Strip Show: Performances of Gender and Desire (Gender in Performance)

STRIP SHOW

Strip Show offers an account of an unprecedented North American study of contemporary female and male strip shows. It particularly focuses on the contradictory sex roles, cultural positions, and performance practices of “straight” strip shows during their second heyday in the early 1990s. Katherine Liepe-Levinson has spent three years researching heterosexual female and male striptease. Her travels took her to over seventy different strip bars, clubs, theatres, and sex emporiums ranging from elaborate lap-dancing and couch-dancing “gentlemen’s” clubs in New York, Houston, and San Francisco; to Peoria’s unisex cabaret where women strip for men downstairs, and men for women upstairs; to nightclubs in Montreal. The book is based on interviews with participants as well as Liepe-Levinson’s own analyses of these events. The focus of this comprehensive and well-researched study is on the theatrical elements of striptease shows including choreography, costumes, and design. But a variety of methodologies are drawn upon to review the strip show’s upholding and breaking of gender norms within the cultural and theatrical aspects of the events themselves. Katherine Liepe-Levinson has worked as a professional dancer, actor, choreographer, director, and playwright in both Europe and the United States. She currently lives and works in New York City as a freelance writer, researcher, and educational consultant. She has published several articles in journals such as the Drama Review and ETC: A Review of General Semantics.

GENDER IN PERFORMANCE General Editors: Susan Bassnett and Tracy C.Davis

The Gender in Performance series reflects the dynamic and innovative work by feminists across the disciplines. Exploring both historical and contemporary theatre the series seeks to understand performance both as a cultural and a political phenomenon. Also available: CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THEATRES To each her own Lizbeth Goodman ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN Their social identity in Victorian culture Tracy C.Davis AS SHE LIKES IT Shakespeare’s unruly women Penny Gay FEMINIST THEATERS IN THE USA Staging women’s experience Charlotte Canning GETTING INTO THE ACT Women playwrights in London 1776–1829 Ellen Donkin WOMEN IN RUSSIAN THEATRE The actress in the silver age Catherine A.Schuler THE CHANGING ROOM Sex, drag and theatre Laurence Senelick

STRIP SHOW Performances of gender and desire

Katherine Liepe-Levinson

London and New York

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2002 Katherine Liepe-Levinson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Liepe-Levinson, Katherine, 1953– Strip show: performances of gender and desire/Katherine Liepe-Levinson. p. cm.—(Gender in performance) Incudes bibliographical references and index. 1. Striptease. 2. Striptease—Social aspects. I. Title. II. Series. PN1949.S7 L45 2001 792.7–dc21

2001034887

ISBN 0-203-44962-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75786-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-17380-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-17381-7 (pbk)

CONTENTS

List of illustrations Acknowledgements

vii ix

Introduction: Strip show: Performances of gender and desire

1

1

Urban locations of desire: A tale of five cities

19

2

Interiors

50

3

Costume dramas and sexual subjectivity

76

4

Choreography I: The basic moves

108

5

Choreography II: Structure, pleasure, and “confessional” narratives of the body

133

6

Performing spectators: The pleasure of mimetic jeopardy

151

7

Epilogue as intermezzo: The saga of the strip show, or the battles over sexual representation rage on…

180

Appendix Notes Select bibliography Index

189 191 231 251

v

ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1 0.2 1.1a 1.1b 1.2a 1.2b 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Gypsy Rose Lee 17 Women as sexual consumers and gazers 18 The strip club Le Super Sexe in Montreal, Quebec (1998) 43 The strip club Chateau du Sexe in Montreal, Quebec (1998) 44 Show World’s carnival design, New York City (1992) 45 Show World’s carnival design, New York City (1992) 46 “Jungle Mural.” Exterior of the O’Farrell Theatre, San Francisco (1990) 47 The Garden of Eden and other clubs in North Beach, San Francisco (1990) 48 Chippendales New York. Women line up early to get into the club (1990) 49 Glamour design at Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum club, New York City (1992) 71 Luxurious interior at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) 72 Dancer on a “piano stage” at the luxurious Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) 72 Handbill for the notorious Scores club, New York City (1993) 73 Jungle interior design for the Colorado in Houston, Texas (1990) 74 “West Side Story” meet S/M design at Chippendales New York (1992) 75 Dancer Johnny Rotten demonstrates how to play peekaboo with his costumes (1992) 101 Female dancer in lingerie/fetish wear at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2000) 102 Annie Sprinkle does her “Big Nurse Sprinkle” striptease character 103 “Alien-exotic” male dancers at the Sugar Shack II, Chicago, Illinois (1990) 104 Dancer in leather fetish at Chippendales New York (1992) 105 vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

3.6a 3.6b 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 5.2 6.1

6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

6.6 6.7 6.8

Dancer in high-costume gear—“space alien” at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Dancer in high-costume gear—“Zorro” at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Female dancer bumps and grinds with pole “partner” at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) Male dancers at Chippendales New York bump and grind out of their pants (1990) Annie Sprinkle demonstrates her Bosom Ballet used in her strip acts and in her performance art (circa 1992) Male dancers at Chippendales New York demonstrate sensual moves and body-stroking choreography (1992) Handbill with a woman’s eyes ogling patrons, used by the Lusty Lady club in Seattle, Washington (circa 1992) Male dancer demonstrates his “friendly” struts and approach to seduction at the Hangar club in Camp Springs, Maryland (1992) Pole dancer performing “death-defying” stunts at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) Fire dancer caresses his body with flames at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Male front-row patron tipping dancer as a fellow patron watches the scene at Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum in New York (1992) Tip’n kiss at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Female patrons pay for a “hunky-man ride” to the stage at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Female lap-dancer and patron (1992) Female patrons enjoy a crepe-paper bondage game at Chippendales New York which allows them to perform on stage (1990) Annie Sprinkle demonstrates “boobs on the head” photo shoot with patrons (circa 1992) Beverlee Hills gives a patron a breast headlock for his photo-shoot opportunity at New York Dolls (1992) Female patrons get to take, and pose in, their own “naughty” photos with dancers at Big Alice’s in Peoria, Illinois (1990)

viii

106 107 127 128 129 130 131 132 149 150

172 173 174 175

176 177 178 179

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank Marvin Carlson, Judith Milhous, Judith Lynne Hanna, Tracy Davis and the staff at Routledge for their long-time support of this project. Thanks to Julia Whitworth, Bob Glass, Sophie Ben-Shitta, Annie Sprinkle, Katherine Gates, Mary Moran, Nancy Ries, Susan Schoonmaker, Stephanie Hoare, Jacques Levy, Margaret Maurer, and Sharon Kabak whose support, suggestions, and contributions made this book possible. Thanks to all my friends, family members, colleagues, participants of the Women in Theatre Program, and members of the New York Society for General Semantics who listened, debated, asked questions, and encouraged—and to the staff of the Colgate University Library. Special thanks to Kathy Quaranta, Rhonda Paganetti, Patty Hruby, David Naistat, Barbara Liepe, Frank Eeckman, Jan Heissinger, Marianne Teuber, Andreas Teuber, Deborah Levy, Paula Shapiro, Lucy Winner, Pearl Eppy, Catherine Behrens—and to my parents, Winfrid Liepe and Madeline Liepe, and Risha and Gerald Levinson. To my husband, Martin Levinson, thank you for your support, your partnership, your patience, your spirit, and your “general semantics” outlook. Many thanks to the club owners, managers, and patrons, especially Dominique, Robert Watters, and Ron Martin, who early on generously shared their time and insights. Thanks also to the recent contributions of Ellis Witherspoon, “Candy Girl,” Dallas Fontenot, Frank Kent, and Lonnie Hanover. Finally, I am most grateful to the female and male performers Veronica Hart, Donna Foxx, Johnny Rotten, “Roxanne,” “Nancy and Michael,” “Kelly,” “Lily,” and so many others for their insights, expertise, beauty, and courage.

ix

INTRODUCTION Strip show: Performances of gender and desire

A woman dances in the spotlight of a small platform stage. She moves her hands over her undulating body and then takes off her clothes. The male spectators stare. Some sit motionless, others solemnly hand her dollar bills or carefully place the money into the dancer’s G-string or garter belt. This generic act, this performance of gender and desire, has been variously labeled topless, bottomless, nude dancing, exotic dancing, erotic dancing, and striptease entertainment by such trade papers as Exotic Dancer, Canadian Stripper, Mentertainment, and The Go-Go-Gazette. It has been described as a representation of Freud’s primal scene, socio-sexual purgation, male degradation of women, female rebellion against the double standard—and an authentic instigator of vice and crime.1 In a “similar” scene, a man gyrates under the stage lights. He massages his bare chest and stomach. He bends over and exposes his buttocks as he slides out of his pants. The female spectators stare. Some whistle, laugh, and shout, others vigorously wave dollar bills in order to receive kisses and hugs from the dancer. This show has been called exotic dancing, erotic dancing, and striptease. It has been described as “turning the tables,” a manifesto of pro-sex feminism, an inadequate female imitation of male lust and the male gaze—and a joke.2 As a former professional dancer and actor (from the Zurich Opera Ballet in Switzerland to OH! Calcutta! on Broadway), I have long been interested in live performances that focus on the body, nudity, and sexual display—and in the social theories and policies that seek both to explain and to control or suppress them. This book offers an account of an unprecedented North American study of contemporary female and male strip shows. The events ranged from the elaborate lap-dancing and couch-dancing gentlemen’s clubs of New York City, Houston, and San Francisco; to Peoria’s one-time unisex cabaret, Big Al’s/Big Alice’s, where women stripped for men in the luxurious main floor performance space while men stripped for women in the intimate upstairs theatre; to the nightclubs of Montreal, Quebec, where straight and gay male and female dancers exposed their genitals on portable mini-platforms set up inches away from the seats of their patrons. The field work for this project spanned eight cities and included more than 70 different strip bars, clubs, and sex emporiums in the United States and Canada.

1

STRIP SHOW

Overview of the “subject” and the “field” The strip show continues to be one the most persistent and controversial forms of indigenous American entertainment. During its first heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, the strip show as Burlesque was so popular it threatened to engulf all of the legitimate theatres on Broadway. Noted scholar Bernard Sobel, along with six New York University professors, awarded Gypsy Rose Lee a Doctorate of Strip Teasing.3 And the publicity-seeking Minsky brothers convinced the House Immigration Committee of the United States Congress to announce that the striptease was indeed “an American art” and, therefore, no “foreigner” should be allowed to practice it within the borders of the United States.4 The decade that spawned the stripper in America was marked by profound cultural and social disturbances. Women obtained the right to vote, bobbed their hair, shortened their skirts, and traded in their corsets for the androgynous look of the flapper. The youthful rebellion of the period (often likened to that of the 1960s) was galvanized by the music industry’s co-optation and dissemination of “hot music” or jazz—music that originated from the work of African-American and Caribbean artists. In some quarters, both strippers and flappers were considered immoral; but, so too were the new sounds of jazz and the popular social dances that accompanied them—sounds and movements that transgressed conventional ideas about the decorum of “ladies” and “gentlemen,” “white” and “black.”5 The skits, songs, and dance numbers of the Burlesque were rife with sexual, racial, and ethnic stereotypes. However, as with the later exponent of the show, Lenny Bruce, they also often questioned and mocked long-standing social mores through parody and exaggeration. Civic and religious groups, outraged by the irreverence, blatant sexual exhibitionism, and omnipresence of the Burlesque, joined forces to ban the stripper from the auspices of the legitimate stage. But once relegated to the bars, cabarets, carnivals, and sex shops of our cities, the strip show proliferated as never before. While former Burlesque Queen Ann Corio performed on Broadway in an evening gown adorned with a giant padlock, singing “I would if I could but I can’t,” producers on the Great White Way danced around the censors by presenting strippers as characters in popular shows such as Star and Garter and The Naked Genius—a trend that continues to this day. In the years 1999–2001 alone, Broadway audiences were treated to the British play Closer, which featured the character of a female table dancer, and a musical adaptation of the British film The Full Monty, which centered on a male strip show for women that revealed everything. For striptease aficionados in other parts of the country, television cable channel HBO offered G-String Divas, a 13-episode “docu-soap” series that described the life and work of straight, bisexual, and lesbian female strippers who perform for men in a strip club in Pennsylvania.6 When I first began to “study” strip shows in the early 1990s (for a doctoral dissertation in theatre history and criticism), new clubs and bars were opening each week in small towns and major cities across North America. Public strip shows for straight women and gay audiences—made possible, in part, by the “Sexual

2

INTRODUCTION

Revolution” and the Stonewall Rebellion of the 1960s—unabashedly advertised in community, local, and national newspapers. Mainstream self-help and adult education centers, such as the Learning Annex in New York City, offered “howto” workshops on topless bar ownership and management as well as group field trips to female and male strip clubs.7 However, the strip show truly reached its second apex with the advent and success of the upscale “gentlemen’s” club, whose popularity and notoriety—like that of the original Burlesque show—once again resulted in governmental intervention. In 1991 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, even though nude dancing was entitled to a measure of protection under freedom of speech, the harmful social conduct it presumably provoked in the context of adult entertainment (e.g., indecency, immorality, and criminality) gave cities and states the constitutional right to require dancers to cover their private parts by wearing pasties (nipple coverings), G-strings, bikinis, and the like.8 The decision made front-page news, prompting gleeful headlines such as the New York Post’s proclamation, “No Nudes Is Good Nudes.”9 Nevertheless, despite the ruling of the Surpreme Court and the numerous campaigns staged by anti-porn activists, the 1990s saw the first all-topless strip club, Rick’s of the Lone Star State, go public and offer its wares on the American stock exchange; Demi Moore make her much heralded debut as a stripper on celluloid and in the buff; and US News and World Report announce that “Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances—combined.”10 I saw this unfolding drama as a unique opportunity to chronicle a small part of cultural history in the making. I also saw it as an opportunity to examine firsthand a live form of popular entertainment that had an exhaustive history of inciting social and political debates about the constitution of “good” and “bad” sex roles for women and men; about the relationship of fantasy and fiction to social “reality”; about the machinery of our sex—gender and class systems, and about the civil rights and protection of women and children in the face of censorship. These debates remain at the heart of the on-going legal battles over sexual representation and expression in the United States—battles that rest on the “free speech” versus “harmful social conduct” controversy. The limitations of the study, the purpose of this book Like the strip show, New York City is often regarded as a cultural phenomenon that is at once progressive and debauched. Since I have lived and worked in New York most of my adult life, this city became the natural nexus of the study. To incorporate a wider range of the strip show’s cultural, regional, and performance aspects into the project, I included six other cities in the United States and one in Canada as supplemental field sites (Houston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Peoria, and Montreal).11 The time span of the original study (1990–93) neatly coincided with the historical apex of the second major 3

STRIP SHOW

striptease boom in North America. (According to US News and World Reports, strip clubs in the United States more than doubled from 1987 to 1992.12) It was this boom that prompted the 1991 US Supreme Court decision that questioned the protection of live nude entertainments in adult contexts on the grounds that they often crossed the line between expression and conduct. In this light, it is notable that the Supreme Court’s ruling also followed directly on the heels of the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts debacle in which funding was denied to nationally recognized American artists who expressed their varying cultural, political, and sexual identities and affiliations in non-adult contexts using many means—including nudity.13 In the early stages of this project, I attended gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender strip events along with the “straight” shows. (Chapter 1 discusses the intersections and divergences between the geographic and cultural “locations” of strip shows for sexual minorities and straight women and men.14,15) The eventual decision to focus on primarily white heterosexual (or mimetically heterosexual) exotic dance events was the result of a provocative, recurring discussion that took place during the annual Women and Theatre Conference (an affiliate of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education) from 1990 to 1992. In this forum, it was suggested that women who defined themselves using the various social categories of white, middle class, and straight should investigate the “strangeness” (or “queer” aspects) of their own political and personal spheres, particularly with regard to the concepts of “whiteness” and “heterosexuality.” To make dominant heterosexuality “strange” in this sense became a major goal of the project. One of the strangest or most striking features I encountered during the field work was the many ways in which the straight strip shows simultaneously upheld and broke conventional female and male sex roles and other related cultural rubrics as an integral part of their performance—thus aggravating activists on both the Right and the Left. In the most obvious examples of the strip show’s transgressive dynamic of upholding and breaking conventional sex roles, female dancers play desired sex-object roles as they openly defy the expectations of the double standard. Male dancers perform the action, machismo parts of “gladiators,” “construction workers,” “cowboys,” and “policemen” as they proffer their bodies to the gazes of women for financial gain. Female spectators as a group express their appreciation for male dancers through aggressive physical actions (e.g., shouting, kissing, and grabbing), whereas many male spectators appear to take on “passive” roles of sexual surrender as they watch the strippers’ routines of seduction. The social class of the performers and patrons (and this includes gender and race as well as class) are frequently defined in terms of who displays monetary control and who displays flesh. However, in the social hierarchies of the strip show, the ability to spend money does not necessarily guarantee a customer’s ability to wield power, because the biggest tipper is often labeled the “biggest sucker” by customers, managers, and dancers alike. Tipping rituals are additionally peculiar because they blur traditional boundaries between performer and spectator, often spotlighting generous patrons as an actual part of the show they pay to see. 4

INTRODUCTION

After travelling many miles, after spending many odd hours in strip clubs and bars across America—and after interviewing strippers, club managers, and club owners about how they turned these and numerous other contradictory expressions of gender and desire into profit—I provisionally concluded the study (and completed my doctorate) early in 1993.16 Almost two years had passed since the Supreme Court ruled that nude dancing was not necessarily protected by freedom of speech, yet the strip clubs continued to thrive nationwide and gave every indication that they would do so for some time. I was satisfied that I had been able to chronicle at least something of the cultural strangeness of these events, and the ways in which they complicated several of the most prominent theories about pornographic entertainments coming from both the Right and the Left. So I moved on to other pursuits. My interest in the project was rekindled with some urgency a few years later when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani began making headline news through his attempts to enforce a new zoning code aimed at closing down all legal sexually oriented businesses in New York City (i.e., strip clubs, adult movie houses, and X-rated video/magazine stores for straight and gay patrons). The rationale behind Giuliani’s anti-porn campaign and ordinance was based on research that directly overlapped with the time span of my original study. According to chief executive counsel Leonard Koerner, the city’s investigation found that the rapid expansion of the strip clubs and porn shops in all five boroughs of the city during the early 1990s, as well as the content of their entertainments, created a host of negative secondary effects that destroyed neighborhoods and the quality of life for all New Yorkers.17 These adverse side effects included increases in prostitution, the sale and use of illicit drugs, mob activity, vandalism, street brawls, and male assaults on women and children. Giuliani’s crusade against the strip clubs and other hitherto legal sex trades in the Big Apple was inspired by the vision and activism of the National Family Legal Foundation established by Charles Keating and Edwin Meese among others. This organization trained 1,000 lawyers to “secure” 1,000 cities by initiating and implementing zoning codes that would eliminate all businesses that did not uphold their standards of “family values.”18 Thus, while the new zoning codes were espoused in terms of harmful-secondary-effects and quality-of-life issues, they also were aimed at getting around the sticky issue of freedom of speech that was still at the heart of the 1991 Supreme Court decision. As noted, the highest court in the land had ruled that nude dancing as expression was still entitled to a measure of protection under the First Amendment—even though the majority of the Justices had ruled that such entertainments could be restricted in the interest of “morality” and “order.” Justice David H.Souter specified, in his assenting opinion, that the only constitutional basis for a state or city to restrict nude dancing was on the grounds that it caused harmful social conduct or negative secondary effects such as prostitution and neighborhood decline. However, in line with the conservative Supreme Court majority, Souter claimed that one could simply assume that these entertainments produced such effects. In other words, cities and states could 5

STRIP SHOW

prosecute, restrict, or close down strip clubs and like entertainments without having to offer concrete proof that they caused harm. It was Souter’s opinion (which he recanted nine years later pleading “ignorance”) that underwrote the rash of antiporn ordinances which swept across America during the 1990s.19 The new zoning codes received ardent support from certain groups of feminists who had long denounced all forms of pornography for producing harmful effects for women and children. Ironically, when New York City was able to shut down a number of strip clubs and porn shops as a result of the new regulations, some were replaced by regular bars and co-ed dance clubs that local residents, men and women, found even more disturbing and offensive.20 As a New Yorker, I know only too well how even the most mundane qualityof-life issue can negatively impact daily living. As a feminist and educator, I am ever mindful of the heinous discriminations and only slightly more subtle social and financial disparities that persist in dividing communities and nations by gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual preference. However, my own research did not support the claim that strip clubs and other legal sex trades inevitably produced the harmful side effects listed above. Strip clubs located in urban danger zones— including New York City’s Times Square of old—may well contribute to the aura and decline of those districts according to mainstream standards. On the other hand, many urban areas of ill-repute have endured decades of decline. Therefore, it is just as likely that the strip clubs and porn shops moved into these districts after the fact to take advantage of the low rents and the accessibility provided by nearby bus and train terminals. At the same time, many of the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs of Montreal, Houston, and Washington DC are still located in thriving upscale or middle-class business districts. And in San Francisco, where women were warned to stay away from the sex shops and clubs of the dangerous Tenderloin area, tour books lauded the city’s North Beach sector (a district also crammed with strip joints and gaudy nightclubs) as a West Coast version of Greenwich Village—a place where “poetry meets porn.”21 Whatever one may think about strip clubs and nude dancing shows, their presence in such areas indicates that legal sex trades do not invariably make “wastelands” of the districts in which they reside. On the contrary, their geographic and cultural locations suggest a very different mapping and genealogy of commercialized sexual entertainments. The politics of the harmful-secondary-effects argument, and the ensuing legal battles over the anti-porn zoning codes in the United States, underscored the major finding of my earlier work. Strip shows are strange cultural artifacts because they both uphold and break traditional female and male sex roles and other related cultural rubrics—thus aggravating activists on both the Right and the Left for different reasons and purposes. The “secure cities plan” of the National Family Legal Foundation, and Giuliani’s specific attempts to rezone commercialized sexual entertainment in New York City, prompted me to revisit and reshape my original study into its present form. The centerpiece of this book remains an exploration of the contradictory sex roles, cultural positions, and performance practices of “straight” strip shows during 6

INTRODUCTION

their second heyday in the early 1990s. After all, it was the omnipresence of these spectacles that triggered the 1991 Supreme Court decision involving freedom of speech and the more recent anti-sex trade ordinances designed to rezone a nation. Because of the relationship of the historical strip show to its present incarnations, and because of the starts and stops of this study’s own layered history and duration, this book offers occasional forays both backwards and forwards in time. Comparisons with the performance codes of the original Burlesque show (circa 1920–1942) serve to situate modern versions of the show, and their portrayals of gender and desire, historically and culturally. References to the events and court battles over the harmful-secondary-effects argument, which have raged on into the New Millennium, serve to keep the purpose of this book in focus. That is, this work explores the strip show’s inconsistent representations and violations of traditional sex role norms to sort out the reasons for, and the efficacy of, some of the negative assumptions (the fears and the harms) that continue to be associated with commercial sexual display and play—even in a form of porn as seemingly quaint, common, and stereotypical as striptease. The United States has proved to be a fruitful “field site” for such an endeavor. As a nation that uses sex to sell just about everything, America, in particular, seems to regard carnal desire with a mixture of horror and awe. Ethnographic practice: Performance and method, theory and activism Clifford Geertz cautions all ethnographers who attempt to play the part of “participant-observer” in research projects such as this one to be ever wary of its “very special culturally bracketed nature.”22 Each ethnographic undertaking includes its own logistics of participation that arise from the interests, projections, and desires of the researcher as well as from the specific social and cultural situations at hand. During the initial field work for this book, I encountered several practical but signficant considerations that shaped my role as “researcher” and “participant-observer.” While I could have easily passed as a regular attendee in events where men stripped for women, passing as just another patron in events where women stripped for men would have been almost impossible. Some single females, as well as heterosexual and lesbian couples, do in fact patronize strip shows slated for straight men. However, their presence is still rare or exotic enough to warrant extra attention from dancers, managers, and fellow spectators.23 Other clubs make a point of refusing entrance to lone women for fear they may be prostitutes looking for action. Contrary to popular belief, most middle-class strip clubs and bars, from the late 1980s to the present, at least attempt to comply with the laws prohibiting prostitution. As one manager put it, “I run a clean club—it’s better for business—you know, virtual sex in the age of AIDS and fewer hassles from police.”24 Given such circumstances, I found the most practical and honest approach to the role of ethnographer was to state or indicate up front that I was writing about 7

STRIP SHOW

the strip show.25 In some instances, I contacted the managers or owners of the clubs beforehand. But most of the time, I simply entered the bars, theatres, or clubs (alone or with companions) off the street and then did not hide the fact that I was taking notes. In this way, I rarely had to solicit interviews because dancers, waiters, managers, owners, and other patrons frequently approached me first to find out what I was doing. Many of them volunteered forthwith to share their views about the industry. While only a small portion of these conversations are directly quoted or referred to in the pages that follow, the remarks of all the actants have, in no uncertain terms, informed the discussions of this book. I am comfortable with Lila Abu Lughod’s definition of a “feminist ethnography” as an academic act of seeing and describing that includes an intense negotiation, an “unsettling of the boundaries” between the subject(s) of study and the personal and social orientations of the researcher.26 As noted, both my practical background and academic interests revolve around the study of theatre. Therefore, this book explores the strip show mainly in terms of performance and performance theory.27 It examines how the strip show’s concurrent upholding and breaking of gender norms operate in the cultural and theatrical aspects of the events themselves. These aspects include the social and geographic locations of the strip shows within the various cities; the exterior and interior designs of their places of performance; the costumes, choreography, and behavior of the female and male dancers; and the participation and behavior of the female and male spectators. The chapters of this book are loosely divided and organized around these formal elements of the show. Collectively, such aspects of performance also suggest a number of the environmental pressures that most obviously inform and manage sexual display in “real life”: the overall class/social situation and the immediate surroundings; the dress codes and body language of the actants; the common cultural narratives of sexual fantasy and erotic desire; and the sex play or games that result from all of the above. In contrast, the majority of sociological and psychological studies on strip shows focus their interviews and investigations on the private lives and backgrounds of the dancers (females in particular)—to better understand the constitution of social deviancy. Some studies specifically use this approach to prove that strippers and other sex trade workers invariably are “forced” into the industry as a result of oppressive factors in their social and personal lives (e.g., lack of education, financial difficulties, abusive parents, abusive partners and spouses, etc.).28 However, none of the studies to date have included a control group or an actual comparison between the personal and social lives of exotic dancers and those of women and men in other kinds of theatrical occupations, “after hours” jobs, or even conventional careers. The recent research of anthropologists Judith Lynne Hanna and Katherine L.Frank (also a former dancer), along with my own findings, suggest that the personal lives and backgrounds of American strippers are as varied and incongruous as the shows they perform. In general, the backgrounds of the dancers—their family upbringing, religion, sexual preference, geographic origin, socio-economic group, education, ethnicity, marital relations, and so forth—are 8

INTRODUCTION

far too diverse and multi-faceted to draw clear-cut conclusions about their job choice en masse, other than the need to make a living.29 The private lives of some of the dancers appear to be at odds with their occupation—like the sedate middleclass Mom-next-door or the studious Ivy League student who strips by night.30 Other performers seem to gravitate to the industry because it is compatible with their already alternative lifestyles.31 To complicate matters further, a number of dancers reported that they and many other strippers regularly embellish or make up entire autobiographies as part of their stage persona and show for the customers. “Lily,” a dancer from the Baby Doll Lounge in New York City stated: “I make more tips by making my customers feel sorry for me, than I would if I told them the truth—I like the money, the hours, the attention, the exercise, and the lifestyle.”32 Other dancers, such as Roxanne from the New York Dolls club in Manhattan and the Dolly Sisters from assorted strip bars on Staten Island, stated that they often switch or alter their personalities, backgrounds, and attitudes during their acts and conversations to satisfy different customers. In the words of Roxanne, “At one end of the room I may play a dominatrix—at the other a kitten—and everything in-between.”33 To inhabit the roles of both “stripper” and “strip show patron” is to enter into an entire infrastructure and subculture that is based on theatrical performance. The strip show’s culture of sexual role playing and fantasy, however, does not mask the fact that many dancers do indeed experience problems or second thoughts about their occupation. As Frank notes, however transgressive or fantastic a club’s strip show, that club is still a workplace for the performers.34 The majority of dancers interviewed for this book commented on the various social stigmas and sexual stereotypes attached to their job and places of work. In the scheme of most strip events, men pay women to perform “sexual acts”—to play what is commonly called the “sex-object” role. In the dramatic, sartorial design of these shows, male spectators are protected by their dressed state, while the nudity of the female performers may suggest the cultural and physical vulnerability and accessibility of women to men. Only a few clubs for women feature completely nude male dancers. However, because of the status of men in our society, and because so many male strippers emphasize physical prowess in their acts, their nudity (or partial nudity) may refer less to the vulnerability of the body than to additional demonstrations of power and sexual expertise. As an adjunct to this scenario, female spectators frequently appear to be more interested in getting the male dancers to pay attention to them—by yelling, dancing, and wildly waving dollar bills—than in taking up power positions as sexual scrutinizers themselves. “Michael,” a former star of Chippendales New York, stated that he and other male strippers were also bemused by the fact that so many female patrons “laughed through the entire show.”35 This behavior may suggest that most women are entertained or embarrassed by sexual representations—rather than “really” aroused. Some female and male dancers found the practical working conditions in a few of the clubs to be far more disturbing than the strip show’s general replication of 9

STRIP SHOW

sexual stereotypes. A few dancers reported that, while they did not think of themselves as being forced into the striptease industry, in at least one place they had worked owners or managers had expected sexual favors. Other dancers commented on clubs that enforced rigid work schedules, imposed severe penalties for any absences including illness, fired performers for being too heavy or too old, and charged dancers exorbitant fees to perform, garnishing up to one half of their earnings from tips.36 One stripper spoke of a co-worker who stated that she was forced to dance and prostitute herself outside of the club by her boyfriend/pimp. Several strippers reported that, in order to cope with such conditions, some of their peers had turned to drugs and alcohol.37 At first glance, such aspects of the strip show’s performance and production appear to endorse unequivocally several of the most prominent and prevailing critiques of sexual representation. In brief, right-wing politicians, such as Keating, Meese, and Giuliani, view all public exhibitions of explicit imagery (straight and gay) as a form of social violence that harms not only women, but the entire family unit. Such entertainments are said to encourage prostitution, promiscuity, and adultery—all of which undermine the foundations of Western religion and good citizenship. On the Left, many feminists scrutinize pornography for the ways it upholds the traditional structures of the patriarchy which oppresses and disenfranchises both women and sexual minorities. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, the principal founders and champions of the Women Against Pornography movement, insist that explicit sexual imagery not only encourages male violence against women including rape—but that it is, in and of itself, an age-old form of violence that degrades all women by depicting them as objects for male use.38 Feminist psychoanalytic theories, on the other hand, filter society’s general objectification of women through Freudian and Lacanian versions of the Oedipal complex and male castration anxiety.39 All forms of desire, including the sexual, are considered to be the result of the infant’s initial bonding with, and separation from, the primary love object of the Mother. The Woman—Mother does not exist in her own right, but functions instead as a catalyst for the maturation and pleasure of the (male) child. Since females lack the supreme signifier of social power and independence (the “penis-phallus”), they are denied full participation in the dominant discourse of language and law. Representations of female nudity (or even the suggestion of female nudity) replay the socio-psychological scene of women’s disempowerment through the site of their anatomical difference. Any display of the “castrated” female serves to reassure the physically and culturally “complete” male of his power.40 For some time now, Marxian and materialist theorists have taken cultural and psychoanalytic formulations of sexual representation to task because they do not address the socio-economic factors responsible for the production and consumption of such images. Strip shows are especially interesting in this regard for the commodification of sex is written into their performance through the rituals of customer tipping. Because of their inherited social and economic privileges, white heterosexual males are said to wield ultimate control over both the production 10

INTRODUCTION

and the consumption of pornographic goods—appropriating or outlawing lesbian, gay, and minority expressions of desire as they see fit. In this schema, females are not only consigned to roles of sexual thralldom and powerlessness, but they are equated as a class with “the goods”—as things or objects to be looked at, desired, and traded to shore up relations between men. 41 The selling of sexual entertainments, and the use of sexual imagery to sell other kinds of products, fuel the consumer’s desire to desire more and more “goods.” Commercialized sexual entertainments maintain the power of the privileged classes by ensuring the passivity and alienation of the subservient classes upon which capitalism also depends. The Dworkin—MacKinnon, psychoanalytic, and Marxist-materialist critiques of sexual difference, sexual representation, and social inequality have revealed so very much about the roots and structures of sexism and other kinds of bigotry in our culture. However, in some ways, many of these theories are as narrow in their design as any on the Right. Despite the intricacies of their rhetoric, most formulations rest on two-dimensional conceptions of gender and desire which the strip show—being a performance specifically about desire—foregrounds. Whether such critiques analyze explicit or nonexplicit sexual representations by equating them with physical violence and rape, variations on the Oedipal narrative, or socio-economic inequities, they all break down the experiences of carnal desire in heterosexual arenas into two discrete, oppositional, and seemingly immutable gendered categories: the “active-‘male’-desirer-controller,” and his companion, the “passive-subordinate-‘female’-object-of-desire.” Some advocates of these paradigms have gone so far as to pronounce the entire representational apparatus as male—hence also the concept of the all-powerful monolithic “male gaze” (and the objectifying, degrading, and inevitably violent desires that characterize it) which has dominated much of gender and feminist studies over the past several decades. As a complication to such either/or formulations and terms, the overwhelming majority of both female and male strippers interviewed for this book insisted that they were satisfied with their work and workplaces. Many dancers described their bosses and supervisors as professional business people—and, in some cases, as “friends,” “house mothers,” “kindly fathers,” “uncles,” and “aunts.” A few of the dancers insisted that they experienced sexual harassment, not in the strip clubs where they felt respected and occasionally deified, but in their previous conventional workplaces (e.g., restaurants, law offices, educational institutions, and insurance companies). Most female and male dancers admitted that they had to deal with ill-mannered patrons from time to time. Nevertheless, unlike other work situations where the “customer is always right,” they saw themselves in command of these instances as well—manipulating patrons with their sexual energy, scolding them, refusing to perform for them, or, as a last resort, having them removed from the club by the bouncers. A number of dancers pointed out that, while the customers paid them to perform certain acts, they still exercised control over the scene through their ability to seduce patrons into “submission” 11

STRIP SHOW

or to “put them on the spot” in front of their friends. These actions, once again, turn the “spotlight” of the show on to the bodies of the customers, blurring the traditional lines between performer and spectator, seeing and being seen, activity and passivity, and what is often considered “female” and “male” behavior. Finally, even the dancers who reported that they had been offended or victimized by the working conditions in a few of the clubs stated that they had not passively stood by and accepted those conditions. Some of the dancers quit their workplace for other clubs or professions. Others organized or allied themselves with unions, sued clubs for violations of labor laws, filed wage grievances, and even initiated class-action lawsuits to deal with situations such as on-the-job-injuries, work schedule problems, racial discrimination, and denials of artistic control. Julia Query, one of the organizers of the Exotic Dancers Union, a chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU 790), co-directed a documentary film about such dancer activists entitled Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000).42 How do critics who rest their formulations on two-dimensional paradigms of gender roles, sexual desire, and sexual agency deal with these and other multifaceted situations—and the ambiguous or conflicting attitudes, behaviors, and representations they produce? Some theorists simply ignore them and concentrate on the elements that neatly fit into their either/or schemas. Others acknowledge the complexities of such images and entertainments, including their non-binary expressions of gender and desire, but then immediately dismiss them as inconsequential. They propose that these transgressions have no real social or performative significance because they are ultimately subsumed by the inequities of the dominant culture’s long history of sexism, compulsory heterosexuality, and exploitive system of capitalism. In the most general and practical sense, two-dimensional theories of gender and desire cannot thoroughly investigate how socio-sexual symbols are used in representation or in the construction of female and male sex roles because their formulations eliminate so many of those uses. In terms of performance theory, since men are said to desire only positions of control, such paradigms foreclose on the spectator’s experience of being “moved,” “swept away,” or “done in” by the mimetic scene. They disregard, as Berkeley Kaite puts it, the spectator’s desire to look until his “eyes pop out of his head” and the “subject” of his desire has “got him by the eyeball.”43 While such spectatorial desires and pleasures—for both males and females—have been acknowledged in other theatrical venues, they are usually ignored in the analyses of sexual representations because they do not expressly link male desire to a position of domination. Peggy Phelan has pointed out that, while there are obvious “links” between fantasy, representation, and social “reality,” these links are never an exact matching-up of the terms.44 As noted, some anti-porn activists deliberately equate all images of explicit sex with sexism or other social ills. Many flaunt this sensational “body of evidence” for the greater good of exposing the insidious bigotries of contemporary Western culture.45 A few critics, including Dworkin and MacKinnon, insist that by ridding society of all explicit imagery, we would solve such deep-seated and horrific 12

