Las Vegas: A Feminist Nightmare?

A few weeks ago, almost a month, actually, I went to the lovely land of Las Vegas for spring break and my 21st birthday. While there, I observed some fairly anti-feminist, or at least anti-my-understanding-of-feminism occurrences. This is just a simple recalling of those instances. You can put your own feminist meanings on them; That will make it more fun and help you hone your feminist skills.

Day 1 in Las Vegas: Seeing My First Prostitute

"Las Vegas isn't like it was. It's not like we'll see any hookers on the street or anything like that." (My friend reassuring me on what Las Vegas was like.)

When we got to Las Vegas, it was night. My friend's grandma picked us up at the airport and drove us out to eat. After eating way too much at an Italian place she liked, she drove us to the condo we were staying at (My friend's uncle has an amazing condo very, very close to the strip). While driving there, we had to stop at a light. A scantily-clad woman walked by the car, looking in before realizing we were not customers. Her name was Lola; she was a Show Girl. Just kidding. She was actually a hooker, and I do not know her name. However, her presence definitely disproved my friend's theory. I was kind of, sadly, ecstatic. "So this is what a hooker looks like?" I thought. I also want to sate here that I have no qualms against prostitutes/hookers/etc. I believe that many of them really need the money and that the profession works for them. I am not against them; I am against the system.

Day 2 in Vegas: "Porn Dispensors"

As we walked to the monorail station, we passed some dispensers. They looked like your average, run-of-the-mill newspaper dispensers. However, instead of newspapers inside, there were nearly nude, more than semi-pornographic papers inside. These papers had pictures of mostly naked women on them and numbers to call for escort services and phone sex operators. I was surprised that such pornographic materials were so easily available that any 14-year-old could access them. I had never seen that before in my little, conservative Midwestern towns.

Day 3 in Vegas: "Star Nipples"

"Watch out for the people in neon shirts. They give you porn baseball cards."

As we were walking throughout Vegas, we passed a series of people in neon shirts trying to hand these escort service cards out to the men. Never did a single person try to hand me a card; my fiance, however, wasn't so lucky. The people passing out these cards were predominantly Mexican men, but there were some women passing out these cards as well. The cards had, you guessed it, almost completely naked women on them. The women's "indecent" (I'll explain more about the quotes in a second) parts, however, were covered very nicely with little stars. Two new terms, then, came into my vocabulary that day: "star nipples" and "porn baseball cards." I'm still not quite sure, though, why it is alright to show all of a woman's boob except the nipples. I'm not sure why that particular area is the indecent area. We wondered whether it would be considered indecent if the woman had everything covered but the nipples. We believe it would be considered so, but I still have no idea why.

Day 4 in Vegas: Paris

All of the casinos had scantily-clad women servers waiting on the people at slot machines and tables. They all had their own little uniforms. The most scantily-clad ones, though, in my opinion, were the ones from Paris. Although I do not remember much about them now, they seemed to be the ones with the least amount of clothing on. I can't help but wonder if my disdain at these costumes is for or against my feminist cause, though. Sometimes there are blurry lines.

After being annoyed by all the annoying costumes the women had to wear in all of the casinos, I came to another realization. Las Vegas is a great place to live if you are an attractive woman. If you are an attractive woman in Vegas, there are a great deal of jobs out there for you. You are more needed in Vegas than men are. So, unemployed attractive women of America, flee, flee to Las Vegas if you don't mind showing off most of your body to the world.

Return of Star Nipples.

My fiance was carrying a tote bag for me as we walked back home from some arcades. As we were passing by some of those neon shirted, card holders, they tried to give some to my fiance. Since he would not accept any of the cards, they came up with a new inventive method. They apparently decided to throw them into the tote bag. We, unfortunately, did not notice until the last person threw one in. I opened up the bag, looked inside, and found five or six of those star nipple baseball cards inside. I took them all out and violently threw them to the ground. I was kind of angry that they put them in the bag. I was doing my best to give them evil glances so they wouldn't even try to hand us any. However, later I wondered if my looks were misconstrued as racism since most of the people passing them out were Mexican.

Day 5 in Las Vegas: Not as bad as I Imagined.

When we were visiting some of the casinos, I became aware of music and a dancer. Apparently at certain casinos, they have areas where women dancers come out and give a little "demonstration." They had a little platform to work on and a little pole if I remember correctly. I couldn't help but think of the film term, "the male gaze." Even though this seemed to be a pretty evenly split area between women and men, there were still plenty of shows to attract the male gaze with no public shows at the casinos to attract the female gaze. Why? Because there is no female gaze. In my opinion, there is not a publicly acknowledged one anyway.

After Vegas: Reflection

I decided that Las Vegas was really not as bad as I thought it would be. I think that by imagining it to be a horrible, horrible place, I was helping myself to feel less feminist crazy when I got there. Truth of the matter is that Las Vegas is a place that is based on sex, but you don't have to be constantly immersed in that culture of Las Vegas if you don't want to be. We rarely spent time in the bars and casinos, except when we passed through to see the sights. I really enjoyed my time in Las Vegas. I think sometimes, I just need to let those feminist thoughts go and have a good time. Then again, maybe not.