Abstract
In Neon Wasteland, anthropologist Susan Dewey asks why “some women come to perceive sex work as the most desirable option out of a limited menu of life choices?” Dewey spent six months conducting participant observation at a strip club (Vixens) in a part of upstate New York that has been ravaged by the economic crises of deindustrialization. The resulting ethnography draws on and examines the narratives of five specific dancers (whom Dewey claims are representative of a larger sample), and each chapter features a narrative excerpt. Neon Wasteland is a rigorous analysis of the ways in which individual biography intersects with systemic forms of inequality, such as the feminization of poverty and cultural scapegoating of poor women in U.S. social policy. Notably, Dewey explicitly defines her informants as not “the glamorous icons of femininity who perform in expensive topless … dancing establishments in major North American cities” (p. 22) but, rather, as women whose stories have more in common with “sex workers in the Global South” (p. 23).
Neon Wasteland interrogates the survival strategies used by dancers as they seek to profit from labor contexts that are designed without workers’ interests in mind. Dewey lucidly explains how beliefs held by dancers—which outsiders may see as “paradoxical”—are actually quite understandable and indicative of the decision-making practices of individuals who are attempting to survive in a world that is hostile to them. For instance, she points to dancers’ deep investments in moral hierarchies that allow them to distance themselves from the stigma of prostitution, diminish their own labor by describing their income as “dirty” money earned for “doing nothing,” (p. 56) and ultimately to insist that this is merely a temporary form of work that must be endured to achieve long-term goals. Dewey is careful to point out that although these beliefs sometimes replicate the very cultural myths that oppress the women, they are also means for dancers to “salvage” some form of self-esteem “in a society that often views them as little more than immoral objects in need of regulation” (p. 79). Her focus on how the women of Vixens manage the myriad forms of epistemic and economic violence they face, while balancing the roles of mother, romantic partner, and sex worker, is a sorely needed contribution to our understanding of commercial sex and social class in the United States.
However, Dewey’s attempt to “demystify” her informants’ lives is at times undermined by her own lack of authorial self-reflexivity. Dewey clearly foregrounds danger and violence as the central thematic of her informants lives and work, to the point where her own experiences as a researcher are characterized through this lens. She recounts a story in which late one night her car was stuck in the snowy parking lot of Vixens, and when a group of men approached her, she was immobilized with fear. The men simply helped her get her car unstuck, yet Dewey concludes this story on an ominous note—choosing to highlight danger in sex businesses. Why she does not chose to use this moment to reflect on her own assumption that the men—potentially from the same economically impoverished communities of the workers inside—intended her harm is worth contemplating. From this and other anecdotes, the reader is left to wonder whether this assumption of inherent danger at times colors Dewey’s interpretations of her informants’ experiences in sex work. Nonetheless, Neon Wasteland offers an empathic glimpse into the lives of poor female sex workers and a strong critique of the economic and social systems that have left many women desperately running in place.