_._~~-.~._-_..,--_.,_._----_.- '-'.- ---._._-. _. ----~-----,- UNIVERSfTY OF HAWAI'l LIBRARY WOMEN OF THE STRIP: A GENDERED HISTORY OF LAS VEGAS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAll IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN mSTORY DECEMBER 2002 By Darlene B. Dunston Thesis Committee: Margot A. Henriksen, Chairperson Louise McReynolds Robert McGlone COPYRIGHT © 2002, Darlene B. Dunston iii Acknowledgments The i4eas in this thesis evolved with the support and encouragement ofa great number ofpeople. First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to Mimi Hemiksen, my thesis advisor and mentor, who had faith in me. Her intellectual guidance, support, insightful comments and editorial suggestions improved this thesis immeasurably. I would also like to thank Louise McReynolds for her scholarly guidance and for her encouragement to keep writing. I am also grateful to Robert McGlone for all ofhis erudite advice and for his understanding during all ofthe challenges I faced. I want to offer special thanks to Joyce Marshall, who not only assisted me in my research work in the special collections at the University ofNevada Las Vegas' Lied Library, but who also shared with me her working experiences as a Las Vegas cocktail waitress. She proved to be very insightful and her observations helped to shape my understanding ofwomen in Las Vegas. I would also like to thank the entire staffat Lied Library's special collections for their assistant during my research. I am also thankful to the many friends and family members who offered their support in various ways. I am especially grateful to Gail Levy, my first college instructor at Leeward Community College, who has academically encouraged me since that first semester. I would also like to thank my parents, John and Violet Dunston, who always had words ofpraise. Also, I am grateful for my daughter, Shayna Ashley, who cared enough to listen, especially when I IV thought I had had enough and then encouraged me to continue. She also tirelessly helped me to copy hundreds ofpages ofresearch material while on vacation in Las Vegas. My nieces Shannon Han and Jessica Puchert also believed in me and offered many loving words that helped me through some of my darkest days. In addition, I would like to thank the staffin the Department of History, Pauline Sugiura, Margaret Hattori, Susan Abe, and Gwen Agina for their assistance throughout my graduate career. They helped to make my days very enjoyable. Last but certainly not least, I wish to thank my best friend and biggest supporter, Elaine Doi, whose encouragement, involvement, and understanding are what truly helped me throughout my entire academic career. Elaine, thank you for continuing to believe in me. v Abstract This thesis offers a gendered history ofLas Vegas. It does so by investigating the histories ofwomen workers in Las Vegas, especially showgirls, cocktail waitresses, and casino card dealers. It also does so by exposing the masculine political economy ofLas Vegas that restricted women to the realm of sex workers or rendered them invisible in histories ofLas Vegas. Showgirls and cocktail waitresses were shadowed by the image ofsex and prostitution for decades. In contrast, female blackjack dealers had to divorce themselves from sexuality in order to gain employment in a field with direct male competition. Women in Las Vegas had to learn to live between sexual extremes and to inhabit what one scholar termed their "liminal space" in Las Vegas. In doing so, though, they experienced a real sort offinancial empowerment and a real sense of liberation, particularly when viewed in the context ofthe larger American culture and society, These women were sexual outlaws, often breaking barriers firmly in place for women elsewhere in America. It is argued here that the threat posed by female sexuality was acknowledged by a masculinized Las Vegas in two ways: by reducing women to what men saw as the demeaning roles of"strippers and prostitutes," and by outlawing female sexuality when it directly competed with masculine employment, as in casino card dealing. Women in Las Vegas, however, also used their bodies-both by exposing and concealing them-to survive and prosper in Las Vegas, and to become a significant part ofthe city's history. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS · .. S19nature page ................................................ 11 Copyright page ............................................. .. iii Acknowledgments iv Abstract .................................................. .. VI Chapter 1: Introduction Sex in the City: Complicating the Masculine Constructions ofLas Vegas Women. ............................ .. 1 Chapter 2: Sexual Outlaws: Las Vegas Showgirls and the Empowerment ofBeauty and Nudity 16 Chapter 3: Accessories to Larceny: Las Vegas Cocktail Waitresses and Therr. "C'nmm. al" L'lIDIDa. l'Ity . 