For an industry that couldn't always advertise in the phone book, Exotic Dancer left behind a remarkable paper trail.
Launched in 1991 as the Exotic Dancer Directory, the publication provided the first comprehensive national directory of gentlemen’s clubs, connecting businesses across the country before search engines and social media made that information readily accessible.
Over the next 21 years, the directory evolved into a trade publication, documenting an industry and culture that has often been overlooked in the historical record.
Now, a nearly complete run of that print history has a permanent home in UNLV Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives, where it joins a growing collection dedicated to documenting sexual entertainment, adult industries, and sex work.
“Exotic dancing is an important sector of the adult entertainment industry, and particularly significant to the history of entertainment in Las Vegas,” said Sarah Quigley, director of Special Collections & Archives. “These magazines will complement our existing collections spotlighting burlesque, striptease, and the production shows that featured dancing nudes, and offer insight for researchers on how gentlemen’s clubs have promoted themselves.”
Devyn Waitt, daughter of magazine founder Don Waitt, donated the collection as part of the Sexual Entertainment and Economies collecting initiative. The donation coincides with an exhibition of the publication’s materials now on display at Las Vegas’ Erotic Heritage Museum.
“I am so grateful that my father’s work has found such a wonderful home at UNLV,” said Devyn Waitt. “My dad had such a unique perspective on this industry, and now his work and the story he helped document will be preserved as part of his legacy for generations.”
Origins of Exotic Dancer Magazine
Don Waitt, who passed away in 2024, began his award-winning journalism career covering the crime beat for newspapers in Louisiana and California before starting his own publishing business focused on the entertainment industry. Among those ventures was the publication that would become Exotic Dancer magazine.
What began as a directory grew alongside the industry. Exotic Dancer developed into a magazine covering the adult nightclub business as Waitt's company launched a national convention and awards show for the industry. The publication continues today, both online and in print, as do the ED Expo and ED Awards, held annually in Las Vegas.
Nearly 160 issues spanning the publication’s various formats are now cataloged and available in Special Collections and Archives, making UNLV’s collection the most complete archive of Exotic Dancer in the country, said Quigley.
About the Sexual Entertainment and Economies Collection
Since its launch in 2023, the Sexual Entertainment and Economies collecting initiative has brought in collections documenting sex workers, adult filmmakers and performers, photographers, activists, and others connected to sexual entertainment and economies.
With Exotic Dancer now among them, the collections are building a broader record of an industry and the people who shaped it, preserving histories that haven’t always found their way into traditional archives.
For Lynn Comella, professor of gender and sexuality studies and co-founder and senior advisor of the collecting initiative, Exotic Dancer offers students and researchers a window into more than the history of adult entertainment.
“It's deeply gratifying to see the sustained enthusiasm for this collecting initiative, not just from researchers worldwide, but also from donors and adult industry professionals,” said Comella, who is also the author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure. “With the addition of this collection to Special Collections & Archives, UNLV students will have the opportunity to examine the role print culture played in creating a sense of community and industry connections in an era that predates the rise of the Internet.”
