Organizational Communications
This posting dissects this scenario:
Robin Reed is a twenty-two-year-old single mother and
graduating senior at the University of Nevada. In addition to being an
excellent student and loving mother, Robin is proud of the fact that she has
worked hard to support herself and her three-year-old son and to put herself
through school. She hopes to attend law school and someday to become a public
defender.
Robin does have a problem, however. Since entering college,
she has worked part time as an exotic dancer at Sparky’s, a popular gentlemans
club in Las Vegas, and she doesn’t always feel comfortable telling people about
her work. The few times she has disclosed her employer-once when a classmate
recognized her at the club-she has found people to be very judgemental about
what she does. And each time she talks to the people who care about her the
most-her mother ans her son-she feels forced to lie about what she does for a
living.
For her part, Robin feels that stripping is a just means to
an end, no more degrading (and much more lucrative) than a dead-end job in
retail or food service. She has read a good deal of feminist theory in her
classes and feels torn between what these writers seem to want her to
think-that she is complicit in the continuing oppression of women-and how she
feels, which is powerful, resourceful, and strong.
Even so, the lying is starting to get to her, and she is
increasingly anxious. She feels as if she is being forced to compartmentalize
her life in order to survive. Robin feels comfortable in all of her worlds-at
home, at school, and at the club. But problems occur when these worlds collide.
Questions
1. How would you characterize her emotional state at this
time? What are some of the possible reasons she feels as she does? What might
she do, if anything, about these feelings?
2. What moral or ethical questions is Robin facing? How
would you counsel her if you were her friend? Her mother? Her fiance?