INTRODUCTION

social problems as domestic violence, all types of rape, the sex slave trades, sexual harassment, and the sexual abuse of children—as well as prostitution, adultery, and promiscuity. While one may not wish to accuse these theorists and social strategists of actually believing any representation to be a copy of the real in this manner, their reductions still conceptually function as if that were the case. This, in itself, is problematic because theory is indeed a form of activism. It not only explains phenomena, it reinforces and even creates the phenomena to be seen (and believed). There are indeed powerful links between sexual representation and the machinations of our sexist and heterosexist society. However, social sexism, social alienation, sexual representation, and sexual fantasy do not operate as a single seamless system of oppression. If we continue to analyze the stuff of erotic desire, adult fantasy, and sexual entertainment exclusively in terms of our social dictates and inequities, we deny sexual and social agency to all. We reinvent and promote the double standard that insists that explicit sexual expressions are inherently harmful to women. We categorically condemn the fantasies of men and the male sex by falling into the trap, as film scholar Linda Williams warns, of simply reversing “the dreadful patriarchal ideas that sex is evil and that the evil in it is women.”46 By resting our critiques of pornography and the sex roles it depicts on either/or evaluations (whether coming from the Right or the Left), we also promote varying concepts of a “good” or an “authentic” sexuality—an idea that threatens to become ever more a part of legislation. Chapter summaries Chapter 1 examines the efficacy of the harmful-secondary-effects argument in terms of the zoning codes championed by conservative politicians and some feminist activists alike. It explores the locations, exterior designs, and advertisements of strip bars, clubs, and theatres in five North American cities at the height of the modern striptease boom in the early 1990s. In doing so, it also reviews the various “street scenes” and any social troubles that these places and entertainments may have produced. Strip events for white, middle-class, heterosexual males are discussed first. Their physical and social sites are compared to shows for gay, bisexual, lesbian, and mixed audiences as a way of situating heterosexual events and commercialized displays of erotic desire as part of a much larger socio-sexual discourse. The geographies of strip shows for straight men are then compared to shows for straight, similarly classed women—events that were all but ignored by the anti-porn zoning campaigns of the last decade. While each city had its own sexual gestalt, there were some striking similarities in how they expressed sexual difference, sexual preference, and class through the geography of their strip shows. Despite these distinctions, however, most of the clubs hid or marked their locations in ways that transgressed mainstream assumptions about gender and sexual desire— including assumptions about the innate sexual aggressiveness and violence of men. Chapter 2 explores the interior designs of a number of different strip bars, clubs, sex emporiums, and theatres. It discusses their spatial layouts, decors, general 13

STRIP SHOW

ambiances, and spectator sightlines in terms of a socio-psychoanalytic formulation of fantasy first set forth by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. This formulation proposes that both fantasy and sexual desire are predicated not on a fantasizer’s wish for specific objects such as a dancer per se, but on an entire setting or scene of desire that the fantasizer can imaginatively enter.47 To activate the world of the fantasy, the fantasizer identifies with all of the dramatic elements and varying social symbols that make up that scene, rather than with a single object or unified subject position alone. Desire is thus represented through an entire theatrical production of excess that runs counter to traditional psychoanalytic models that propose that desire is always portayed and driven by “lack.” Some bars and clubs feature interior designs and ambiances that underscore the social containment and policing necessary to keep such desires and excesses under control. A few clubs police patrons by dividing and seating them according to their perceived class and social standing. Other places, like upscale sex emporiums for men and co-ed nightclubs that feature strip events for women, offer luxurious interiors or a superabundance of activities and seating choices that are designed to consume the consumer—to overwhelm or confuse patrons into emptying their wallets. Nevertheless, part of the customers’ stated pleasure in all such settings is derived exactly from the control these scenes exert over them—and from their own obeisance to that control. Chapter 3 discusses the strippers’ employment of costume and the body as costume. The first section examines the dancers’ use of “peekaboo apparel” such as lingerie, ripped jeans, cut-off T-shirts, speedos, and G-strings. While such effects create a particular look for the body of the performer, they also produce the peculiar pleasure (and pain) of erotic eye strain for the viewer—a pleasure that rests on the suspense and instabilities that underlie both erotic desire and the pornographic experience. The second section of the chapter examines the cliché or uniform costumes favored by contemporary female and male strippers. Evening dress, babydoll outfits, preppy-boy leisure wear, occupational uniforms, and costumes that refer to assorted cultural exotics or social rebels are discussed in terms of how they encourage the spectators to make traditional as well as “bi-gender” sex-role identifications. This formulation of bi-gender identifications is based on the internal subject/object split of the individual in the throes of sexual excitement as variously laid out by Laplanche and Pontalis, Jessica Benjamin, Lynda Hart, Jacqueline Rose, Robert Stoller, Linda Williams, and Laura Kipnis.48 The last section of the chapter examines the dancer’s display of the nude body as another kind of cultural uniform. It discusses the different ways female and male strippers manipulate and redesign their physiques to create sexually fashionable bodies for the stage—bodies that are “made” to conform to, as well as resist, conventional expectations of physical beauty and gender norms. It also investigates how spectators may “dress up” the nude bodies of the strippers with their own projections, fantasies, and identifications with the scene of sexual exhibitionism. Chapters 4 and 5 explore the varying dance styles and choreographic structures of female and male strip shows. Chapter 4 discusses the traditional striptease act— 14

INTRODUCTION

from its historical roots to its contemporary elaborations. It explores how even the most basic moves of the conventional routine—bumps, grinds, shimmies, struts, body-stroking, and eye-dancing—expand on traditional ideas about Western female and male body language and sexual behavior. Chapter 5 focuses on the thematic and narrative gimmicks contemporary dancers use to shape their routines. These devices include the traditional pattern of sequenced stripping, reverse strips, and cycles of undressing and redressing. They also include entire acts in which dancers choreograph or improvise around the gimmick of unguarded “private moments” such as bathing or masturbating. Other performers base their routines on actions that suggest potential harm to their own bodies through their play with fire, whips, slam dancing, acrobatics, and death imagery. All of these acts are interrogated for the ways they relate to common cultural narratives about sex—including the eroticization of violence against women. But they are also explored for the ways they attempt to represent the almost impossible to represent—the extreme physical and emotional sensations that often accompany the experience of sexual desire for both females and males. Chapter 6 discusses the spectators’ formal participation in the show. Patrons not only pay to look at dancers, they also pay—and even tip extra—to participate in rituals and sex games in which they can become the center of attention, in which they can be scrutinized and consumed by others. Some strip shows also allow patrons to pay to have their fellow spectators inducted into the dancers’ acts—to have them dragged on stage by the performers or spotlighted in audience as the displayed objects of the dancers’ lust and sexual teasing. Such patterns of behavior concretize Paul Willemen’s now classic observation that “when the scopic drive is brought into focus, the viewer also runs the risk of becoming the object of the look.”49 This chapter describes the various starring and supporting roles that female and male spectators can hire for themselves and their friends as part of the performance. It argues that the spectators’ rituals of tipping and gazing do not categorically commodify and therefore objectify the performers as is usually theorized. The concluding chapter presents a brief overview of the strip club scene in North America in the year 2001. It then returns to questions about female and male sexual agency in the light of commercialized sexual entertainments such as striptease. In our society, heterosexual female desires and sexualities are usually theorized (however nuanced the rhetoric) as being pristinely “under cultural control.” Dominant male sexual desires, on the other hand, are often depicted as intrinsic or not subject to social mediation (as in the age-old adage “boys will be boys”). Nevertheless, the strip events discussed in this book foreground not only the extent to which both female and male sexual desires are designed and managed by culture, but the fact that neither women nor men respond passively to such conditioning. Within the transgressive “poetics” of the strip show, depictions of female and male sexual interests (as in “real life”) take the form of active, dialogic conversations with the cultural imposition of sexual “normalcy.” Strip shows are additionally “strange” because they play out in three dimensions the socio-psychic process by which the viewer-fantasizer enters the scene of 15

STRIP SHOW

representation in general. This experience, most often expressed in American culture by the colloquial statement, “I was really into it” or “I really got into it,” requires from the viewer-fantasizer, not a simple objectifying gaze or detachment from the scene—but a certain kind of practiced mimetic empathy. Strippers, patrons, owners, managers, and other researchers also report that, instead of merely objectifying the performers in the canonical sense of degrading or dehumanizing them, many spectators become involved in the game of attempting to discover “the real person” behind the dancer’s icon-character(s). The questions most often asked by the patrons interviewed for this book included: “Why do strippers strip?”; “What do strippers think about when they strip?”; “Do strippers get ‘turned on’ when they dance?”50 Such spectator interests are by no means new to the strip show. One of Gypsy Rose Lee’s most famous routines made fun of this seemingly ubiquitous patron obsession over what really goes on in the minds and bodies of the strippers.51 There is a certain irony to these spectator obsessions as well. As underscored by the harmful-secondary-effects argument and the various anti-porn campaigns, what also appears to be at stake in any pornographic enterprise is what goes on in the minds and bodies of the spectators. In sum, this book does not attempt to present a balanced or symmetrical account of the ways in which the various strip shows simultaneously uphold and break the boundaries of traditional sex roles and other related cultural expectations. Rather, it uses the features that replay established sex-role norms as a backdrop for the exploration of those aspects that resist the binary categories and either/or ways of seeing that still drive and shape so much of contemporary Western culture. This strategy is partly in reaction to the abundance of images and materials that continue to be popularly circulated (whether through the television talk shows of Jerry Springer, the political rhetoric of Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan, or the wellmeaning slogans of anti-porn activists) that all too often endorse bigoted notions of sexual difference, sexual preference, and class in the name of protecting women, or promoting better relations between the sexes. But this strategy is also very much due to my own surprise and curiosity about the many elements of the strip show’s spectacles of gender and desire that could not be so conveniently delimited and catalogued.

16

Source: Photo clipping courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center.

Figure 0.1 Gypsy Rose Lee

STRIP SHOW

Figure 0.2 Women as sexual consumers and gazers Source: Cover for Chippendales Micro Film Strip Shows (circa 1990), courtesy of Fascinations Inc., Seattle, Washington.

18

1 URBAN LOCATIONS OF DESIRE A tale of five cities

I need to understand how a place on a map is also a place in history. (Adrienne Rich)1

Between 1987 and 1992, the number of strip clubs in major cities across the United States roughly doubled, suggesting that voyeurism was indeed the commercial sexual pursuit of choice in the age of AIDS.2 As Eric Scigliano observed in the early 1990s, “the emerging battleground in the eternal war between prudery and prurience” was none other than the “ancient, quaint, and innocent-sounding art of the striptease.”3 At the time, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was just beginning to contemplate a political career on the national scene. It would be to his advantage to conclude his mayoral career by “purging” New York City in ways that reflected the values and policies of his conservative party. Giuliani’s crusade against the legal sex trades for straight and gay patrons alike began in earnest in 1994 with the development of a new zoning code (approved by the City Council and Planning Commission in 1995) that was aimed at forever changing the Big Apple’s infamous map of sexual desire.4 The trials and tribulations surrounding the enforcement of this ordinance, from 1995 through to the year 2001, made his anti-porn campaign the most widely publicized version of the “secure cities” plan. As noted in the previous chapter, the secure cities plan was devised by Charles Keating and Edwin Meese, among others, for the National Family Legal Foundation. The goal of the foundation was to train 1,000 lawyers to “secure” 1,000 cities by creating and implementing zoning codes that would eventually eliminate all dedicated, and hitherto legal, sexually oriented businesses in the United States (e.g., strip clubs, X-rated book stores, pom and video shops, etc.).5 The earlier anti-sex trade campaigns launched against the Burlesquers of the 1930s and 1940s targeted performers for indecent and immoral behavior. The rationale behind the secure cities plan, however, focuses on the illicit exhibitions of the spectators. It is based on the premise that sexually oriented businesses invariably provoke male consumers to all kinds of indecent and violent acts that degrade the entire city (e.g., engaging in prostitution, trafficking in drugs, participating in other mob-related activities—or engaging in vandalism, street brawls, and sexual assaults on women and children).

19

STRIP SHOW

To protect the citizens of New York City from such hazards, Giuliani’s zoning code banned any sex trade business larger than 10,000 square feet, and all sex trades from operating less than 500 feet from residences, churches, day-care centers, schools, and one another. The ordinance also gave the city the right to regulate all visible urban markers of the sex trades—that is, the right to remove any marquee or sign that did not meet with the approval of the zoning board. Because of the population density and the overlaps between commercial and residential zoning in New York, the implementation of the ordinance guaranteed the rapid demise of all such businesses. In order to avoid being accused of violating freedom of speech, Giuliani repeatedly announced that all legal sex trades in the city would be allowed to relocate to the wetlands of Staten Island or to the west-side piers of Manhattan. However, since the wetlands had no roads or infrastructure, and since both locations were remote and inconvenient to the rest of city life, such a move would probably lead to their speedy dissolution as well. Throughout his anti-sex trade campaign, Giuliani insisted that his goal was not to ban the selling of sexually explicit material per se, but rather to close any establishment exclusively dedicated to the marketing of such goods. In other words, the city would still permit newspaper stands and stores to sell sex videos and magazines—provided that these materials did not comprise more than 40 percent of their overall inventory. Technically, this edict would allow the strip clubs and porn shops to operate in their current locations if they limited their sexually oriented goods and performances to 40 percent of their stock and space. Thus, outwardly at least, Giuliani appeared less interested in actually forbidding the sale of erotic or pornographic goods than in eliminating any explicit signs of sexual desire (along with any signs of “social trouble” in all senses of the phrase) from the official map of his city. Community leaders rallied to the mayor’s cause. Chief executive counsel for New York City, Leonard Koerner, averred that in urban areas where adult stores flourished, non-sex trade businesses routinely went out of business leading to municipal “dead zones.” Queens city council member Karen Koslowitz lauded the campaign as “a fight to maintain a decent quality of life for our constituents and their families.” Dennis Saffran, director of the Center for the Community Interest (CCI), insisted that, far from being repressive, the new zoning code was “a sign of a new common sense of balance between individual and community rights that rejects the extreme positions of both the Civil Liberties Union and the censors.”6 Nevertheless, a coalition of over 100 adult video stores, peep shows, and topless bars, along with the New York Civil Liberties Union representing the industry’s customers, took the city’s new ordinance to federal court for violating the First Amendment. Harold Fahringer, head of the legal team for the coalition of strip clubs, maintained that the Mayor was in fact trying to legislate his own morality. “I do not think he’ll get away with it. It has nothing to do with these places causing crime or other social harms. What’s at the heart of this is he wants to ban this kind of entertainment.” Fahringer asserted that the zoning code would destroy 20

URBAN LOCATIONS OF DESIRE

what makes New York City “the greatest city in the world”—its high “tolerance for unorthodox views in every field, whether it be entertainment or political.”7 After months of waiting for the Federal Court of Appeals to decide whether his anti-sex trade ordinance was in fact constitutional, Giuliani attempted to get rid of strip clubs and porn shops by other means. During one of his weekly radio broadcasts, the mayor urged all like-minded and concerned citizens to photograph or videotape men going into and out of these establishments to deter business. Giuliani explained to his listening audience that it was legal for citizens to take pictures of people on city streets. He reassured “caller Dan” from Forest Hills, Queens, that this strategy would really “cut down on business… You know who goes into those shops anyway, right? You know the kind of people who would go in there. They probably wouldn’t want [other] people to know [about] that.” Norman Segal of the New York ACLU immediately took the mayor to task. Segal pointed out that while all citizens are free to use their cameras on the streets, it is illegal for an elected official to rally people to oppose any legal activity—be it the right to obtain an abortion, attend a political gathering, or visit a porn shop. Fahringer called the mayor’s photo shoot strategy “absolute insanity.” “What frightens me is enlisting citizens to engage in that kind of Big Brother activity in a free society. I just find it intolerable.”8 Giuliani, once again, defended his actions by insisting that places of adult entertainment posed a real and present danger to all New Yorkers. Anti-porn activists flocked to his defense, adding to the list of charges against the clubs the assertion not only that their entertainments degraded women by categorically depicting them as passive sex objects dominated by men, but that they triggered actual male violence against women. This formulation of gender, sexual desire, and representation is best summed up by the now famous anti-porn slogan coined by Robin Morgan: “Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice.”9 The harmfulsecondary-effects argument and the secure cities plan of Keating and Meese rest on this analogy as well. They too propose that places of entertainment dedicated to sexually explicit representations inevitably lead to rape—the rape of our neighborhoods and cities. The balance of this chapter explores the substance and legitimacy of all such arguments. To this end, it examines the locations, exterior designs, and advertisements of strip bars, clubs, and theatres (and the street scenes they produced) in five North American cities at the height of the striptease boom in the early 1990s. It was the omnipresence of these places of performance, and their spectacles of desire, that led directly to the instigation of the secure cities plan. Strip shows for white, middle-class, heterosexual males are discussed first. Their physical and social sites are then compared to similar shows for gay men, bisexuals, lesbians, and mixed audiences as a way of situating dominant heterosexual strip events and displays of desire as a part of a much larger socio-sexual discourse. Finally, the geographies of strip shows for straight men are compared to the shows for straight, similarly classed women—events that were all but ignored by the anti-porn and zoning campaigns of the last decade. 21

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Strip clubs for straight men: City “street scenes” in Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Houston, and Washington DC The sleazy nudie bar, hidden away in a municipal district of ill-repute, epitomizes for many both the cultural and the geographic location of the strip show for men. However, since the end of the Burlesque era, strip events have found their way into public forums as diverse as neighborhood bars, converted movie houses, theatres, restaurants, discotheques, luxurious nightclubs, and upscale sex emporiums. These places of performance are not only located in the danger zones of our cities, but in traditional business, entertainment, and shopping sectors as well. Marvin Carlson, Leslie Wade, and others interested in urban semiotics have pointed out that the locations of all places of performance—along with their exterior decorations, names, and general upkeep—not only structure the meanings of the show for the patrons within, but provide stories and narratives about both the city and the performance to the passer-by. In the words of Wade, erotic entertainments are “grounded in the cultural and mythic connotations of the street, the quarter, and the city itself.”10 The urban zoning code for strip clubs in Montreal, Quebec, stands in stark contrast to New York City’s latest anti-sex trade ordinance. Most of the well-known clubs and cabarets for straight men are situated in the relatively upscale, stylish downtown district along Saint Catherine Street, where they share the boulevard with conventional movie houses, theatres, department stores, four-star hotels, and boutiques.11 Despite this gentrified and otherwise mainstream location, strip clubs and sex shops blatantly advertise their presence with prominent marquees; neat, tuxedoed door-persons posted in their entranceways; and names that often refer expressly to the sex trades (e.g., La Cave du Sexe, Chateau du Sexe, Club Super Sexe, etc.). On Saint Catherine Street in Montreal, sexual entertainments are then rendered not only readily accessible—but, apparently, fashionable. As part of the sexual gestalt of this city and district, some of the clubs for men exhibit giant exterior murals, neon signs, and posters of nude or semi-nude females and female body parts. Cabaret Penthouse features a doorway flanked by a huge pair of disembodied legs. Club Super Sexe sports a marquee offering a triumvirate of comic book-style “supersexy” heroines flying across the sky, decked out in minuscule bikinis and traditional superhero capes and boots. Chateau du Sexe and Club Le Scandale display enormous posters of pinups and nudes who stare down at the traffic and parking lots from second-story windows. Some critics and passers-by may find these street exhibitions degrading for the ways they “objectify” women—and for the ways they make what is culturally understood as private so very public. Such sizable marquees and posters were obviously designed to stop traffic. However, their towering depictions of overtly sexual women also suggest something of the dominatrix—and with the dominatrix, the transgressive male desire to be sexually overwhelmed or enslaved by a woman. In the street scene created by the exterior design of Cabaret Penthouse,

22

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comparatively tiny male customers even must enter the club by going between the disembodied legs of a man-consuming giantess. As almost any classified, personal ad section in newspapers across North America will attest, male fantasies about female sexual control and power are far from uncommon. From San Francisco to Syracuse, men of all socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities advertise their desires for the sexually expert dominatrix. Sex trade researchers and feminist critics Anne McClintock, Laura Kipnis, and Pat Califia also note separately that within S/M communities and S/ M entertainments, the majority of straight men participate not as dominants, but as submissives.12 Nancy Friday’s anthology of male sexual fantasies, Men in Love: Men’s Sexual Fantasies, suggests that most men at least occasionally fantasize about being seduced by sexually aggressive women or about participating in scenes where erotic control oscillates between partners, rather than imagining themselves to be the sole dominators of the action.13 Signs of immense erotically demanding women affixed to the facade of a strip club may also reassure potential customers that once inside, the pressures of sexual performance they endure in “real life” are transferred to a brigade of women now responsible for the whole show. On the marquee of Club Super Sexe, where halfdressed “supersexy” action heroines patrol the skies, sexual heroics (rather than sexual passivity or moral depravity) are clearly fastened to the figures of females. Fred Small has proposed that such spectacles break gender norms because they offer males “a dream vacation” from their expected roles as the pursuers or initiators of sex.14 The logos and advertisements of Cabaret Penthouse and Club Super Sexe are arguably among the most unusual in the sex trades. But Berkeley Kaite contends that even stereotypical Playboy-like pictorials, such as those adorning the windows of Club Le Scandale, can suggest scenarios of female sexual control. Far from portraying women as powerless passive objects, Kaite argues that these representations also impose sexual demands or controls on their viewers, because even the most macho of spectators is still likely to imagine what he must do to prove his manhood—and, by extension, what the subject(s) of his desire may think about him or want from him. Kipnis discusses a similar scenario in her analysis of Hustler magazine. She insists that while this genre of porn plays to the standard male fantasy of the always accessible, always horny and willing bimbette, such material can include visions of the “haughty, superior, rejecting, upper-class bitchgoddess.” The attractiveness, and hence the “class,” of the “bitch-goddess” give her the power to reject and humiliate men. Kipnis writes, “Doesn’t this reek of (male) disenfranchisement rather than any certainty about male power over women? The fantasy life here is animated by cultural disempowerment in relation to a sexual caste system and a social class system.” Kipnis slyly observes that she is sometimes offended by pornography as well—but not for the typical reasons. Kipnis states that she becomes disgusted by porn when she in turn imagines that some “hairy, belching” man might attempt to use her (beautiful, classy) image to fantasize that she, or a person like her, could ever lustfully pant over the likes of him—over his ugly, “bloated body.”15 23

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The scenarios described by Kaite and Kipnis together underscore the fact that the end point of all representation rests not with the subjects it depicts, but with the socio-psycho responses it inspires in the viewer—which are often contradictory and oscillating. The premise that the “dramatic action” of any representation is completed by the varying mind/body responses of the spectator (mediated by culture) is particularly significant in terms of examining traditional assumptions about the social effects and dynamics of pornography. Carol J.Clover puts it this way: Although our systems of censorship and our production codes concern themselves with the status of bodies “up there” (on the photograph, on the canvas or screen), what is really at stake is the body “down here,” the body of the viewer. Pornography’s shame lies in the fact that it has one simple, unequivocal intention: to excite the consumer.16 Advocates of the harmful-secondary-effects argument and anti-porn feminists return the analysis of pornography’s operations to the body of the spectator. But their insistence that the “excitement” experienced by all consumers of porn inevitably leads them to a homogenized response of creating havoc on the streets is clearly complicated by the map of desire provisionally imprinted on Montreal’s Saint Catherine Street. One may be tempted to dismiss the strip clubs of Montreal, and the social decorum and acceptance they produce, as a strictly European phenomenon. Montreal, one could argue, is a French-styled city whose entire culture seems to regard or imagine sex differently (by puritanical American standards). However, the social geography and topography of strip shows in two distinct and very American cities—Washington, DC, and Houston, Texas—also produce maps of desire that cannot be reconciled with the theory that the mere presence of sexually oriented businesses results in urban carnage. Unlike the blatantly advertised Montreal clubs, strip events in these two cities maintain a relatively low profile. The street scenes they create suggest that sex and desire are indeed experiences that should be kept “under wraps”—which is in line with the more American concern and obsession with “pornography’s shame.” The majority of middle-class strip clubs and bars in Washington, DC, are located in Upper Georgetown, and around what Fodor’s 1991 travel guide to the capital described as the “high density night life area of 19th and M Streets, Northwest…located near the city’s lawyer-lobbyist-filled downtown.”17 Most of the DC clubs are housed in sedate brownstones or in buildings with small storefronts. Their locations are marked with modest signs and marquees in terms of size, color, and lighting—and with names that do not directly suggest or refer to the sex trades (e.g., Joanna’s, Archibald’s, Camelot, Royal Palace, Good Guys, J.P.’s, etc.). Instead of windows plastered with posters of generic nude or partially nude females, most places display small theatre placards listing the names of the performers. The placards are sometimes accompanied by coy headshots of the 24

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dancers for the benefit of their informal fan clubs and claques. Resident and strip show patron “Mike” explained that the placards and headshots allowed the “regulars” to follow their favorite strippers from club to club, “sort of like following your favorite baseball team around the country to different stadiums.”18 Many of the upscale strip clubs for men in Houston are also situated in and around a district known for its political and social movers and shakers. Houston’s Galleria sector has long been touted as an international center for finance and commerce.19 Here, too, the exterior designs of the clubs take on the ambiance of the area, often making it difficult for the casual visitor to know from their street presence alone that they house sexual entertainments. Rick’s Bar and Restaurant is cited in Fodor’s Texas, editions 1990–2000, as one of the classiest Burlesque clubs in town.20 Rick’s large single-story structure, tan stucco exterior walls, greentiled roof, green and white awnings, and surrounding landscape suggest the look of a nice well-kept “yuppie” or “bobo” restaurant. The Men’s Club, Rick’s chief competitor, is housed in an immense coral-pink building with an outdoor fountain encircled by palm trees. The complex includes an outdoor swimming pool, an indoor health club, a gift shop, and a hair salon—all of which create the appearance of a plush health spa or a country club. Caligula XXI, designed by architect Robert Schuh, is an imposing structure with white faux stone walls and majestic columns reminiscent of an ancient Roman ruin or a fantasy bank.21 In this city, located in the land of mythic oil wells and wealth, sex and desire are represented through symbols of conspicuous consumption. The sexual performances of the female dancers are the obvious commodities of the clubs. However, the exterior designs of these places of performance foreground the bodies of the male patrons instead. They indicate what will be done to the men (“the bodies down here”) through the various pamperings of food, drink, grooming, and “spa treatments.” The geographies and topographies of the strip clubs in Montreal, Washington, DC, and Houston collectively represent dominant heterosexual male desires as “decadent,” “opulent,” “obscure,” “fashionable,” “slavish,” “heroic,” “show biz-like,” and so on—but never as natural. Sexual desire in Western culture is, in fact, rarely represented through signifiers of the “normal.” Elizabeth Cowie observes that, unlike sexual relations which can be regulated by the state through institutions such as marriage, “sexual desire is often taken to be something beyond social organization or rational control.”22 That is one reason why erotic arousal is so frequently experienced, theorized, and portrayed as being downright “dangerous” as well. This coupling of sexual desire and danger was explicitly played out in the street scenes of New York City’s Times Square area of old (i.e., pre-Giuliani), and in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Both Times Square and the Tenderloin have endured long periods of physical decline, debauchery, and crime. In her study of the sex trades, Califia proposes that the urban danger zone may actually serve the “character” of the city. By bracketing certain evils from the districts outside, the danger zone creates “a mythology of sexual normalcy which has little or no relationship to the actual frequency of perverse sexual fantasies and practice.”23 In 25

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other words, a designated district of ill-repute lends the other tracts of the city, and their inhabitants, the appearance of being “wholesome” by comparison. Some sex trade entrepreneurs deliberately choose to become denizens of such nether regions—not because they allow their patrons to run rampant, but because these areas protect the customers to a certain extent from the prying eyes and harassment of those outside. For others, the transgressive social position of the danger zone enhances the erotic experience because it provides both real and mimetic instances of risk-taking. The leitmotif of patron risk-taking again spotlights the body of the spectator and contradicts the notion that all male sexual pleasures are founded on a desire to dominate others. In addition to the celebrity of their tainted reputations, Times Square and the Tenderloin are also known for the traditional theatre districts they adjoin or encompass. Many of the strip clubs in both districts advertise their whereabouts with bold neon signs and explicit posters, but use names that reflect those of their mainstream neighbors (e.g., New Century Theatre, the Market Street Cinema, and O’Farrell Theatre in the Tenderloin; and the New Paris Revue, Show World, and Flash Dancers in Times Square). This marriage of theatre, danger, sex, and the exotic was best exemplified by the exterior designs of each district’s most infamous place of striptease performance: the O’Farrell Theatre in the Tenderloin and Show World in Times Square. The O’Farrell Theatre was the brainchild of the Mitchell Brothers, the producing team for one of the most popular porn films of all times, Behind the Green Door (1978). This enormous entertainment complex boasts an entire exterior wall covered by a mural of exotic animals and birds cavorting and hunting amid lifesize palm trees and other lush flora. The impressively rendered painting advertises the O’Farrell as a sexual paradise for straight men. As such, it provides grist for the feminist critique that women in our society are too often viewed and represented as something less than human—as animal-like exotic “others.” This portrayal of women sets up a reciprocal form of racism that operates by feminizing all nonWestern and so-called “primitive” cultures and terrains.24 However, the O’Farrell’s representation of male sexual bliss cannot be reduced to dramatic narratives about men colonizing or dominating exotic others and their tropical terrain alone. For the mural clearly portrays an untamed wilderness with all of its associated thrills and risks intact. If this carnal jungle were simply scripted to be controlled or “civilized” by the consumers in the end—the entire design would quickly lose its appeal for the many aficionados of porn who find pleasure in the persistent presence of danger, whether real or mimetic.25 The notorious Show World, situated in the urban jungle that once was New York City’s Times Square, created a complementary street exhibition on carnal desire and the pleasures of danger. The marquees and neon signs announcing Show World’s block-long presence on 42nd Street were constructed to suggest an array of circus or carnival tents. Circus and carnival tents are, of course, known to house spectacles of death-defying feats and “freakish” exhibitions that thwart the laws of “man” and “nature.” Under Show World’s big top, female strip events and 26

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other sexual entertainments for straight male audiences were located on the ground and upper floors of the complex. But events that featured transgender dancers (pre-operation men to women with intact penises and hormonally induced female breasts) and their attending mix of audiences (e.g., gay, bisexual, and straight men) were relegated to the basement of the center. In this subterranean world, marked by the logos of the carnival, dominant definitions of femaleness, maleness, heterosexuality, and homosexuality had little or no relevance. Long before Giuliani arrived on the scene, the Women Against Pornography organization (WAP) targeted Show World as the flagship of the sex trade offenders responsible for, among other things, the terrible decline of Times Square.26 During the 1980s, WAP presented lectures and led “tours” of Times Square’s strip clubs, porn shops, and sex emporiums to awaken the public to the horrors of the sex trades—and to annoy (i.e., harass) local sex trade entrepreneurs and their customers. A decade later, when Giuliani finally received notice that the federal courts had ruled in favor of his anti-sex trade ordinance, he sent New York City police detectives to Show World first. The detectives made sweeps every 30 minutes to complete as soon as possible the three visits required by the law to close down such places of business. According to Hanna, proponents of the harmful-secondary-effects argument (feminists and conservative officials alike) seldom offer specific data indicating whether the legal sex trades in question moved into an area already in decline, whether they actually furthered the problem, or whether the district’s demise was caused by additional factors. Hanna bases her findings on her own eight years of research—as well as that of certified city planners such as Bruce McLaughlin. McLaughlin conducted a seven-year national study on strip clubs for men (1988– 1995). He too concluded that there was no concrete evidence to support the claim that strip clubs invariably destroyed neighborhoods or encouraged vice and crime.27 Kipnis states that our culture requires us, as part of good citizenry, to teach ourselves and others to view pornography as a form of violence. We are obligated to deplore porn by predicting disaster (such as the harmful-secondary-effects argument) to enforce certain moral codes—to which the notion, “sexual desire= danger,” is crucial. For Kipnis, the “zoning” of pornography is essentially a class issue—a rejection of the “low” and the “vulgar.” Not all porn consumers are lower class—but their use of porn becomes a lower-class thing that must be removed from public view because it naturally offends the sensibilities of the dominant, and somehow more “pure,” middle and upper classes. Activist and sex trade worker Jo Weldon concurs with Kipnis’s argument, insisting that New York City’s zoning wars against the strip clubs and porn shops were essentially class warfare.28 It is worth noting, then, that of all the more sizeable and elaborate sex emporiums and strip clubs in North America, Show World was perhaps the most eclectic in terms of the “class,” “ethnicity,” “race,” and sexual preferences of its managers, performers, and patrons.29 Theatre historian Bernard Sobel categorized the original American Burlesque 27

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show—with the stripper at its center—as a theatre of the working people. When the Burlesque show was banned from the legitimate Broadway stage in the 1940s, many of the dancers went to work in the area’s exclusive nightclubs and continued to bare their breasts. Damon Runyon devoted one of his syndicated newspaper columns to the resulting popular complaints about the new exorbitant ticket prices and the class discrimination of such places in “Runyon Views: Poor Man Has Been Robbed.”30 While Giuliani was in the process of shutting down the strip clubs and sex emporiums of Times Square, film star Nicole Kidman was stripping and baring it all on Broadway in David Hare’s new play The Blue Room—a “legit” drama and entertainment about hollow sexual relationships. Norman Siegel responded to the situation by stating, “It’s highbrow versus lowbrow in the city, and the people who’ve created this new regime will allow the highbrow and censor the lowbrow.”31 Recently, Supreme Court Justice Souter recanted his original opinion on nude dancing and the harmful-secondary-effects argument. In the 1991 US Supreme Court ruling, Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., Souter espoused that one could simply assume that strip clubs and other adult venues produced negative secondary effects on city streets. Therefore, such businesses could be regulated by the state without obstructing the First Amendment. Again, Souter’s 1991 opinion was responsible for much of the revamping of the zoning laws governing adult businesses in the United States throughout the 1990s. However, in the subsequent Supreme Court ruling on the matter, Erie v. Pap’s A.M. (2000), Souter was one of three dissenting Justices in a decision that also upheld the state’s right to ban nude dancing in adult clubs by a vote of six to three. This time Souter wrote that a city or state could not simply infer that adult establishments produced harmful side effects, but had to offer concrete, objective proof to support their claims. To protect freedom of speech, he recommended that Erie’s case be sent back to the lower courts to provide hard evidence of “the seriousness of the threatened harm” and “the efficacy of its chosen remedy.” In a discussion about his shift in position from the 1991 ruling, Souter explained that he had since rethought the issue: “I should have demanded the evidence then, too, and my mistake calls to mind Justice Jackson’s foolproof explanation of a lapse of his own, when he quoted Samuel Johnson, ‘Ignorance, sir, ignorance.”’32 Of the Justices who voted to uphold the state’s right to regulate strip club nudity in Erie v. Pap’s A.M., Sandra Day O’Connor, William H.Rehnquist, Anthony M.Kennedy, and Stephen G.Breyer insisted that nude dancing may be banned to reduce crime (i.e., cities can require dancers to wear at least pasties and a G-string). None of the Justices discussed how the wearing of pasties and a Gstring would actually reduce the purported harmful side effects. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, stated in a concurring opinion that there was no need even to consider the presence or absence of secondary effects. The traditional power of the government included the fostering of “good morals”—and one could indeed consider dancing nude in private adult venues to be immoral. In this way, the opinions of all the Justices, whether dissenting or sanctioning, returned to the sticky issue of legislating sexual morality.33 28

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The very “fact” that clusters of strip clubs and bars are found simultaneously in the flourishing areas and danger zones of some cities—including San Francisco and New York—offers more compelling “evidence” that highlights the biases of the harmful-secondary-effects argument. In addition to the Tenderloin, strip clubs in San Francisco are located around the North Beach sector of the city— an area that is also known as “Little Italy,” “Greenwich Village,” “London’s Soho,” and the “bohemian” district. While the travel guide Frommer’s San Francisco 1989–1990 warned women against visiting the Tenderloin unescorted, it categorized the North Beach district as a relatively safe place with Las Vegas entertainments.34 North Beach—with its gaudy night spots and strip clubs that still bear names like the Garden of Eden, Condors, and Hungry ‘i’s—was described by The Real Guide: San Francisco and the Bay Area as a place where “poetry meets porn.”35 During the early 1990s, white middle-class strip clubs in Manhattan were scattered across three significant business districts—Wall Street, Chelsea (also known as the garment and florist center), and the East Side midtown shopping area. Instead of the giant neon marquees and explicit posters that typically marked the sex trade businesses of Times Square, strip clubs in those districts advertised their presence in accordance with the ambiance of their respective neighborhoods. Outside of the Times Square area, the largest single concentration of straight strip clubs in New York City was located in the borough of Queens along Queens Boulevard. Queens Boulevard is a densely populated thoroughfare spanning several different neighborhoods—each with its own mix of ethnic groups: from the Irish, Asian, and South American residents of Sunnyside, to Rego Park’s Russian, Jewish, Asian, and Indian populations, to the African-American, African-Caribbean, Greek, and Italian residents of Long Island City. The Boulevard is also home to a tightly packed array of delicatessens and diners, upscale restaurants, movie houses, large and small department stores, Mom-and-Pop establishments, schools, places of worship, and residential buildings.36 Here, established sex trade and non-sex trade businesses operated side by side for years. On the far more elite, male strip club-free Austin Street that runs parallel to the Boulevard, family-run boutiques and shops were routinely put out of business— not by strip clubs—but by the big corporate retailers and the ever-skyrocketing rents that accompanied them. Austin Street continues to have other woes as well. The many visitors to its various restaurants, nightclubs, and movie theatres create their own brand of havoc on the streets. Some drivers illegally park their cars clogging traffic. Others keep residents awake until the wee hours of the morning with their drunken revelries—which frequently include vandalism of neighborhood property and cars. Teenagers, drawn to the area by the numerous movie theatres, hang out on street corners teasing and harassing one another—and sometimes other passers-by. Reports of rape, date rape, club brawls, and muggings have made headlines in all the local newspapers.37 Curiously, none of the municipal studies on strip clubs to date (including those authorized by Giuliani) compare the instances of vice, crime, and quality-of-life 29

