Ivy League Stripper

Rating:
Summary: ALL WRONG.
Review: Although, I respect Heidi Mattson's tenacity...she wrote a book and got it published -- that is about it. As a woman who has been in and around this business for many years -- I can honestly say that Mattson is still hiding the truth from mom. Her fragmented stories are so "sugar coated" it is laughable to anyone who knows the truth about this dark world. I don't care if you graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School or if you have no education and grew up in foster homes -- if you have worked as a stripper for more than one night, undoubtably -- you have experienced moments of extreme degradation -- no one girl (dancer) is different in the eyes of a customer than the next in a strip club -- As a writer, if you are going to step up and write a book about this "taboo" subject -- TELL IT LIKE IT IS -- TAKE THE LEAP. This book is NOT an accurate account by any means of the real world of stripping....

Rating:
Summary: A stripper who paints a pretty picture on stripping.
Review: As a college graduate, I know how difficult it is to finance a four year degree. Unlike Heidi, I financed mine by working two parttime jobs while attending school. I read this book and have to admit I found her story somewhat interesting, but overall the book was not really worth reading. I have severl friends who work as exotic dancer and they don't dexcribe it at all like Heidi does. Besides, Heidi comes across as if she's the only good girl in the industry. For a good realistic book on stripers I recommend THE NAKED EYE, that's agreat inpirational story.

Rating:
Summary: pictures alone are worth the price
Review: i enjoyed this book as it is easy to hold in one hand. A+++

Rating:
Summary: why all the hateful reviews?
Review: I find the incredibly negative reviews of Ivy League Stripper interesting. I almost wonder if I read a different book than some of these people. Perhaps they were written by some of her rivals. Who knows?

Heidi does not "advocate" stripping anywhere in the book that I can tell, nor did she when I saw her on Real Personal with Bob Berkowitz. In fact, she made a point of saying she did not recommend it as a way of earning money. On TV and in the book she made it quite clear that it is not an easy or safe way to make money, however addictive that money might be. My sense of the book was that she came across as just about the only undamaged person in the business. She did discuss topics like drug use, prostitution, money addiction, and self-esteem, but since the book was about her personal journey, she didn't dwell on the problems of others. Perhaps it didn't appeal to people who wanted a more dramatic, negative, and victimized approach. She never said anything to give even the slightest impression that she was attempting a tour de force of sex work in the US. (I recommend Susie Bright or Carol Queen for that sort of thing.) This was a book about her personal journey, not yours. If your experience was different, then write your own book so we can read it, too.

I'll admit that my experience with "exotic dancers" is somewhat limited. I have only been to the clubs a half dozen or so times, and I don't know any dancers personally. I do hear by second and third hand stories that the scene does have a high rate of drug (including alcohol - it is a drug) use, prostitution, and other unsavory activities. There would probably be far less of such things if sex work were not forced into marginal areas of towns and the people involved treated like garbage by so-called "good citizens." The clubs I visited had full nudity.

The question of whether showing off one's body for money is degrading is largely a matter of semantics and personality. People who have an exhibitionistic bent are *not* degraded by such exposure, but exhilarated and empowered by it. Realize that there are different types of people in the world! Is it any less degrading for a coal miner to trade the health of his lungs for money, or a stock broker his/her ethics? Women in this society face degrading behavior all the time in every location and setting you care to name. (For that matter so do men.) If one looks beneath the thin veneer of common society here in the US, there is far more unsavory behavior going on than most will admit, and it happens in churches, boardrooms, and on Wall Street. This is a sick, sex-negative, anti-nature, and basically maladjusted society, and we all pay a price for that.

The discussion of nudity and appreciation of the human body and sexuality is a far too long and complex one to settle here. Read some history - When God Was A Woman, Ishtar Rising, or other material on how and why our current religious-based views of sex were created. Shame over nudity and sexual behavior is not universal, natural, "moral," or healthy by a long shot. Read Betty Dodson, Carol Queen, Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, Laura Kipnis, or some other of the intelligent, sex-positive writers.

