When I was teaching, I met several students who made their living by working as exotic dancers. I could usually pick them out of the class by the way they stood on the balls of their feet, but most of them told me about their jobs during office hours, or sometimes even during class discussions. It was relevant since I was teaching women’s studies and sociology classes, and issues of sexuality often came up.

I always had mixed feelings about these women. On the one hand, I applaud their efforts to get an education at any cost. They were exploiting an institution that was exploiting them — so good for them for fighting back and getting something for themselves out of it. But then, I worried about what dancing was doing to their inner lives, their sense of self, their view of male/female relationships. And it made me mad (still does) that male and female strippers serve audiences with such different cultural reasons for being present. There’s a world of difference between male and female exotic dancers, and that difference says something important about the way we see the sexes.

So this story about a strip club that pays college tuition for dancers who maintain a B or better average raises the same ambivalent feelings:

Katzman said his company will pay $1,500 to $2,000 in educational expenses per year to women or men who work three or four seven-hour shifts in his clubs. The money is on top of the $10 an hour that dancers are paid, in addition to cash they get from tips and private dances.

This makes it seem as if dancing is an increasingly acceptable, recognized way to earn an education — and that bothers me. Why should a person have to take his or her clothes off to get ahead?