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disruptions attributed to the legal sex trades to instances of street trouble associated with other kinds of entertainments (e.g., discos, restaurants, mainstream movie theatres, private clubs, and bars). The incongruity of this situation is perhaps best expressed by one New Yorker, Laura Michaels, who was quoted in the New York Times. Michaels complained that with the closing of the unobtrusive strip club on her block, she feared the opening of yet another noisy disco or dance club whose patrons by contrast made the quality of life in her neighborhood unbearable by their loud drunken behavior and vandalism.38 In the words of Milton Anthony, 78-year-old owner of Billy’s Topless (now Billy’s Stopless) in the Chelsea area of New York City, “I can understand what Giuliani did on 42nd Street. He cleared up a real lousy area…But that doesn’t mean the whole city has to shut down. We’ve been here for 28 years—no trouble.” Edward Kirkland, chair of the Chelsea Preservation and Planning committee for Community Board 4 confirmed the fact that there has never been a citizen complaint lodged against Billy’s or its customers.39 During late summer and early fall of 1998, the city of New York was finally able to shut down a number of strip clubs and porn shops, including the Harmony Burlesque in Lower Manhattan—one of the very few sex trade businesses owned and operated by a woman. The Harmony was also targeted because it featured strip shows in conjunction with “lap-dancing”—an act in which half-naked female performers sit on the laps of fully clothed patrons and “friction dance.” Many other strip clubs and sex emporiums, including Show World, terminated their presentation of all such nether activities. They complied in full with the ordinance’s 40/60 rule, stocking 60 percent of their inventories and spaces with non-sex trade items (mostly New York souvenirs such as T-shirts, buttons, ashtrays, etc.). They also limited the nudity of their formerly topless and bottomless dancers to skimpy swimsuits, lingerie, or T-shirts with underwear. Giuliani attempted to close them down anyway, arguing that if these places did not violate the letter of the law, they violated the spirit of the law. For despite their new inventories and the newly acquired modesty of their performers, these establishments continued to make most of their money vis-à-vis entertainments specifically designed to sexually excite the consumers. This time, however, the courts ruled in favor of the clubs, stating that since they had complied with all aspects of the ordinance as written, the clubs were in accordance with the law.40 The Giuliani administration was still able to figure out a way to shut down Show World within the year. It charged Apple Photo ID, one of Show World’s many new souvenir vendors renting concession space in the emporium, with the possible crime of selling stolen goods. Show World immediately evicted the vendor. The emporium’s lawyer, Fahringer, argued that none of Show World’s managers had prior knowledge of, or had been involved in, the alleged crime. It was to no avail. Show World’s owner Richard Basciano finally announced that his organization was getting out of the sex trade business. He was moving forward with plans to turn the former sex palace into a virtual reality arcade that would titillate the senses of its patrons through other means.41 30

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By May 2000, Show World was again advertising with signs and a barker shouting, “Live Girls!”, “Live Girls are Back at Show World!” However, in this instance, the “live girls” were actually members of an avant-garde theatre company who were performing a take-off of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, titled The Show World Reunion Show. The Reunion Show included (clothed) characters reminiscent of Show World’s disc jockeys, dancers, and customers of yore. The story of the Reunion Show, like Shakepeares’s Measure for Measure, revolved around the enforcement of out-of-date sexual laws and the hypocrisy of state and religious officials. New York Times reporter Shaila K.Dewan writes of Show World’s foray into avant-garde drama, “in a city where enforced morality and rents are both on the rise, it amounts to a meeting of endangered minds: sex entertainment and fringe theater.”42 The latest statutes governing the sex trades in New York City and elsewhere have produced a few other cultural curiosities. Some dedicated strip bars and clubs have indeed become part-time souvenir hawkers, creating potential situations where unsuspecting tourists may wander in by mistake. Other places attempted to get around the laws governing adult entertainments by opening their doors to teenagers. Such establishments championed a PG-13/PG-17 rating system similar to the one used by film and television—which deems nudity and some suggestion of sexual relations appropriate for minors 13–17 when accompanied by an adult. As cabarets open to both adults and minors, the clubs could then legally utilize 100 percent of their space, stock, and trade for sexual entertainment without having to relocate.43 In retrospect, the Giuliani administration may have fared far better in its stated quest to protect the quality of life for all citizens of the Big Apple if it had targeted specific night-time entertainment establishments, sex trade and non-sex trade alike, that interfered with neighborhood life, rather than instituting a blanket sweep of all exotic dancing establishments. City limits: “Sexual minorities” and the “politics of visibility/invisibility” Califia observes that the social geography of most cities reveals “a map of the hierarchy of desire, from the valorized to the stigmatized.” This urban segregation of dominant and marginalized sexual desires and preferences, in turn, often reflects “an attempt to reduce conflict between opposing sets of desires and the roles people adopt to try to fulfill those desires.”44 As one might expect, most strip events for sexual minorities and patrons of color were physically separated from the shows slated for middle-class white men. Many of the straight clubs in Washington, DC, are scattered around 19th and M Streets and Upper Georgetown Northwest. Gay bars featuring go-go boys and strip acts (e.g., Badlands and Rascals) are located closer to Dupont Circle, the hub of the gay and lesbian community. Other clubs that offer striptease entertainments for gay audiences (e.g., La Cage aux Follies, Ziegfeld’s, and Tracks DC) are situated 31

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in the “rougher” Southeast section of the city. During the early 1990s, Tracks DC featured a weekly strip show for gay men called “Flesh,” as well as an exotic dance event for lesbians dubbed “Lesbo-a-Go-Go” (which included a few numbers that suggested stripping, but no actual nudity). The Southeast district is also home to straight “black” strip bars and clubs including Isle’s, the Penthouse, the Foxy Playground, and Muncambo.45 The only establishment that featured ongoing strip entertainments for straight women was the co-ed Hangar Club, located just outside the boundaries of Washington, DC, in Camp Springs, Maryland. Urban demarcations between dominant and marginalized desires were even more conspicuous in Houston and Montreal. As mentioned earlier, many of the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs in Houston are located in the Galleria section (e.g., Rick’s, the Men’s Club, and Caligula XXI). La Bare, the city’s only strip club for straight women is situated there as well. Within the boundaries and immediate outskirts of this prestigious area, however, there were no visible signs of exotic dance events for gay audiences. The Colorado, the sister club of Rick’s, is located a little outside of the Galleria. Robert Watters, former owner of both Rick’s and the Colorado, stated that this location allowed the equally upscale Colorado to attract a more diverse clientele in terms of race, class, and ethnicity.46 In Montreal—where the blatant street decorations and advertisements of strip clubs for heterosexual men continue to be a part of accepted city life—clubs for bisexuals, gay men, and straight women indicate their presence with relatively sedate signs and names. Compare, for example, the names of “Club 281” for straight women, “The Campus” for gay men, and even “Bistro Bunnies” for bisexual and mixed audiences, to “La Cave du Sexe” and “Club Super Sexe” for straight men. While the majority of exotic dance shows for heterosexual men are located along the central portions of Saint Catherine Street, nearly all events for sexual minorities and straight women are found at the furthest reaches of the thoroughfare, or between the downtown area and Old Montreal. Califia’s observation that “opposing sets of desires” in most urban environments tend to be segregated to reduce real-life conflicts suggests another spin on the harmful-secondary-effects argument. That is, her observation implies that much of the problems surrounding the adult entertainment industry are generated not by the clubs per se, but by those intolerant of sexual practices and expressions that differ from their own. The history of the Bar Apollon provides a case in point. The Bar Apollon, located in the central downtown area of Montreal, initially opened as a strip club for gay men. According to the manager, “Maurice,” the straight men frequenting the clubs down the street immediately began to harass and fight with the gay patrons of the Apollon. To resolve the clash of differing desires and still remain in business, the owners of the Apollon switched their clientele to straight women—but continued to feature more or less the same performers and dance routines without further incident.47 When I related this story of trouble on the streets to several different lecture/ discussion groups on striptease and like entertainments,48 some members from each group insisted that the anecdote made complete sense to them. They explained 32

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that the situation was understandable, not simply because the Bar Apollon “went heterosexual” to appease the bigots, but because, in their opinion, “most guys who strip for women are gay anyway.” The assumption that most male exotic dancers “are gay anyway” is unmistakably allied with institutional homophobia, heterosexism, and sexism. This belief also foregrounds another significant complication intrinsic to any so-called “mapping” of sexualities and desires in events like striptease (including this one). For, in Montreal and elsewhere, both female and male strip shows are composed of performers and spectators with samesex preferences, performers and spectators with heterosexual orientations, and performers and spectators whose preferences exceed the limits of any such category. This stratification of desires occurs in most strip clubs and shows no matter how they are advertised or where they are physically located in the city. Freelance stripper Johnny Rotten identified himself as a straight male who enjoyed many years of performing for both straight women and gay men in clubs and private homes from Manhattan to Long Island, New York. Donna Foxx, a featured stripper for the former Show World, explained that her boyfriend “Joe” wanted to strip for Chippendales, but “did not make the cut” because “Joe didn’t have the traditional body-builder physique.” Instead of hanging up his G-string, “Joe” elected to dance in gay clubs like the Show Palace and the Gaiety. Ron Martin, the executive officer of the ostensibly straight Show World and the gay Show Palace, insisted that straight male dancers regularly performed for gay audiences. “Ron X” the owner-manager of the gay club Chez Jean Pierre in Montreal, and “Karl,” an exotic dancer from the same club, estimated that more than half of the male strippers who worked at the Chez Jean Pierre were straight. The manager (name withheld) of the gay Nob Hill Cinema in San Francisco stated that at least 25 percent of the male dancers who worked for him were straight as well. Debi Sundahl—a longtime stripper for the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, the publisher of On Our Backs, a producer and performer in the lesbian Blush Productions and Fatale Videos, and the founder and director of the lesbian strip show for women “BurLEZk”—insisted that while many lesbians strip for men, female strippers who label themselves straight also participated in her shows for lesbians and women. In sum, straight, bisexual, and gay men perform strip acts for women. Straight, bisexual, and gay males perform strip acts for gay men. Straight women, bisexual females, and lesbians perform strip acts for straight men. And straight women, bisexual females, and lesbians perform strip acts for lesbians.49 The litany above is by no means an attempt to locate (i.e., to affirm or to disprove) the stated sexual identities of specific strippers. Rather, it is an attempt to demonstrate the extent to which a theatrical reality can inform and enrapture an audience. Thus, such performances, however they are mandated in terms of sexual preference, also remain open to the possibility that varying sexualities and contradictory positions of desire may inhabit a fantasy space together (which for many is part of the appeal). In the words of Brandon Holley and Gia Kourlas, two self-defined straight women who regularly patronized female strip shows for men: 33

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We don’t go to strip bars (for men) because we think it’s cool, and we don’t go with our boyfriends. We go because we enjoy women, though we don’t see it as a feminist statement. It’s more about titillation, about showing up where you’re neither expected nor desired. And it’s not the reaction from the patrons we care about—it’s the strippers’ opinions that matter.50 “Josie,” this duo’s favorite stripper, stated that many dancers, including herself, love to perform for women in clubs for men. “Women get preferential treatment— dancers make out with them, which rarely happens with men. If they’re hot chicks, girls will molest them.”51 Some critics contend that within the setting of a “gentlemen’s” club, any pleasure experienced by female participants is ultimately subsumed by the desires and sexual interests of the men. Male patrons, for example, may use the acts of “women molesting other women” for their own titillation by imagining themselves part of a threesome. However, Holley, Kourlas, and Josie emphatically stated that they instigated the action for their own purposes. Part of their pleasure may well have come from the fact that the male patrons were watching them—that the men were driven wild by imagining themselves in a scene that only the women got to play out. Playing with “girl on girl” acts for male viewers may garner Josie additional tips, but stirring or controlling the desires of others, directly or tangentially, can also be a powerful aphrodisiac to one’s own. Holley and Kourlas, of course, wrote about their strip club experience for Time Out/New York, knowing full well that it would be consumed by still others—female and male, gay and straight—and they got paid for their efforts as well. One could rightly argue that female heterosexual privilege also figures into Holley and Kourlas’s scene of pleasure. As two self-defined straight women, Holley and Kourlas can flirt with different modes of desire and return to the mainstream or vanilla fold without ever being subjected to the social stereotyping and intolerance that sexual minorities face—such as the original gay patrons of the Bar Apollon. Nevertheless, this truism still cannot account, in full, for the disparate desires and behaviors manifested by both the female and male participants in the clubs frequented by Holley and Kourlas. Several women interviewed for this book stated that they occasionally patronized strip clubs for men to fantasize about being strippers. A number of other self-described straight women and lesbians reported that they went to the clubs to fantasize about having sex with women. One interviewee—“Helen” from Bayside, Queens—explained that she occasionally patronizes strip bars for men to experience “what men feel like when they’re turned on by sexy women.”52 A generation ago, Teresa de Lauretis wrote that one of the greatest challenges facing contemporary feminist and lesbian theorists was to define exactly what constitutes an authentic female sexuality. De Lauretis stated that, for her, an authentic female sexuality must be free from conventional gender expectations but, at the same time, not presuppose yet another essential or monolithic subject 34

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position.53 Judith Butler counters de Lauretis’s formulation by arguing that we can never be absolutely free of the dictates of culture—that all enactments of self, progressive or retro, sexual or non-sexual, take place in and through pre-existing (and therefore oppressive) structures.54 Lynn Segal turns both arguments around, by questioning all postulations of sexuality based on set categories. She writes: In sexology, feminist or otherwise, all experience is seen as manipulative, from the outside in, and the possibility of desire arising from and expressing contradictory, conflicting or quite literally impossible impulses cannot even be expressed, let alone explained, from within this framework.55 Segal’s proposition that experiences of sexual desire often elude or contest any kind of systematic social categorization—including the politically correct—is one of the major themes of this book. However, as Elin Diamond and others have pointed out, set categories remain the ordering principle of Western culture— especially with regard to gender, race, class, and sexual preference. Therefore, it is often necessary to take up what Diamond redefines as a “provisional” unified subject position—such as a stance of collective gay pride, or a national unionization of exotic dancers—to combat institutional discriminations. Diamond’s formulation of a provisional unified subject position (“strategic essentialism”) is an attempt to avoid the sometimes universalizing aspects of identity politics (which also concerned de Lauretis), without sacrificing the community solidarities needed for material social change.56 Marvin Carlson suggests that the more provisional or flexible one’s “truth claims” about identity, the closer one comes to a resistant performance where identities and subject positions become markers in an ironic play whose goal is really to question the process of representation itself, to ask what is at stake in the performance (social and theatrical) of ethnicity, gender, or sexuality—for whom, by whom, and to what end representation is taking place.57 Carlson takes his ideas from Butler, who cautions that we must always carefully examine who or what wields the social power to define a person’s identity.58 However, within the arena of the strip show, one’s authority to label or to construct social and sexual identities (as demonstrated by the provisional, self-proclaimed powers and pleasures asserted by Holley, Kourlas, and Josie) is not always sutured to conventional categories of power (i.e., social and economic privilege) as Butler’s exhortation implies. As explored further in the chapters that follow, the wielding of power within the frame of the strip show frequently makes visible, rather than conceals, the contradictory and oscillating desires and subject positions that make up even the most common sexual fantasies and erotic play.

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It is both ironic and illustrative of our culture’s long-standing binary structures and politics of sex that the only safe place for a public sharing of such varying desires outside of the clubs is none other than on the streets of the danger zone. In San Francisco’s Tenderloin sector, gay entertainment centers such as the Tearoom and the Campus advertise with massive billboards and marquees. These places of performance are not relegated to the furthest reaches of the district, but they are also centrally located—and only a few blocks from the straight shows presented at the Chez Paree and the New Century Theatre. This sharing of city space was even more pronounced in New York City’s Times Square of old. Straight and gay adult entertainment centers were situated next to or across the street from one another— with the heterosexual and transgender strip events of Show World steps away from the gay shows and porn movies featured at the Gaiety and Show Palace. In this one-time district of ill-repute, signs of heterosexual and homosexual male desires were located side by side, their presence, differences, and cross-overs not simply apparent, but lit up in neon. Of all the urban maps of desire reviewed for this book, strip shows for lesbian audiences were the least visible in terms of a public street presence. Most of the shows were subset within places and activities not exclusively dedicated to the presentation of strip events (Michele Levy’s XXX Club in Los Angeles being one of the very few exceptions). The “BurLEZk” shows and tours, under the direction of Debi Sundahl, operated out of the now defunct Baybrick Bar and Cabaret in San Francisco. The “Lesbo-A-Go-Go” show was offered once a week at Tracks in Washington, DC—a club primarily used by gay men. The Spectrum Disco in Brooklyn, New York (of Saturday Night Fever fame), presented a few female and male strip acts for mixed audiences on weekend nights. New York City’s Clit Club occasionally still features performances with go-go girls and exotic dancers. (Clit Club owner Julie Tolentino was herself a professional dancer.) Ad hoc or roaming performances and parties in San Francisco, Montreal, and New York sporadically featured routines by professional strippers and go-go dancers. Strip acts that fell under the umbrella of “performance art” for mixed and gay audiences included the butch/femme acts of Shelly Mars presented at the Tunnel in New York City and at the Baybrick in San Francisco; Janet Feindel’s one-woman show about the lives and tribulations of Canadian strippers sponsored by the WoW Cafe in New York City; and Annie Sprinkle’s various strippings in her Post-Post Porn Modernist show presented at the Sandy Meisner Theatre in New York City.59 Adrienne Rich once stated that mainstream culture repeatedly situates the phallus at the center of all socio-sexual discourses. Hence, it is “small wonder” that lesbians are “reported to be a more hidden population than male homosexuals.”60 Openly gay celebrities such as Tracy Chapman and Ellen DeGeneres, along with the many writings and activism of feminist and lesbian theorists and community leaders, are slowly shirting the sexual field of vision in popular culture. However, debates about public visibility and sexual minorities (whether couched in terms of the military, the Boy Scouts, marriage, mainstream television shows, or explicit sexual entertainments) persist to this day. 36

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During the late 1980s and early 1990s, questions about the constitution of authentic female sexualities and subject positions focused on the politics of visibility as well. Activist Camille A.Paglia (not to be confused with writer and academician Camille Paglia) suggested that events like “Lesbo-A-Go-Go” were subset and relatively rare—and in her opinion should remain so—because most lesbians did not want to replicate the objectification and degradation of the female body that occurs within heterosexual venues.61 Jill Dolan pointed out the social significances, but also the personal and political dangers, of publicly representing lesbian desires in an “era of political intolerance and sexual prudence.” She questioned whether such representations would become “neutralized” if they were viewable as commodities “consumable in a more mainstream economy” (e.g., straight men watching “girl-on-girl” acts for their own titillation).62 Phelan echoed similar concerns in her book Unmarked, written during the same time frame. Here, Phelan contends that many feminists, in their eagerness to define and render female sexual and social subjectivities visible, overlook a major stumbling block. By “going public” with their desires—both as a means of self-actualization and as a political statement against discrimination—sexual minorities and women risk subjecting themselves to the voyeuristic, fixing, fetishizing, and totalizing gazes of the hegemony. Phelan advocates instead a position of refusing to be “marked” at all. She suggests that sexual minorities and women should embrace their right to choose not to choose to ally or label themselves with specific sexual or social identities. To remain “unmarked” is to support a political strategy that resists and disrupts dominant culture’s destructive machinery of categorizing, labeling, and marginalizing others in order to maintain the power status quo. Phelan proposes that a position of invisibility resembles the operation of live theatre, which literally vanishes as soon as it is performed—remaining only in memory, where it “eludes regulation and control.”63 Other critics, such as Joan Nestle, unwaveringly advocate the personal/ political necessity of publicly representing lesbian desires in erotic or pornographic forms for lesbian spectators as a way of disrupting the limiting and oppressive socio-sexual discourses of mainstream culture.64 Califia champions this cause as well. But, like Dolan and Phelan, she is concerned about openly advertising such places and events, particularly in the light of an uneducated, heterocentric public: Heterosexuals would not tolerate the presence of, say, a well-dressed group of drag queens who invaded a singles bar, took pictures, interrupted couples to interview them about what happened in their childhoods to cause them to become patrons of this bar, pressured them to accept drinks in exchange for this information, and then attempted to pick them up and take them home for a spot of cross-dressing. Yet something very like this scenario happens nearly every weekend at many lesbian bars in the smaller cities and large towns.65

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Califia, nevertheless, remains optimistic about the future establishment of visible yet protected places for the pleasures and desires of sexual minorities. She insists that, as more women obtain greater financial resources, “there will be more material and labor available to create lesbian enclaves.” She charges her readers not to overlook the impact of “deviant individuals with unusual amounts of insight or resources” who, by their presence and actions, continue to alter and expand the boundaries of the city, “an anatomy which most people accept as if it were the map of their own bodies.”66 Strip shows for straight women: The “values” of a Broadway show? Strip events for straight women, like those for lesbian audiences, are generally also subset within other performance venues and activities. However, these events are additionally “strange” because they are often quite visible in terms of a public presence—and, at the same time, culturally dismissed or ignored as entertainments that do not really sexually excite their consumers. Thus, they too foreground questions about the efficacy of female sexual visibility, but from within the confines and expectations of middle-class, heterosexual privilege. During the early 1990s, strip shows for women were regularly advertised in both local and national newspapers. Male strippers were featured, not only as “pin-ups” in novelty beefcake calendars, but as frequent guests on all the top television talk shows in the United States. Despite this visibility, strip shows for women were rarely ever criticized by anti-porn feminists and activists—or by the conservative right. Nor were they ever raided by police or prosecuted under the law for potentially causing trouble on the streets. One reason for this immunity most likely rests on the commonly held belief that heterosexual females, however they may boast, do not normally respond to visual, or even tactile, secondary sexual stimuli in the same way that men and sexual minorities do.67 Therefore, the attraction of these events must lie in the “fun factors” they offer—such as an evening-long joke about males playing sex object roles, or a “girls’ night out” where actants get to let off steam by yelling and dancing. The show’s aura of “innocent fun” is further upheld by its typical geographic locations within the city, and by the other social codes that surround its advertisements and performance. Many strip events for straight women are located in urban or suburban areas that specialize in traditional entertainments for the privileged classes—like shopping. The original Chippendales New York club was situated in a row of discos, nightclubs, and yuppie restaurants lining First Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Bloomingdale’s department store and other New York City shopping landmarks were only a few blocks away. Danielle’s, a restaurant nightclub located on Austin Street in Queens (another haven for consumers of designer clothes and posh restaurants), presented a weekly male strip show for women.68 Escapes, on Long Island, New York, was actually part of a small shopping center that included a supermarket, a family video store, an ice cream parlor, several 38

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clothing shops, a pizza palace, and a Chinese restaurant. Sugar Shack II, located in Stone Park just outside of Chicago proper, was strategically situated across the street from one of the largest malls in the area. These places of performance also offered other kinds of entertainment besides strip shows.69 Chippendales New York, Escapes, Danielle’s, and the Sugar Shack II all metamorphosed into co-ed discos as soon as the strippers took their last bows. Escapes, Chippendales Los Angeles at Carlos’n Charlie’s, and Danielle’s also featured multi-course dining experiences and events such as comedy shows, open mike nights, and sing-alongs. As an adjunct to this sharing of space, the entire genre of male strip events for women is often advertised as being itself a subset of traditional show biz entertainments. The Chippendales’ “Seeing is Believing” press kit announced that its performances were based on “the frenzy of a rock show” coupled with “the values of a Broadway musical.” The 1990 souvenir program for the Sugar Shack II makes a similar claim. One of the show’s featured dancers is quoted as stating that Sugar Shack events are “just like a Las Vegas Revue…it’s real serious entertainment.”70 Like other conventional theatre productions, strip shows for women usually begin at eight or nine o’clock at night and last anywhere from one and a half to three hours. The billboards and signs that mark their locations generally avoid any reference to adult entertainment. In contrast, strip events for men run all day and much of the night. Their advertisements usually include handbills, newspaper ads, and signs adorned with pictures or outlines of semi-nude dancers and indications as to whether they feature go-go, topless, bottomless, or nude dancing shows. Strip events for straight women are frequently also subset within the larger activity of the special occasion (e.g., birthday, bachelorette, anniversary, and divorce parties). Much of their advertising highlights this purpose or excuse for attendance. The official Chippendales New York press kit, “Seeing is Believing,” even featured a short skit in which two friends planned a bachelorette party for another friend. Some male attendance of strip shows also involves the special occasion (e.g., the stag party), but it is never touted as a major reason for strip club patronage. Finally, a few strip shows for women are subset within places that feature female strip shows for men. However, in this situation as well, the shows for women are partially obscured, because the far more socially worrisome and extensive strip events for men (in terms of time and space) stand out in relief. The Hangar Club, just outside of Washington, DC, features exotic dance events for women in the evenings, but most of its business is derived from the continuous female strip acts for men offered all day long. Similarly, Big Al’s/Big Alice’s in Peoria, Illinois, presents a male strip show for women in a small upstairs space several nights a week—while women perform for men, day and night, in the much larger performance space downstairs. All of these events may excite female and male patrons alike. But the total stock and income earned by the clubs, vis-à-vis staged representations or simulations of sex for female consumers, is in fact less than one half of their trade. 39

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In essence, most of the social locations and social codes that surround the performance and production of strip shows for women intrinsically appear to follow the 40/60 zoning rule of the secure cities plan. As discussed earlier, this rule limits the explicitly “sexual parts” of all entertainment businesses to less than one half of their trade for sale. Again, the original goal of the secure cities plan, and the various amendments to the zoning laws in the US during the 1990s, was to put an end to all dedicated sexually oriented businesses. There is no question that the physical and cultural sites of strip shows for middleclass, heterosexual women and men bear the imprints of the traditional sex-gender system. In turn, such geographies of desire could readily be used to explain or ratify certain conventional socio-sexual distinctions between women and men. For example, the proliferation of strip clubs for men could be interpreted as evidence of the male biological need for sexual variety, and the innate pleasure straight men presumably take in gazing at female flesh. This narrative is supported by the fact that there are relatively few strip events for women—and what little there is seems to feature “the values of a Broadway musical,” rather than any kind of “real” sexual entertainment. On the other hand, following Califia, one could argue that this charting of gender and desire highlights the fact that women as a group still do not have the economic resources, the time, or the social training to sustain sexual places all of their own. In light of all of these factors, it is “small wonder” that most women do not bother to patronize strip shows—because what would be the point? However, such a mapping of gender roles also locates and reveals another itinerary or significant story about desire and agency. The various subsettings that typically frame strip shows for women shape these events so that they outwardly appear to conform to traditional mores and expectations. This set-up enables both the show’s female and male participants to circumvent the pressures of the double standard—a machinery that continues to deploy the labels of “whore” and “powerless object” in the face of many different kinds of displays and representations of female sexual interest. Such a cloaking device is not a sign of female sexual passivity or lack of agency. It is instead a representation (in a long line of similar representations) used by some women and men to get around the dominant culture’s binary dictates of gender. Unlike Phelan’s political stance of remaining “unmarked,” this strategy relies on a practice of allowing one’s sexual identities and pleasures to be “mismarked.” Giuliani might be surprised to learn that under the cover of its genderappropriate subsettings, the male strip show for women typically affords its patrons the opportunity to pay dancers for sexual favors such as mouth-to-mouth kissing, lap-sitting and humping, dirty-dancing, butt-holding, and other kinds of mutual body stroking. These activities take place in addition to the acts in which male performers gyrate in G-strings and simulate masturbation and copulation (described in Chapters 4 and 5). Almost all dancers, patrons, managers, and club owners interviewed for this book—along with the majority of sociological studies and documented popular opinions—agree that, as a group, female spectators of male 40

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strip shows behave in a far more aggressive manner than their male counterparts, who frequently take on what can only be described as a decorum of passivity.71 “Sheila,” a strip show aficionado and fan of Chippendales New York, explained that she regularly patronizes such events because they are “a safe way to let loose— to feel sexy and act wild.”72 Dancer Johnny Rotten insisted that patrons like Sheila “act like wild women” during strip shows because “they don’t have to worry about being called sluts by their boyfriends.”73 While male strip shows for women both uphold and break socio-sexual boundaries through negotiations between their subsetting conventions and the more nitty-gritty aspects of their actual performances, the locations and advertisements of strip events for straight men also suggest a reciprocal schema of visibility politics. Previous to the latest anti-sex trade ordinances, the goal of many urban regulations regarding such businesses was to separate them from work and residential areas—that is, from “everyday life”—rather than to suppress them.74 In actuality, these regulations were themselves a reflection of the overarching aura projected by the clubs. For even the most centrally located and boldly advertised establishments (e.g., the strip clubs of Montreal’s Saint Catherine Street) proclaimed their separation from everyday public life through the extravagance of their street presence. In most cases, the very idea of a strip club is enough to provide a social and psychological barrier and threshold that dares the passer-by, as Wade puts it, to leave “the relatively safe (and normal) zone of the street for the illicit interior of the club.”75 Similarly, Frank refers to the social and psychological gestalt of strip clubs for men as being “away,” and the men who patronize them as “tourists.” She states that the word “tourist” can be understood in terms of the adjective “touristic”—which describes a process of stepping out of or “escaping” one’s ordinary world to pursue pleasure in a “foreign” world. (But Frank points out that since most male patrons of strip clubs are themselves still laborers in the “real world,” they cannot be theorized as being absolutely “powerful” or in polar opposition to their fellow laborers—the dancers.)76 The fact that strip clubs and topless bars for straight men continue to proliferate in cities across North America does not in any way eliminate the thrills experienced in crossing their thresholds. Like other forms of dictated deviance, this juggling of the common and the forbidden, the permissible and the perverse, is a great source of their appeal. The city as a culturally controlled or zoned body—which includes contraband parts and districts—mirrors the zoned human body which may be wholly socially outcast or which may be required to don pasties, G-strings, or decorated Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear to simultaneously mark and camouflage its forbidden parts. Within the city, places of striptease performance are not just environments that permit acts of clothing removal—those acts take place on municipal beaches and in Broadway theatres as well. Strip environments are spaces that have been made visible and hidden, extraordinary and naughty/deviant, for both women and men, albeit in ways that reflect the social conditioning of gender norms.

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Boundary crossings and recrossings: The dynamics of desire In his 1937 doctoral dissertation, “Burlesque as a Cultural Phenomenon,” New York City Police Officer David Dressler wrote that the Burlesque show is “almost like a fairy tale.”77 His analogy is far from obscure or even apolitical because most fables and myths include stories about social transgressions, transformations, and co-optations. These narratives normally feature the bodily removal of a protagonist from her or his everyday environment into a strange or extraordinary one as part of a rite of passage.78 Laura Mulvey notes, building on Arnold van Gennep’s analyses of rites of passage, that the composition of many other liminal-like events include the participants’ actual “movement through a threshold, from one space to another.” Mulvey insists that such a movement “has a very different mythic connotation from that of a binary opposition.”79 A number of writers and theorists have proposed that the experience of sexual desire itself is founded upon similar kinds of threshold crossings. Linda Wolfe’s survey and analysis of the sexual interests of 106,000 readers of Cosmopolitan magazine found that fantasies about risk-taking or rule-breaking were among the favorite “turn-ons” of heterosexual women. Laplanche and Pontalis insist that part of the pleasure of erotic fantasy comes from the fantasizer’s inherent ability to play several parts at once—and to continually cross back and forth between them. Jacqueline Rose suggests that at the height of sexual arousal, women and men often experience or imagine themselves simultaneously in the role, or from the point of view, of their partners. Hart also makes this point in her discussion about the identifications that take place in S/M play. She writes, “the top does not merely wait on the shore, dispassionately observing the descent and resurgence of the bottom. Nor does she simply facilitate that movement. She comes and goes there with the bottom.”80 Unlike the notion that “male,” or “male-like” sexual desire is produced through uni-positional fantasies and acts of dominating others, these writers propose in various ways that erotic arousal for both females and males is created by the abandonment or testing of the self in situations where a safety net (or the probability or feeling of a safety net) is maintained—where boundaries are upheld and broken at the same time. This dynamic offers the experience of the instabilities of the self and of social institutions—experiences that are usually apprehended and defined as a result of their cultural prohibitions. For class-privileged female and male spectators, the physical and social act of crossing and recrossing the thresholds of the bars, clubs, and theatres that feature strip shows are the first direct steps into this theatrical, erotic, and dialogical conversation between the socially acceptable and the socially transgressive, or, in the words of strip show patron “Sheila,” between the “safe” and the “wild.”

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Source: Photograph by Kevan N.Moss.

Figure 1.1a The strip club Le Super Sexe in Montreal, Quebec (1998)

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Figure 1.1b The strip club Chateau du Sexe in Montreal, Quebec (1998) Source: Photograph by Kevan N.Moss.

