Barton, Bernadette 1967–

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Barton, Bernadette 1967–

(Bernadette C. Barton)

PERSONAL:

Born 1967. Education: Oberlin College, B.A., 1988; attended San Francisco State University, 1992; University of Kentucky, M.A., 1994, Women's Studies Certificate, 1995, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Home— Winchester, KY. Office— Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminology, Morehead State University, 355 Rader Hall, Morehead, KY 40351-1689. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER:

University of Kentucky, Lexington, graduate student advisor and research assistant, 1995-2000; Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Social Work, visiting professor, 2000-02, assistant professor, 2002-07, associate professor, 2007—.

MEMBER:

American Sociological Association, Sociologists for Women in Society, Women in Higher Education, National Women's Studies Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Newton Prize, Oberlin College, 1988; Dissertation Enhancement Award, University of Kentucky, 1998; Arts and Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Kentucky, 1999.

WRITINGS:

Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor of articles to various journals, including Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, NW Women's Journal, Sexuality & Culture, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Gender & Society.

SIDELIGHTS:

Bernadette Barton serves as an associate professor. Her research and academic interests include a broad range of subjects: sexuality; feminist theory; gender, race, class, and ethnicity; popular culture; and feminist science fiction. She has contributed articles to a number of journals and presented at numerous conferences on topics such as homosexuality and religion, feminism, and the sex industry.

Barton's first book,Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers, combines several of her interests, addressing issues of sexuality and female exploitation. Over a five-year period, Barton took trips to a number of U.S. locations, including San Francisco, Hawaii, and an unnamed Southeastern city, where she interviewed women working in an array of strip clubs. She looks at public perception of exotic dancing, a legal form of entertainment that many people consider to be questionable on a moral level and to border on prostitution due to its emphasis on the female form as an object, the purpose of which is to titillate and stimulate male desire. The act of exotic dancing involves behavior that would be considered "inappropriate" by so-called respectable women. Men who enjoy exotic dance performances have also been known to misinterpret the line between stripper and prostitute, and exotic dancers sometimes find themselves in dangerous or abusive situations at the hands of customers who assume more is on offer than a visual performance. Over the course of her interviews with dancers, Barton gleaned a wealth of information regarding how these women cope with the more dangerous aspects of their jobs, protecting themselves against harm from members of their audiences, as well as the emotional impact on the dancers of the public perception regarding their jobs. Barton lays a strong groundwork for readers as to how and why women find themselves in this line of work, stressing the lucrative nature of the business, particularly for women who are lacking in education or practical career experience that would allow them a more traditional high-paying job. However, she stresses that the downsides of this type of work are far more overreaching, and notes that on average, among the women she interviewed, it only took approximately three years for the dancers to become discouraged with their jobs and to decide that the attractive salaries and positive attention that comes with exotic dancing does not outweigh the more negative aspects of the work, such as potential abuse, inability to get ahead, and the effect on their personal relationships. Nancy Yang, in a review for the Harvard Book Review Online, found Barton's writing style detracted from her material, noting: "Barton has chosen a fascinating topic, so it is regrettable that, with the exception of a few excerpts, her writing is largely flat and predictable." However Leila Rupp, in a contribution for the Women's Review of Books, commented that "Barton quotes liberally throughout from her interviews, making her rich data come alive." Rupp called Barton's effort "a systematic sociological analysis of the impact of exotic dancing over the life-course on the women who do it." She noted that Barton limits her research to the United States, and to subjects who appear to have a choice regarding whether or not they strip, thereby eliminating any further comparisons to women in other countries where working as a stripper is a form of sexual slavery and not a matter of choice. Rupp concluded: "We still, I think, have a lot to learn about the racialized and global dynamics of sex work, and we still have a way to go to bring together the polarized perspectives on sex work transnationally."