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3. Hierarchies of Bars and Bodies
- Vanderbilt University Press
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59 Chapter 3 Hierarchies of Bars and Bodies How do the nine women in my project, from different segments of the middle class and occupying the whiter spectrum of Brazil’s racial configuration , find themselves placed in the New York context? How are their bodies reinscribed by the transnational move as they come to occupy specific positions in the labor market and to inhabit specific spaces in the city’s racial, gender, class, and sexual hierarchies? The process of racialization is a continuous building of differentiations based not only on skin color or other apparent body stigmata but also in relationship to other axes of social positioning, particularly class, gender, and sexuality. Ideas of what constitute race or class change according to context. Here, I am interested in exploring the ways bodies , as they move through transnational spaces and spaces of the city, are inscribed by markers of class, race, gender, and sexuality, and how those markers acquire different meanings. Through ethnography of three gentlemen’s bars in Queens and one in Manhattan, I examine how recent socioeconomic transformations in New York City have contributed to the creation of new hierarchies among gentlemen’s bars and among dancers who work in them. I recap here the stories of the nine women in my project as a reminder of what brought each of them to New York, and to dancing. When Clara decided to come to New York in 2000, she followed the path that her aunt Gina had taken three years before. Gina, in turn, had followed Silvana, who had been in New York since 1995, when she came with a friend, also from Salvador. In Salvador, Silvana and her friend were newly divorced and unsure about what to do with their lives. They were in their midthirties, held administrative government jobs, and had children. They lived in upper-middle-class apartments 60 Transnational Desires served by maids and doormen. They had cars, frequented good restaurants , and loved nightlife. The downward class mobility that they experienced as a result of divorce and of the increasing squeeze of their wages came at a time when their desires, as now free women, expanded. They came to New York, at first, to “check it out,” staying with another woman from Bahia who had come with her husband to Miami and after getting divorced, had moved to New York and started dancing. Clara arrived in New York with Nadja, her best friend and a colleague in the same law office. Sara and Barbara followed almost simultaneously in 2002. Nana came in 2003. Renata also came via a family network. Before moving to New York, as I have mentioned, she lived and ran a small business with her boyfriend /partner in the tourist town of Porto Seguro, where some of her relatives lived. It was in Porto Seguro, a center for national and international tourism, that Renata started entertaining the idea of migration . Five of her cousins were already living and working in the United States, although Renata said that it was not quite clear exactly what kinds of jobs they held in New York. She had heard about housecleaning , working in salons or stores, and babysitting, but nothing about dancing. She and her boyfriend decided that she would come first and stay with her cousins; then, if things went well, the boyfriend would rent out the store and follow her. Teresa did not know anyone in New York, but she had a couple of telephone numbers of friends of friends. She had some savings in Brazil and an unpaid leave of absence from her work and did not intend to migrate but also to “check out” what kind of life she could have in the States and what kinds of jobs would be available to her. As she said to me, she “had nothing to lose.” At JFK Airport, she met a Brazilian gypsy cabdriver whose work was to greet the newcomers and offer his transportation services. Teresa gave him the address of a Manhattan midtown hotel familiar to Brazilian middle-class people who used to come to the city for shopping, particularly in the 1980s. Probably sensing that her stay, as an unaccompanied woman, might last longer than those of the usual visitors and shoppers, the driver instead took her to a Brazilian boardinghouse in Astoria, in the borough of Queens. It was in that boardinghouse that she learned both about housecleaning and about go-go dancing. [44.193.11.123] Project MUSE...