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Figure 1.2a Show World’s carnival design, New York City (1992) Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

Figure 1.2b Show World’s carnival design, New York City (1992)

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Figure 1.3 “Jungle Mural.” Exterior of the O’Farrell Theatre, San Francisco (1990) Source: Photographs by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 1.4 The Garden of Eden and other clubs in North Beach, San Francisco—where “poetry meets porn” (1990) Source: Photographs by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

Figure 1.5 Chippendales New York. Women line up early yo get into the club (1990)

2 INTERIORS

[T]he instabilities around male sexual identity, performance and “equipment” are given space in a discourse which purports to empower men… This disturbs claims that pornography “silences” women, and it can be argued that pornographic machinery speaks…of women’s sexuality. (Berkeley Kaite)1 We find here a characteristic logic, the peculiar logic of the “inside out” (à l’envers), of the “turnabout,” of a continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings. (Mikhail Bakhtin)2

Elizabeth Cowie argues that “there is a confusion about sexual arousal—not the fact that it occurs, but what produces it.” She rhetorically asks her readers whether it is provoked by some kind of “pure denotation”—such as a spectator’s biological response to a stripper’s nude body—or whether “it is stimulated by the scenario of presentation, by the mise en scène and implied narrative?”.3 Following Freud and the Laplanche and Pontalis schools of psychology, Cowie suggests that sexual arousal is indeed founded upon biological drives. However, these urges—and, for that matter, all of our varying sexualities—manifest in conscious life through our ability to fantasize—to imagine entire scenarios that we can inhabit. Panoramas of desire, wrought from both social and psychical components, reveal that fantasizers are as intensely involved with all the accoutrements that make up the scene as they are with specific objects of desire.4 Pointedly, dancer and anthropologist Katherine Frank states that the pleasure and satisfaction of her customers lay not only in scrutinizing the nudity of the performers as detached observers, but in experiencing the “change of scenery” from everyday life that the club setting provided.5 The importance of a “change of scenery” to the production of fantasy—and hence to sexual desire—is found in more mainstream entertainments as well In the Star Trek television series and its various spin-offs, crew members of starships take virtual vacations by programming a computer with the details of another time and place—replete with appropriate characters and possible storylines. The computer produces a three-dimensional holographic world on the ship’s “holideck” that the crew members can enter and physically interact with, often while assuming

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new identities and relationships—including “love” interests. Likewise, the wideranging historical and contemporary settings found in romance novels for women are often as important to the reader’s selection as the characters of the hero and heroine. Unlike the usually private holideck adventures, the experience of reading novels, or even most S/M activities and scenes (which also foreground the mise en scène as a cornerstone of carnal desire), the “vacation” of strip show patrons includes a “real-life” community of other fantasizer-voyagers whose collective presence reinforces the particular “dreamscape” they have all chosen to enter. Strip bars, clubs, and theatres produce three-dimensional landscapes of desire through their varying sizes and shapes, interior decorations, arrangements of spectator seating and sightlines, and general ambiance. In most urban settings, straight male patrons have the option of choosing from several different types of strip bars and clubs— each with their own environmentally induced set of expected spectator behaviors and participation.6 As noted in the last chapter, strip events for women are usually subset within places that feature other kinds of entertainment not specifically dedicated to the sexual amusement of females. The interior designs of these places, which typically reflect their larger purpose (e.g., dining, co-ed club dancing, etc.), therefore also function to partially conceal or contain the displays of female desire. This containment of female sexual interests in turn becomes part of the mise en scène at hand. The scene and ambiance of any club or social space are also shaped by the cultural organization and “class” of its patrons, owners, managers, and employees. In general, the more upscale the strip club or bar, the whiter and more middle- or upper-class the spectators and performers.7 Nevertheless, some socially and economically privileged patrons prefer to attend the smaller, more culturally diverse strip bars and shows, while others less advantaged “dress up” and “max out” their credit cards to patronize the larger clubs. Classes of strip show spectators are further stratified or blurred by mixes of patrons who are regulars, members of the weekend college crowd, and actual “out-of towners”—and by the fact that there is no single reason why men or women patronize strip shows. The stated motives of strip show patrons range from seeking companionship and attention to breaking social rules, peer bonding, shoring up business deals, curiosity, giving the performers a hard time, “turning the tables,” and sexual variety.8 However, once patrons enter a particular setting—regardless of their initial intentions, tastes, group affiliations, occupations, or socio-economic backgrounds—the environmental directives of the club, bar, or theatre pressure them into becoming, at least to some extent, the “ideal spectators” for each show. Richard Schechner states that, in theatrical situations and events, performers become a literal extension of the environment.9 The same could be said of spectators whose pleasures are dependent, like the holideck voyagers of Star Trek, on the degree to which they become immersed in the details of the scene. Desire is thus also represented through the fantasizers’ surrender to the staging and setting of the show, rather than through their mere pursuit of, and presumable 51

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domination over, the dancer lust-objects who cohabit the scene. This chapter explores the interior designs and ambiances of a number of different strip clubs, bars, and theatres in terms of how they literally transform their patrons into extensions of the mise en scène. For the sake of discussion, I have provisionally grouped these places of performance into several overlapping categories: the “hangout strip bar,” which ranges from the upscale neighborhood pub to the dive; the more formal and fanciful “show biz” club, which is typically housed in converted movie theatres and nightclubs; and the “sex emporium” or entertainment center which offers a number of different events and activities that take place simultaneously. “Hangout” strip bars, “normal trouble,” and the policing of desire Sherri Cavan, in her ethnographic study of bar cultures in San Francisco, observes that most drinking establishments are set apart from regular city life because they accept, and even encourage, a certain amount of prescribed social “trouble”— including patron inebriation, sexual cruising and solicitation, various forms of hustling, and the social accessibility of all members to one another.10 In the strip bar setting, the nudity of the dancer and the patron’s performance of ogling become part of the “normal trouble” of the scene. The cliché layout and design of the traditional, hangout strip bar consist of a relatively small, narrow, dimly lit space decorated with dark colors, strategically placed mirrors, juke boxes, miniature platform stages, and utilitarian stools, tables, and chairs. The social positioning of the hangout bars, in tandem with their often non-specific, casual, or even scruffy decors, creates an ambiance of informality. The informality, and often overall dinginess, of such places support and underscore the “normal trouble” of the scene. In Washington, DC, during the early 1990s, scruffy-style hangout bars such as JP’s and Good Guys specialized in all-nude female dancers who performed crotchrevealing acts on the floor. Some dancers made extra tips by drawing their customers’ attention to the dust that collected on their bodies, despite the use of clean towels and mats to cover the floor. One dancer at Good Guys was particularly adept at garnering extra cash by telling her patrons, in a little-girl voice, how much she hated “the dirty club.” Every time she sighed and revealed the sorry, but minuscule or non-existent smudges on her body, the patrons—slouched and groveling in their seats—handed her dollar bills—their actions both acknowledging and highlighting not only the physical, but the social “dirtiness” of scene. “Mark,” a DC government lawyer and long-time customer of JP’s and Good Guys, smiled as he described these clubs as “joints that walk the line of indecency.” He also smiled as he noted that many “upstanding” businessmen and legislators (including himself) regularly patronized these places.11 The patronage of JP’s and Good Guys by otherwise upstanding citizens is very much in keeping with their designs. Scruffy-style hangout bars, catering to middle52

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class (blue- and white-collar) audiences, are clearly scripted to allow their social transgressions to go only so far. Policing from the outside world always seems to lurk in the wings—whether in the form of unscheduled visits from municipal health, sanitation, and fire departments (whose written codes collect their own dust balls on the walls) to the bartender’s rambling discussions of patron ID checks and vice raids. In the words of “Paul,” another patron of Good Guys and a selfdescribed hard-working small businessman, “Guys come here to relax—but no one really takes it easy—we’re all on guard.”12 The hangout strip bar’s accepted forms of trouble constantly allude to the various social monitorings that threaten to put not only the bodies of the dancers or the club’s managers and owners “up against the wall,” but the bodies of the spectators as well. By the winter of 1992, Good Guys was renovated to include three small formal stages surrounded by string lights—and a nice, clean environment. But the club’s former ambiance remained imprinted on the scene. On one visit to Washington, DC, a policeman was posted on the premises to make sure that the strippers and patrons kept their acts as “clean” as their new surroundings—in other words, no more “dirty” patron ogling of dancers performing “dirty” crotch-revealing acts on the floor.13 In addition to the renovated version of Good Guys, other smaller upscale clubs in DC maintain the hangout bar’s casual atmosphere, but replace its scruffy or indifferent attitude toward decor and general upkeep with a conspicuous concern for the clean. Joanna’s and Archibald’s are small neighborhood clubs that nevertheless offer drinks, snacks, and lunch or dinner served on neat bistro tables decked with crisp white table cloths, napkins, and small vases of fresh flowers. Their respective managers and owners all reported that they strove to provide their patrons with “healthy” entertainments. They also described the dancers they hired as “girl-next-door types,” “sweet kids,” “clean-cut,” “gals-just-trying-to-makea-living,” “one-of-the-guys,” and “healthy.”14 The healthy strippers of Washington, DC’s “nice and clean” strip bars and clubs are, of course, required to remain “upright” at all times. To create some of their more sensual and revealing moves, the dancers compensate by leaning their all-nude bodies up against the mirror-backed walls of the small stages, and performing poses and gestures as if they were plastered to their reflections. At the conclusion of the act, with the music still blasting away, the dancers carefully wipe the mirrors clean with strategically placed bottles of Windex—actions that frequently elicit comments from the audience such as “that’s right, make it squeaky clean.” But in the intimate set-up of the upscale hangout club, the mirrors that are “dirtied” and cleaned by the strippers also often reflect back to the patrons, images of themselves and their spectating peers. So when the bodies of the clean and healthy strippers at Joanna’s and Archibald’s produce visible dirty marks, smudges, or “fog” on the mirrored walls surrounding the stage, the reflected bodies of the patrons appear to be sullied as well. And when the dancers wipe clean the leavings of their exhibitions, the spectators are likewise cleansed—eerily recalling Carol Clover’s contention that “the pornographic body”—the one that needs to be wiped 53

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clean to assuage the guilt of transgressive pleasure—is found on both sides of the representation.15 While the dancers of Joanna’s and Archibald’s are required to invent theatrically spotless renditions of desire and sex, the behavior and “performances” of the spectators are expected to be comparably as “squeaky clean.” The demeanor of the majority of the patrons in both these clubs can only be described as demure. Most men sit quietly by as they watch the action. They tip the dancers by neatly cueing up at the edge of the small stage. One by one, they place their dollar bills in the dancer’s thigh garter upon her express signal to do so. The tidy rituals of the Windex coda and the patron tipping activities uphold the physical cleanliness of the environment. However, they also make visible the constant effort and care that is necessary to keep “dirt” (i.e., sexual desire) under social and personal control. Cleaning rituals and fetishes in sexual play foreground both the idea of “dirt” and the tenuous and therefore exciting borderline between social order and social chaos. McClintock writes that “nothing is inherently dirty; dirt expresses a relation to social value and social disorder.” Iconographies of dirt constitute a form of social surveillance that is used to “police the boundaries between ‘normal’ sexuality and ‘dirty’ sexuality; ‘normal’ work and ‘dirty’ work; ‘normal’ money and ‘dirty’ money.”16 McClintock suggests that, for male and female fetishists, cleaning rituals also refer to the domain of woman, and thus to the participants’ identifications with the culture of women. In Fem-Dom (female domination) play, some male participants dress up in women’s clothes and aprons when they engage in cleaning activities. This domestic economy of pleasure and power represents the womanmother figure as the one responsible for keeping any manifestations of dirt under control—and hence, the one responsible for the behavior and training of the “child.”17 Overt forms of role playing and cross-dressing usually do not occur in clubs that feature straight strip shows. However, the environments of Joanna’s and Archibald’s, and the cast of patron characters they produce, create a related effect. The glamorous two-story Camelot club, situated in the political hub of Washington, DC, transmutes the iconographies of dirt and cleanliness into actual scenes of surveillance and social monitoring. This club features a far more formal atmosphere and environment than either Joanna’s or Archibald’s, beginning with the uniformed doorman posted in the entranceway. The narrow downstairs space has the look of a nice yuppie neighborhood bar with mock Tiffany stained-glass windows and polished wood-paneled walls. The larger upstairs nightclub space is decorated with elegantly patterned mirrors, more polished wood, giant dark nondescript paintings trimmed with ebony and gold, shiny bistro tables, and a sizeable platform stage ringed with string lights. As soon as the patrons cross the threshold of the Camelot, their bodies are typecast and segregated according to the “class” specifications of the two environments. Well-to-do businessmen and heterosexual couples are escorted upstairs where the environment is posh and the stage is large enough for the 54

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performers to actually dance. Single men, particularly if they look like college students or blue-collar workers, are seated in the downstairs space where the atmosphere is rowdier, the stage minuscule, and the decorations less select. Both levels of the club are patrolled by imposing male bouncers who wear blaring yellow security guard jackets and carry walkie-talkies. Their job is to make sure that all the patrons behave and basically “stay put.” The lighting plan throughout the club makes prodigious use of “black light,” which adds another dimension to the atmosphere of surveillance and control. Unlike the performers in other strip bars and clubs, the dancers of the Camelot wear mostly white or light-colored outfits and lingerie to take full advantage of the black light’s dramatic effect of making all such apparel glow in the dark. Since the Camelot is typically patronized by businessmen, civil servants, and government officials, the black light also plays off their own costumes or uniforms of work which include the ever-popular white or light-blue shirt. Part of this mise en scène, then, consists of a bevy of “stuffed shirts” glowing in the dark along with the dancers. The luminescent light-colored costumes of the performers; the seated “stuffed” shirts; the fact that one can see what the male patrons are doing with their arms and hands at all times; the carefully detailed, but subdued and coordinated decor; the general segregation of spectators by gender and perceived type; and the overt policing performed by the uniformed security guards not only create an ambiance of order and discipline, but an atmosphere of palpable tension. This particular scenography of containment once again frames sexual desire as a potentially dangerous experience that must be controlled by hegemonic forces at all costs—a design that neatly fits into the current social and political gestalt of Washington. Implied and conspicuous signs of containment, surveillance, and policing have always been a part of the American strip show. In the 1930s, Gypsy Rose Lee regularly planted a fellow performer in the audience who stood up and screamed “NO!” just as the diva of disrobing began to remove her clothes.18 In the early 1990s, Gallagher’s, a hangout strip bar in New York City, used the more modern sound-effect of a police siren to announce the beginning and end of each dancer’s set. “Dominique,” the owner of the now-defunct Harmony Burlesque which was located in downtown Manhattan, explained that patronizing a strip club is “like going to a horror show.” She insisted that state and city regulations of strip clubs and like entertainments (when kept within reason) were actually “good for business” because they endorsed the delicious “scream ambiance” of the clubs. Dominique offered the following anecdote to back up her theory: Another business in the same building as the Harmony was robbed last month. When the police arrived to investigate, some of my customers panicked and ran out [of the club]. The next day, the place was packed. Customers kept following me around begging for details about the latest “police raid.”19 55

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The strip show’s material and metaphorical representations of “cleanliness,” “dirtiness,” “monitoring,” and “policing” may well fall in line with the age-old cultural narratives that conflate women’s bodies with sex and sin. Nevertheless, these representations do not neatly position their spectators as unified, powerful subjects who take pleasure in gazing at “poor,” “unclean,” “powerless” victims. Instead, the scenographies of the clubs suggest visions of patrons being sullied, cleaned, and monitored as well. Stoller observes that any fetish is essentially “a story masquerading as an object.”20 Clearly part of that story for many patrons of strip shows is the thrill and pleasure of potentially being disciplined for their own intense immersion and participation in the scene. Show biz clubs: Glamour, decadence, and—perilous excess As noted, many psychoanalytic theories (including Freudian, Lacanian, neoFreudian, neo-Lacanian, and feminist reworkings of such discourses) rest their formulations of desire upon the concept of “lack.” Desire, including sexual desire, is considered to be the result of the infant’s initial bonding with, and separation from, the primary love object of the Mother. The figure of Mother stands for lack—both as the primary lost object of desire and because she lacks the penisphallus, the signifier of an individual’s or a group’s full participation in the dominant discourse of language and law.21 In the crudest sense, such theories investigate the dynamics of desire in terms of the “objects” we presumably lack and therefore seek to possess—whether in fantasy or reality. But since women are defined as “lack,” or “that which is lacked,” they are said to be capable of only “desiring to be desired.” Males, on the other hand, actively seek and desire what they lack, and hence experience erotic pleasure through dominating others to get what they want. As a material manifestation of this active male desire, “the male gaze” (or men’s sexual looking) has been theorized as an aggressive act of consuming, objectifying, and degrading women. It is an act considered inherently tied to the historical, social, and economic power of men. However, as described above, the designs of many contemporary strip bars and clubs portray desire not as a form of Lacanian lack or male domination over women, but as a potentially overwhelming and dangerous experience for both sexes, which then requires social intervention and control. Laplanche and Pontalis suggest that the primary function of fantasy is “to be a setting for desire, in so far as desire itself originates as prohibition.”22 Prohibitions do not merely signal what one is denied, but also that which exceeds the social norms of what one should expect or have. Some of the upscale glamour clubs and theatres represent “desire as excess,” or an experience that exceeds social norms, through mise en scènes of seemingly unlimited choices and sexual possibilities that transform patrons into promiscuous, decadent consumers. The patrons’ acts of purchasing or indulging in a superabundance of luxuries, in turn, threaten to consume the consumer. Glamour clubs typically consist of relatively large spaces, multiple stages, sophisticated 56

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lighting and sound systems, formal seating arrangements, uniformed or tuxedoed personnel, and a carnival-like atmosphere with embellishments such as streamers, balloons, mirror balls, shiny surfaces, silver or gold accents, and string lighting. In addition to the standard glitzy fair, some places are so elaborately designed and appointed that they suggest the projects of a Donald Trump. Rick’s Bar and Restaurant has been dubbed the premier gentlemen’s club of Houston.23 This mecca of adult entertainment was also host to the Stripteasers video series shot in the club’s VIP Lounge. The interior design of the VIP Lounge boasts floor to ceiling arched windows and mirrors, pinkish walls, soft blue lighting, pink table cloths, museum-sized vases of flowers, and huge abstract paintings in blues, reds, and whites. The main platform stage is backed by mirrors and mauve columns, and includes a small runway. Several white baby grand pianos are used by the dancers as supplementary stages. The even larger main party room at Rick’s combines high-tech designs with art deco touches. The walls, carpeting, plush chairs, and tables are done in mauve and light-green colors. The pastel colors and appointments are mixed with mirrors, polished black surfaces and accents, and the use of multi-colored spotlighting. The large formal runway stage is surrounded by additional white baby grand pianos. Like many of the upscale gentlemen’s clubs, Rick’s usually features 20 or more strippers performing on the various stages, and at the tables of patrons, simultaneously—and over 100 dancers on site in a given evening. Robert Watters, the owner of Rick’s, stated that he designed his club to create “the environment of a European cabaret—sophisticated—where businessmen feel comfortable.”24 But Watters also admitted that he modeled his establishment after the huge first-floor cosmetic section of Bloomingdale’s department store in New York City. Throughout the 1990s, the cosmetic department of “Bloomie’s” was a barrage of mirrors, high-tech lighting, shiny surfaces, and a seemingly endless, orgiastic selection of goods. According to Watters, Bloomie’s was expressly designed to “overwhelm” and “confuse” the customers. Watters confessed that his own intentions for Rick’s followed suit. He planned the interior design of the club to be “like an orgy.” This design would “satiate” the spectator’s “pleasure of conspicuous consumption” and also produce what Watters called “consumer overload.” In his discussion of “orgy theory,” Karl Toepfer insists that “the orgy always signifies a mood of danger, an extravagant risk” because it is predicated upon “excess, extremity, and abnormality.” The excesses of the orgy, or the orgiastic experience, “exposes a conflict between a mode of desire and an ideologically defined norm for the magnitude of the desire.” Orgies are “the manifestation of ‘too much’ or ‘more than enough’ pleasure.”25 Because of the personal and social risks involved, Toepfer notes that the orgy, and its too many pleasures, are more often expressed and experienced through fantasy or fantasy situations.26 The strip show is, of course, one such situation. The staging of any such fantasy situation requires considerable material resources and stagecraft. As Toepfer puts it, the orgy’s scenography of luxury reiterates to its 57

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participants that “only a few people can ever afford pleasure on this scale.” But Toepfer maintains that the orgy’s general surfeit of pleasure and action also creates a “decadent,” “demonic,” or even “fatalistic” aura that undercuts conventional displays of power.27 Architect Robert Schuh pointed out that another exclusive Houston club, Caligula XXI, was specifically named and designed (with its Doric columns, blood-red and gold interior, fountains, and huge cast of dancers) to invoke customer fantasies about the “fatal perversions and decadence of ancient Rome before its fall.”28 Rick’s and Caligula XXI are by no means anomalies in the skin trade. Many upscale gentlemen’s clubs capitalize on this brand of erotics vis-à-vis designs of consumer overload. The interior decor of the Men’s Club, also in Houston, is modeled after an art nouveau hotel lobby. Its large open main space, high ceilings, and walls are accented with faux marble columns and niches adorned with statuettes and brass lion heads. The floor is covered with a thick green floral carpet. Spectators sit in matching high-backed, floral parlor chairs placed around large circular tables. The club’s huge, main runway stage is surrounded by a series of small table-top stages—a set up which again allows 20 or more dancers to perform at the same time. Instead of the stark spot lighting and dark interiors favored by most glamour establishments, the entire space of the Men’s Club is bathed in a diffuse bright light. The open space, lighting, and parlor or hotel lobby-feel foreground the spectators’ place and part in the scene. Schuh stated that the “nouveau hotel lobby” design of this strip club reminded him of the dream-like thrill and fear of inadvertently “being caught with one’s pants down in a public place.”29 The main performance space of the Men’s Club is surrounded by several adjoining areas that offer additional luxuries and amusements—an outdoor swimming pool, an indoor health club, a gift shop, and a haute couture hair salon. Multi-use, multi-sectional “entertainment environments” (including shopping malls, carnivals, and amusement parks) afford each of their patrons the opportunity to organize their own day- or evening-long event30 However, because of the amount of choices involved, and the excitement and the problem of scheduling such choices, overloaded consumers often spend more time and money than they normally would in an environment dedicated to a single entertainment. The O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco takes the sexually oriented “entertainment environment” to its furthest extremes. As mentioned elsewhere, the O’Farrell Theatre was the brainchild of the Mitchell Brothers, the producing team of one of the most popular and elaborately designed porn films of all times, Behind the Green Door. This sex emporium offers five separate performance spaces— each with its own series of events. The Cine Stage presents adult films and special strip shows featuring female porn stars in a sedate, plush forest-green and oaktrimmed movie theatre. The snazzy New York Live Stage offers continuous strip shows with dazzling light and video displays. The small Copenhagen Room, decorated boudoir-style with red velvet couches and cushions, features “girl on girl” acts, mini strip shows, and lap-dancing. The Ultra Room consists of a cluster of private booths where patrons watch peep shows in which performers strip and 58

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play with sex toys. Last, but not least, is the Green Door Room—a cabaret space decorated with gigantic copies of ancient and Renaissance friezes depicting erotic scenes. The focal point of this space is a semi-circular shower stage where ten or more female dancers undress, shower, and frolic together. Directly following the shower show, the all-nude, dripping wet performers mount large carpeted tables scattered throughout the Green Door Room. The dancers make untold tips as they “towel-off’ and converse with spectators who sit, sometimes two-deep, around the tables. Most entertainment environments require patrons to contend with house or game rules that shift from event to event. This is particularly true in the case of the O’Farrell Theatre. Spectators are allowed a prescribed amount of physical contact with the partially-clad lap-dancers in the Copenhagen Room, but they are forbidden to touch the totally nude dancers in the Green Door Room both during and after the shower show. Similarly, patrons may talk to the dancers and one another in the Green Door Room, but they are expected to remain silent during the films and featured strip acts shown on the Cine Stage. As patrons move from space to space within any entertainment environment, they embark on a play of dislocation and adjustment to fulfill expectations and become the ideal spectators of each subsetting and activity. Through these adjustments, patrons underscore, for themselves and their peers, the extent to which the environmental directives of the place and the show control and shape their roles in the event. A few upscale gentlemen’s clubs heighten the risk or danger aspect of their respective consumer-overload schemes by invoking game or sports motifs. Sporting events have long been used as metaphors for male sexual desire, competition, performance, and conquest. However, as most dedicated game players and fans well know, along with the scoring of points and the exhilaration of victory come the risks of losing the ball, of being defeated by the opposing team or the event itself.31 Scores is still New York City’s most elite strip club; it was initially advertised as the “Only Fully Equipped Executive Club for Gentlemen.” At its opening, the enormous 15,000 square foot establishment included an arcade where patrons shot pool and baskets, played video games, practiced golf on a miniature putting green, and tried their luck at the soccer and air hockey machines. Customers took breaks from their sports activities by watching women strip on the bar and main stage—and by ordering drinks, snacks, lunch, dinner, and private strip shows performed at their tables. They could also pause in their own activities to watch their favorite teams win or lose on television monitors set up throughout the space. As the patrons played games with one another, bet on teams, and attempted to score points with the strippers, their own tests of prowess were carefully scrutinized by fellow customers, dancers, and other club employees, who reinforced the design of the scene through their cheering, booing, and commenting on the shows of the spectators. In the mid-1990s, a new management team replaced much of Score’s game arcade with a design that suggested both the luxury-overload scheme of Rick’s and the Camelot’s plan of patron containment and monitoring. In accordance 59

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with the new ambiance of the club, spectators were required to behave in a more sedate fashion. The dancers, on the other hand, continued to aggressively ply their craft, scoring money and drinks off the customers. After visiting the updated Scores, now also laden with Hollywood and sports celebrities, New York Post “He Says” columnist Bill Sanderson wrote: You wouldn’t want to break the rules in this place—Scores is loaded with muscular security-types who keep order inside and quiet on the street outside. Everyone was very polite. And the men were too focused on the pretend sex of their $20 lap dances to hoot, holler, and shout at the women on stage.32 At the Colorado, the sister club of Rick’s located just outside of Houston’s wealthy Galleria district, “hooting” and “hollering” were the order of the day. The Colorado brazenly equates sex and desire with the perils of “the hunt.” The roughhewn timber beams that decorate the walls and ceiling of the club are covered with animal trophies, statues of animals, stuffed animals, and photographs of women dressed in corsets toting rifles. Patrons sit at the bar or cluster around shiny coppertopped tables. Adjoining the main space is the Sports Club, which contains rows of pool tables and shelves of well-bound books set off in a “library” niche. The club’s hunting theme is also carried out by the waitresses and bar maids who wear camouflage safari shirts and shorts. Amidst the animal heads, trophies, and guns, the conservative behavior usually exhibited by the patrons of Houston’s upscale gentlemen’s clubs is transformed into what Watters and his manager Bob Fury call “macho hooting and stomping.”33 In this environment, the almost nude female dancers may indeed play the parts of hunted beasts, while the stomping, hooting patrons take up the roles of sportsmen, zoo keepers, or tamers.34 However, neither the power positions within this performance space, nor the cultural mythology that informs it, are necessarily uni-directional. For in this design of too much pleasure, it is the “lowly” waitresses who assume the costumes of colonizers or animal tamers, while the spectators are reduced to non-verbal, animalistic behavior. Prints of corseted women toting rifles, displayed on the walls among the hunting trophies, suggest that the strippers, too, can play the parts of “sportswomen” and “slayers.” In the words of Colorado dancer “Sofie,” “We are the hunters, guys are our prey—we stalk ‘em, exhaust ’em—and take ’em for all they got.” The entire set-up of the Colorado, in fact, seems to dare patrons into taking up a position of desire best described by that antiquated expression of sexual arousal, “you slay me.” “Ginger”—a star of the HBO television “docu-soap” series, G-String Divas (2000)—echos “Sofie’s” sentiments. Dubbed by the series as the “Queen of the Jungle,” Ginger reports that, once inside the boundaries of the strip club, she searches out “who I’m going to kill next. I’m like a vulture and I’m circling—I find out who is going to be vulnerable to me [and then] I go for the kill.”35

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Cowie contends that all dream figures and dreamscapes of pornography both create and support the viewer’s “desire to desire.” For Cowie, the desire to desire is not driven by the fantasizers’ ultimate wish to possess or degrade the sex objects they lack. Instead, the primary goal of the fantasy experience is the satisfaction and pleasure of being taken in, done in, (or even slayed) by the scene of sexual titillation. Cowie observes that in fantasy, symbolic or real acts of sexual consummation are frequently delayed as long as possible to prolong this central pleasure.36 Such delays include the playing of assorted roles and games—and all the pauses, restarts, winnings, and losings that may be a part of that action. Desiring what one lacks may also figure into this design—but it is by no means the main driver of the enterprise. Cowie insists—again following the ideas of Laplanche and Pontalis—that rather than experiencing desire as “lack,” it is at the very moment that we learn to express desire through the dreamscapes and figures of fantasy (however socially questionable or politically reprehensible they may be) that our varying sexualities wholly come into being—male or female.37 Places for women Places of performance that feature strip shows for straight women also represent “desire as excess” through cultural symbols of containment, policing, discipline, and overload. However, strip shows for women are partially hidden or socially kept in check from the outset by the fact that most are subset into places that feature other kinds of entertainments. Danielle’s, a restaurant nightclub in the exclusive neighborhood and shopping district of Forest Hills, New York, presents a weekly strip show for women—along with co-ed entertainments such as gourmet dining, comedy nights, disco nights, and sing-alongs. Big Alice’s in Peoria, Illinois, is subset within Big Al’s—a strip club for men that also contains, and partially conceals, the events for women by positioning them as adjuncts to the larger scene and social norm of male sexual arousal. Both Danielle’s and Big Alice’s feature interior designs that could be described as “simple and sweet.” Danielle’s serene dining and performance area is separated from a noisy bar by a glass divider chiseled with a floral pattern. The nightclub space features soft pink walls, a few hanging plants, and a small, shiny parquet dance floor. The tidy layout includes bistro tables covered with pink table cloths, artistically sculpted standing pink napkins, and small vases of pink flowers. Big Alice’s offers a more spartan version of this design. Its pale, peachy-pink color scheme is accented by two delicate, peach neon ribbon lights circling the walls of the space. A lone platform stage takes up one end of the club, while a very small bar decorated with a few plants is situated at the other. Spectator seating is arranged in neat rows of utilitarian chairs on bare wood floors, interspersed with a few black mini bistro tables for drinks. In contrast, the sizeable and much more conveniently located downstairs space of Big Al’s for men boasts a “trashy” treatment of the consumer-overload plan. Bright orange, black, and red carpeting adorns the floors. The shocking blue-green walls are covered with mirrors, silver tinsel, and pictures 61

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of spotlighted female pin-ups and centerfolds. Patrons sit around shiny, lacquered red bistro tables and a large red bar to watch female dancers performing on four different stages—including one go-go cage. The relatively spare environments of Big Alice’s and Danielle’s, like the genre of “nice and clean” strip bars for men, create a scenic neutralization, muting, or whitewashing of desire. In concert with the subsetting aspect of strip shows for women, these designs foreground the general whitewashing-effect that is often necessary to render female desires socially acceptable. Set side-by-side, the scenographies of Big Alice’s and Big Al’s represent the flip sides of erotic arousal as it is most often drawn and articulated in Western culture—the excesses of desire carefully controlled and the excesses of desire mimetically unleashed. Some places that feature strip events for women offer more specific scenarios involving the social policing of sexual desire. The mises en scène of Escapes and Chippendales New York both cast their spectators as hormone-driven juveniles who threaten to run amok. The Escapes club is housed in an airplane hangar-sized space that has maintained the atmosphere and look of its former purpose—a disco for teenagers. The club’s peeling black walls are decorated with peeling gold and silver trim. Cafeteria tables with red paper coverings form long lines across a gymnasium-like floor. True to its previous incarnation, Escapes presents co-ed strip shows. The majority of patrons who attend these events do so as members of separate female and male groups celebrating bachelor and bachelorette parties, and sometimes birthday parties. The different groups of celebrants are seated at the cafeteria tables segregated by sex. The few stray heterosexual couples who wander in are escorted to a small, bistro-table balcony section, further away from the main stage and action. During the course of the show, the male MC repeatedly admonishes his charges seated at the cafeteria tables that “all you nice boys and girls should get together. But don’t forget, we’ll be watching you—so you’d better behave.”38 The gym/cafeteria setting, the segregation of female and male spectators, the few roaming but seemingly jolly bouncers, and the MC’s repeated refrain of sexual invitation and warning are reminiscent of a school dance monitored by diligent chaperones whose task is to make sure that everyone has a good time within the proper limits. The interior design of Chippendales New York features a much darker rendition of puerile lusts and desires. The all-female audience (which ranges in age from 18 to 80) sits on utilitarian benches and stackable chairs piled on makeshift-looking risers. Giant photos of clean-cut hunky young men line the walls. However, the entire interior of the club—including the floor, platform stage, and risers—is painted blood-red. The centerpiece of the design is a simple, but striking, permanent “West Side Story” set comprised of a street lamp, a torn metal chain fence, a broken wooden fence, and part of a car. With the use of a smoke machine, both the stage and the dark-red audience space take on the appearance of a dismal alley way or deserted school yard at night—a place of young love and clandestine meetings— a place of rumbles and the screams of police sirens. Most of the dancers and waiters employed by the Chippendales New York club 62

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are young, friendly, and enthusiastic. However, like the decor, some of the club’s bouncers are reputed to be “rough and tumble.” “Sami,” a first-time club attendee, reported that one bouncer, making the rounds of his beat, turned a waiter’s serving tray sideways and pushed it between her buttocks when she did not heed his warning to move out of the way and return to her seat. The New York Post ran an even more troubling story under the heading, “Chippendale’s Stung With Suit: Three Women Say Bouncers Beat Them in Beefcake Club.”39 When asked about these incidents, “Susan”—a long-time patron of Chippendales—shrugged her shoulders and stated, “I don’t care—I like the atmosphere—I think it’s sexy.” Susan’s friend “Cherly” agreed, stating, “It looks and smells like men.”40 Some may consider “Sami’s” experience, and the article in The New York Post, more than thorny for the ways they relate to domestic violence or to the general long history of men controlling women through physical abuse. But in making such analogies, one must take into account the fact that itinerant bouncer behavior occurs in strip clubs for men and in mainstream co-ed dance clubs and bars as well.41 Therefore, such incidences cannot be attributed to misogyny or gender indoctrination alone. Like the male patrons of the Harmony Burlesque who thrilled to the idea of a police raid—of imagining themselves or their peers manhandled by New York City’s Finest—monitoring through physical threat (whether real, rare, or mimetic) simultaneously highlights and checks the excesses and delinquencies of the sexual scene. As Michel Foucault has repeatedly pointed out, symbols and actions of social containment are integral to fantasies that shape and reflect both “deviant” and “normal” sexualities—including preferences and pleasures that fall under the cultural categories of “the sweet,” “the nice,” “the clean,” or “the vanilla.” For such categories also owe their very existence to the rigors of social policing.42 Most establishments that feature strip shows for women cannot compete with the over-the-top scenes of desire typically found in the upscale clubs for men. Nevertheless, a few places for women also portray the perils and surfeit of sexual excitement through scenographies of conspicuous consumption and consumer overload. La Bare in Houston, Texas, was the only club for women reviewed for this book that featured male dancers stripping on several different formal stages at the same time. Almost a square city block in size, La Bare’s interior decor mixes high-tech lighting and sound equipment with nondescript dark walls, mirror balls, and spartan seating arrangements. But, here, patrons have the opportunity to choose from several different viewing positions. They may sit at the bar, directly around the stages, or at the tables and banquets. As with many of the overload clubs for men, 20 or more performers may be stripping simultaneously, because La Bare also offers table dancing. The smaller, but more elegant Club 281 in Montreal features male table dancing acts as well. The dark interior of this club is accented with multiple strands of yellow and green string lights, hanging plants, and spotlighted photographs of semi-nude male dancers. A large gleaming bar runs along one side of the room, and sleek polished bistro tables and chairs crowd the rest of the space. The generous 63

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platform stage is backed by an enormous screen that projects images of the dancers as they perform. Harrison described Club 281 as a “feast of the male body,” where female customers get to sample “table dancers as though they were a new kind of fruit drink in eighteen flavors.” “Simon,” a dancer at the club, stated: “It can get pretty scary. Some women go broke here. I know one awesomely beautiful woman who took out a bank loan to pay for all the table dances she wanted.” “Ellie,” a long-time patron of Club 281, corroborated Simon’s story. She explained that she and her friends usually spend more money when they visit Club 281 than on any “serious shopping” expedition: “There’s so much ‘going on’—music, dancing, lights, drinking, naked men at your beck and call—it’s like a narcotic—you get swept up—you don’t realize what you’re doing.”43 The even more elaborately designed Sugar Shack II, located in the Stone Park area of Chicago, is similarly described by patrons as “overwhelming,” “a financial time-bomb,” “the best way to go broke,” and “the sexiest experience ever.” The Sugar Shack II was initially constructed as a gigantic country music hall for touring stars such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Roy Orbison. When the venture failed, the hall was rented out for banquets and weddings and then finally sold to Danna Montana—one of the very few female proprietors of a sexually oriented business that caters to women. Montana’s earlier attempts to move her original Sugar Shack show from her restaurant in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to the more accessible and lucrative location in the Windy City, were plagued by local politicians and community groups leery of such a large and visible sex club for women in their midst. Montana writes that “despite the fact that Chicago area women drove 80 miles by the busloads to my club in Lake Geneva no one wanted any part of me in their little village.”44 After almost eight years of searching, Montana purchased the Stone Park property. She won over her critics by advertising her show as a Las Vegas entertainment with professional dancers—which safely situated the strip show for straight women as a mainstream theatrical event. Montana states that she completely renovated the club—redoing the floors, stages, sound and lighting systems, bars, plumbing, heating. She even added circus-certified hydraulic lifts for the stage.45 However, Montana retained much of the music hall’s original country and western decor which she was able to effectively translate into a sexual mise en scène for women. The club’s interior brick walls are patterned to suggest the large windows and archways of a courtyard. The ceiling is strewn with tiny, white string lights creating the illusion of stars overhead. The audience sits on countless risers trimmed with brick and lit with outdoor garden lamps so that each section has the look of a romantic balcony. Shiny rectangular bar tables and high stools neatly line each terrace. The enormous high-tech stage consists of a main stage with lighting hung on imposing steel racks overhead; a small runway stage; and a large, shiny, attached steelcage stage that can be raised and lowered so that the patrons may more easily tip and interact with the dancers. The overall design of the environment gives one the odd impression of being 64

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in constant motion—of being indoors and outside at the same time—of transversing some past era into a time of the future. Female spectators are parked on romantic balconies that reflect each other like an infinity mirror. Male performers are surrounded by the space-age technology of the stage. But, once again, these positions are far from stable. Patrons are expected to sidle up to the space-ship stage where they can participate in various tipping activities with the dancers. The space-age design of the stage that frames the male performers also situates them within the dreamscape of an alien world. The dancers are, in fact, limited to the stage and tipping cage. But bare-chested male ushers and waiters roam the innumerable aisleways and terraces in their stead, selling—in addition to drinks and snacks—services such as kisses, hugs, and special “caveman rides” to the stage (for which patrons pay to be literally carried to the stage where they can pay some more for a dancer’s kisses and hugs).46 Montana likens the Sugar Shack II to the exclusive Grosse Point Women’s Club, The Beverly Hills Women’s Club, and The Palm Beach Women’s Club. However, she insists that her club is the most exclusive of all because it is “dedicated solely to the pleasure, to the fantasies, to the entertainment of women.”47 The Sugar Shack’s aura of “exclusivity,” like that of the upscale strip clubs for men, is also predicated upon its customer shows of conspicuous consumption. As many club owners, managers, patrons, and dancers have pointed out (including Watters, “Simon,” and “Ellie”), the schemes of overload that structure the spectators’ performances of consumption threaten, in return, to consume the consumer by the very orgiastic designs of desire that signal such privilege. This tandem experience “of being consumed through one’s very act of consuming” is not only integral to the mises en scène of strip clubs, but to the most traditional lore and theories about sexual excitement. Such acts of consumption (which threaten to consume the sexual consumer) thus also function as a form of “prohibition” from which all desire is said to stem. “Sightlines”: The public, the private, and the auto-erotic self-seeing eye Toepfer observes that the exclusivity and perilous decadence of orgy-like events also rest on a communal experience that includes the “quality of secrecy.”48 Within the strip event, this play on the private and the public is often underscored by the club’s spectator-seating arrangements—and the sightlines that they produce. Most theatrical spectacles rely on variations or combinations of two basic seating designs—the “isolated spectator” (or “side-by-side” seating plan) and arrangements in which spectators subgroup or cluster together. The distinction between “isolated spectator” and “spectator subgrouping” designs depends not so much on whether patrons initially attend the event as individuals or in groups, but again on the different pressures that these arrangements exert to transform the patrons into ideal spectators for the show. Police officer David Dressler, in his 1937 doctoral dissertation on Burlesque in 65