43 Chapter 4: "What is going to happen to the quality ofIife for the men of Las Vegas?": Female Dealers as a Sexual and Economic Threat 80 Chapter 5: Conclusion "I'm a part ofLas Vegas": Women's Place in Las Vegas. .. 111 Bibliography ............................................... .. 114 vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION SEX IN THE CITY: COMPLICATING THE MASCULINE CONSTRUCTION OF LAS VEGAS WOMEN All women in Las Vegas are either strippers or prostitutes. Frank Lamb, former Governor ofColorado Arnie Williams, director ofthe 1998 documentary Strippedand Teased: Tales From Las Vegas Women, interviewed women who worked in Las Vegas to gain insights about their lives in the city. She interviewed and filmed, among others, a cab driver, a cocktail waitress, a construction worker, an exotic dancer, a maid, a professional card player, a showgirl, a casino/hotel corporate vice-president, and the then-mayor ofthe city. Every one ofthese women claimed to have found empowerment and self-satisfaction in their Las Vegas employment. These are concepts about female work in Las Vegas that have long escaped the attention of most men and most historians. Mayor Jan Jones, during her interview with Williams, stated that there had always been a problem with the perception ofwomen in Las Vegas. Jones shared with Williams a recent experience. While she was doing a promotion for the local NBC television station, one ofher political consultants heard entertainer LL Cool's manager state, "Isn't it amazing that only in Las Vegas could you find a mayor who in her past life had been a showgirl." When the consultant corrected the manager, 1 pointing out that Mayor Jones had never been a showgirl, Cool's manager replied, "Dh well, NBC thinks she was." 1 This type ofassumption about women workers in Las Vegas, that somehow they must be linked to what could broadly be termed sexualized employment, paralleled former governor Frank Lamb's statement that "All women in Las Vegas are either strippers or prostitutes.,,2 This simplified notion ofwomen selling their bodies in Las Vegas derived in large p«m: from Las Vegas' history oflegalized and then decriminalized prostitution and from its overall reputation for sexual permissiveness. It also developed, however, from the masculine control over Las Vegas that permitted men to shape the city and women's presumed places within it. Throughout much ofLas Vegas' history, women have been perceived as sexual commodities, as a means ofsatisfying high rollers, politicians, businessmen, and male tourists. There is, ofcourse, some real merit to the presentation ofwomen as sexual beings in Las Vegas, and there is little doubt that women's bodies have been featured prominently in the development ofthe sex industry in the city ofLas Vegas. The city was founded in 1905, and between that year and the next, Block 16--the nascent city's gambling, drinking, and "red light" district--flourished as the one area in "Glitter Gulch" where women could in fact work, ifonly as prostitutes.3 Between 1906 and 1942, when the United States military presence in Las Vegas forced the 1 Stripped and Teased: Tales from Las Vegas Women. 00. and prod. Arnie Williams (Bat-Maiden films Production, 1998). 2 Frank Lamb, as cited in Stripped and Teased: 3 William 1. Morris, "I've Seen All the Rooms: Female Prostitution in Las Vegas," 1. Taken from website www.wfu.edn, on 26 Sept 2002. 2 closure ofBlock 16, the only women laborers who roamed the most sought-after section ofdowntown Las Vegas were prostitutes.4 This image ofwomen selling sex attached to almost all female workers in Las Vegas thereafter, and this sensualized presentation ofwomen in Las Vegas was fostered and exploited by the men in control ofthe political economy ofthe city. The gendered language in the title ofa recent historical treatment ofLas Vegas suggests the masculinized vision that usually controls representations ofthe city--Players: The Men Mo Made Las Vegas, edited by Jack Sheehan.5 From its urban origins in 1905, but especially from the founding of "the Strip" in the 194Os, Las Vegas has evolved under a watchful male gaze. The men who made Las Vegas were also the ones who conceived ofthe roles women would play in Las Vegas, particularly those forms ofwork exclusive to women, such as performing as showgirls and serving cocktails inside casinos. Men resisted seeing women in ways that went beyond the sexual, especially since male casino owners and entertainment directors, for example, stood to profit from the sexual attractiveness oftheir showgirls and cocktail waitresses. They rarely acknowledged the sort offemale- derived satisfaction that could stem from such employment, the sort ofsatisfaction documented in Arnie Williams' documentary, Strippedand Teased In her film, Williams attempts to complicate the understanding ofwomen's roles in Las Vegas and to move beyond the stereotypical definitions ofwomen's work in Las Vegas, including work in the sex industry. This thesis also seeks to 4 John M. Findlay, People ofChance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 127.