Uh...What do you say to this?

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Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

But I suspect you're going anthropological with this one, which also makes me curious as your comment to me suggests there are cultures where concepts of beauty and desire are not intertwined, or that cultures exist that where there is no objectification and my existentialist self doubts that to be the case.

This activity comes from Middle Eastern/Eastern Mediterranean cultures (esp. Turkey and Syria) and not from Greece. It's culturally inauthentic for a Greek restaurant to hire a belly dancer to go around from one table to another. So our discussion is not about the validity of Greek culture. It's about what this particular restaurant chooses to do to attract customers. This particular restaurant decided that a belly dancer going around to tables would probably increase their business.

We have an inauthetic quasi-Mediterranean practice that reminds Americans of something in their own culture, namely a striptease act where commodification of the body is clearly going on.

Are there cultures where the concept of beauty and desire are not intertwined? Probably not. That's not the question. If attractiveness brings about physical desire, that's one thing. Paying to see the commodification of the body is something else.