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New York City, not surprisingly found that strip events housed in theatres with conventional rows of side-by-side seating and darkened audience areas focused the audience’s attention almost exclusively on the stage.49 Contemporary strip shows performed in converted movie houses, such as the New Century and Market Street theatres in San Francisco, are the most obvious modern-day examples of this design. The dim lighting and tightly packed seats limit patron mobility. The physical and mimetic isolation and “privacy” of the individual spectators are further preserved, in counterpoint to the general openness and size of the environment, through an unspoken rule of mutually respected patron anonymity. Less formal designs, found in some of the hangout-style strip bars for men, also make use of side-by-side seating plans that both foreground the communal experience of the event and encourage the spectators’ pretense of privacy, which allows them to concentrate simultaneously on their own fantasies. The design of the Baby Doll Lounge in New York City includes a bar counter and stools that run lengthwise along a good portion of its small, dark, narrow space. The dancers’ stage areas are placed directly across from the bar so that patrons must either sit or stand with their backs to the bar to watch the action. Customers can also sit on chairs placed in a line directly in front of the stages, which then creates two rows of side-by-side seating. In another typical style of hangout bar, on display at Gallagher’s and the Merry-Go-Round in Queens, New York, patrons sit side-byside around the outside of a large bar that entirely encircles the main stage and action. Customers often stand directly behind the seated patrons, creating another row or “ring” of side-by-side spectators. Dancers usually rotate their positions on the stage so that all patrons, no matter where they are situated, are offered something of a centered view—which then also limits their interactions with one another and their desire to cruise about the club. The side-by-side seating and stage designs of the Star Strip club in Los Angeles heighten the isolation or pretend privacy of the patrons by controlling even the slant of their gazes. Running down the center of Star Strip’s large, but dark and narrow space is a series of eight small, circular platform stages that are connected by short runways. The individual stages look like small wading pools because they are hollowed out and lit from the bottom with bluish-lavender neon lights. Patrons sit side-by-side around the pools, mostly staring down into them without talking or moving, because the dancers strip quickly and then sit or lie in the hollows of the stages and gyrate. Since the performers also rotate from “pool” to “pool,” spectators never have to move, or really shift their focus, to view the entire show. The scenically produced slant of their gazes makes patently visible the mimetic blinders that are part and parcel of all isolated spectator-seating arrangements. This theatrical convention is not a device designed to obstruct completely the presence of other spectators. On the contrary, as designated by the various seating plans, one’s fellow spectators are to be glimpsed at the periphery of one’s gaze, or as out-of-focus images that float behind or in front of the dancers. Laplanche and Pontalis postulate (as did Freud) that within the fluid structures and fields of fantasy, the fantasizer inhabits not only the roles of seducer and seduced, 66

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actor and acted upon, but also the part of an omnipotent nebulous presence bearing witness to the scene. This configuration of positions is evident in many sexual fantasies through actual scenes of staged voyeurism—scenes where male and female actants imagine themselves watching the private acts of others, imagine others watching them, or both. Laplanche and Pontalis suggest that, beneath all the socalled active and passive stances of seeing and being seen, there is always a reflexive form of seeing oneself—a vision intrinsic to the plenitude of auto-erotic pleasure.50 The strip clubs, bars, and theatres which feature side-by-side seating arrangements encapsulate this aspect of auto-erotic pleasure and fantasy through spectacles of patrons indulging in their own private fantasies, as they play the parts of silent overseers to the fantasies of their spectating peers. Such a doubling-up of roles connects all patrons to the auto-erotic pleasures of the group, whose collective presence serves as a mirror for, and a magnification of, each participant’s fantasy of reflexive “self-seeing.” Strip clubs that encourage spectators to subgroup, or to conspicuously interact or “bond” with one another as a result of their scenic set-ups, highlight a different, but related exchange between the traditional privacy of sex acts and the transgressive, orgiastic thrill of a communal situation. These clubs trade the formal and informal side-by-side spectator-seating arrangements for tables, chairs, and banquettes that allow small groups of patrons to cluster together and interact face to face. Establishments that offer or abet various subactivities and events—such as dining, table dancing, group celebrations, and business deals—intensify the interactions and spectacles of bonding performed by the subgroups. The owners and managers of Archibald’s, the Men’s Club, and Caligula XXI went so far as to dub the business deals that regularly take place between patrons in their clubs as “the main event.”51 A 1995 survey conducted by Sales & Marketing Management magazine revealed that 49 per cent of the males polled had entertained small groups of business clients in strip clubs to shore up deals. Capital Design salesman Dave M.Kirchoff explained the phenomenon: “You get a bunch of guys in a room who don’t know each other, you get drunk and look at naked women and the next day you’re great friends.” The same survey indicated that only 5 percent of the women polled had taken groups of clients to strip clubs.52 Lorrie Beno, outraged by such practices in the automobile industry, filed a lawsuit against her employer, Magna International, Inc., a well-known supplier of motor vehicle parts. Beno claimed that her male colleagues were reimbursed more than $40,000 annually for entertaining groups of customers, while her budget as a salesperson was a mere $6,000. Beno stated that she felt both “compelled” and “harassed” when male clients asked her to be taken to strip clubs. To rectify the situation, she invited several potential buyers to an ice show. Her company refused to pay for the tickets because the administrative executives did not consider such an outing conducive to the appreciation and group-bonding necessary for high-volume sales.53 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes that the sharing and selling of women to seal the public interests of men have been, and continue to be, inherent to the “whole 67

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spectrum of bonds between men, including friendship, mentorship, rivalry, institutional subordination, homosexual genitality, and economic exchange.” The intensity of these bonds often inspires both homosexual desires and heterosexual panic. The personal and cultural policing of homosexuality that results from such desires and panics ultimately strengthens the homosocial bonds and heterosexual identifications of the group.54 In strip clubs that encourage patron performances of male-bonding, the role of the female dancer may take on a monitoring function that reminds the actants of the privileges they accrue by remaining, at least for show, staunch heterosexuals. By the same token, the figure of the dancer, when “shared” by an intimate group of males, may serve as a decoy for, or placeholder of, covert desires circulating between the men. Writer and social critic Annette Fuentes concurs that heterosexual males reinforce their superior social status through rituals of homosocial male bonding. But Fuentes insists that the lure of strip events for straight men is based exclusively on “male bonding around the time-honored tradition of reducing women to nonthreatening sex objects.”55 Across the footlights, some dancers—particularly female dancers—complain that small groups of male patrons seated together are often more “obnoxious” than single spectators or spectators seated in side-by-side situations. Rocky, ex-stripper and bartender-manager for Joanna’s, suggested that subgroups of male and female patrons “try to take control”, or direct what he called “their personal hostilities” on to the performers. Regulars and single spectators, on the other hand, allowed themselves to be “dominated” or “swept away” by the action.56 Male performances of bonding in strip clubs, intensified by the use of cluster seating and the use of dancers to sell each other goods, may indeed invite “obnoxious” or “hostile” behaviors on the part of some male patrons. Like the event’s other perilous excesses (e.g., patron overspending, too many bodies and choices, and the circulation of culturally outlawed desires), these behaviors also may become part of the normal trouble of the scene. Nevertheless, the overall design and environmental directives of most clubs still thwart any discrete spectator positions of power or domination—either vis-à-vis the dancers or the scene itself. Because in such set-ups, patrons must triple their roles as actants and voyeurs in that they are expected to participate as individuals, small-group members, and members of the larger audience. Thus, they are subject to a triple set of rules and negotiations—of which, first and foremost, remain the rubrics of the house and the pressures of its mise en scène. For example, Watters described an environmental management technique that he expressly devised for his subgrouping customers. At Rick’s, strippers perform “private” table dances at a cost of $20 plus tips for a three-minute song. Watters stated that he deliberately arranged the tables favored by the wheeling and dealing businessmen so that their views of the main stage areas were slightly obstructed. Under these conditions, the patrons hired many more dancers to perform private shows at their tables, assuring both the club and the strippers the greatest profits possible.57 The steady stream of up-close and personal table dances also helped to 68

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keep the more boisterous patrons of the group in check because all spectators are required to remain immobile during this activity. In addition to the club’s environmental managements of its patrons and their wallets, spectators may find themselves subject to the rules of the business deal; the codes governing the camaraderie of the subgroup; and the expectations of the spectators’ individual fantasies that operate in concert with the varying personalities, desires, and intentions of the performers. Clubs that make use of both side-by-side and cluster seating arrangements (e.g., the Men’s Club, Big Al’s, Scores, the Penthouse, and Club Super Sexe for men—as well as Club 281 and La Bare for women) underscore all of these negotiations. Spectators may interact as members of small groups at the tables, and then temporarily leave those situations to take up positions as single participants in the side-by-side seating arrangements that surround the bar or stage. When spectators move away from their subgroups, there is often a marked change in their decorum. Some spectators act in a loud and brash manner in a group, but once on their own, behave in a relatively sedate fashion—and vice versa. Toepfer states that the orgy’s aura of “aristocratic” exclusivity and secrecy revolves around “a magnitude of pleasure reserved only for an initiated class of persons.” Rituals of group-bonding highlight this distinction and pleasure. But Toepfer also contends that the “dramatic, turbulent, dynamic emotion” produced by the orgy and like situations is always “based on an exchange, rather than stability.” Actants are never in search of “a powerfully unique self.” Rather, they seek to become part of a “unique class of persons whose collective ecstasy is greater than the happiness of any individual or of an entire society.” The experience of communal ecstasy—or ecstasy experienced within a communal setting—compels all who participate to abandon something of their usual or everyday selves—to become, as Toepfer puts it, “other.”58 Kirchoff suggests that businessmen who patronize strip clubs in groups become “great friends” in a single night because they drink and look at naked women together. Perhaps these men also become great friends in a single night because of their shared secret and intimacy in watching one another become “other”, as they are transformed into varying extensions of the gilded dreamscape that sets off their precious “big deal.” The effects of seating and other sightline modalities generally have less influence over female spectators because the majority of strip shows for women are under the direction of an MC. As discussed in the upcoming chapters, the MC interferes to a certain extent with both isolated and subgrouping spectator behavior because the MC attempts to have all participants respond as a unified community during the show. This is not to say that isolated and subgrouping experiences do not occur in clubs for women, but simply that female spectators have this additional factor in play. A few places that present strip shows for women—such as La Bare, Club 281, and the Bar Apollon—dispense with the guidance of an MC in favor of a deejay who merely announces the names of the dancers and songs. The controls of the seating arrangements then operate much in the same fashion as they do in the clubs for men. 69

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While the management device of the MC is rarely found in contemporary strip clubs for men,59 the strip show’s control over male spectator desires and actions is every bit as rigorous. The difference is that the event’s authority over the male patrons is often less overt because it is played out through the club’s mise en scène. Such management techniques are in keeping with the prevailing norms of gender because they outwardly preserve the male spectator’s sense of autonomy and privilege, even as they check or undermine it. As noted throughout this chapter, the environmental controls of the strip club and show, which reflect the sociopsychic prohibitions that underlie both fantasy and erotic desire in the West, are also very much a part of the pleasure of the sexual scene for females and males alike. While such managements and prohibitions offer patrons the erotic pleasure of being controlled by forces outside of themselves, they also highlight the potential magnitude and power, the social “too much,” of the spectators’ own consuming desires.

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Figure 2.1 Glamour designs at Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum club, New York City (1992) Source: Photographs by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 2.2 Luxurious interior at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) Source: Photograph by courtesy of Bob Glass

Figure 2.3 Dancer on a “piano stage” at the luxurious Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) Source: Photograph by courtesy of Bob Glass.

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Figure 2.4 Handbill for the notorious Scores club, New York City (circa 1993) Source: Courtesy of Lonnie Hanover, Scores.

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Source: Publicity photograph courtesy of the colorado.

Figure 2.5 Jungle interior design for the Colorado in Houston, Texas (1990)

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Figure 2.6 “West Side Story” meet S/M design at Chippendales New York (1992) Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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3 COSTUME DRAMAS AND SEXUAL SUBJECTIVITY

[Dress] links the biological body to the social being, and public to private. This makes it uneasy territory, since it forces us to recognize that the human body is more than a biological entity. It is an organism in culture, a cultural artifact even, and its own boundaries are unclear,…and unclear boundaries disturb us. (Elizabeth Wilson)1

Theatre impresario Harold Minsky once stated that neither the topless bathing suits of the 1960s, nor the new European “film imports” with all their nudity, could undermine his successful revival of the American Burlesque show. In an interview for Variety printed under the page-wide headline, “Topless No Threat to Strip,” Minsky averred that “femmes on the bump-and-grind circuit do not merely expose themselves. There is drama and interest in what they do, how they do it.”2 A quarter of a century later, television impresario and talk show host Phil Donahue introduced the husband and wife striptease team, Malibu-Barbie and Malibu-Ken, to families across America.3 The couple’s choice of stage names refers, of course, to Mattel’s ubiquitous Barbie and Ken dolls—toys that entertain their owners through the costumes of their “perfect” bodies and through the storylines suggested by their innumerable outfits which, in turn, require that the dolls be endlessly undressed and redressed. Nowadays, female strippers who work in the smaller bars and clubs typically begin their acts in simple lingerie outfits or other kinds of leisure wear conducive to the small stages, intimate surroundings, and lack of formal dressing rooms. Female strippers who perform in the larger show biz cabarets or gentlemen’s clubs, along with most of the male dancers who strip for women, continue to entertain their audiences with elaborate and varied costuming.4 But no matter how simple or complex the stripper’s initial outfit, it always creates “drama and interest” for the spectator because it functions as an obstacle to the story’s transgressive outcome— public nudity. The “nudity” of dancers in most strip shows is limited to the wearing of a G-string to cover the genitals.5 However, even in events billed as both “topless” and “bottomless,” strippers are rarely without some article of clothing or adornment that refers back to the state of dress (e.g., garters, stockings, high heels, ties, boots, hats, etc.). As Anne Hollander observes, in Western culture an “erotic awareness 76

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of the body always contains an awareness of clothing.”6 Like other visually based spectacles—from pageants and parades to sexual cruising and S/M—costumes drive the dramas of the strip show.7 This chapter explores the costume dramas of the strip show in terms of how they produce an “erotic awareness” of the body for the spectator. That is, it examines the theatrical dynamics and conventions that underlie and fashion the experience of visual sexual stimulation for both males and females. The first section explores the dancer’s sartorial “peekaboo” techniques that not only construct a particular look for the body of the performer, but that also produce the peculiar pleasure and performance of erotic “eye-strain” for the viewer. The second part of the chapter examines the cliché or uniform costumes favored by contemporary female and male strippers (e.g., formal wear, baby-doll outfits, preppy-boy leisure wear, occupational uniforms, and costumes that refer to different types of cultural aliens, exotics, and rebels). It analyzes how these costume choices encourage strip show spectators to make both traditional and “bi-gender” sex-role identifications that turn on oscillating positions of erotic control and surrender. The last section of the chapter discusses the dancer’s display of nudity as another type of cultural uniform. It explores the different ways female and male strippers manipulate and redesign their bodies to create sexually fashionable physiques for the stage. It also examines how spectators “dress up” the bodies of the strippers through their own projections, fantasies, and identifications with the scene of sexual exhibitionism. The costume drama of the dancer’s peekaboo look and the spectator’s peekaboo looking Burlesque star Margie Hart (a contemporary of Gypsy Rose Lee) found fame and fortune through the simple device of a trick panel skirt that was constructed out of many strips of material fastened together at the waist like a hula skirt.8 Hart began her signature striptease act by almost immediately baring her breasts. She then proceeded to parade around the stage for a considerable amount of time flouncing and playing with her panel skirt. The transfixed spectators stared, not at her fully exposed bosom, but at the lower half of her body because Hart reportedly did not wear a G-string.9 In the words of Irving Zeidman, Hart’s audiences “followed with avid concentration every slight movement of the fingers toying with the folds of the trick gown, every sudden twist of the wrist, for, who knows…”10 Ann Corio described her routine as responsible for “more ‘eye-strain’ in one night than the New York Eye Hospital sees in a year.”11 Variety dubbed Hart the “‘most daring’ of all strippers.”12 However, despite the notoriety of her costume and act, Hart’s panel skirt actually protected her from the censors because its peekaboo construction made it difficult for them to prove indecency charges. Hart’s costume, then, allowed her to be legally “good” and “bad” at the same time,13 while it entertained her audiences by eliciting from them the peculiar performance and pleasure-pain of erotic eye-strain. In 1987 the city of Chicago banned all female strip shows for male audiences 77

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from public bars and clubs that served “alcoholic liquor.”14 However, such establishments continued to provide sexual entertainments for their customers by substituting the equally eye-straining “lingerie shows” (sometimes called “fashion shows”) in their place. The lingerie show typically features one or more performers, who parade around a bar or club wearing an assortment of corsets, brassieres, camisoles, panties, negligees, garters, and stockings. In Chicago, since sexual dancing in adult venues was also forbidden by the same set of laws, lingerie performers enhanced the pleasure of erotic eye-strain for their customers by “modeling” (striking various poses similar to “voguing”) and by engaging patrons in up-close and personal conversations. Each new variation of the performer’s act—strolling, posing, chatting, and strolling once again—was geared to create an ever more intense round of spectator gazing as customers strained to catch a glimpse of what they were no longer supposed to see. “Gary,” a patron of the Playpen bar explained: “As a guy, you always try to see more than you should—like when she [the performer] bends over. You don’t want to be obvious—but sometimes you can’t help staring. It’s a kick—even when you know she knows that you’re being ridiculous.”15 For “Gary” and others, the spectator’s performances of “straining to see” (that is, the very action of attempting to “peep”) may produce a pleasure almost on a par with that of beholding a stripper’s actual nudity. Like the dancer’s revelations, the spectator’s act of peeking is also a performance about transgressing social taboos. In a certain sense, lingerie performers do, in fact, strip as part of their show. During their usual four- to six-hour shift at a club, most performers change outfits several times behind the closed doors of a bathroom or an office. Some bars and clubs allow the performers to raffle off their just worn costumes to the patrons for large sums of money. At the Playpen, winners of the raffle stand just outside the bathroom door in order to receive their prizes hot off the performer’s body. A few patrons attempt to carry on shouted conversations with the performers as they undress and redress. Others simply stare at the door, as if to bore holes in it with their eyes. Tactile titillations and fetishes obviously play a large part in this ritual where patrons gain possession of the performers’ just worn clothing. But the entire set-up of the event also resembles a precursor to the strip show in which dancers and actresses created the suggestion of illicit public nudity (and hence another type of eye-strain for their viewers) by undressing and redressing onstage behind strategically placed screens or curtains. As the many jokes about men stockpiling Victoria’s Secret catalogues suggest,16 lingerie shows are not limited to the bars of the Windy City. Strip clubs in New Jersey, New York, and Texas feature these events as well. In New Jersey, where local laws require dancers to wear G-strings and pasties (nipple covers), or bikinis with tops and bottoms, a number of former strip clubs have opted for the lingerie parade instead. Rick’s of Houston, which features “nude dancing” girls, supplements its regular shows with specially advertised “Lingerie Lunches.” Danielle’s in New York City offered a fashion show for men as an occasional prelude to its regular weekly male strip show for women. The Pure Platinum strip clubs—with establishments in Florida, the Mid-West, and New York—feature continuous 78

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lingerie entertainments because their waitresses are required to wear “uniforms” that consist of bustiers, garters, stockings, matching panties, and high heels. James Laver analyzes the historical legacy and cultural attraction of women’s lingerie and other peekaboo fashion designs through his theory of the “shifting erogenous zone.” According to Laver, the ultimate purpose of all fashion in general is to maintain the sexual appeal of women for men. Fashion does so by constantly shifting the public’s attention to different parts of the female anatomy through the cut, fabric, and accessories of its designs.17 In her critique of the fashion industry and dominant cultural views about women’s bodies, Susan Brownmiller reiterates Laver’s theory but from a feminist perspective. Brownmiller contends that fashion continues to objectify women by highlighting and altering the contours of their bodies. The natural or utilitarian functions of female body parts—for example, legs for walking or breasts for nurturing the young—are thus made incidental. Brownmiller notes that, historically, men’s fashions have also emphasized different features of their anatomy such as legs, buttocks, chests, shoulders, and genitals. But she rightly points out that most fashion designs for men—including corsets, tights, armor, codpieces, stiff boots, and stiff collars—have never been as restraining, debilitating, or as painful as fashions for women, which have counted among their number foot-binding, high heels, hobble-skirts, and the tightest of chest and waist corsets.18 In modern times in the West, “sexy” or “macho” fashions for men have run the gamut from power suits and preppie leisure wear to muscle T-shirts, ripped jeans, skintight jeans, cutoff shorts, and athletic gear. During the last decade and a half, Westerners also have been subjected or treated, depending on one’s point of view, to the fashion industry’s penchant for advertising men’s bodies and underwear on oversized billboards and in popular mainstream magazines. Specialty catalogues like R. S. Sales, marketed in the Cosmopolitan magazine for women throughout the early 1990s, advertised “provocative intimate fashions for men” from briefs and speedos to leather wear and sheer wear “with the kind of fit a man looks for and lives in.”19 Susan Bordo suggests that the cultural genealogy of men’s underwear and men’s bodies displayed in fashion ads should be attributed to gay male aesthetics, rather than [to] a sudden blossoming of appreciation for the fact that women might enjoy looking at sexy, well-hung young men who don’t appear to be about to rape them. Feminists might like to imagine that Madison Avenue heard our pleas for sexual equality and finally gave us “men as sex objects.” But what’s really happened is that women have been the beneficiaries of what might be described as a triumph of pure consumerism…over homophobia and the taboos against male vanity, male “femininity,” and erotic display of the male body that have gone along with it.20 While some female strippers prolong their acts by playing with eye-straining garter belts, stockings, brassieres, and camisoles, male dancers (performing for women 79

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and gay men) have invented their own sartorial choreographies around the fashion for peekaboo apparel. Instead of immediately exposing the final G-string after removing their pants or shorts, many male dancers wear fruit-of-the-loom or speedos underwear over one or two G-strings in ever-decreasing sizes. Dancer Johnny Rotten extends this sequence of stripping by adding skintight bicycle shorts under his jeans and over speedos and two smaller G-strings. He also sports a midriff tank top worn under his shirt which, like the bra of the female dancer, covers only his upper chest. After Rotten removes his shirt, he plays with the midriff tank top, flashing one nipple and pectoral muscle at a time—to the great delight of his female audiences.21 Club 281 and the Bar Apollon in Montreal permit male dancers to strip to “total” nudity. In these clubs, strippers turn their fruit-of-the-looms and G-strings into penis slings to make their genitals “dance” or bounce around before they completely disrobe.22 Clubs that forbid total male nudity for women—such as Big Alice’s in Peoria, Illinois, and Chippendales Los Angeles and Chippendales New York—allow male dancers to remove their final G-strings under the cover of towels, robes, and pillows. Dancers often follow this exercise by tossing their underwear hot off their bodies into the audience. Like the Burlesque star Margie Hart, the male dancers then play peekaboo games with their straining-to-see female patrons as they use the towels, robes, and pillows to flash (or to pretend to flash) their private parts. In a manner evocative of Brownmiller’s earlier reproval of the fashion industry, cultural critic Arthur Asa Berger holds the blatant advertising of men’s underwear (which began in earnest in the late 1980s), and the variety of designs and colors now available in men’s underwear, responsible for transforming good old boys into passive lust “objects” for females and males alike. According to Berger: Men’s psyches have changed—It used to be that men were judged in terms of their position, their education, and their manners. All of this has been stripped away and men are now, like women, increasingly being judged basically in terms of their physical attributes.23 Both Berger and Brownmiller attribute the erotic charge that spectators experience when gazing at partially clad bodies to a preordained spectatorial position of domination. The peekaboo outfits worn by the models and dancers supposedly underscore their roles as sexual objects or “things to be had” by turning them into collections of passive body parts. What Berger and Brownmiller overlook, however, is the fact that the spectators’ excitement in beholding such images rests, at least in part, on their own performance of straining-to-see. The spectator’s action of straining-to-see—whether it is in the form of attempting to bore holes through a door with one’s eyes, or striving to see through or around a dancer’s brassiere, ripped jeans, or speedos—is pleasurable because it adds to the experience of instability and suspense that drives erotic arousal. Art historian Mario Perniola proposes that representations of partially clad bodies are arousing for men and women not because they offer their spectators 80

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positions of absolute control over the mimetic scene, but because they create an arc of action that moves the viewers and the subjects of the representation “from one state to another”—from dressed to undressed, from curiosity to sexual excitement, from desire to satiation, and back again. This cycle or movement, which Perniola names “the transit,” ends only upon the spectators’ disengagement from the representation.24 The transit demands both stamina and imagination from the spectator. It produces a double vision—yet another type of eye-strain for the viewer—that eschews any single stable spectatorial position. Laplanche and Pontalis insist that such a movement or variability in the fantasizer’s identifications with the scene is the key to the “heterogeneous nature” of all fantasies, including the sexual.25 If the goal of pornography is, as Cowie suggests, to provoke the viewer’s desire to desire, rather than a mere wish to possess static objects, then the wild ride of the transit helps to create and sustain the primary pleasure and satisfaction of the fantasy for as long as possible. Cowie states that inherent to all fantasies is the conflict between the fantasizer’s goal of sustaining the primary pleasure (the desire to desire), and the secondary goal of the consummation of desire which usually concludes the story.26 The story’s diversions, delays, and obstacles, embodied in the performer’s or model’s peekaboo costuming, create for the fantasizer a ride of the transit that prolongs the narrative, and thus the exciting tease and instability of sexual yearning (which, again, is a powerful pleasure in and of itself). Costume characters: from formal wear and occupational uniforms to baby dolls and “alien-exotics” Alison Lurie reminds her readers in The Language of Clothes (sold in major book stores and at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York City) that dress not only tells us whether a person is interested in sex, but “what sort of sex they are interested in.”27 A female stripper decked out in black leather and chains, or a male stripper sporting full motorcycle regalia most likely will invoke different narratives and sexual fantasies from our Western cultural storehouses of desire than those suggested by a female dancer parading in a pink chiffon evening gown or a male stripper strutting in preppie leisure wear. Lurie suggests that such sartorial clichés often muster the signifying power of uniforms.28 At first glance, costumes of leather and gowns of pink chiffon may appear to represent either erotic roles of control or erotic roles of surrender—or, as an alternate, either S/M or vanilla (i.e., romantic) sex. However, within the realm of sexual play and representation, these roles and proclivities are rarely played out in terms of such mutually exclusive or diametrically opposed positions of desire. The leathergarbed seducer or “top” may yearn to please the “bottom”, above all else in order to ensure the bottom’s devotion and desire in return. The sweet baby doll or demure debutante, who appears to capitulate to the will of a practiced seducer, may have been pursuing the presumed seducer all along. Any and all of these costume roles and positions may offer their enactors and viewers control through 81

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surrender, surrender through control, mutual power, mutual abandonment, the pretense and suspense of “hostility,” the experience of “tenderness,” narcissistic identifications and pleasure, and so on. Like the symbolism of the “wedding ring,” certain apparel, props, and accessories may serve to signal a person’s availability, favored erotic roles/acts, and sexual preference. But, however codified these symbols may be within specific communities and subcultures, there is never an exact reason or accounting for a person’s fetish or costume choice in terms of sexual play. Upbringing, childhood trauma, social indoctrinations, biological sex, and sexual preference do not offer one-for-one explanations for these choices—because, again, such choices cannot be understood in terms of static positions or experiences of desire. An actant’s choice of “costume,” then, provides a particular trigger or entry point into the whirlwind and “scene” of sexual desire. With regard to the “triggers” provided by the strip show, the more formal the initial costume of the dancer in terms of its references to the established echelons of a society, a subculture, or a community, the more elongated and dramatic the ride between the states of dress and nudity and the oscillating positions of desire. Formal wear: From evening gowns to occupational uniforms Glamor girls and Burlesque queens strutting their stuff in tight-fitting sequinnedgowns—properly accessorized with elbow gloves, stockings, and high heels—are not nearly as prevalent as they once were during the Burlesque and post-World War II eras. However, many strippers who work in the upscale gentlemen’s clubs (e.g., Rick’s, Scores, Goldfingers, The Men’s Club, and the chain of Pure Platinum clubs) continue the tradition. Most male strip shows for women also feature at least one routine in which a muscle-bound dancer parades around in formal or dress-wear. The classic tuxedo is the signature costume of “Downtown Marty Brown,” the star stripper and director/manager of Beefcakes USA. The MC of the Escapes club peels off his white dinner jacket and white dress-pants as part of the finale of the show. The Hangar Club features a routine in which rows of men, à la A Chorus Line, strip out of glittering, cutaway turquoise tuxedos and top hats. White military dress uniforms of marine and naval officers, tightly fitted to the body and decorated with brass buttons and gold epaulets, braids, and metals, turn up on strippers at Chippendales Los Angeles and at Montreal’s Club 281. Formal wear heralds special social occasions from state banquets and military exhibitions to high school proms and beauty pageants. It frames the wearer in terms of certain social and economic privileges—even if they are only temporary or mimetic. Hollander points out that, in addition to signifying high social rank, dressing up fascinates us because it creates a psychic and sartorial “armor.” While the cut and fabric of formal wear (e.g., peekaboo or tight-fitting designs made from silks, fine wools, gold braid, spangles, beads, and other shiny materials) may 82

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be tactilely appealing, they also produce an “intimidating otherness” that repels touch. This coupling of invitation and intimidation is the basis for the ever-sought after, merciless tease of the “dressed-to-kill” effect.29 In the early 1990s, Chippendales Los Angeles featured a routine in which three male strippers, costumed in the white military dress uniform of heart-throb Richard Gere in the film An Officer and a Gentleman (dir. Taylor Hackford, 1982) stripped to their G-strings in perfect synchronization. The dancers performed the number to the movie’s Oscar-winning theme song, “Up Where We Belong” (Buffy SaintMarie’s revamping of the Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes original). The movement or transit from the glamorous image of dressed-to-kill military officers (and movie stars) who are “up where we (all should) belong” to a degree of nudity allowed for the maximum dramaturgical play possible. In other words, this sartorial plotting took the social symbols of dressed and undressed states and moved them to their conceptual extremes. Along such a roller-coaster ride, strip show spectators can position themselves in an array of roles that arc and swing from swooners to seducers. In the story of An Officer and a Gentlemen, it is, of course, the two workingclass factory women who set out to beguile and hook for themselves the success object of an “officer and a gentlemen.” One of the women “gets the guy.” The other rejects the officer she initially pursues because he decides to leave the military, and so is stripped of his elevated social status. Striptease costumes that borrow from everyday occupational uniforms—such as those worn by nurses, maids, enlisted soldiers, and police officers—may not play upon the “up where we belong” narrative. Nevertheless, they also suggest a type of sartorial armor that refers to established class and gender norms which are highlighted and violated through the act of stripping. Male dancers outfitted as construction workers, businessmen, police officers, lifeguards, and the like turn up in almost all strip shows for women. These characters may exemplify the various male action roles extolled by Western culture. However, within the reconfigured hierarchies of the strip event for women, patriarchal insignias of social power and physical strength are always displayed in conjunction with the dancers’ obvious show of placing themselves at the service of their female patrons and their sexual fantasies. The occupational uniforms worn by the male strippers then also serve to underscore the fact that both the dancers and the action figures they portray are for hire within the context of the show. Pointedly, the Chippendales New York “Seeing is Believing” press kit for the Welcome to Your Fantasy show describes a featured male dancer under the caption, “John/Room Service.” In the opening sequence of another Chippendales New York program, One Night of Sin the MC introduces a featured dancer to the audience as “our very own doctor who you can hire out for house calls.”30 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White observe that if one is “for hire,” be he or she maid or doctor, one is always also at risk for dismissal according to the desires, choices, and expectations of the immediate employer.31 Male dancers survive as sexual performers in strip clubs for women by pleasing or meeting the expectations of their clientele—a fact that was stressed by many of the male dancers interviewed 83

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for this book. During a visit to Montreal’s Club 281, the reality of this situation was publicly played out in dramatic terms by one male stripper costumed as a cowboy and a female patron he was trying to impress. The cowboy stripper performed several table dances for a young, attractive woman seated alone. When she tried to pay him for his efforts, the stripper refused explaining that for her he would continue his erotic rodeo show “free of charge.” The dancer’s demeanor was polite and sincere, but the young woman responded to his “favor” by angrily throwing her money on the table and making a beeline for the door. She paused along the way only to complain to the manager, who then publicly chastised and threatened to fire the misbehaving stripper.32 Cowie proposes that the difficulty of realizing one’s own sexual desires and fantasies in harmonious accord with the desires of a potential “real-life” sexual partner is one of the major reasons for the success of pornography.33 In the set-up of the strip show, women exercise the power of suitor rejection which they are granted, at least in theory, in everyday life in the West. However, they also are encouraged to play the role of the sexual initiator—a role that usually still is reserved for men in mainstream society. Within the confines of the show, female patrons choose which dancers to pay attention to, which dancers to tip, how much to tip them and, in some events and clubs, which dancers to invite to their tables for drinks or private acts. The theatrical convention that pairs virile male action characters with everyday Janes who get to take charge of them helps to sustain the whirlwind, or arc of action, that propels the strip show’s customers between the various, overlapping, and slippery states of erotic control and surrender. The cowboy dancer’s attempt to initiate a sexual scene of his own, by expressing his interest in a customer through the “real-life” means of refusing payment, cut short the arc of that action—and, with it, the spectator’s pleasure in surrendering to a scene that she herself had initiated. A few female strippers also choose to masquerade in occupational uniforms— a practice that offers their male patrons a related but variant set of erotic roles and positionings. Female hard-hat construction workers, carrying ropes and assorted tools, saunter around the stage during special costume theme nights at Rick’s. The Dolly Sisters, decked out in police gear, twirl night sticks and handcuffs as they periodically “raid” the bars of Staten Island. Hordes of lady wrestlers demonstrate their action skills by performing pins, flips, and headlocks at the Tropicana in Los Angeles. Featured strippers Veronica Hart and Donna Foxx often don men’s tailored suits to parade as business sharks or gangsters in clubs across North America. Such female costume characters in sexual play usually stand for the role of the dominatrix who is hired to exact pleasure from her clients by commanding (at least for outward show) the sexual scene. In mainstream or “straight” society, male sexual hires are socially transgressive, first and foremost, because they are considered to be so rare. On the other hand, female sex trade workers are considered to be socially transgressive or threatening exactly because they appear to be so common. For some social activists, the very prevalence of female sex trade workers, no matter how they position or costume 84

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themselves, reaffirms the patriarchal dictate that the true place of women in the world is as the play toys of men. In response to such charges, a number of selfdefined feminist sex trade workers, including Annie Sprinkle, Marilyn Dragu, Nina Hartley, Debbie Sundahl, have suggested that the sexual consumers’ very act of buying erotic entertainments or hiring others to arouse them—to “do” them— is also an immediate act of giving over social and personal power. This situation is exemplified by the consumer’s engagement of the gender-bender action character— the female top or dominatrix. But there are subtler expressions of this job description as well. After the role of “policewoman,” the occupational costume characters most favored by contemporary female strippers include the roles of nurses, teachers, maids, mommies, and nannies—all of which refer to the most well-rehearsed social role for women, the nurturing helpmate. But the character of the nurturing helpmate in sexual play and representation can also produce a roller-coaster ride between oscillating erotic positions of control and surrender. The roles of teacher, maid, nanny, mommy, and registered nurse all recall scenarios in which women have profound social and physical power over males. Stallybrass and White cite Freud’s own account of his relationship with his nursemaid in their discussion of the shifting positions of power that occur between employers and the hired help who have intimate control over their bodies.34 Sex trade worker, feminist, and performance artist Annie Sprinkle featured one such “nurse routine” in her evening-long performance piece for mainstream audiences, Post-Post Porn Modernist. She developed this routine from acts she performed during her earlier career as a stripper and porn star. Sprinkle avers that no matter what the performance venue, she always feels “like a school nurse” whose job is to educate her audiences and clients about sex. Sprinkle begins her Nurse Sprinkle routines by addressing the audience as “boys and girls.” She uses a microphone because, in her words, “it amplifies my voice, engulfs them [the audience], massages them, penetrates them.” As Nurse Sprinkle strips, she entertains her spectators with an anatomy lesson on the female body that includes directions on how to best please a woman through the massage and titillation of her many erogenous zones. In this way, Sprinkle generously offers her male patrons relief from the burden of having to prove their sexual prowess at all times and at all costs, because she gives them the luxury of placing themselves under her care and supervision.35 Like the figure of the registered nurse, nanny and mommy characters encourage strip show patrons to imagine themselves as the focal point of another’s interest, ministrations, and training. The Dolly Sisters, renowned for their “police raid” numbers, reported that their fans were equally enthralled by “mommy acts.” Gabriel Dolly explained that in their mommy acts: “We talk baby talk. We say ‘Good little baby’…It’s being in control without being mean. Men want to be babied. They want to be controlled.”36 Anne McClintock describes the most extreme version of this fetish, “babyism” or “infantilism,” as a pleasure or indulgence that allows men to 85

