ATLANTA – As a dozen naked women undulate on three stages, Susan Doster fires up a cigar and leans back in one of the leather armchairs in The Cheetah strip club’s VIP section. The 48-year-old and a quartet of pals – conservatively dressed professional women in their 30s, 40s and 50s – are in TGIF mode, unwinding over cocktails at the end of the workweek.
“Yea for the fact that women can walk into a strip bar without an escort!” her friend Kathie McTyre exclaims. Indeed, the group parties undisturbed. Patrons of both sexes, black and white, white-collar and blue, watch the dancers onstage or sports on two 110-inch-screen TVs.

The Cheetah, like a growing number of upscale strip emporiums that welcome women, is not the take-it-off club of stereotype – a dark den of iniquity inhabited by groping men and grinding women with sad life stories. Indeed, stripping itself, once a forbidden topic in polite circles, is now strutting into the mainstream, propelled by pop culture and the loosening of societal taboos.

Exotic dancers populate TV shows, including The Sopranos, G-String Divas, Las Vegas and the cartoon series Stripperella. Beauties from Manhattan’s Scores strip club are regulars on Howard Stern’s radio show.

Music idols such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera appear almost undressed, grinding in concerts and videos. “Your average teen star could go right on a strip stage without changing clothes,” says writer Lily Burana, a former stripper.

Actor Ben Affleck made headlines in a Vancouver strip club. Tabloids report on stars who give pals or lovers lap dances in night spots. And L.A. stripping classes started by actress Sheila Kelley, whose credits include TV’s L.A. Law and the movie Matchstick Men, are packed with everyday women.

Pop-culture observer Michael Barson, author of books such as Teenage Confidential, calls stripper chic a “watershed … a big trend. It seems to be permeating deeper and deeper, like an ink stain sinking into an Oxford shirt.” He’s not certain shedding inhibitions is “actually a bad thing,” but as a parent, “I’m not sure how to defend it.”

Strip clubs and strip culture used to be strictly “an escape hatch for men,” says Burana, author of Strip City, which chronicles her 1999-2000 farewell tour of 25 clubs nationwide. “About 10 years ago, feminism took a switch. It was no longer women saying, ‘To be taken seriously, I need to be asexual.’ Sexuality became more egalitarian. I started to see women going on ‘anthropological field studies’ to clubs. They were curious.” Because owners tend to be market-savvy, she adds, some clubs have become cleaner (in all senses of the word) to attract a broader clientele.

The veil of secrecy has been lifted from stripping, says Curtis Pryce, founder of 2-year-old StripperWeb.com, a forum for dancers to talk shop that also offers a peep into the strip world. “When talk of clubs was kept more hush-hush, mystery abounded and rumors ran rampant.”

Today, strip clubs can be “just another stop for entertainment,” says actress Lauren Woodland, whose character on The Young and the Restless turns to stripping (albeit only to a bikini) to support her expensive tastes. “The same people going to bars and nightclubs are popping in and out” of strip clubs on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, she says.

In Las Vegas, where new clubs showcasing hundreds of dancers are cropping up, “civilian” women drop by with greater frequency, says Dolores Eliades, co-owner of Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club.

It’s the same in Atlanta, says Cheetah general manager Jack Bragley. “In the last year and a half, it has become trendy for couples and women to come in.” Female customers, who help make up for a decline in convention business, are wooed to the three-decade-old Cheetah by “wine, women and thong” wine tastings and a revamped restaurant that serves elegant eats such as lobster crepes at tables a garter’s toss from the stages.

Why are women ogling women? For some, it’s sexual preference. Others say they enjoy the dancing, comparing their physiques to the toned specimens on display, eyeballing the 6-inch heels and costumes – from gowns to racy lingerie – that get shucked during a performance.

“Women have a natural curiosity about each other’s bodies,” Burana says.

Actress Woodland says viewers have responded well to her strip club storyline. “The audience has the chance to have a vicarious experience … an escape.”

Adds psychologist Carol Ellison, author of Women’s Sexualities, “Going to a strip club can be quite a safe sexual adventure.” She went with colleagues on a strip-club field trip during a sexologists’ convention in Las Vegas and was “intrigued. It was a venture into the fantasy realm, if you don’t think too long and too hard about what’s happening in the (strippers’) minds. That’s another issue.”

Actually, many stripper stereotypes aren’t true, says sexologist Ted McIlvenna, president of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco and organizer of that Vegas outing. He has just completed a study of 1,000 exotic dancers that found most “sell fantasy, not sex.”

At the Cheetah and elsewhere, some dancers are college students looking to repay student loans. Stripping can be lucrative – a dancer in a high-end club can make $500-plus on a good night.

“There’s no lap dancing here,” manager Bragley says. “The girls can make a lot of money without resorting to anything.”

That’s not to say all the estimated 2,500 U.S. strip outposts are ready for the average clubgoer. Many still are geared toward men, and some “are just awful, really, really raunchy,” McIlvenna says.

On The Young and the Restless, “there have been allusions to the down side,” Woodland says, such as the time she hid when her character’s father came to the club not knowing she worked there. She’s sure the negative aspects “will get me out of the story line.”

Actress Kelley, who danced in clubs to prepare for roles, decries the “sleazy” side. “It’s pretty awful to crawl across the stage for two or three dollars from some guy.”

Some strippers welcome female patrons. At the Cheetah, a dancer whose stage name is Simone says she and colleagues like them because they don’t try to paw them or push for extras. Burana thinks more women watching strippers “signals acceptance. It means that the barrier between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ girls is coming down.”

Another sign stripping is going mainstream: KegWorks.com, vendor of bar accessories, began selling strippers’ poles and found most are ordered for homes or student apartments.

Many are not applauding the stripper-chic trend. “The appetite for bare flesh … is only further proof that Americans have forgotten from whence they came. They have, in many areas of life, forsaken biblical teachings,” says the Rev. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Though Burana says stripping “has been added as a cultural spice,” she is not sure strippers are truly dancing into the public’s embrace. “I’ll believe it when a soccer mom turns to me and says, ‘Tiffany decided to turn down Yale and go to work at Scores.’ ”