G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire.(Book Review)

G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire. Katherine Frank. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

Katherine Frank, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at the College of the Atlantic, has produced an intriguing book on an unusual topic: strip clubs and their visitors. Frank's ethnography is based on her experiences working as a table dancer at various strip clubs in a Southern city she calls Laurelton. She investigates why men return even when they know they cannot have, or do not desire, sexual relations with the dancers.

Frank includes material from interviews with thirty club regulars and grounds her work in the theories of …