Playpen: Racialization, Embodiment, and Symbolic Boundary Maintenance among Erotic Dancers

Drawing upon an 18-month ethnography at an exotic dance venue we refer to as “Playpen,” we show the significance and centrality of the body in drawing symbolic boundaries as constitutive of internal hierarchies during a weekly event colloquially referred to as “Latina Night.” In order to make race and racialization among Latinas, a group which has always been considered an ethnic group composed of any race, we foreground the uses of nationality as a primary marker of differentiation amongst Latina dancers, revealing how processes of racialization are instrumentalized as forms of capital and distinction. Central to the boundary-forming mechanisms amongst dancers are embodiment and the racialization of Latinidad itself, including its proximity and distance to Whiteness and Blackness. Findings show the types of racialization negotiated in and through aspects such as music, body adornment, body size, girth and ideas of fatness or thinness, body adornment, and elements such as country of origin identifiers. Implications of this research return us to thinking through race/racialization, embodiment, and symbolic boundary maintenance as a critical tripartite seldom explored in previous research on Latinidad.