My experience in strip clubs was transformative. I felt liberated and freed from centuries of lies. I experienced more spiritual release in those few short hours than in decades of Christian beliefs. I literally felt transported back to a time when women were proud of being sexual beings who owned, celebrated, and were masters of, their own sexual energy. I felt a deep sense of gratitude, wonder, awe, respect, devotion, and something so deeply spiritual that it sent me researching the goddess religions for understanding. Few women comprehend the tremendous power their body holds for men. (And there are forces in this society who don't want you to learn that, either.)

The complaints that she didn't seek "honest" work are humorous - maybe something honest like politics or working at Enron or pushing denatured foodlike toxins at a fast-food restaurant? I consider the no-strings, cash-for-a-look-at-my-body transaction in the strip clubs to be one of the most honest transactions in this society!

Of course, I realize that Heidi's real error was in writing what she really experienced and how she really felt, not what was expected or "politically correct." I find it interesting when women who respond to being sexually assualted/harassed by ramping up their self-esteem, owning and wielding their sexual power instead of becoming whimpering little victims who need someone to protect them, are attacked for it. Interesting how little is said in the reviews of the behavior of the people at Brown.

But then again, maybe some of the reviews are from folks at Brown............

I feel it is really a three star, but I gave it four in an attempt to create some balance. Her writing is okay, but not as insightful or powerful as Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Betty Dodson, or Laura Kipnis. Read them if you are looking for deep discussions of sexual issues. Read this book if you want to read one person's story.

Rating:
Summary: ALL WRONG.
Review: The book prompted great discusions with me and my mother. Good or bad writing, we both felt she presented a descent argument for acquiring money by stripping. And good or bad, the book has started a vivid discussion of this occupation.

I went to high school with Heidi. I am from the small town America she left. I was on the cross country team with her. In writing about how she kept in shape, she talks about being one of the best runners on the team which is true. But a note about there only being four girls on the (girls') team might have added a bit more perspective.

Which is what this book lacks. She eagely wanted to cover so many 'scandelous' and not so naughty topics: A chapter on organized crime? A night with a customer? Some social discorse on feminism with cited references and all? The pros and cons of breast enlargements? And, of course, her counting the money. If she had whittled down some of these topics, delved deeper on selected issues, gone outside herself and looked more at the other women and their lives and not counted her money every other chapter, she might have eeked up a bit in the ratings.

There were times I was hooked. I kept reading the book because I was genuinely interested in her going home to Bucksport, Maine and telling her parents the truth. That's brave...I think. I can see her father's face and his silence as she tells him in the kitchen. To me, her anticipation of this moment was where the writing was.

I would recommend this book to only a selected few.

Rating:
Summary: Only part of the truth
Review: This book does a service in that it brings out the harsh reality of college tuition and what far more young women than this country will admit will do to pay for a college beyond their means. Mattson however does not discuss the relationship of prostitution to stripping, pervasive influence of government and/or organized crime nor the long term effects such exploitive use of her beauty may have had on her relationships since.

If you look around colleges you will see prospering escort services and the like catering to women who need large amounts of cash for relatively few hours' work. This is a dimension Mattson only briefly touches on: that young women can legitimately earn money for college but the hard work and necessary hours for most available jobs will affect their performance in school. It is hard to judge in this case, because college tuition ,especially at an Ivy league school equals the price of a modest home or a nice condo paid in after tax income.

What Mattson does do here is raise awareness of what such costs will encourage women to do. She obviously had the achievement and intelligence to make it into Brown but not the financial aid necessary to make work and attending the school all that feasible. In some ways you can say the educational system as such can work against promising students who come from less affluent families. Should someone with a good head and shallow pockets be prevented from realizing their potential? Should there be a halfway point where the student can work and get enough aid such that stripping and/or prostitution is not so attractive a way out?

We might also ask reading this book if there is anything in Mattson's past that could have influenced her towards the stripping/sex/fantasy for money business even hadshe not attended Brown? Was she abused? Had she had bad experiences in the past with men?

Rating:
Summary: A good story...but far from reality
Review: This stupid and simple book is just another story os a stripper trying to justify herself. Heidi takes her clothes off to pay for her medical expenses and her high tuition at an expensive university-Who cares!...This story is dull, far too common and just another stripper trying to inspire other strippers.