Embracing Our Inner Strippers

For our most recent "bookclub" a group of seven of us sexy sistahs took a private erotic dance class at a local dance studio. It even included a bit of pole dancing! I thought it was an amazing experience--very hard, (I was sore all weekend and the rest of the gals reported they were, too) but oh, so much fun! And as cliched as it sounds, it really was empowering (and very silly.) The studio was suprisingly classy and the instructor had great presence.
Now, I'm not saying that stripping in general is empowering for its practioners...as our bookclub selection "G-Spot" by Noire painfully demonstrates! This was actually a rather well-written book (it's not by an independent publisher like Urban Books) that was very intense and compelling. My only real complaint about it is that it was billed as "erotic." While there were some sexy scenes, there was also a lot of graphic violence, including gang rape and torture, that were very disturbing and definitely did not put me in the mood! My biggest question about the characters in the book was why Gino didn't make any attempt to try and help Juicy out of her extremely abusive relationship with his father. He didn't even really acknowledge the horrible danger she was in...what a schmuck. He also seemed to think he was a really moral, upright guy, but it didn't bother him at all to take his father's drug money or participate in the biz. I did think it was kind of funny that at the beginning of the story, Juicy thought her biggest problem was that she was sexually unsatisfied with G. Yes, I think sexual satisfaction is important, but I think I would be a little more concerned with being threatened and beaten!