CLEARWATER, FL — A respected anthropologist says dancing in topless clubs helps women become poised, self-confident, and creative individuals who often go on to higher education and successful business careers.Academy Award winner Diablo Cody (Juno) “is one of many performers who prove that exotic dancers are more than sexual objects,” Judith Lynne Hanna, PhD, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, wrote in the May issue of Exotic Dancer’s Club Bulletin.

Club Bulletin is a trade journal serving the nearly 4,000 gentlemen’s clubs in the U.S. It is published bimonthly by ED Publications Inc., a division of Houston, TX-based Rick’s Cabaret International Inc.

“Dancers commonly gain self-esteem and self-confidence appearing nude before strangers,” Hanna wrote. “Successful dancers become acute observers of verbal and nonverbal communication in order to sell a fantasy of themselves and to create the patron’s fantasy. Business and money management leads dancers to complete education, start businesses, and support families.”

According to Hanna, after Cody won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay “the media referred to her as having ‘once worked as a stripper,’ ‘a former stripper,’ a ‘retired stripper.’ Commenting about her dress, the question was ‘what would you expect from a stripper?’ and ‘she should have saved more dollar bills and bought a better dress.’”

Hanna opined the media attacked Cody because “exotic dancing, the preferred term for stripping since the advent of upscale gentlemen’s clubs, is stigmatized and has an unfounded reputation for leading to prostitution, drugs, crime, and decreased property values. But recent social science has disproved all of this.”

In 2006, Cody was the keynote speaker at the 14th Annual Gentlemen’s Club Owners Expo, produced by ED Publications. Cody’s invitation to speak at the expo was a response to the success of her book Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, which chronicled Cody’s experiences as a “regular girl” who decided to spice up her life by dancing at adult nightclubs in Minneapolis, MN.

Hanna earned a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. She also holds a masters degree in political science from Michigan State University. The author of six books on subjects ranging from dance to social behavior, she has published in scholarly journals more than 300 articles about anthropology, art, black studies, dance, drama, education, gender, leisure and recreation, medicine, music, political science, psychology, religion, and urban studies.