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surrender deliriously to the memory of female power and their own helplessness in their mother’s or nurse’s arms. If men are socially tasked with upholding the burden of rational self-containment, perhaps in the babyland of fem-dom they can fleetingly relinquish their social control, surrendering responsibility and authority in an ecstatic release of power. 37 McClintock’s analysis of babyism specifically focuses on the tightly structured scenes played out in private between a paid dominatrix and her client. However, as the Dolly Sisters indicate, within the full range of its scope, the fetish may be enacted in communal arenas where the participants use less transparent means to achieve comparable ends.38 McClintock herself observed that on a visit to the notorious Show World, her expectation of “brutish howls, the heady odour of male power, the whiff of abuse” were nowhere to be found. She was confronted instead with what looked like “the nursery of a maternity ward during breastfeeding: the men were slumped low in their chairs, slack-jawed and still.” It was by all accounts “a spectacle of glazed and infantile enthrallment.”39 Baby dolls, virgins…and more baby boys? While some male patrons use the macho advertisements and aura of the strip club as a cover for their transgressive play as baby boys, many female strippers act out the companion role of the culturally endorsed “baby doll.” In 1990 The New York Times ran a full-page article about a “new” fashion fad for grown women entitled, “Baby Dolls, Naughty and Nice.”40 The popular baby-doll dress, worn by business executives, saleswomen, and homemakers alike—was a demure highwaisted, loose-fitting garment with a hemline cut well above the knee. Older versions of the look—baby-doll lingerie and baby-doll pajamas—are still very much in vogue. The lingerie version generally consists of a loose-fitting and sometimes lacy, sleeveless top cut just short enough to reveal the matching panties underneath. Baby-doll apparel marketed for women is both naughty and nice because it projects the innocence of youth while naughtily displaying, or threatening to display, too much flesh and underwear. Most strippers create babydoll characters through simple lingerie outfits, wide-eyed stares, and a friendly or shy-coy attitude. Some performers invent entire scenarios around playing the parts of virginal girls complete with school uniforms, pigtails, jump ropes, and teddy bears. Ann Corio, a Burlesque queen who performed both little girl and glamour girl strip acts, explained that innocence is “the one virtue that drives men wild.”41 Much of feminist criticism insists that both the violations of the actual pedophile, and the stories or images that refer to virginal girls in the context of male sexual desire, reflect men’s inherent need to play the dominator or control women at all costs. Nancy Hartsock describes the “persistent (male) fantasy of transforming the virgin into the whore”: 86

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She begins pure, innocent, fresh, even in a sense disembodied, and is degraded and defiled in sometimes imaginative and bizarre ways. Transgression is important here. Forbidden practices are being engaged in. The violation of the boundaries of society breaks its taboos. Yet the act of violating a taboo, of seeing or doing something forbidden, does not do away with its forbidden status… Put another way the obsessive transformation of virgin into whore simply crosses over and over again the boundary between them… And without the boundary to violate, the thrill of transgression would disappear.42 In Hartsock’s scenario, fantasies about despoiling virgins—the archetypal passive female characters—allow men to play their traditional roles as sexual dominators as they simultaneously enjoy the thrill of breaking social taboos. Hartsock’s point is well taken, for, in numerous narratives and representations, the virgin’s innocence does indeed lead directly to her victimization by men. However, historically, the figure of the virgin in fiction and fantasy has also produced a very different storyline—a storyline in which the virgin’s would-be male dominators are humbled, shamed, or even driven mad by their own overwhelming desires. In Molière’s play, School for Wives, and in Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (based on several plays by the ancient dramatist Plautus), virginal characters escape their jailers or amorous wardens and leave them haplessly gasping in frustration. It is by virtue of their very innocence that the virgins take strong actions to get what they want— actions that include agreeing to clandestine meetings with their own love interests and running away. By the end of these tales, the virgins not only choose whom “to give it up for,” but they supposedly live happily ever after with their self-selected mates. In her anthology of male sexual fantasies, Men in Love, Nancy Friday proposes that a female virgin’s control or triumph over her would-be seducers is not always a result of her ignorance. Friday states that women as well as teenage girls “understand virginity.” By deciding “how far to let a man go” and “how far to go” themselves, females can wield great power. Friday goes on to muse: “All that power. For how many women, I wonder, were the adolescent years the best? Sex is supposed to empower men, but it is (ironically and logically) their very powerlessness.”43 In this instance, Friday is specifically discussing the fantasies and frustrations of virginal young men who may not have the immediate wherewithal to manipulate or force their attentions on another. Friday’s blithe vision of adolescent sexual and social relations seems to suggest that only males can be bowled over by sexual desire. Her scenario also implies that most sexual encounters between youths and young women are based on mutual consent—a proposition that has been hotly debated. Brownmiller and Dworkin both insist that the gendered inequities of mainstream society (and in Dworkin’s argument, the physical differences between women and men as well) cannot help but encourage male sexual aggression against women. Even pro-sex feminists such as Carol Vance and Lisa Jervis warn that, in most 87

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cultures, women’s pursuit of sexual pleasure and agency is always dampered by the potential physical harm they risk from men.44 In addition to such dangers, there lurks the thorny issue of statutory rape—or sex between minors (persons 16 and under) and the “adults” who take heinous advantage of them. Notwithstanding these social and political realities, the figure of the female virgin in fantasy and representation is often used as a device to foreground the dangers and sexual teasing that men may face as a result of their own consuming passions and machinations—such as the sexual frustration and public loss of face suffered by Arnolphe in School for Wives. In other narratives and stories—including Pretty Baby (dir. Lous Malle, starring a prepubescent Brooke Shields, 1978), Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita (1955), and the Lolita film adaptations (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1962; dir. Adrian Lyne, 1997)—the young heroines are subjected to long-term male abuse. But, in the end, their keepers and oppressors also suffer mightily from the devastation brought about by their own perverse desires. While such stories may offer a version of “poetic justice” or a cautionary tale about why it is important to obey the social rules, this moral sugar coating often hides an additional purpose. The virginal character’s “innocence” is used as a dramatic obstacle that initially delays or foils the male seducer’s objectives, thus increasing his (and the reader/viewer’s) pain and passion. Many sexual fantasies, and the whole set-up of the strip show’s “innocent” entertainments, operate on this principle as well. Most dancers, patrons, and strip clubs follow Friday’s ideal dictum of female power and control: “you may look and desire, but not touch.” Or, as an alternative, the house rules of the club may allow the dancer to direct patrons to “touch here, but not there—and only for so long.” In other words, the device of the virgin also prolongs the suspense and particular pleasure/satisfaction that comes from the experience of sexual yearning. Friday limits her discussion about female sexual power and virgins to the young women who remain, technically at least, virgins. However, some narratives and fantasies turn on the suspense created by the transfer or sharing of power that takes place between the leading characters when the virgin loses her virginity and acquires carnal knowledge. The movie musical adaptation of Colette’s Gigi (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1958) plays out the various transgressions of the traditional virgin/whore split. In his rendition of the film’s Lerner and Loewe theme song, “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” Maurice Chevalier sings about the liminal position of girls on the brink of womanhood. “Those little eyes so helpless and appealing,” he croons, shaking his head, “one day will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling.” The leading man, played by Louis Jordan, echoes the theme song as he voices his uneasiness about seeing Gigi trade in her schoolgirl uniform for more womanly garb. The figure of a girl budding into sexual maturity is itself represented as a symbol of social transgression and danger (to men), a violation of “innocence”—to which the conventional boy-to-man transformation is never subject. Child abuse in the form of kiddie porn is an atrocity. The questionable use of the very young Brooke Shields in the film Pretty Baby, and teenagers Jodie Foster 88

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in Taxi Driver and Dominique Swain in the 1997 film version of Lolita, provoked charged discussions about this issue. However, there is a crucial distinction between representations that use children in sexualized roles and those that feature adult women disguised as girls—such as in the film Gigi which starred a 20-year-old Leslie Caron, or most strip shows and clubs which require their performers to be at least 18 years of age. Little girl symbols consciously adopted by legally adult women in representation and “real life” may have very little to do with the desires of the actual pedophile. Instead, such disguises may offer an additional avenue for sexrole experimentation and transgression for both so-called “normal” women and men. In an interview for this book, “Charlene,” a stripper and 25-year-old graduate student in business, discussed her own trademark little girl strip routine which she performed at Billy’s and other smaller clubs and bars in New York City and New Jersey. She described her costume character as “too naive and sweet to be a threat to men.”45 Nevertheless, Charlene made it clear that she carefully crafted her act—that she pretended to be “too naive” to take up a position of sexual control even as she skillfully manipulated her male audience for financial gain. As “Charlene” suggests, little girl routines may allow men the fantasy of being more sexually expert than women, even as they surrender to a scene in which they themselves are being expertly teased. “Lily,” a 24-year-old dancer at the Baby Doll Lounge in Manhattan, reported that she sometimes takes her “innocent act” one step further by telling customers that she does not date outside the club because she is still a “virgin.” Lily has a live-in boyfriend, a fact that most club regulars know even as they suspend their disbelief once again to indulge in this fantasy.46 The vision of a woman disguised as an innocent young girl shifts the traditional and inequitable responsibility and liability of socio-sexual decorum from the female to the male. This transfer of responsibility is not a sign of sexual passivity or sexual subordination on the part of the masqueraders. It is a performance that offers adult female and male actants a culturally safe place from which to experiment with sexual seduction and sexual surrender. For such a disguise suggests that the socially worrisome, powerful female seductress is now artless rather than deliberate in her display. Women who take up the costume or outward demeanor of “little girls” have figured out another way to circumvent the double standard that divides good women from bad, because as The New York Times article suggests, the masquerade allows them to be both “naughty and nice.” The baby-doll routine, in all its forms, is a mainstay of strip shows for men. However, some of the events for women also feature male strippers in the roles of the young and the guileless. The Chippendales New York One Night of Sin show opens with the MC introducing the male chorus and ushers to the audience. All of these performers are outfitted in look-alike black spandex pants with tuxedo collars and cuffs that accentuate their bare chests and arms. So the MC gives each dancer and usher a verbal costume that suggests a different sexual type (e.g., “and now, Ladies, this is so and so—the doctor—the football player—the Italian—the marine,” etc.). When the MC finally introduces the last dancer of the sequence, 89

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he asks the audience: “How many ladies like them young and innocent? I’ve got a virgin—his name is Timothy and he is 18 years old.” The women greet “the virgin” with cheers and whistles. Throughout the duration of the show, “Timothy” is referred to as “the virgin” by the MC and the other cast members to the continued delight of the audience.47 The obvious pleasure the female spectators took in this running gag may be a reflection of the changing mores that make it more acceptable for women to select younger men as sexual partners for short- and long-term relations. But the figure of the male virgin is also entertaining because it too operates as a symbol of social transgression. Unlike the girl-to-woman transformation, a boy is not considered socially transgressive or delinquent through his gaining of sexual knowledge. Instead, he transgresses cultural expectations and becomes the butt of jokes by the very virtue of his innocence. The common cultural tale of a youth initiated into the world of sex by an older, more experienced woman focuses on the youth’s journey to conform to the expectations of manhood. The older woman simply functions as a catalyst for his sojourn; we learn nothing of her desires or pleasures. The Chippendales’ virgin routine, however, shifts the center of the drama to the female spectators (the “older” women) and the transgressive pleasures they take in being cast in the roles of “sexperts” by the show. While both female and male spectators may use the figure of the virgin to situate themselves in roles of erotic control, they also may delight in identifying with the virgin in terms of the thrill of an ideal “first time.” Michael Balint observes that, in popular culture, the most exciting or titillating experiences usually revolve around unfamiliar situations and satisfactions where “the obvious new object is a virgin.” Balint writes that “it is amazing how many thrills claim this adjective. One speaks of virgin land, a virgin peak, or a virginal route to a peak, virgin realms of speed, and so on.”48 It may be tempting, then, to conflate a fantasizer’s desire for the virginal in sexual play with the desire to plunder or dominate another person. However, as most thrill-seekers well know, a virgin land, a virgin mountain, or an untried speed, can lead to one’s own ravishment as well. In the words of Cowie, “Fantasy cannot be taken at face value. Psychoanalysis shows that it is a complex realm of subterfuges and satisfactions as well as terrors.”49 “Alien-exotics” In order to create the thrill of the unfamiliar for their spectators, strippers frequently double their own social positions as cultural aliens by selecting costumes that represent a wide range of exotic “others”—or characters who also stand outside of the norms of dominant society. Such costume choices may incorporate symbols that refer to ethnic, racial, and regional stereotyping—as well as designs that suggest space aliens, robots, leather rebels, S/Mers, and legendary or mythic characters. Dancers at Rick’s, Caligula XXI, and the Colorado don what stripper “Ivy” calls “Tex-Mex” dress.50 Chicago’s Sugar Shack II features male strippers costumed as ancient Aztec warriors and various Latin lovers. Female strippers in bars, clubs, 90

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and theatres throughout North America wear Westernized versions of Asian dress including mandarin-style evening gowns, silk kimonos, lingerie with feathers, seethrough harem pants, and assorted veils and scarves. At the other end of the exotica spectrum, helmeted, space-age male dancers in shiny leather outfits accessorized with spikes, chains, and other hardware turn up at the Sugar Shack II, Chippendales Los Angeles, and Chippendales New York. Female performers decked out in black leather mini-skirts with matching bras, G-strings, and boots strut across the stages of Billy’s and New York Dolls. A few clubs and special events feature strippers who perform take-offs of storybook or legendary characters such as Superman, Zorro, Spiderman, Robin Hood, Snow White, and male and female vampires—all characters who are forced to live, either permanently or temporarily, on the perimeters of their own fictive societies. Stallybrass and White propose that, in Western society, the middle class “uses the whole world as its theatre in a particularly instrumental fashion, the very subjects which it politically excludes becoming exotic costumes which it assumes in order to play out the disorders of its own identity.”51 By invoking the “alienexotic” figure, or what Stallybrass and White also describe as the culturally grotesque subject or situation, mainstream society can flirt with transgressive behaviors and desires, while it simultaneously reasserts the presumption of its own “normalcy.” Stallybrass and White call this “the grotesque of the Other.” But they also observe that there is another type of experience involving the figure of the alien-exotic that frequently stems from, or coincides with, a group’s or individual’s need to construct identity through differentiation. They describe this tandem experience as a boundary phenomenon of hybridization or inmixing, in which self and other become enmeshed in an inclusive, heterogeneous, dangerously unstable zone. What starts as simple repulsion or rejection of symbolic matter foreign to the self inaugurates a process of introjection and negation which is always complex in its effects…an identity-in-difference.52 In the most reductive sense, Stallybrass and White’s theory of an identity-indifference occurs when a person or a group encounters a culturally grotesque figure or situation that allows them to experience both a socially correct fear or repulsion and a transgressive impulse to imagine what it would be like to be likewise “Other.” Stallybrass and White’s hypothesis about this experience—and the heterogeneous, dangerously unstable fantasy zones it may produce—is clearly formulated from their own perspective within dominant culture. But the basic paradigm has the potential to cut in many ways.53 Whatever one’s cultural, subcultural, or community affiliations, there are always those who are also “Other.” At the same time, “grotesque” figures such as space aliens, vampires, Neanderthals, and various storybook characters indicate that the fantasizer’s use of the “Other” does not always relate to specific cultural or institutional prejudices. The “Other” has yet another function in the fantasizer’s pursuit of pleasure. 91

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Julia Kristeva insists that, in the novel, liminal characters such as “foreigners” are exciting because they can be read in more than one way. Kristeva states that such figures create “a network of paddings,” “a concatenation of deviations oscillating between two oppositional poles.”54 However, this design does not rest on a simple binary proposition. “Foreign” or “alien-exotic” characters, like the time-telling, talking rabbit of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, provide the reader, fantasizer, or spectator with the necessary passport or transit to a fantasy realm that is itself predicated on shifting relationships—that offers an entire scene of action, rather than clear-cut identifications. The fantasizer’s gratification or pay-off in making such a voyage, or stepping into such a scene, is based on the delicious suspense and sought after pleasure of dramatic uncertainty—a pleasure not unlike the suspense and tease of sexual desire. Romance novels for women frequently transpose the figure of the foreigner into the character of the “unruly woman”—who at the outset of the story refuses to conform to the presiding norms of gender. Some critics have dubbed these characters and narratives as regressive because, by the end of the story, the unruly heroine usually has been tamed or reformed in some way by the hero. Her timely “taming” ultimately reinforces conventional sex role expectations, including the expectation that men have “the final say.” However, such readings overlook or ignore how the figure of the unruly woman and other social rebels may disrupt or question the validity of gender and other cultural norms no matter what the final outcome of a specific narrative.55 Significantly, socially transgressive characters continue to turn up in all kinds of representations and entertainments. During the mid- to late-1990s, Jerry Springer featured a bevy of female strippers as guests on his national television talk show, The Jerry Springer Show. In keeping with the antagonistic format of the program, Springer and his studio audience took turns chastising the dancers for their choice of occupation. Springer concluded the narrative of each program with a soliloquy that issued warnings to any female who dared to contemplate work as a stripper. Nevertheless, a steady stream of new exotic dancers continued to appear on the show. Despite the verbal battering by Springer and the chorus of his audience, most of the female strippers defended their right to perform and strut their sexual stuff. Not surprisingly, Springer’s guardianship of the double standard was revealed during the few times that male strippers were featured on the show. The male strippers selected by Springer’s assistants projected a decidedly “macho” aura. They were, therefore, also well received by both Springer and his studio spectators.56 Most feminist critics of romance novels and strip shows for women also tend to ignore the many narratives and images in which the unruliness of the “heroine” is matched by the unruliness of the “hero.” Cowboys, sheiks, warriors, robbers, rebels, Don Juan lovers, and an assortment of cruel, but misunderstood dukes, barons, and counts may embody narratives about physically fit, irresistible men who dominate women. But like the sometimes unruly strip show spectator, they too can stand for erotic positions that cry out for another’s control. Even the so-called passive or innocent heroine in romantic fiction is typically the one who finally 92

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tames or rescues the leading man from his dangerous excesses. Most romantic stories do conclude with the socially correct heterosexual marriage or pairing up of the hero and heroine. However, such scenarios do not guarantee a return to traditional family values jealously guarded by an all-powerful patriarch. As Rosalind Coward suggests, “these fantasies are very obviously about a certain transfer of power.”57 As with the panoply of stories inspired by the romantic “alien-exotic,” female and male strippers who don the costumes of space aliens, robot-terminators, motorcycle rebels, and leather mamas and papas may summon tales about dissidents or misfits who are similarly in need of “rescue,” “education,” or “control.” Such costume characters may also represent the mistresses and masters of domination whose sex games shun the traditional social hierarchies of gender and class.58 Following Freud, Linda Williams and Lynda Hart separately insist that the roles of the sadist and the roles of the masochist can be no more definitively separated than the strict division of male and female sexuality along the lines of activity and passivity. Jessica Benjamin argues that children of both sexes internalize masochistic and sadistic impulses—and that “through this internalization comes the ability to play both roles in fantasy to experience vicariously the other’s part.”59 Some theorists and activists have attempted to differentiate between the “good erotic” positions posed by romantic fiction or vanilla sex and the sexual domination, “tortures,” and “humiliations” of S/M. But these “differences” are probably a matter of degree rather than of kind. Robert Stoller contends that there is an element of “hostility” in all sexual fantasies and in most experiences of erotic arousal.60 In sexual encounters between mutually consenting adults, this “hostility” (which may be expressed through unshared private fantasies as well as through the use of costumes and ritualistic enactments) becomes another anarchic force or passport to a realm of dramatic uncertainty and suspense—a zone that is foreign to the scene of one’s everyday world. The sexual fantasizer’s vicarious and pleasurable entanglement in a “zone of the foreign” may include a type of psychic and social tourism that reinforces cultural stereotypes. Nevertheless, such representations and fantasies clearly question canonical feminist and psychoanalytic object-relations theories that insist that we make only literal same-sex identifications or oppositional connections—that, for example, (powerful) men identify only with other (powerful) men, while women identify exclusively with other women or in terms of their collective position as social and sexual subordinates.61 In the words of Parveen Adams, we are not limited to masculine or feminine identifications that begin and end with “I am like so and so” (male or female), therefore “I must like so and so” (male or female)—or the reverse.62 For Adams, both identity and erotic pleasure transpire as a result of the psychic movement between the self and others, rather than through a static object or subject position. Like Perniola’s idea of the “transit” which describes the shift of positions spectators experience when gazing at partially clad bodies; or Stallybrass and White’s theory of the “grotesque other” which conjures up a dangerously 93

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unstable, heterogeneous zone; or Coward’s idea of the transfer or ciiculation of power that occurs between heroes and heroines of romance novels—Adam’s formulation of identity and desire is based on a scene of action that is always in some ways, foreign and unfinished. Traditional gendered identifications of power and subordination may indeed be a part of the social and psychological collage that constitutes sexual subjectivity. However, as the figure of the “alien-exotic” so profoundly illustrates, they are by no means the sum or even the basis of its formation. The costume dramas of “naked” bodies Since strip events stage various negotiations between the socially sanctioned and the socially outcast, it is not so strange to find Burlesque queens and kings decked out in formal wear sharing the same show with baby dolls and construction workers—as well as space aliens, leather bikers, and Snow White or Zorro. In most shows, however, the variety of character roles is more subtly expressed— such as the contrast between lingerie baby dolls sharing the stage with leather mamas. What happens, then, when the performers disrobe and continue to dance in the nude or semi-nude? Richard Schechner states that nakedness always “implies a public event” because “to be naked with no one watching is to adumbrate a process that needs another’s acknowledgement.” Schechner insists that the spectators’ acknowledgment of the performers’ nudity always includes the spectators’ own projections of positive and negative body fantasies—projections that, in turn, transform the naked bodies of the dancers into other forms of social costuming.63 Pointedly, Lauri Lewin titled her memoir about working as a stripper in Boston’s “combat zone” in the 1970s, Naked is the Best Disguise. She explains to her readers that she took up exotic dancing because of her own body fantasies about nudity and exhibitionism. In Lewin’s words, she became a stripper because “nakedness was natural, the primal costume.”64 Hollander insists that fantasies about an authentic or primal body are the direct results of a dressed society’s longing for “a primal virtue, a primal human beauty, a primal sexuality.”65 However, in popular culture as well as in high art, the idea of a primal body is almost always represented through a paradox. As with the colloquial expression for nakedness, “the birthday suit,” Lewin’s “primal costume” refers to an image of dress (and the machinations of culture on the body) even as it suggests some mystical notion of an inherently natural state. Mark Morris, an internationally acclaimed choreographer, created a ballet for mainstream audiences inspired by Roland Barthes’s short essay, Striptease—an essay that also examined the social paradox of the primal costume.66 Barthes states that “in striptease a whole series of coverings are placed upon the body of the woman in proportion as she pretends to strip it bare.”67 Morris’s version of Striptease, dubbed “a brilliant porno-ballet” by dance critic Arlene Croce,68 culminated in the total nudity of all of his performers. According to Morris, his work (like strip 94

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show) underscored the truism that “the fantasy is all in the dress-up part… As you get naked, you become more like everybody else, and it becomes less erotic.”69 However, Morris cast his dancers as strip show characters according to their body types. Terri Weksler, a slim young-looking dancer, took the role of the virginal bride-stripper. Rob Besserer, a tall, rangy, blue-eyed blonde, was cast as a cowboystripper. Morris, a little out of shape and overweight at the time, cast himself in the part of a “derelict-flasher-stripper”—and so on. Because the bodies of the dancers matched the conventional expectations of the costume characters they played, it was not difficult to keep the character roles in mind—even after the performers had stripped away all vestiges of clothing. While Lewin describes her own “primal costume” as natural, she, too, relied on stereotypical body/costume exchanges in the construction of her signature routine. Throughout her book, Lewin bemoans the fact that she was short and that she had, in her mind, short, unattractive legs. At one point, she confesses her envy of a tall, blonde stripper who was able to wear the elaborate glamour costumes and evening gowns of a Burlesque queen. Lewin’s critique of her own body led her to select the stage name “Lolita” and a little girl costume and act along the lines of those discussed earlier. Through her masquerade as “Lolita,” Lewin was able to situate her body type within a particular social text that transformed her body into a sexually fashionable one.70 Contemporary strippers also are well aware of the intertwined socio-sexual narratives and interplay between bodies and costumes. At the old Show World in New York City, a 24-year-old regular house dancer with a flat barrel chest, tiny nipples, and a protruding stomach called herself “Baby.” Baby typically began her strip act dressed in a childlike one-piece bathing suit. Her routine consisted of wildly flaying arms and legs, and body crashes into the floor. At Big Alice’s, a very young male dancer with a slight build and a long tangle of dark hair, opened his routine dressed in torn jeans and a dirty, ripped T-shirt. He also performed an enfant terrible act in which he threw his body around almost as if he were having a tantrum. Karl, a stripper in the Montreal clubs, plays the role of a college student. He is slender and blonde with very white skin—which he never tans in order to look more studious.71 “Ben,” a short stocky Canadian dancer who performs a “wealthy dignified businessman who goes berserk” routine stated, “I make my best tips when I wear costumes suited to my look—costumes that glamorize my body.”72 On a more fanciful note, the exceptionally muscular and “well-endowed” leading stripper of the Males in Motion video series performs a Superman routine that leaves nothing to the imagination.73 The husband and wife striptease team, MalibuBarbie and Malibu-Ken, also sport cartoon character physiques almost identical to that of their namesakes—a fact that did not go unnoticed during their stint on the Donahue show.74 Hollander contends that what we consider to be the natural beauty of both clothing and bodies is, in reality, taught to us through “the alchemy of visual representation” in which any image of nudity or nakedness is again never absolutely free of a counterimage of dress.75 95

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As part of the alchemy of visual representation which underlies the public display of naked bodies, female and male strippers dress up or exaggerate certain features of their birthday suits through the use of cosmetics, exercise, drugs, and surgery. E.Adamson Hoebel writes: In all times and climes, man [sic] undertakes to effect what he vainly believes are improvements upon his body appearance… The time and effort that have gone into painting, pricking, scarring, puncturing…the human bo dy for aesthetic and status reasons are beyond all calculations… People who wear little or no clothing are no contradiction to what has just been said. Be man ever so unclothed, he is never unadorned. 76 Female and male dancers apply paint to their faces, rouge to their nipples, blush between their breasts or around pectoral and stomach muscles, nail polish (clear or colored) to fingers and toes, and body glitter and body oil everywhere. Some performers use self-tanning products and tanning salons to accentuate their muscle tone or bodily curves. A few clubs, including Rick’s and Caligula XXI, even provide their dancers with in-house tanning machines.77 While female dancers shave, wax, or laser their leg, underarm, and pubic hair, male dancers also use hair-removal products on their chests, backs, and legs. Alison Susan Pate, the marketing director for several chains of male and female strip clubs, stated that the male dancers of the Florida chain of La Bare clubs were required to shave or remove all body hair, except for pubic and head hair, to help the dancers project a “cleaner image.”78 Kenneth, a dancer who works for the La Bare club in Houston, explained that he prefers Nair hair-removal lotion to shaving or waxing to create his “clean, shimmering, body-builder image” for the stage.79 In his discussion of figurative art, John Berger contends that the stereotypical “nude gestures and poses” required of an artist’s model in any given historical period mask the true “nakedness” of the poser.80 Most contemporary female and male strippers indulge in strenuous workout programs that allow them to sculpt and pose their bodies in accordance with the lean, mean, buffed look that has been the way of the flesh for the last two decades. On the more drastic side, some female dancers stated that they resorted to surgery to achieve the look they desired. A few dancers commented that certain strip clubs encouraged performers to “undergo the knife,” while other places—such as Billy’s in New York City—proudly advertise their dancers as being mostly free of surgical enhancements. None of the male dancers interviewed for this book admitted to surgery—which at the time could have included both silicone and saline implants to augment pectoral and calf muscles. However, some male strippers reported that a good number of their peers used steroids to increase their muscle mass. Both major and minor alterations to the body carry health risks. Steroids, dieting, and diet pills may adversely effect the functioning of the heart and other internal organs. Plastic surgery, dentistry, tattoos, and body piercings may result in infection 96

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or unsightly scarring. On the other hand, jogging and supervised exercise programs may also cause injuries to the body. Even the seemingly benign use of everyday cosmetics, hair dyes, suntan lotions, and moisturizers can produce painful allergic reactions in some individuals. Many feminist critics, including Susan Brownmiller, Susan Faludi, Naomi Wolf, and Elizabeth Haiken, have railed against the absurd and distorted standards of female beauty in Western culture that have resulted in severe physical and psychological problems for women—problems that range from low self-esteem to the rare disorder in which a perfectly normal-looking person sees herself as a deformed monster.81 Kevin Colleary and others also contend that the current vogue for the male body-builder physique has produced analogous self-esteem issues for boys and young men. Colleary points out that action toys for boys (e.g., G I Joe and Batman) and male cartoon characters (including the lead character in Disney’s animated version of Tarzan) have all “bulked up.” These representations of male physical beauty and prowess have furthered the problem by endorsing standards and expectations of manhood that no boy or young man could possibly live up to. Haven’t we learned anything from the research done on female eating disorders and the Barbie syndrome, except to extend it across the gender line? You would think we would have learned to make our culture more accepting of healthy, natural physiques. Instead, we continue to promote more unrealistic tiny-waisted, large-chested models—both male and female.82 Like the use of clothing, the various tinkerings and adjustments to the body reflect not only dominant and subcultural expectations of gender, but also our affiliations to specific ethnic, religious, or regional groups.83 Judith Butler notes that all “styles of the flesh” are constructed according to the dictates of culture. She nonetheless argues that constructions of the body per se are “not opposed to agency.” They are instead “the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible.”84 “Megan,” a dancer who works in several of the smaller New York City strip clubs, insisted that her new breast implants were no different from tattoos and body piercings in terms of making, as she put it, “a personal and social statement.” Megan averred: “My implants are my right to speak with my body—to tell the world that I’m a hypersexual person.”85 Luce Irigaray has suggested that women who announce themselves to be hypersexual through the guise of hyperfemininity, or even through the guise of femininity, should not summarily be dismissed as victims of the dominant discourse. For such designs of the body, however stereotypical in origin, often create a disruptive excess that flies in the face of social norms. Mary Anne Doane alternatively has proposed that in order for women to distance themselves from mainstream images and expectations of “feminine” passivity and narcissism, some women (like Madonna) employ “a masquerade of femininity” that allows them to manipulate and control their public image.86 97

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Breast implants for women reflect a longstanding American obsession with the body. However, in recent times, their use and disruptive excess have triggered another kind of mass hysteria in the United States. Lawyers were able to make untold sums of money by playing on the cultural fear, distrust, and anger directed toward the women who dared to proclaim themselves hyperfeminine or hypersexual beings through the use of breast implants. Like other surgeries, breast augmentation carries severe risks—including implant rupture, silicon migration to other parts of the body, and infection. However, in America, the cultural fear of overtly sexual women was so virulent and insidious that a host of autoimmune disorders and related syndromes were attributed to the implants without adequate scientific research to back up those claims—such as research that examined the frequency of these disorders in women who had not undergone augmentation. While the implants and the renegade women who owned them continued to make headline news, other surgical devices that contained silicon in both hard and soft forms were all but ignored. Some of the women were scared into additional and often deforming surgeries to remove the implants. (A horrific but fitting “punishment” to exact social conformity from females who were viewed either as transgressors of the traditional good girl/bad girl split, or who were seen to be complicit in the desires of the patriarchy.) Cancer patients were denied or steered away from the lighter implant for reconstructive surgery. Established medical supply companies went bankrupt. And the important role that environmental pollution, lifestyle, nutrition, hormonal and endocrine imbalances, and genetics played in such syndromes was shunted to the sidelines. Models, strippers, cancer patients, and others who could afford to do so simply went to Europe, Mexico, and South America to get the implants of their choice. By the late 1990s, independent research panels for the British Ministry of Health, the Mayo Clinic, and American Medical Society all concluded that there was no definitive link between silicon breast implants and autoimmune disorders. In other words, the implants were not associated with any greater health risks in this regard than other surgical implants. Nevertheless, many social activists and lawyers persevere in proclaiming that this is the case.87 The breast implant debacle in America thus mirrors the adverse-secondaryeffects argument (both right-wing and feminist) that insists that explicit sexual representations and images also inevitably produce harmful side-effects. All of these arguments are predicated on inculcated ideas about the fearsomeness of sexual desire and the innate naïveté and corruptibility of women’s minds and bodies. Apparently, even the recantations of the American Medical Society and the eminent Supreme Court Justice Souter (in the case of the harmful-secondaryeffects argument) were not enough to dispel such fears and assumptions. While deliberately alarming reports about breast implants continue to circulate, many women have resorted to alternative costuming effects in order to create a like vision of hyperfemininity. These effects include the ubiquitous cleavage-making “Wonder Bra” and the new “Body Perks.” Body Perks, invented and marketed by a group of female entrepreneurs, are life-like silicon nipples that attach to one’s own nipples and stay in place through the wearing of a tight bra. The devices give 98

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the wearer’s bosom (whatever the size) the effect of perpetually erect or aroused nipples. Lari Barghini, one of the owners of bodyperks.com, described her product as “another accessory in the seduction arsenal. We’re taking advantage of a very simple fact of life.” Daily News reporter Alev Aktar gave “the perks” a trial run in several bars in Manhattan. She and her fellow investigators reported that the devices uniformity “stunned” the men. As one happy male voyeur stated, referring to an investigator’s breasts, “You almost put my eye out.”88 All cosmetic enhancements foreground rather than obstruct the various processes by which bodies are socialized.89 The exposure of the stripper’s nude or partially nude body reveals neither a primal body, nor a socially fixed one. It exposes instead a body that is permeable, open to modification, exaggeration, minimization—one which may be written and rewritten upon. In the strip show, the dancer’s costume of nudity offers up a theatrical rendition of Foucault’s observations that the body is disturbing in general because it is such a conspicuous site for both social resistance and social subordination.90 The paradox of the primal costume, the birthday suit, the site and sight of the dancer’s nudity supports the “dangerous” (“put my eye out”) heterogeneous zone and interplay of identifications that animate and constitute erotic arousal. For it produces another series of views and possible positions for the spectator that slide between the changeable poles of culture, self-invention, and the notion of a powerful, primal, pure, and somehow perennially “erect” animal self. The scene of sexual exhibitionism: objectification or identification? A special reunion and performance of the Golden Era Strippers was held in a bathhouse in San Francisco in 1991. Alumni Burlesque Queen Jeanine France stated that, although she enjoyed performing for the reunion show, she found the overall situation “weird” because her “audience only had towels on. How do you do a striptease for people who aren’t dressed?”91 Hollander states that while representations of partially clad bodies are almost universally considered erotic in dressed cultures, the most intense sexual messages are usually conveyed “by a bare body shown in the company of a covered one, even in the most abstract arrangement.”92 In the strip event, spectators uphold and foreground the social taboo of nudity by remaining dressed in contrast to the eventual nakedness or semi-nakedness of the dancers. However, these sartorially based spectator and performer positions are also neither discrete nor diametrically opposed. Some female and male patrons mime or even go so far as to remove the outer layers of their own clothing during the strippers’ dance. While such occurrences are rare, they are indicative of the larger-scale identifications that take place between the dressed and non-dressed participants of the show. Cowie categorizes this type of identification as a kind voyeurism of the most childish kind, of the order “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” which is also “I want to see your sex because I want 99

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you to see mine,” whereby the display of the woman sexually stands in for and is equivalent to the man’s wished-for display of himself sexually, including as a display for someone else… It is an identification with the scene of exhibitionism.93 Part of the anti-porn and feminist strategy of equating almost all explicit sexual representations with sexism and other social harms stems from the fact that representation in Western culture is frequently seen to be intrinsically objectifying (i.e., dehumanizing and degrading). A few feminist theorists have pronounced the entire representational apparatus as male—hence also the concept of the allpowerful monolithic “male gaze” (and the objectifying and violent desires that invariably accompany it) which has dominated so much of gender and feminist studies over the last several decades. As an alternative, Jennifer Wicke has proposed that the sine qua non of sexual desire and sexual looking, for females and males alike, may operate in a manner similar to the so-called “male gaze” in that we all, as if by rote, objectify the subjects of our lust.94 However, to ignite any fantasy into psychic action—including the scene of sexual exhibitionism—the fantasizer or viewer must, like the playwright, identify—at least to some extent—with all the parts.95 Even if one particular role is more compelling than another for the fantasizer, all of the positions offered by the scene can be played out only in terms of one another. Therefore, while it is quite true that spectators, male and female, may never relinquish the social roles they assume in everyday life, the mimetic empathy required by the spectatorial or fantasy experience makes “objectification” as it is usually defined and theorized, almost impossible in terms of the viewers’ relationship with the fantasy sex scene at hand.

