear as much or as little as I wanted and still be entirely comfortable; entirely unmolested. It was extremely personally and sexually empowering.
Did men (and women) notice me? You bet they did. Did some of them approach me to tell me I looked hot or to ask me to dance? That too, but to be completely honest, I have never felt more safe and respected by men in a public place. One guy even asked me if he could touch my breasts because he loved the way they looked in the outfit I was wearing. He did it such a respectful and genuinely appreciative way that I told him sure.
A club like that may be full of nearly naked women but there was no leering, catcalling, harassing, stalking, lewd gestures or other nonesense and you knew there wasn’t going to be any. You didn’t have to be on alert as to whether or not it was a good idea to go to a particular area of the club; you didn’t have to wonder whether someone was going to get grabby or would latch on to you and not leave you alone. These are common things that women have to deal with in the “real” world on a regular basis, even in broad daylight when they are entirely covered up, but it was just never a factor and pretty much never is in these kinds of clubs.
The difference is in power dynamics. In a club like that women have complete control over what does and does not happen as relates to their body, their time and attention or anything else about them. Men respect that because if they didn’t, women wouldn’t go to these clubs, or at least they wouldn’t dress in the way that they do when they are there. The whole notion of trying to get something from a woman is completely dismantled. She is free to be as sexually forward or expressed as she wants with no slut-shaming or entitlement. What she has on isn’t seen as an invitation. There’s no assumption that she is dressing to get male attention. Women dress sexy to have the enjoyment of owning their sexuality in a semi-public venue and she may or may not share that sexuality with anyone else present and that is considered completely acceptable.
A male club goer wouldn’t dream of telling some woman he doesn’t even know to smile. He wouldn’t ever consider yelling across the room about what he’d like to do to her; he wouldn’t expose himself or demand that she look over in his direction, “Hey, hey mama, over here…...” Writing that down actually made me laugh out loud, because in the context of a club like that it would be perfectly ludicrous. And yet, that kind of thing happens daily on the streets in the middle of the day to women who are going about their own business, completely dressed. And some people (some women even) still see that as no big deal, but more and more research indicates that catcalling is not complimentary; it’s dominance posturing and it’s harassment. Even Playboy magazine thinks it’s inappropriate.
Besides the fact that it’s sexually objectifying to shout out comments about a woman’s body, the woman doesn’t know whether or not that is the end of it and that generates fear. In a recent study by Cornell Univesity and Hollaback! that surveyed over 16,000 young women, 50% reported that they had been groped on the street and 71% had been followed by harassers. There have been more and more instances in recent years of women being attacked and even murdered for not giving a guy her phone number or otherwise refusing his attentions even though he was just a stranger on the street.
It seems counter-intuitive that a woman in a suit or jeans walking along minding her own business is not as safe as a woman wearing next to nothing in a club, but that is the case if the club in question is a “lifestyle” or “sex” club. Having been on the receiving end of catcalling and the receiving end of actual compliments when I was wearing sexually revealing and enticing clothing, I can tell you that catcalling is never complimentary. Catcalling is about demanding female attention; it’s about exerting dominance by making a woman feel vulnerable; it’s about expressing entitlement to her body because it happens to be there in front of you. Real compliments never do that and they feel entirely different. Real compliments are appreciative and are given in the appropriate time and space to do so; namely when you are having an actual conversation with someone and you are emphasizing an aspect of them that you enjoy. Ironically, in a sex club, a woman is more than her body. The rest of the world should really take a page out of that book!
