Beyond Labels

The article explores how stripping has shaped pop culture. It highlights the positive impact the profession has had on individuals, such as Cardi B, who started as a stripper and later became a successful rapper. The role of strip clubs in influencing the music industry is also discussed, with Atlanta's Magic City being a notable example. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding and appreciating the cultural origins of pop culture phenomena like twerking, which originated in the black community. It concludes by stating that without strip clubs and strippers, pop culture as we know it would not exist. Beyond Labels, How Stripping Has Shaped Pop Culture by Savannah Guadagnola I got a call at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. The name Haley appeared on my phone screen. I answered the call to immediate sobbing. I was confused and worried. She dropped the news on me that she was pregnant at 16. I tried to calm her down but to no avail. She was freaking out. Fast forward three years and her son is now three and he is the light of her life. She is a single mother who watches her son during the day, drops him off around 6 p.m. at her mom's house and then she goes to work. She is now a stripper in Indiana and she is able to afford all the necessities for her and her son. The term stripper usually comes with a lot of negative stigma. It draws negative attention and people become judgmental at the term. Yet what people don't realize is the positive effect it has brought to many people along with how it has shaped our culture. For an example, Cardi B started off as a stripper in order to support herself. Now she is a worldwide known female rapper and her music about stripping makes thousands of people smile and dance. It's as though adding music behind the experience of stripping brings it up in a less negative so to say way. With that being said, Cardi B's life changed in an amazing way because of stripping. Taylor Bell even mentioned in a cultural studies paper referencing Cardi B that she was even able to gain financial independence enough so that she moved out of her abusive boyfriend's place. When it comes to pop culture and stripping, it's not always about the dancers. Sometimes it's about the atmosphere that can affect the music being played which then makes its way worldwide. Atlanta is known for many famous rappers being raised and born there. However, it is also known for producing the hip hop industry. Magic City is a place where you hear music before anybody else does and where it is decided if that music gets played anywhere else. Mentioned by Friedman in his article Make It Rain, how an Atlanta strip club runs the music industry. An example of this music being Fizio Foran's song titled Magic City featuring Quavo. Because this music comes out of many of these strip clubs, the videos to songs also often incorporate women in little to no clothing performing in the same sense as a stripper would. An example being DaBaby's music video to Shake Some, as well as the music video to the song just played titled Magic City where the men are fully clothed and the women are almost nude. It is important to understand the culture from which many of the pop culture moments have come from. Twerking, which is usually done while stripping, hit a peak in 2013 when a video of Miley Cyrus went viral online, but a subversion of the history, complexity, and meaningfulness of the black social dance and the role black females play and played in it began. Kiera Gaunt stated this in her article YouTube Twerking and You. After Miley posted her twerking video, the internet took off on this trend, having many people of different races participate, but what people didn't realize was that this overlooked the black roots of this dance which originated in New Orleans. Twerk in the US descends from the movement of earlier black music genres like blues and jazz written in the Black Feminism Journal. So, although new pop culture is very exciting and loved by so many, it is important not to overlook the culture from which it came from and who we should thank for it coming to light. If it wasn't for these dancers and the atmosphere of the location, it would be very hard for many of these artists to take off, and we most likely would not be exposed to their music, dancing, or their culture. Because these locations and dancers exist, we all get to experience new and still improving music, as well as new dances rising from the black culture, which many people in the new generation love and pay lots of money to see and experience in person. Pop culture is constantly changing when it comes to music and dancing, but we need the atmosphere of strip clubs and also strippers to get to where pop culture is today.