Why Was Hayden Stripping for that old guy?

Yes that was what she wanted something to happen but she did not know what to do. In one of the deleted scenes on the DVD she almost try's to kill herself around the highway or stays there to try to get a trucker but leaves. She finaly got it in her head that what she was doing was wrong.

I concur totally about the inappropriate subtext between the father and daughter, but I don't really agree that it's the father showing her attention that he shouldn't. Other than the scene early on when he sees her laying out in the sun, there's really nothing to suggest that... and even that isn't the father's fault, as it's not like he was spying on her.

I got the sense more that maybe the father was backing away from her, probably due to her development, since they focused on that early on. The brother remarking that she'd gotten a boob job, and her feeling that her bathing suit no longer fit, suggesting that the physical changes in her were recent.

I've read a few articles about that being an actual reaction in some fathers, usually one they aren't conscious of, where they physically distance themselves from their daughters once they reach a certain age. Children and even teenagers desire contact with their parents, be it hugs or sitting on Daddy's lap or whatever the case may be. But when fathers see their daughters developing, they start to fear that such contact will be seen as inappropriate, or that being in close physical contact with a more adult female body may result in certain responses they can't control (i.e. the male state of physical arousal). Again, it's usually all in the subconscious, not something they do intentionally. But the physical separation from their fathers can sometimes lead to emotional issues in the daughters, hence the fact that articles are being written on it.

And the daughter in the movie seemed to display that, with her desire for affection leading her out into the college campus, then the bar and then to the trucker. She wants the attention that she's not getting and she seeks it from others. Which isn't to say that she wants sexual contact from her father, but in the real world that type of contact is the only thing she'll find.

And it shows in the scene with the trucker, where she demands to know why he stops being interested. She asks him "Don't you want to look at me anymore?", suggesting that maybe her father doesn't, and, perhaps most telling, she says "Just tell me what you want me to be". She's not trying to hide from unwanted attention that her father is giving her, she's craving the attention that he's not giving her. She wants to know why this older man -- a stand-in for her father, as was said -- doesn't want to get close to her.

It also shows itself in other little ways, but I think those were the major points. I took his "I relied on you" line more in terms of dealing with the mother, as his next line was about it being much easier when she and the brother were little. The scenes about his reluctance to tear down his building showed his ego, and he was clearly too focused on himself to worry about his wife's sanity slipping away. Since the son was off at college, he could have meant that he relied on the daughter to hold things together at home since he certainly wasn't worried about it himself.

And he followed up that line by expressing how much he loved her, and if he'd meant "relying on you" in a sexual sense, adding on a declaration of his love for her would have made it creepy and invalidated his apology. And she didn't appear to be weirded out by anything he was saying.

Just my $0.02.

Nothing was really "happening" just, Chris was growing up and her dad didn't really know how to respond to it. It was more, the way he acted around her, or didn't act, really. And her brother and mum oviously notised, the brother points it out early on, and her mum seems to be in denyal for most of it, which just adds to her mental issues.