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Source: Publicity photographs courtesy of Johnny Rotten.

Figure 3.1 Dancer Johnny Rotten demonstrates how to play peekaboo with his costumes (1992)

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Figure 3.2 Female dancer in lingerie/fetish wear at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2000) Source: Photograph courtesy of Bob Glass.

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Figure 3.3 Annie Sprinkle does her “Big Nurse Sprinkle” striptease character Source: Photograph originally taken for Star Magazine, circa 1983. Photographer anonymous. Reproduced courtesy of Annie Sprinkle.

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Figure 3.4 “Alien-exotic” male dancers at the Sugar Shack II, Chicago, Illinois (1990) Source: Photographs by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

Figure 3.5 Dancer in leather fetish at Chippendales New York (1992)

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Figure 3.6a Dancer in high-costume gear—“space alien” at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Source: Photograph by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 3.6b Dancer in high-costume gear—“Zorro” at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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4 CHOREOGRAPHY I The basic moves

…the body language of dance may carry a more immediate wallop than verbal communication in commenting on sexuality and in modeling gender because of its motion-attracting attention, language-like qualities, replete multilayered meanings… (Judith Lynn Hanna)1

The choreography of contemporary female and male strip shows extravagantly ranges from party dancing, slam dancing, disco, ballet, and jazz to pantomime, gymnastic feats, martial arts, body-building, and circus-like stunts with fire and animals. Judith Butler posits that traditional female and male gender roles in everyday life are choreographed, like the sundry forms of dance, through specific stylizations of the body. These particular stylizations—“femininity” and “masculinity”—are constructed out of age-old repetitions of certain movements, gestures, and stances that have, as Butler puts it, “congealed” into what we now understand as the natural and distinct body languages of women and men.2 Earlier research and writings on female and male body language, from the classic social scientist and ethnographer Ray Birdwhistell to feminist critics Nancy Henley and Judith Hall, support Butler’s thesis. Most of these studies propose that women and men learn to choreograph their daily gestures and other non-verbal forms of communication according to the social roles they are expected to play.3 Because of Western culture’s obsession with beautiful, marketable (and therefore presumably passive) female bodies, many women continue to assimilate and project the traditional sex object role of “kitten,” “pet,” or “doll.” “Dolly” roles, in turn, reinforce the cultural notion that “sex is done to” women. Females physically manifest such expectations by responding to, rather than initiating, interactions with others; by yielding the greater portion of time and physical space to dominants (mostly males); by using smaller gestures in general; and by presenting a circumspect or constrained (ladylike) comportment which often includes a submissive, averted gaze when dealing with the opposite sex. However, because women are considered to be by nature more “emotional” (i.e., irrational) than men, they are allowed a free range of facial expressions.4 In contrast, the body language of men reflects their inherited cultural privileges of economic independence, social power, and social activity. Men’s bodies are

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marked as sources of their own (male) sexual pleasure and strength. They are cultural “sex possessors” in every sense of the phrase. Males physically demonstrate the gamut of their social prerogatives through their roles as the initiators of action; their greater control over time and physical space; and their frequent, nonchalant use of a direct gaze (or staring) when interacting with females. Since displays of emotion are still viewed as signs of weakness or vulnerability in the West, men are generally more reserved in their facial expressions than women.5 Many aspects of contemporary striptease choreography fall in line with such traditional distinctions between female and male physical behavior and comportment. Male dancers typically employ large, space-consuming movements and gestures that emphasize their physical strength. They perform a variety of dance steps—from “hip hop” moves to pelvic thrusts—with staccato accents and accelerating rhythms that suggest the intensity and power associated with “male aggressiveness.” Conversely, many female dancers favor slow, controlled steps and undulating gestures that cover less physical ground. This type of choreography may focus the audience’s attention more specifically on the dancer’s display of flesh and particular body parts. However, all of these stylizations, manipulations, and revelations of the body are, once again, only a part of the strip show’s varying choreographies of gender and desire. In the No. Five Orange Club in Toronto, Ontario, a female stripper puts herself through the paces of a vigorious gym workout. She sweats, grunts, and grimaces as she concentrates on perfecting and increasing her body-building repetitions. Her act so delighted her male patrons that the management of the club installed a permanent set of regulation rings, hooks, and bars to encourage other dancers to create similar routines.6 At Chippendales New York, a group of male performers dressed in karate outfits suddenly cut short their martial arts routine to flash giant black fans and strike assorted group poses reminiscent of a female Ziegfeld or Busby Berkeley chorus line. The male fan dancers are eventually joined by the star of the show—a long-blonde-haired stripper decked out in a red leather dragon jacket and tight black pants. He performs a hip-rolling number surrounded by the martial arts men who fan him as he strips to a hot bump-and-grind finale, flinging his long blonde hair with wild abandon. In her discusssions about gender-role construction, Butler also contends that there is no such thing as an original gesture or behavior. As members of cultures and subcultures, we are all obligated to take up “the tools where they lie.” Sexual agency or “new possibilities for gender that contest the rigid codes of hierarchal binarisms” are not found in some kind of mystical notion of a new, pure, or authentic behavior or gesture. They are discovered in the variations that take place within the established, repetitive signifying practices of our culture.7 This chapter explores some of the strip show’s variations and expansions on traditional female and male sex roles that are found, not only in the novelty acts in which women pump iron and men coyly play with decorative fans, but also in the most basic steps of the dance.

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The basic moves: A short history of striptease choreography In 1893, impressario Sol Bloom engaged six “Oriental” or “Egyptian” dancers to perform at the Chicago World’s Fair. Their exotic dancing show, which was part of the “Street of Cairo” display, drew throngs of fascinated viewers to the Fair’s midway exhibition which promised patrons a glimpse of diverse cultures from around the world. The great international fairs and expositions of the nineteenth century, held in both Europe and the United States, were designed to showcase the technological advances of the West and the cultural and anthropological diversity of the globe. In other words, the fairs were designed to extol the progress of the West by comparing it to the titillating, but presumably more “primitive” cultures of the East. Bloom adapted his “Street of Cairo” exhibit from a similar side-show featured at the Paris Exposition of 1889.8 The “Egyptian” dancers’ performance of the voluptuous art of “belly dancing” mesmerized and scandalized the patrons of the Chicago World’s Fair. Not only were their movements blatantly sexual, but the dancers eschewed the corset and wore thin shirts, waist jackets, and a type of baggy pants considered masculine by late nineteenth-century American standards. The “Egyptians” created such a stir, and made so much money for Bloom, that they inspired a host of vaudevillians and variety performers to concoct and tour their own “hootchy-kootchy,” “Oriental,” “Zora,” “Salome,” and “Venus” dance acts.9 No one knows which of the new “coochers” first combined the movements of the belly dance with the act of disrobing, but several have been credited with the innovation. As one legend has it, Minsky Burlesque star Mae Dix got so hot one summer’s night that she removed the collar and cuffs of her dress. Her thrilled audience demanded an encore—so Mae obliged by unbuttoning her bodice and reprising the entire number. To revive a lagging career, Cleveland hoofer Carrie Finnel boasted to local and national newspapers that she would remove an additional piece of clothing at every show for 52 weeks—until she was dancing “in the nude.” Renowned coocher and “wild woman” Hinda Wassau reportedly shook and shimmied so furiously when she danced that she inadvertently (but oh so frequently) slid out of her costumes. By whatever account, at the end of the 1920s, the coocher-cum-stripper was firmly established as the main attraction of the American Burlesque show.10 The poverty of the Great Depression in the United States made it more acceptable for women to seek employment in (and sometimes to be exploited by) the burgeoning striptease industry. The apparent “Oriental” heritage and belly dancing movements of the strip act framed its performers as “exotic others”— reinforcing the common Western cultural trope that females are more “primitive” and therefore less rational than men. Nevertheless, the newly revamped Burlesque show with the stripper at its center was also very much a part of the profound social upheavals and sexual revolution that marked the decade of the Roaring Twenties. In America, women obtained the right to vote, bobbed their hair, shortened their skirts, and traded in their corsets for the more androgynous look

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of the flapper. It was a time of youthful rebellion (often likened to the 1960s) that was galvanized by the advent of the affordable condom—and by the music industry’s co-optation and dissemination of “hot music” or jazz developed from the work of African-American and Caribbean artists. In many quarters both strippers and flappers were considered to be immoral. So too were the new forms of music and popular social dances such as the “shimmy”—sounds and movements that transgressed conventional ideas about the decorum of “ladies” and “gentlemen,” “white” and “black.”11 In addition to the flagrant exhibitionism of the strippers, which reflected the sexual permissiveness of the time, the variety format of the Burlesque show featured a blend of old and new songs, skits, dances, and jokes that embodied the cultural hodge-podge and conflicts of American society. Many of the skits and jokes were rife with racial, ethnic, and sexual stereotypes. But like Lenny Bruce, a later exponent of the Burlesque, they also mocked long-standing social mores and foregrounded questions about censorship and freedom of speech. Critics of the show bitterly complained that the censors gave the coochers the right to display their legs only to have them in the end claim the right to display the whole body.12 Nudity and “faux nudity” (i.e., performers covered with form-fitting, fleshcolored body stockings and tights), were certainly not new to the American stage. They had long been a feature of the Tableaux Vivants or Living Pictures, a European import in which live female and male models posed as motionless statues or figures in well-known paintings, either dressed or “in the nude.” The furor over whether the coochers had the right to display the entire body, then, was not merely a debate about stage nudity. It centered on the fact that these dancers exposed themselves while performing sexually suggestive movements—a whole-body choreography that defied conventional ideas about the naturally sedate, physically contained comportment of females, which included the old adage of the night— “Ladies do not move.” The basic moves of the early strippers’ whole-body choreography, as documented by several historians of the time, included the gyrations of the “bump,” the “grind,” and the “shimmy”; the gestures of “body-stroking” whereby dancers touched, slapped, spanked, and grabbed themselves in autoerotic ecstasy; the minute details of “facial choreography” and “eye-dancing”; and the signature sexy walk of each performer known as the “strut” or “parade.”13 These same fundamental moves were featured six decades later in the video tape, How to Strip for Your Man, starring modern striptease luminary “Gio” (still available for sale or rental at local video stores in the USA). They were also highlighted in porn queen and stripper Veronica Hart’s workshop, “How to Strip for Your Lover,” offered by the Learning Annex in New York City to straight women and lesbians throughout the early 1990s.14 The basic steps and gestures of the strip act are, of course, usually performed in combination with one another. However, what follows explores each move or set of moves separately to highlight the ways they materially and metaphorically expand on, or even contest, traditional ideas about the distinctions between female and male sexual behavior and non-verbal communication. 111

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The bump and grind The image of a Burlesque queen “bumping and grinding” her way through a routine continues to represent quintessential striptease. The “bump” is a sharp, isolated pelvic thrust that may be executed to the front, back, or side, while the “grind” consists of a circle or sometimes a figure eight of the hips performed in a relatively smooth fashion. Female and male strippers incorporate bumps and grinds into their walks, runs, turns, and leaps. They use them to extricate themselves from pants, skirts, dresses, and underwear while maintaining the rhythm of the dance. And they perform them to simulate auto-erotic pleasure and sex with invisible partners—often in conjunction with the use of set pieces and props. Male strippers at the Hangar Club in Washington, DC, bump and grind up against the railings and columns that divide the audience from the stage area. Dancers at Chippendales New York perform pelvic thrusts as they straddle set pieces such as lamp posts, metal fences, and car doors. Performers at the Sugar Shack in Chicago gyrate as they hang onto the bars of a special tipping cage where female spectators pay them for kisses and other caresses. Female dancers bump and grind into railings, columns, table tops, chairs, and set pieces as well, but they frequently have an additional stage property at their disposal. Many strip clubs and bars for men feature permanent vertical poles affixed to their stages. Female strippers use the poles as silent sex and dance partners to execute aerial bumps and grinds in unusual positions—including hanging upside-down. Other earthbound dancers specialize in horizontal bumps and grinds performed on couches, beds, platforms, and stage floors—acts that suggest ever more explicit scenes of masturbation or copulatory pleasure. In a parodoxical yet predictable twist of cultural mores, all of the strip shows for women reviewed for this book included routines in which male dancers performed “on their backs” for the pleasure of their spectators. However, a large number of strip clubs for men ban female dancers from this practice. The most striking example of this disparity is on view at the Hangar Club, which presents separate female and male strip shows for straight men and women. Here, female dancers are required to remain upright at all times, whereas a special platform is added to the main stage during the shows for women to enhance the spectators’ view of supine and writhing men. The rationale for banning female dancers from prone position bumping and grinding is predicated on the notion that this activity encourages them to “flash” in order to make more money—that is to illegally expose their genitals or, in some clubs, their nipples if pasties or other breast coverings are required by law. Flashing is considered “dangerous” because it supposedly leads to prostitution.15 However, according to Houston club owner Robert Watters, such restrictions are the result of a very different kind of cultural fear and confusion about female sexual behavior. Watters insists that the “couch-dancing” craze, popular in Texas during the late 1980s, was outlawed by the state—not because of any real problems involving illegal flashing or prostitution—but because civic and religious leaders simply found the idea of the women bumping and grinding on or next to couches more disturbing

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(or “obscene”) than the same gestures performed by dancers in upright positions, or even leaning across the chairs and tables of the patrons.16 The image of an upright, glamorous Burlesque queen gyrating her way through a routine may indeed represent quintessential striptease through her portrayal of an ultra- or hyper-femininity. However, the actual movements of the bump and grind, especially when highlighted by the prone position of the stripper, are arguably more in keeping with the social expectations about the aggressive activity of males during sex (vis-à-vis various pelvic thrustings and grindings). Since prone-position bumping and grinding so clearly refers to masturbation and copulation, and since these moves suggest the “active” sex partner as well, such performances by female strippers are doubly transgressive. In the dancer’s execution of the bump and grind, sex is not represented as being categorically “done to women”—because the stripper is obviously, albeit mimetically, “doing sex.” The shimmy After the bump and grind, the “shimmy” is without a doubt the most widely recognized move of the traditional striptease act. As noted, “the shimmy” was also the name given to one of the most popular social dances of the 1920s. The shimmy reemerged as a popular social dance in the 1960s in the form of a more suggestive version of the twist.17 Both the shimmies of the strippers and the shimmies of the social dances included that familiar rhythmic shaking of the shoulders and chest, as well as other tremblings and quiverings of the body. For example, contemporary female and male dancers continue to perform a shimmy technique in which they expose their buttocks and then rapidly shift their weight from side to side by flexing alternate knees so that the lower halves of their bodies vibrate at dizzying speeds. Like the bump and grind, shimmies isolate and foreground specific parts of the dancer’s anatomy, epitomizing for some critics the very mechanics by which women are objectified in Western culture. However, as with the isolations and muscle control of the body-builder, the shimmies of the stripper also foreground the performer’s extraordinary kinesthetic knowledge and mastery of the body. In addition to her 52-week long strip act, Finnel invented a shimmy technique, the “bosom pop,” which exemplifies this control. The “bosom pop” is an isometric cousin to the feat of tassel-twirling. Finnel’s mastery over her pectoral muscles was such that she could literally pop her bosoms out of her bodice or brassiere one at a time. In her later years, Finnel performed this stunt in nightclubs across America to the well-known children’s song, “Pop goes the Weasel.”18 Stripper, porn queen, and New Age feminist Annie Sprinkle adapted the breastpopping sequences of the Burlesquers for her own strip acts and performance pieces. Dressed in a ballet skirt or “tutu,” Sprinkle performed her version of the bosom ballet by baring her chest and manipulating her breasts—sometimes with her hands, sometimes with her pectoral and shoulder muscles—in time to classical music. A featured stripper at the Garden of Eden in San Fransisco uses a similar breast-popping 113

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routine as a prelude to her main act of “tassel-twirling.” After she pops her breasts up and down a few times as if to warm up, the dancer begins to rotate them with her chest muscles in opposite directions so that the tassels attached to her nipples fly in circles. For the finale of the act, the dancer looks down at her wildly heaving bosom, stares directly at the audience, and smirks as she suddenly reverses the rotation of her breasts without missing a beat. The tassels spin so fast they look like airplane propellers or circular saws, suggesting a real physical danger for anyone who ventures too near. While female strippers who tassel twirl and bosom pop are a relatively rare these days, many male strippers routinely choreograph acts around their dancing chest muscles. At the Hanger Club, a performer hikes up his tank-top T-shirt to a position just above his nipples. He flexes both of his pectoral muscles together, varying the speed of his maneuvers. He then alternates the quivers of his right and left chest pectorals to thunderous applause from his female audience. As he takes his curtain call, some of the spectators wave their hands in the air as if cupping his pecs.19 In Montreal, “twirling” most often refers to the male dancer’s stunt of “cocktwirling.” As discussed in the last chapter, male strippers in this Canadian city often wrap G-strings or underwear around their flaccid penises to fashion slings which they move back and forth with their hands to make their penises rotate and bounce in different patterns. Another version of “cock-twirling,” on view in the “Superman strip” of the Males in Motion video, features a muscle-bound dancer who strips and then places his hands on the back of his head. His biceps and triceps bulge as he rhythmically swings, quivers, quakes, and shimmies his hips back and forth so that his penis bumps off alternate thighs.20 He watches his cock dance, and then looks out to the viewers to gauge their reactions in a pose strikingly reminiscent of the cliché stance of a tassel twirler. In his book Masculinity in Crisis, Roger Horrocks suggests that the ultramasculine look and brutish strength of the body-builder makes him simultaneously appear like a “massive penis” waiting to explode and “quasi-female” because of his “massive jutting breasts which are flaunted.”21 Horrocks’s description suggests that he is simply responding to the phenomenological size and shape of the bodybuilder’s chest muscles. But his reaction is most likely also due to the fact that the body-builder’s entire physical display of himself goes beyond contemporary expectations of manhood. The body-builder’s performance of hyper-masculinity, of savage strength, marks him like other cultural exotics as a “primitive” other— and thus as a feminized subject as well. As with the original shimmy of the social dance, most of the basic steps and acts of the strip show threaten the dominant discourse and conventional gender norms because they contradictorily frame their female and male practitioners as being at once both too feminine and too masculine (e.g., men who appear phallic-like and quasi-female, or hyper-feminine women who perform male-like bumps and grinds). Performers of striptease and body-building shows may tease their spectators’ desire to view and to touch them through their deliberate “flauntings” of the 114

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body. However, these performers do not offer themselves up as passive sexual objects, but rather as “sexually active” subjects who through their own maneuvers and pleasure in their prowess literally threaten to “pop” or “explode.” Like the airplane propellers of the tassel-twirler’s wildly heaving bosom, strippers and bodybuilders often appear to be dangerous and silly at the same time—as they reflect back to their audiences, through the magnifying glass of their bodies, both the “primitivism” and the cultural indoctrinations of the spectators’ own desires and obsessions. Most contemporary female and male strippers demonstrate their kinesthetic control and mastery of the body through rhythmically timed shimmies and movements that are not as elaborate or as “hyper” as those described above. However, even the most rudimentary manipulations and displays of physical prowess can produce a similar effect. For all of the basic gyrating moves of the strip not only focus the audience’s attention on the specific physical attributes the performers wish to highlight, but they also portray and parody the bodily reactions of the spectators (such as the spectators’ own wished for, but feared sensation of exploding or popping with desire). As the song, “Pop Goes the Weasel” suggests, the monkey chases the weasel around the mulberry bush “for fun,” until s/he gets “popped” a good one by the little varmint, who, like the experience of sexual desire and seduction, can be sneaky, evasive, treacherous—and also sometimes laughable. Body-stroking “Wild woman” Hinda Wassau has been credited with being the first stripper to dare to portray auto-erotic ecstasy on stage by running her hands all over her body.22 Today female and male dancers freely touch and massage their chests, stomachs, buttocks, legs, and genitals. Some strippers routinely pinch, grab, and slap themselves as well. In addition to the dancers’ portrayal of auto-erotic abandon, these gestures may suggest the caresses of imaginary sex partners, the dancers’ ministrations to imaginary sex partners, or any combination of such scenes. Strippers frequently enhance the visceral appeal of their body-stroking maneuvers through the use of tactile props such as water, lotions, ice, and towels. Many female dancers take advantage of the fully equipped shower stall stages and functional bathtub props that are a staple of the larger strip clubs for men. These scenes of bathing and grooming may replay the traditional negotiations of cleanlinesses and dirtiness with regard to women’s bodies. They may foreground the vulnerability of the female performer’s body by conspicuously casting the show’s spectators as Peeping Toms. But such scenes also may propose a cultural oxymoron by framing the mastubatory activities and pleasures of women as “clean,” “wholesome,” or “just part of daily life” behaviors, rather than as “dirty” girl conduct. Male strip shows for women, on the other hand, rarely include full-scale bathing rituals. Most of the shows must share their performance spaces with other types of 115

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entertainments or constantly tour to survive—making shower installations and bath tub props too costly or unwieldy. Nevertheless, strip events for women also feature acts that include a variety of props designed to underscore both the sensuousness and the vulnerability of the performer’s body. Beefcakes USA features a day-at-the-beach routine in which a group of male dancers strip down to itsybitsy bikinis. After preening and striking body-builder poses, the men sprawl on beach towels. In excruciatingly slow-motion, they rub suntan lotion all over their bodies as they close their eyes and arch their backs. Dancers at Chippendales New York offer a different kind of lotion routine. Three men in speedos enter the stage carrying nondescript bottles of lotion. The performers languidly make their way to individual platform stages set up right next to the first rows of the audience. The dancers lie down on their backs and hold their bottles directly over their crotches, aiming them skyward. As the music crescendoes, the dancers squirt the lotion into the air in unison mimicking ejaculation. During the fading bars of the music, the men massage the lotion into their stomachs, chests, and thighs as they gently rock to and fro. In another act in the same show, male dancers dressed in white Calvin Klein underwear solemnly enter the stage area carrying bowls of ice water. They alternately splash and drip the frigid water over their near-naked bodies. One of the performers removes an ice cube from a bowl. With great ceremony, he rubs the ice over his exposed chest. The spectators gasp and cheer as his nipples stand up and his bare skin turns to “goose flesh.” The dancers’ use of such props and body-stroking maneuvers creates a very special kind of optical sensuousness for the viewers because it exposes the bodies of the dancers to real physical stimuli. Water streaming down a dancer’s back, ice caressing a dancer’s chest, or a dancer’s own action of massaging lotion into his groin and thighs, all open up the possiblity for the spectators that some of the performer’s movements and bodily reactions may just be “involuntarily” wrung out of the performer.23 Seemingly raw or involuntary responses of the body that occur within the frames of theatre create a particular dilemma and added thrill for the viewers. For such acts lure spectators into the game of actively guessing whether the performers’ pleasures or pains are real or pretend. The viewers’ collective uncertainty about the real and the mimetic, or how the real and the mimetic may intersect, spurs their own performances of “straining to see”—performances that in turn foreground the responses that are involuntarily wrung out their bodies in the act of looking (e.g., laughter, audible gasps, cheers, and of course any physical manifestations of sexual arousal). In the context of sexual entertainments, involuntary responses of the body refer back to the involuntary and hidden spasms of orgasm. Judith Lynn Hanna states that men experience their bodies and bodily reactions as a “source of pleasure and strength” in a manner usually denied to women in mainstream society.24 However, males are also sexually censured by dominant culture. Aside from the obvious taboos placed on homosexuality and S/M play (even between consenting adults), such censures include a cultural disdain for all males who would exhibit or experience their bodies as a source of pleasure (for themselves or for others) in terms of the blatantly “sensual.”25 116

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In Montreal, both female and male strippers perform “table dances” directly alongside the tables and chairs of their patrons. The male dancers of the Bar Apollon and Club 281 perform these acts on portable, knee-high plastic platforms oneand-a-half to two-feet wide. Since total stripper nudity is legal in Montreal, the platform pedestals create a male genital show at the eye-level of the female spectators. The men displayed on these perches—as vulnerably exposed as any female performer in a shower show—stroke, massage, and slap themselves as they slowly turn around so that the patrons can scrutinze their bodies from all angles. American culture in particular seems to view “sensuality” as an absolute signifier of the feminine. As with other signs and traits traditionally associated with femininity (e.g., sensitivity and tenderness), sensuality is bizarrely linked to the concept of passivity because it suggests a reactive or reflexive state of being—a state in which one responds to stimuli, receives or takes in pleasure, or exhibits oneself in such a way as to become the desired sex object of others. However, as the routines of female and male strippers repeatedly illustrate, desiring to be desired—or reacting to and receiving pleasure—are also very much manifestations of the active act of desiring. John Money points out that in “real-life” courting situations between same-sex and straight couples, both females and males may express their sexual interest in others by touching themselves in different ways.26 For example, women and men may consciously or unconsciously stroke their hair, jaw lines, necks, and upper arms; uncross and recross their legs; open their jackets; unbutton the top buttons of their shirts; and stretch or adjust their posture. In this light, the strippers’ body-stroking maneuvers appear to be extravagant expansions on everyday female and male sexual behaviors that also overlap. Facial choreography and eye-dancing Porn queen and star stripper Veronica Hart began her series of “How to Strip for Your Lover” workshops, sponsored by the Learning Annex in New York City— not with the sensual gestures of body-stroking, nor with the body toning moves of the bump, grind, and shimmy—but with what she called “facial choreography” and “eye-dancing.” Hart’s workshops for women, straight and gay, attracted mostly white, middle-class participants 20–40 years old. The occupations of the novice strippers ranged from professional ballet and modern dancers to homemakers, businesswomen, policewomen, and government lawyers.27 All of the workshop members were initiated into the world of striptease with a series of mouth and eye exercises devised by Hart. The mouth exercises consisted of pursing, pouting, and parting the lips in time to music—and using the tongue to suggest licking and french kissing. During the eye-dancing portion of the lesson, neophyte strippers practiced staring boldly at imaginary lovers or spectators, peeking at them from under their eyelashes, winking in various ways, and coyly averting their gaze by looking down or off into the distance. Hart’s classes were designed exclusively for women, but male exotic dancers also perform their own versions of erotic mugging. They, too, create compositions 117

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of partially open mouths, wet lips, grins, pouts, tongue dances, naughty boy expressions—and, of course, eye dances that include stares, peeks, heavy-lidded looks, and winks. The male stripper’s performance of eye-dancing is, in fact, so exhaustive that it made a lasting impression on journalist and television talk show host Geraldo Rivera. Rivera dedicated one of his early Geraldo talk shows to male dancers who strip for women. His special “All-Male National Danceathon” program featured strippers from Rosebuds, Sugar Shack, and the US Male dance groups. During the course of the show, Rivera asked several of the women from his studio audience to name the male body part(s) they found the most exciting. All of the interviewees insisted they were most “turned on” by the strippers’ eyes. Exasperated, Rivera finally exclaimed, “What’s this eyes bit? What are you, ophthalmologists, here?”28 The unvarying response of the female spectators on Rivera’s show could be analyzed as yet another example of how America’s puritanical culture represses the sexualities and desires of women. In other words, Rivera’s viewers may have focused on the sexual attractiveness of the strippers’ eyes to avoid any “bad girl” labeling for expressing “male-like” lust on national television. Or, as an alternative, Rivera’s audience simply may have been acknowledging the socio-sexual power of the “male gaze” as performed by the male strippers. Some of the data collected by the social scientists who specialized in the study of female and male body language and non-verbal communication seems to uphold these theories. The seminal example of the power exerted by the male gaze and the repression of female sexual agency, offered by feminist and traditional ethnographers alike, is the fact that men often stare directly at women in anonymous situations (such as on the street), while women typically respond to this behavior by averting their gaze. However, when taken as a whole, this body of research on non-verbal human interaction also suggests that an analysis of the “male gaze” and its operations in terms of discrete positions of gender and power is not always quite so simple.29 Henley points out that whereas women do tend to avert their eyes when stared at by strange men on the streets, straight males also attempt to avoid making eyecontact with other unknown males. However, both women and men freely gaze at and return the looks of women in most public or unfamiliar situations. Hall notes that gendered patterns of gazing are also affected by different spatial spheres. Women usually gaze more at others (male and female) in “up-close” situations of one to six feet, while men gaze at women when they are in the “safety zone” of at least six feet away from the subjects of their interest.30 This suggests that the stripper’s performance of table-dancing and floor work falls within the province of socialized female gaze control—which makes such acts doubly thrilling for their female and male participants, for different reasons. While a sustained gaze can indeed be a power play on the part of the looker, researchers also have observed that the more powerful or admired a person is, the less gazing or eye-contact she or he needs to make with others. And the higher a person’s status, the more looks that person receives. Henley points out that there is a vast difference between the aggressive staring of the would-be dominator and 118

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the “visual attention” that subordinates or admirers (female and male) give to their superiors—or to the subjects of their friendly or sexual interest. Actants who do avert their gaze when confronted by a would-be dominator are not necessarily responding in a passive or powerless fashion because eye-contact avoidance can be a marker of defiance, a refusal to recognize the presence or existence of another, or a signal to the looker or conversationalist to back off. A number of female and male dancers reported that they also frequently chastised or punished annoying patrons by refusing to look at them. In addition, most researchers agreed that in everyday life, women paradoxically do more gazing and receive more looks than men. As Henley suggests, much further study is needed “to spell out” all of these distinctions satisfactorily.31 In the strip show, female and male dancers initiate and guide the spectators’ performance of sexual looking. As a result, patrons do not merely gaze at the bodies of the strippers. They also are obligated to return the dancer’s “look in the eye”—to offer them a particular type of visual attention. During the process of accomplishing these looks, spectators may momentarily avert or close their eyes before and after making direct eye-contact with the strippers. This routine of gazing, highlighted by Hart in her striptease workshop and aerobic eye-dancing exercises, follows a specific Western pattern of sexual looking that occurs between mutually interested parties. Again as outlined by Money, both straight and gay couples, caught up in the first flutterings of sexual attraction, usually begin their own performance of erotic gazing by establishing eye-contact. In short order, both partners may blush, look away, droop their eyelids, and peek at one another. The act typically concludes with the couple re-establishing eye-contact while squinting or smiling.32 This “real-life” dance of the eyes, replicated by strippers and their patrons, is an expression of the roller-coaster ride, the “charge and retreat” pattern, that often occurs between interested parties. In the first heat of their passion, both partners attempt to simultaneously reveal and conceal the full thrall of their desire for one another. Featured exotic dancer Beverlee Hills employs a facial movement refrain that underscores a related aspect of the wild ride of desire. As Hills displays certain parts of her body, or poses herself in particularly revealing positions, she suddenly stops the action short. Her mouth and eyes open wide as if she were “surprised” or “worried”—as if she could not believe what she was doing or the sensations she was feeling. She then quickly half closes her eyes and treats her audience to a come-hither look, followed by an ecstatic expression of sexual satisfaction. Hills’ series of fleeting worried looks—set in relief by the more traditional come-hither and ecstatic expressions of desire—underlines for the audience the social transgressiveness of the strip show they watch and the extent to which the experience of sexual desire can thrillingly overwhelm us.33 The male dancers of the Bar Apollon and Club 281 make use of an allied choreographic ploy and narrative. After the strippers disrobe to complete nudity and dance for a time on top of their tiny pedestal stages set up inches away from 119

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their patrons, they too stop the action and sport “worried,” “surprised,” or even “embarrassed” looks. The dancers quickly cover their fully-exposed genitals with their hands, close their eyes for a moment, and then continue to undulate, genitals in hand, while staring sheepishly at the closest spectators. The dancers’ gestures and facial choreography are designed to suggest that the attractiveness of the patrons, and the erotic experience of stripping, have lured their penises into erections against their will. The spectators’ power and sexiness threaten to induct all of the performers into an illicit act because the revelation of an erect penis by a stripper in Montreal is illegal. The male dancer’s carefully composed facial expressions and protective hand movements constantly remind the audience that he is at risk of legal and social sanctions if his penis is seen to take phallic shape. Such a choreography suggests that, despite the dancer’s prowess, he also has been caught off guard or overwhelmed by the power of sexual desire. However, because of the strippers’ well-timed movements, there is no way to tell for sure whether any of the dancers’ erections are “real” or mimetic. So these acts once again pique the spectators’ own performance of “straining to see.”34 Henley discusses at length the inequitable, gendered distribution of power instrinsic to much of socio-sexual looking in contemporary American culture. Nevertheless, like the female spectators on Rivera’s show, she acknowledges her own pleasure in erotic games of gazing. Henley observes that “eye engagement is like touch in its mystic and magnetic qualities. As in touch, a spark seems to pass between two persons whose eyes meet.”35 The majority of female and male strippers interviewed for this book insisted that they made most of their tips by establishing eye-contact with their patrons and engaging them in dances of the eyes. The patrons’ delight in the mystic magnetism of the stripper’s eye choreography is so powerful and recognized by the industry at large that it is also used to advertise and market strip events. The cover of the press kit for the Chippendales New York Welcome to Your Fantasy show features a photograph of a pair of female eyes under the headline “Seeing is Believing.” Included in the press kit are descriptions of the show’s leading male dancers accompanied, not by full face or body shots, but by photographs of the strippers’ eyes. The Lusty Lady sex emporium for men in Seattle, Washington (the sister sex emporium of the Lusty Lady in San Francisco) advertises with a handbill that displays a pair of disembodied female peepers staring out above the club’s long listing of entertainments. According to “Candy,” a dancer for the Seattle club for almost two decades, the eyes in question belong to famed porn queen, stripper, feminist, and social activist, Nina Hartley.36 Strip clubs for men such as Private Eyes in New York City and Hungry I’s in San Francisco are specifically named for the thrills of sexual looking. They too advertise with handbills that feature pairs of female eyes ogling potential customers. In order for erotic sparks to fly between pairs of “hungry I’s,” the gaze of the looker must be returned—not by passive “sex objects” with vacant, empty stares— but again, at the very least, by the fiction of a like-seeing sexual subject who offers the pretense of desiring the looker in return. 120

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Sexual strutting: Collisions of the social and the fantastical, the metaphoric and the material The strip show’s variations and expansions on gender roles and sexual desire are perhaps most dramatically embodied through the last component of the basic choreography, “the strut”—or each dancer’s signature sexy walk. Dancers use struts as entrances and opening segments; as pauses in the action to build anticipation; and as connecting steps to travel from patron to patron for tips and other kinds of audience interaction. While there is often a distinction between the macho strutting of the male stripper and the more subdued, mincing step of the female dancer (shaped through her use of high heels),37 this difference is not always so exact. Both female and male strippers employ several overlapping sexual attitudes in the construction and presentation of their sexy walks that, for the sake of discussion, can be roughly translated into “sensual,” “stalking,” and “friendly” approaches to the elicitation of erotic desire. These cliché approaches to sexual seduction, like the other stereotypical aspects of the show, excite patrons because they nevertheless foster rather than occlude multiple roles and identifications for performers and spectators alike. Female and male “sensual” struts include undulating hip and stomach movements, body-stroking techniques, and heavy-lidded, come-hither looks. The Chippendales New York All About Love and One Night of Sin shows feature an act in which male dancers—naked except for white towels wrapped around their waists—saunter around the stage using slow, measured, hip-swaying steps. Some of the performers toss their long hair in time to the music; others massage their bare chests and half-close their eyes before gazing seductively at the audience. In contrast, female and male stalking struts are usually composed of long, swaggering strides and unwavering, smoldering stares at the audience which often serve as a prelude to the dancers’ aggressive physical interactions with the spectators. Female strippers at Good Guys prowl around the small platform stages, stopping here and there to place—or occasionally to grind—their boots and high heels into the shoulders of male patrons who are expected to remain immobile. Taking on the roles of “tops” or unrelenting seducers, female and male dancers “do” their audiences. Spectators demonstrate their pleasure and surrender to the scene through their immobility, sighs, eyeball rolling, and extravagant tipping. Unlike the sensual struts that spotlight the bodies of the performers, the dancers’ stalking parades yet again shift the focus of the “show” onto the bodies of the patrons. “Friendly” struts typically include more dance-oriented moves (e.g., simple turns, jumps, and hip hop steps) and a facial choreography that features constant smiling. As part of their display of amicability, many performers incorporate convivial talking “patters” into their acts. Female strippers at Rick’s and Big Al’s strut around the stages asking patrons questions such as: “How ya doing?”; “What’s ya name?”; “Where ya’ll from?” Male strippers at the Hangar Club, Big Alice’s, and Chippendales Los Angeles enthusiastically and repeatedly ask their customers the all-important question, “Are ya havin’ a good time?” The dancers’

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choreographed and scripted show of “friendly interest” in the physical and emotional well-being of their patrons also serves to return the focus of the event back to bodies of the spectators. Constant smiling and a show of friendly interest, or a show of attempting to please others above all else, have long been the hallmarks of “femininity” in the West.38 However, in the strip events reviewed for this book, the male dancers’ employment of friendly struts equaled their use of stalking and sensual parades, while female strippers appeared to favor, if only slightly, both stalking and sensual approaches to sexual seduction. Male dancers may choose friendly struts over other such expressions to avoid appearing either too aggressive or narcissistic for their presumably neophyte or vanilla sexual consumers. But as the conceited or often “brutal” action figures found in women’s romance novels and the strip show testify (e.g., war-lords, gladiators, bandits, vampires, etc.) this, again, is far from the only answer. In her study of straight porn films, Linda Williams traces the shift from the early stag film’s fixation on phallic pleasure, to modern versions of the genre which frequently indicate a distinct interest in, and sometimes even an obsession with, the sexual pleasure of women (as in that significant question, “Are you having a good time?”).39 Male obsessions about sexually pleasing women are nothing new to the social and cultural annals of history. Thomas Laqueur point outs, that in Eastern and Western societies, from antiquity through much of the nineteenth century, it was commonly believed that females must experience orgasm at least once during sexual relations to conceive and produce (male) heirs.40 At the turn of this century—in the wake of the Dr Ruth generation and the opening up of career, economic, and lifestyle options for many women—straight men are expected as never before to be able to satisfy their partners in both long- and short-term relationships. The awareness and concern over the issue of sexual harassment in America during the last two decades of the twentieth century, have also increased the stake men have in making sure that the partners they desire are interested in the same sort of interaction. As Cowie suggests, by discovering what a woman wants, by being able to give her pleasure, today’s man can have or be what she wants, and thus consequently ensure his role as the object of her desires as well.41 The friendly struttings of male strippers may illustrate certain contemporary ideals of both manly and “PC” behavior. However, the sexual parades of all male strippers—whether stalking, sensual, or friendly—still thwart traditional social expectations about gender roles because they underscore the fact that the dancers are exhibiting themselves—strutting their sexual stuff—to please women for money. Real men do not get paid for sexual “posing” in public—for explicitly playing sex object roles for women without in the end really “doing something” about it. As discussed in Chapter 2, popular confusions and disapproval over male strip shows for women are often voiced through the homophobic, heterosexist assumption that all male strippers “must be gay anyway”—as if such a “truism” could solve, explicate, or defuse the “problem” of this sex play. In actuality, straight, bisexual, and gay men perform strip acts for women; straight, bisexual, and gay males perform 122

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strip acts for gay men; straight women, bisexual females, and lesbians perform strip acts for straight men; and straight women, bisexual females, and lesbians perform strip acts for lesbians.42 Susan G.Cole described a similar reaction to the early erotic magazines for women—such as Viva and Playgirl. In her essay “Pornography: What Do We Want?,” she noted that the female subscribers were initially “delighted” by the sexual adventure stories and the photographs of male nudes. Cole explains that everything possible was done to surround each model with “manly” clichés: “They had him in forest settings. They had him looking out into the distance to make him look like he had control over the whole environment. They had him on horses so that he could look like the Marlboro man.” Cole states that the female consumers nevertheless soon began to worry that the models “looked gay” because “they did not see what they considered masculine by conventional standards.”43 Cole’s comments imply that the male model’s apparent lack of “conventional masculinity” was a direct result of his nakedness. But this view of the male model’s questionable social status and virility is also related to the fact that the female consumers did not recognize the larger representational frame (i.e., a magazine that displayed men as sexual subjects to be enjoyed by women) as “masculine.” Therefore the entire fantasy structure had to be by default, “feminine”—making the subjects who blatantly strutted their sexual stuff within its frame either some kind of “joke”—or “gay.” Of course underlying this habituated either/or way of seeing is our society’s fear of homosexuality—and any other way of being that contests hegemonic categorizations and frames of maleness and femaleness. The sexual struttings of female strippers—also regardless of whether they are stalking, sensual, or friendly expressions of erotic arousal—provoke a variant set of cultural and political pronouncements about gender and desire based on other potential social harms. The traditional religious Right’s view of females who flagrantly strut their sexual stuff is that of Eve-like temptresses or poor beleaguered sinners who have the power to lead (good) men astray from God and family. Anti-porn feminists and activists see the sexual struttings of strippers and sex trade workers as detrimental, not to men, but to all women—because such displays uphold the patriarchal notion that females are, above all else, sex objects for men’s use. Once again, the most radical supporters of this view insist, in sensational and horrific terms, that “to flaunt it” is “to ask for it”—that pornographic portrayals of females threaten all women with real physical violence from men—including rape. In almost mirror image, the critics who advocate a “politics of invisibility” for women and sexual minorities as protection against such harms (like Phelan in her book Unmarked) seem to suggest that if straight women and sexual minorities openly reveal their identities, erotic interests, and politics, they may be asking for it as well. Because, in a male-dominated heterosexist world, almost any kind of in-your-face sexuality is at risk for cooptation, neutralization, or worse by the all-powerful, immutable gaze of the hegemony.44 As hyperbolic as such rhetoric may be, the concerns of all of these activists and theorists are indeed well founded. Women and sexual minorities in 123

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America and elsewhere continue to be harassed and physically harmed. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance to remember that women and sexual minorities are subject to such abuses whether they take the veil of purdah in countries that strictly forbid pornography, or whether they openly parade their sexual stuff in the strip clubs of New York City and San Francisco. Some Marxist and materialist critics, such as Rebecca Schneider, link the sexual struttings of “dream girls” in mainstream pornography, and in the “pornography” of mainstream advertising, to another type of social harm—the cultural excesses, bigotries, and oppressions produced by contemporary capitalism. Schneider contends that the images of beckoning “dream girls” service and drive the commodity market because they represent and encourage the consumer’s “desire to desire”—the very essence of the capitalistic system. Dream girls keep the consumer’s desire to desire constantly in play, because they are ultimately inaccessible—they cannot be had in any real way. Patrons are thus teased into paying for the sight of ever more dream girls on parade—or, at the very least, they are teased into acquiring a parade of new cars, watches, and bigger and bigger houses—none of which really satisfies, but only further stimulates the insatiable desire to desire that drives the market. Images of women who strut and sell their sexual stuff within the frames of this marketplace infringe on the sexual agency of women everywhere because they function as mere place holders for the desires of men who control the economy.45 Schneider suggests that the entire framework of capitalism is held in place by Western culture’s insistence that fantasy and reality are mutually exclusive categories. The fantasy of the dream girl’s availability, set in motion though her sexual strutting, must suggest a real enough satisfaction to encourage the consumer’s insatiable buying and spending. But this image must never really satisfy so that “the frenzy of accumulation” will never “be assuaged.”46 However, in her formulation of sexual strutting and consumption, Schneider leaves out the possibility, as postulated by both Cowie and Butler, that patrons of pornographic and other types of fantasy entertainments usually get exactly what they pay for—the satis/action of the fantasy experience itself.47 Schneider offers her readers only one of two choices to comprehend the dynamics of desire in terms of fantasy: the “wrong” choice of viewing fantasy as completely divorced from the prejudices of the social world, and the “right” choice of understanding fantasy as the vehicle by which we construct social reality.48 Schneider’s “right” choice is useful and powerful because it foregrounds how a culture’s fantasies of race, gender, sexual preference, and class, and so on, can produce very real effects in terms of oppressing others. However, this limited paradigm excludes an examination of the ways social reality and fantasy may also diverge, intersect, and comment on each other even from within dominant discourse. For some strippers, it is the public’s acknowledgment of the connections and the collisions of these two realms (foregrounded by their own transgressive parades) that set the stage for what they experience and describe as sexual agency. Lesbian stripper, porn star, and feminist Debi Sundahl (Fanny Fatale) insists 124

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that her sexual struttings are in no way harmful to women or to society. On the contrary, she argues that her performances, and those of other sex trade workers, provide a conduit for the sexual agency of all women—as well as a handy lesson on what is appropriate “real-life” sexual behavior and decorum for men and women. Sundahl explains: Women who work in the sex industry are not responsible for, nor do they in any way perpetuate, the sexual oppression of women. In fact, to any enlightened observer, our very existence provides a distinction and a choice as to when a woman should be treated like a sex object and when she should not be. At the theatre, yes; on the street, no. Having the distinction so obviously played out at work, I felt more personal power on the street… For the first time I felt I could express my sexuality in a safe environment. I was in control.49 Feminist writer and stripper Seph Weene described a similar experience. Weene stated that she, like so many women, was “taught to fear the sexual arousal of men.” Nevertheless, in the theatre of the strip show, where “the air is charged with sexuality,” Weene felt empowered because she was “being sexy on purpose, the initiator, not the victim.”50 Weene’s experience of sexual empowerment was echoed by speakers during the Strip Tease: Art, Pornography, and the Wages of Skin colloquium held at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (1996), and by many female and male strippers interviewed for this book. Writer and dancer Lily Burana stated that while she did indeed experience problems in the sex trade industry (e.g., grueling work schedules, artistic disputes, and clubs or managers who demanded an unjust percentage of her tips— for which she sued and won), she would defend her right to keep strutting her stuff in the clubs because her work underlined her position as a “free sexual agent.”51 Some feminist critics, including Jill Dolan, have contended that lesbian sex trade workers can experience agency through their sexual struttings because they do not participate in or support the gendered hierarchies of mainstream society. However, straight female sex trade workers are, by definition, caught up in the closed system of “compulsory heterosexuality” and they, therefore, can neither claim to be nor represent themselves as authentic sexual strutters. Since most producers and consumers of pornography are men, straight female porn stars, centerfolds, and strippers cannot help but reaffirm and represent the needs and desires of men to the exclusion of their own agency. Dolan also ponders whether lesbian strippers and sex trade workers who perform in heterosexual contexts may uphold the patriarchy as well because they may be trapped into making a show of traditional gender roles, which then maintains the dominant culture’s assumption of heterosexuality. To support her thesis, Dolan refers to Sundahl’s comment that female strippers like to perform for other women because they are “not limited to ultra-feminine acts.”52 However, as demonstrated throughout this book, many female dancers performing in heterosexual contexts do not limit their shows to 125

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strictly “feminine” displays. And even when they do, what one may consider to be “ultra-feminine” at first glance, such as the bump and grind, ultimately may be viewed as “ultra-masculine” besides. As Butler so profoundly argues, the relationships between dominant and subaltern cultures (like that of fantasy and social reality) are not mere matters of inside/outside dichotomies. Like the basic moves of the strip act, even the most fundamental “tools” used to construct and maintain the fantastical discourses of mainstream culture, are often the same tools that allow us to alter, expand, and dismantle them. In her study of heterosexual striptease in Canada, A.S.A. Harrison discusses some of the problems in the industry. She nevertheless concludes that the overwhelming majority of female strippers strutting their sexual stuff across the stages of North America exhibit a physical prowess and a confidence generally expected only of men. Harrison insists that this kind of female confidence and expertise continues to be so foreign a concept, especially in heterosexual arenas, that as with so many of our limiting fantasies about other cultural others, “we often fail to recognize it when we see it.”53

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Figure 4.1 Female dancer bumps and grinds with pole “partner” at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas (2001) Source: Photograph courtesy of Bob Glass.

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Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

Figure 4.2 Male dancers at Chippendales New York bump and grind out their pants (1990)

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Figure 4.3 Annie Sprinkle demonstrates her Bosom Ballet used in her strip acts and in her performance art (circa 1992) Source: Photograph by Les Barany. Reproduced courtesy of Annie Sprinkle.

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Figure 4.4 Male dancers at Chippendales New York demonstrate sensual moves and bodystroking choreography (1992) Source: Photographs by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 4.5 Handbill with a woman’s eyes (presumably, Nina Hartley’s) ogling patrons, used by the Lusty Lady club in Seattle, Washington (circa 1992)

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Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

Figure 4.6 Male dancer demonstrates his “friendly” struts and approach to seduction at the Hangar club in Camp Springs, Maryland (just outside of Washington, DC) (1992)

5 CHOREOGRAPHY II Structure, pleasure, and “confessional” narratives of the body

Anne McClintock observes that “the pace of porn—the swerves in scene, the switches of persona, the rehearsal of variety within the structure of compulsive repetition—mimics the floating, chaotic structures of masturbatory fantasy.” While critics such as Rebecca Schneider equate the structure of compulsive repetition standard in heterosexual porn scenes to the destructive, self-perpetuating insatiable desires of capitalism’s market system (discussed in the last chapter), McClintock nonchalantly comments that this dramaturgy in all its various forms follows “an obscure logic about which we know very little.”1 The majority of contemporary strippers, female and male, structure their acts around the well-known repetitive pattern of sequenced stripping established by the early Burlesquers. Most dancers still begin their routines in some form of dress. They bare their upper bodies or chests first (which in the case of female strippers may be completely exposed or partially shielded by pasties, latex nipple coverings, or bikini tops depending on the statutes of the city or state). The final revelation of the strip act exposes the dancer’s pelvic region, buttocks, and genitals, which also may be partially concealed by a G-string, thong, bikini, speedos, or other type of underwear. Old-time Burlesquers typically concluded their routines upon reaching the final degree of nudity. However, most contemporary strippers spend the better portion of their acts dancing “in the buff’ or “in the semi-nude.” Female dancers who perform in the smaller strip bars and clubs tend to move quickly through the first three sequences of the pattern, while featured strippers, porn queens, and dancers who entertain in the larger show biz or cabaret style of clubs generally embellish and take more time with all sections of the dance. Since male strip shows for women tend to be highly theatrical as well, most male performers also pay proportionate attention to each sequence of the act. But there is a major distinction in the way female and male dancers realize the standard structure of sequenced stripping. Male dancers usually employ set, or at least partially set, choreography, whereas the majority of female dancers improvise around the traditional pattern of disrobing. When interviewed about this distinction, a number of club owners, managers, dancers, and patrons insisted that such a difference “proved,” once again, that female patrons of male strip 133

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shows are more interested in “good entertainment” and “fun,” as opposed to male patrons of female strip shows who desire only the “purely sexual.” However, there are several other factors that figure in this equation. Female strippers usually work longer hours than their male counterparts (i.e., they dance in four- to eight-hour shifts as compared to the usually contained twoto three-hour male strip show for women).2 Female dancers are also more frequently required to perform on stages of varying sizes within a single club setting. Therefore an improvisational approach to the strip act may help them better cope with the shifting audience and performance conditions throughout the day or night. Since men in our culture have many more opportunities than women to obtain or view sexually explicit materials and entertainments, it makes sense that some adult entertainments for men project an aura of informality, even though they may be tightly structured. As the following anecdote illustrates, theatrical or ritualized narratives of the body (whether neatly choreographed or improvised) play an important part in the “obscure masturbatory logic” that shapes our multifarious sexual fantasies, and hence our multifarious sexualities (or what some consider to be the “purely sexual”). As discussed in earlier chapters, a number of psychoanalytic theorists insist that it is at the very moment we learn to express desire through the ritualized dreamscapes and figures of fantasy (however socially questionable or politically reprehensible they may be) that our varying sexualities wholly come into being—male and female.3 “Starr,” a house dancer for Show World’s now defunct Triple Treat Theatre in New York City, usually performed an act in which she combined Latin dance steps, the basic moves of the striptease, and the traditional pattern of disrobing which culminated in her total nudity. During the protracted “nude finale” of her act, Starr executed prone position bumps and grinds while reclining on a blanket placed on the stage floor. However, one afternoon—whether from boredom, illness, exhaustion, or a combination of factors—Starr decided to alter her routine. Instead of opening her show by parading and dancing, Starr entered the stage in a short dressing gown which she removed in one fell swoop. She stood naked for a moment and then laid down on her blanket and began to gyrate. Within a minute or two, most of the spectators had vacated the theatre. In the lobby several patrons loudly complained that there was “no show,” that Starr’s attitude and performance were “disgusting” and “no fun.” When Starr performed her act an hour later, she returned to the original format. She began her dance dressed in an animal-print top and matching sarong skirt and proceeded with an orderly strip that eventually led to the nude genital display on the floor. This time, more or less the same spectators stayed to watch her entire show.4 Writers such as Georges Bataille, Susan Sontag, and Michel Foucault have suggested that erotic arousal (or the “logic” of masturbatory fantasy) is dependent on fantasy scenarios that foreground various social and personal transgressions. These transgressions, in turn, highlight the very rules transgressed, which, in return, recall the transgressions taken—and so on ad infinitum. Foucault visualizes this formulation of transgression as a spiral in which every curve inspires and propels 134

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the next arc of itself forward, downward, and/or outward.5 In the most obvious sense, the ritual of the sequenced stripping pattern foregrounds the transgressive crossing and recrossing of social and personal boundaries through a form of stage nudity that discloses ever-increasingly taboo parts of the dancer’s body. The operations of this theatrical strategy become more pronounced when the revelations of the dancer’s body parts are accompanied by the performer’s accelerated use of taboo movements and gestures (e.g., body-stroking, simulated masturbation, “floor work,” etc.). Some theorists insist that representations like striptease bolster social norms because they merely draw attention to the cultural laws they break.6 However, Laura Mulvey and Neo-Bakhtinian theorists such as Jaye Berman argue that rituals and events that cross and recross social boundaries are not necessarily based on binary movements that return their actants to their exact point of origin—or to the status quo. On the contrary, like the spiral, such events and representations may offer a series of confrontations or “swerves in the scene” that eventually expand on the original design.7 Exotic dancers are exciting not only because they perform sexually suggestive movements in the nude, but because their routines, like the spiral (or Pemiola’s idea of the “transit”8), again theatrically “go somewhere”—from dressed to undressed, from sexual flirting to full-blown “I’m going to die” desire, from desire to mimetic or “real” sexual satisfaction. The traditional structure of the strip act further highlights the spectators’ part in the show by incrementally increasing their roles as transgressive “peepers”—which then likewise highlights the spiral-like effects and transformations of the spectators’ own bodies as they become sexually aroused. The strip show’s staged and provoked metamorphoses of both performers and spectators offers the “swerves in the scene” and “switches of persona” that McClintock cites, along with “the structure of compulsive repetition,” as the pivotal constituents of Western masturbatory fantasy. Rebecca Schneider, following Gertrude Koch, suggests that heterosexual males indulge in pornography as a way of both confessing to and assuaging their fear of castration. In the porn film, the compulsive repetition of the male performer’s “dick” going “in and out” of the body of the female is designed to reassure the male viewer that his penis (and dominant cultural standing) will remain intact, regardless of the maneuvers and the devouring vagina of the woman. Pornography involves its spectators directly in the scene they scrutinize because it physically and emotionally arouses them. But, according to Schneider and Koch, it also visually replays the narrative of male castration anxiety which then distances the spectator from the scene. In other words, castration anxiety affords men a certain “perspective” or “aesthetic distance” on the action that in turn encourages them to “objectify” the representation and the subjects in the scene in order to maintain a sense of control and safety.9 However, sexual desire and play in the West are rarely represented in terms of intact or unified subject positions for either male or female actants. As described throughout this book, depictions of sexual desire— or what is considered “sexy” in our culture—usually trade in images that suggest a 135

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shattering of traditional social and personal boundaries. These violations are exciting because they stand for a sexual abandon and pleasure that cannot be quantified. For most sexual fantasizers and consumers, the experience of such boundary shatterings must indeed occur in conjunction with a certain sense of safety in order for it to become “sexy”—like the “bottom” in a S/M scene who, through agreed upon signals, also controls the intensity and duration of the act. Nevertheless, this sense of safety still does not guarantee spectators absolute control over the scene. In order for the scene “to work,” the participants must first agree to surrender, however temporarily, to the dizzy, giddy, spiral-like dynamics of transgression that elicit and propel the carnal desires they seek to experience. If sexual desire is always at least partly about losing control, then sexual representation, play, and fantasy allow us to have control over a time in which we can experience the sensation of being “out of control.”10 The balance of this chapter describes several of the most common choreographic and thematic embellishments to the strip show’s traditional structure of sequenced stripping. These include reverse strips, undressing-re-dressing cycles, scenes that depict unguarded “private moments” such as bathing or masturbating, and acts that suggest harm or potential harm to the bodies of the performers. Each structural and thematic twist intensifies the “swerves in scene” and “switches of persona” that may also produce the expansions on conventional gender roles deemed by Judith Butler to be the hallmarks of sexual agency. Swerves and switch backs: Reverse and cycle strips In 1937, a stripper named Jan Marsh stepped “nude” on to the stage of a Burlesque house and slowly dressed herself as she danced. Marsh’s “invention” was so well received that she insisted it would soon “ruin the ‘strip-tease racket.’”11 The “reverse strip” obviously never replaced the original, but other Burlesquers occasionally incorporated a version of it in their traditional routines through cycles of undressing and redressing. One of Gypsy Rose Lee’s most famous acts included just such a variation on the traditional pattern of sequenced stripping. The routine opened with Gypsy outfitted in a high-necked, long-skirted period costume that had the look of an old-fashioned Victorian girl. With much coy smiling and a few winks, Gypsy unbuttoned the tight bodice of her dress and shimmied out of her ankle-length skirt to reveal giant pasties and a G-string covered with red cherries—or alternately giant black or red bows. Instead of concluding her act with this visual joke, the diva of striptease stepped behind a back-lit curtain and proceeded to redress herself in a different costume while the audience watched the shadowy outlines of her body projected onto the makeshift scrim. When Gypsy sashayed into the light again, she was decked out in a stunning short-skirted, gold-beaded, and oh so au courant cocktail dress. After parading around the stage in her dazzling new outfit, Gypsy grinned at the audience and exited—jauntily swinging her feather boa and shiny gold hips as she made her way to the wings. In his autobiographical account 136

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of life on the road with his celebrity mother, Eric Preminger noted that Gypsy’s audiences were particularly delighted by this “switch in persona” routine that featured an old-fashioned girl’s transformation into a presumably emancipated modern young woman—a figure that also held out the promise of more strippings to come.12 Some feminist critics such as Susan Faludi, Catharine MacKinnon, and Susan Brownmiller have insisted that the so-called “modern age” of the twentieth century did not in any way sexually emancipate women from the sex/gender shackles of the Victorian era. The events of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the World Wars, the discovery of the Pill, and the sexual revolution in the West merely allowed males to take greater advantage of the now more sexually available females.13 Other feminist writers—including Lisa Jervis, Cherie Matrix, Lynne Segal, Linda Williams, and Wendy McElroy—contend that such a premise is itself predicated on the Victorian notion that women are not really interested in sex— or, worse still, that women do not have the intellectual, emotional, physical, and social wherewithal to make authentic sexual choices for themselves.14 While it is arguable that some men may have taken advantage of some women as a result of these social events and transitions, Western females—particularly white, middle-class, straight women—did in fact gain greater sexual and social freedoms as the twentieth century progressed. With the growing popularity of the condom in the 1920s, the advent of the Pill in the 1960s, and the right to an abortion in the 1970s, straight women were able to enjoy sexual relations with less fear of becoming pregnant. Birth control and fertility research allowed heterosexual and same-sex couples greater control over family planning. The hardships of the Great Depression and the World Wars paved the way for more middle-class women to work outside the home, and thereby acquire a greater measure of economic independence. As more and more women entered the work force, college, and other forms of public life, women’s health concerns, debates about child care and maternity leave, and franker discussions about female sexualities finally became issues worthy of mainstream attention. The blatant sexism and harassment that came with the social advancement of women did not stem from the fact that females were more sexually available to males. They were instead part and parcel of a series of backlashes aimed at reversing the tide of women’s new-found freedoms—from the “patriotic” cry in America that Rosie the Riveter should return to the kitchen to open up jobs for returning World War II GIs, to the anti-abortion movement, glass ceilings on higher-paying jobs, and to the wars waged against the “equal pay for equal work” amendment. Grant and Faludi, among others, aver that the boom in the porn industry during the latter half of the twentieth century was also one such backlash. While one should not summarily dismiss this charge (because sexism and other forms of bigotry continue to lurk in all corners and aspects of popular culture), such a narrow reading of the dynamics of desire, fantasy, and sexual representation runs the risk of not only reiterating the dictates of the double standard, but of making it more acceptable for mainstream society to discriminate against sexual minorities. In 137

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the much-discussed case of Butler v. Regina, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that all pornographic materials coming into the country were subject to seizure by customs officials on the grounds that pornography threatened the well-being and physical safety of women. Canadian customs officials, however, proceeded to use the new mandate almost exclusively to confiscate pornographic materials intended for lesbians and gay men, as well as to confiscate feminist writings and sexual imagery.15 There is no question that sex and sexual representation have been used to oppress women. But sexual fantasy, play, and representation also remain realms in which both females and males can swerve, switch character, and disobey the expected gender behaviors and decorums of the everyday world. A contemporary male version of Gypsy Rose Lee’s “switch-of-character” and transformation scene operates on this point as well. The Chippendales New York All About Love show featured an act about a staid, proper businessman who enjoys a double life. In this routine, the dancer enters the stage dressed in a rumpled suit as if he were just returning from a hard day’s work. Using robot-like motions, the character slowly and apathetically removes his constraining “work clothes.” When he strips down to his briefs, the until now mournful music suddenly switches to a disco beat. Freed from the confinement and expectations of his “suit,” the character takes on a completely different physical life. He poses and preens before a mirror. He strokes his body, tousles his hair, and dances around the stage. Then, with much bumping and grinding, he re-dresses himself in an outfit reminiscent of the signature costume of John Travolta’s “Tony Manero” character in the film, Saturday Night Fever. Once thus attired, the Chippendales “Tony” practices a few disco moves and plays with his hair some more to underline the Fever connection. Satisfied that his transformation is now complete, the character gleefully struts off stage for a hot night out on the town—an image that also suggests the likelihood of sexual encounters and therefore more strippings to come. As with Gypsy’s Victorian Girl to Modern Woman number, the Chippendales routine centers on the storyline of a character who escapes from a repressive social situation (in this case, the hard-edged, competitive world of business) to an alternative time and place (the fantasy realm of the dance club) which allows him to express a more vulnerable, sensual, and sexual side of himself. The male character’s actions of grooming, body-stroking, and preening proclaim his desire to pursue sexual pleasure by also becoming the subject/object of another’s erotic interests. He too slinks off into the night leaving the rest of his adventures to the imagination of his spectators. In her book The Male Body, Susan Bordo observes that John Travolta’s “Tony” in Saturday Night Fever was not only the first heterosexual white male character to appear in a film in sexy black form-fitting briefs, he was the first to spend so much screen time on his toilette. Bordo maintains that, as a professional dancer, Travolta was unembarrassed by the script and the camera work that made “his hips, groin, and buttocks the mesmerizing center of attention.”16 Schneider insists 138

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that “dream girls” featured in advertisements and other kinds of representations— and one could assume “dream boys” as well (exemplified by Travolta’s carefully composed screen and television personas of old)—are mimetically constructed to “vanish,” or to remain just outside of the viewers’ greedy grasp. The viewers, never satisfied, are then provoked into buying more and more of these representations or goods in an attempt to hold on to the dream figures of their lust. However, both Gypsy’s act and the Chippendales’ Travolta routine suggest a very different narrative about how spectators experience and consume such images and goods. These acts clearly demonstrate the means by which dream figures can satisfyingly linger in the scopic field and mimetic arms of the spectating fantasizers. The characters in both of these routines anticipate for themselves a future of sexual encounters that, in turn, sets in motion for the spectators a vision of countless other cycles of undressings and re-dressings. Depending on the inclinations and imaginative muscles of the fantasizers, these images and stories may be endlessly replayed and adapted in the minds of the spectators, or used by them as tinder for what is still conventionally thought of as “real” sexual experience or “sexual relations.”17 As Phelan observes in Unmarked, theatre events evaporate in the instant they are performed, but their subjects and scenes may remain in the minds and bodies of the spectators to be remembered and replayed over and over again, safely out of the reach of the sex police of either the Right or Left.18 In the process of remembering or adapting a scene of desire (which also can occur in tandem with the original viewing), the sexual consumer becomes, along with the beckoning dream figure, both producer and spectator, subject and object of the story. Most contemporary reverse or cyclical strip acts do not feature the fairy talelike switches in the performer’s stage persona found in the routines described above. Nevertheless, they offer another type of theatrical boundary crossing and recrossing that also foregrounds the process by which spectators imaginatively replay and rewrite the dancers’ actions as part of their own “consumption” of the scene. As noted elsewhere, JP’s and Archibald’s in Washington, DC, are smaller scale strip clubs that have no formal dressing rooms or backstage spaces in which the dancers can comfortably change. In these establishments, a single female performer strips on a small platform stage. She dances in the nude for the next several songs and then re-dresses herself in the same outfit during the final song of the set. The spectators pay as much attention to the dancer’s re-dressing segment as they do to the other portions of her act. For the last section of the dancer’s act magnifies the social violations of her nude performance through a staged reaffirmation of the accepted rules of dress. With each article of clothing that re-covers the stripper’s body, the spectators are reminded that they have been privy to a (taboo) “secret”— they have been allowed to behold an image that goes beyond what is normally visible and acceptable in the everyday world. When the dancer is once again “dressed,” the spectators are not returned to their original positions of social “safety.” Rather they may find themselves careening back to the scene of dishabille as they remember what the dancer looked like naked. 139

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Larger strip clubs that feature more than one stage or performance area, and a number of dancers performing at the same time, set up yet another kind of scenic swerving that parallels the spectators’ own act of remembering and replaying the scene. In clubs such as Gallagher’s, Billy’s, Rick’s, the Colorado, and the La Bare club (for women), groups of dancers rotate with one another to different stage areas. The performers typically disrobe only at the first stop on their rotation, which is usually the mainstage. They dance semi-nude or in the nude at the subsequent performance stations, and then re-dress when they reach the last stop on their circuit. Depending on the size and interior design of the club, spectators can choose to view the show from the dancers’ disrobing station, the stations where the dancers perform “nude,” or the station where the dancers re-dress. In most cases, the sightlines are such that, regardless of where the spectators actually sit, they can see at least something of the action that takes place on the other stage areas. The overall effect for the patrons is something akin to a visual musical round or canon because the performers dance together in various stages of undress as part of a larger repetitive cycle. Here, the chaotic repetition and logic of the pornographic mandate are represented through a seemingly unending roller-coaster of rising and falling action, breakneck disclosures and cover-ups, and continuous transgressions and affirmations of the rules of dress, which collectively offer the spectator-fantasizers no opportunity to catch their breath, no central or single stable viewing position from which to rest. What is produced from the carefully structured mayhem is not a series of images that elude the grasp or satisfaction of the spectators, but an entertainment that, like a carnival ride, thrills because it affords its breathless glutted patrons the pleasure of a centrifugal force that both holds them secure and allows them to spin with abandon. More boundary shatterings: “Private moments,” “Peeping Toms,” and “scene crashing” In a small Parisian music hall at the turn of the last century, an unknown performer created an act called Le Coucher d’Yvette (Yvette Goes to Bed). The skit featured a young woman who simply removed a few articles of clothing and climbed into bed as if she were in the privacy of her own home. The act became such a success that soon every variety house in Paris was obliged to offer a similar routine with titles like Le Bain de Maid (The Maid Takes a Bath), Suzanne et la Grande Chaleur (Suzanne in the Heatwave), and Liane chez le Médecin (Liane at the Doctor’s).19 Most of the acts included no actual stage nudity—but they produced a like effect because their storylines unabashedly cast the spectators in the roles of “Peeping Toms.” Textbooks describe “real-life” Peeping Toms as sadists who attempt to catch the subjects of their interest in compromising, vulnerable positions without their prior knowledge or consent. Peepers are said to derive sadistic pleasure and satisfaction through imagining the humiliation their victims would feel if they were to discover the peeper’s invasion of their privacy. However, since this fetish 140

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is predicated on the secrecy of the Peeping Tom’s own private act of spying, the peeper is always also at risk, always also in a position of vulnerability, because of the social chastisement and punishment that await him if he were, in fact, caught looking. Mayor Giuliani’s campaign against the legal strip club industry in New York City illustrates that even the mimetic sexual voyeur runs such risks. As outlined in Chapter 1, Giuliani called upon all “upstanding” citizens of the Big Apple to photograph or videotape patrons going into and out of strip clubs and porn shops as a deterrent to their “deviancy.” Since the Peeping Tom always also risks public humiliation and worse, psychoanalytic, legal, and theatrical depictions of this fetish again return the socio-sexual gaze to the mind and body of the “spectator.” Schneider suggests that the sexual voyeur’s buying and selling of women’s bodies in the public marketplace, through the proxy of sexual representation and entertainment, rebrands all females as the private property of men. This commerce helps to sustain the objectifying, dehumanizing, alienating system of late twentieth-century capitalism.20 However, as the anti-porn campaigns of good right-wing capitalists such as Giuliani, Meese, and Keating attest, even relatively straight pornographic “goods” may not be welcomed on the open exchange. Therefore, public displays of “private” sexual acts involving women, whether as performers or as spectators, may simultaneously thwart the traditional equation: women=sex=the (passive) private property of men=the “obscene” (in the literal sense of the word as that which should not be shown on the stage or in public). The “private moment” acts of the early French variety shows featured female characters who, true to their Victorian heritage, displayed little or no overt sexual desires of their own. However, the Peeping Tom scenarios of the later Burlesque shows regularly featured dancers who groomed and pampered themselves (like the Travolta character) specifically to attract and seduce others. Burlesquers “Tirza” and Dorothy Henry performed boudoir and toilette striptease routines that reportedly also helped them to maintain their youthful, sexy appearance in real life. Tirza undressed and splashed around in a wine bath that included a fountain shaped like a phallus, while Henry chose to disrobe and immerse herself in the more well-known beauty treatment of a “milk bath.”21 Ann Corio’s road show, and subsequent film, Here It Is, Burlesque!, featured exotic dancers who stripped, bathed in see-through tubs of water, and then re-dressed in see-through negligees to bowl over lovers.22 Smaller clubs and theatres present dancers who strip out of everyday street clothes, don see-through negligees, and then preen and strike alluring poses again as if practicing to seduce lovers. Some forms of fiction that feature Peeping Toms occasionally include narratives about female exhibitionists who lure men into acts of voyeurism by deliberately staging scenes in which they can be watched (see, for example, director Mike Leigh’s 1993 film, Naked). Thus initiated the Peeping Tom “spies” on the exhibitionist not knowing that she knows he is watching. At some point during the display, the exhibitionist turns her gaze to the viewer or signals by other means 141

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that she has in fact elicited his gaze, that he has been part of her show all along. That story is, of course, obsessively played out in the dynamics of looking in the strip show. In other stories that feature plots about sexual spying, would-be voyeurs become so agog or excited by what they see that they literally lose their balance and come crashing into the scene under surveillance—the screen tips over, the door swings open, and the voyeurs fall into the very space occupied by the subjects of their desire. Or, at the very least, the overly excited peepers inadvertently make their presence known by emitting sounds that alert their erstwhile victims to move the screen or yank open the door, all to the same effect. Strip show patrons replay this particular storyline of illicit looking when they become so enthralled by the stripper’s act that they sigh, gasp, laugh, murmur lines (such as “You’re killing me”) or overly tip—all of which draws attention to themselves. As with their fictive counterparts, strip show voyeurs—bowled over by the view, by the optical sensuousness of the dancers’ performances, by their own enthrallment to the show— accentuate the moment(s) in which they, too, psychically and physically fall into the scene.23 Narratives about voyeurism, or Peeping Toms in strip shows and other forms of fantasy and fiction, rarely suggest spectatorial positions of absolute sadistic control or detachment. Most of these narratives foreground instead the dynamics by which the representational apparatus in general propels the spectator or reader into the scene of the story. In her analysis of the early detective film, Judith Mayne states that the female Peeping Tom is never as transgressive or as dangerous as the male voyeur. The woman at the keyhole in the film is rarely punished for looking because her peeping is incidental and ineffectual. Since women are socially disempowered and physically weaker than men, they ultimately lack the ability to become actively involved in the scene. As Mayne puts it, the “female voyeur can peek, but does not possess the authority to penetrate the room.”24 Mayne dubs the figure of the male voyeur in film and fiction transgressive exactly because of his potential ability to become part of the action he watches. However, most male strip shows for women also feature “private moment” acts that not only offer place holders for the female spectators’ penetration of the scene, but place holders that situate them as the real drivers of the scene’s action. The Chippendales New York One Night of Sin show featured a routine about a male character who becomes so hot and bothered by his lover’s absence that he cannot fall asleep. The scene opens with the dancer preparing to go to bed. Dressed in a black satin bathrobe and G-string, he bumps and grinds, yawns and stretches, and then climbs into a bed decked with matching black satin sheets. The character tosses and turns and then reaches for a photograph of a woman displayed on the bed stand. He kisses her picture and again attempts to fall asleep but to no avail. Restlessly he begins to hug and caress his pillow. In a mixture of lust and frustration, the performer yanks off his G-string from under the sheets and hurls it across the stage. He longingly gazes at the photograph once more and then grabs a large jar of petroleum jelly conveniently placed next to the photograph. He rubs the jelly 142

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on his genitals from under the covers and places the pillow over his crotch. He kicks off the bedding exposing his body which is now completely nude except for his pillow-shielded genitals. The dancer flips around on the mattress so that the audience can view his body from all angles. The character finally brings the scene to climax by bumping and grinding into the pillow in different positions until he achieves a shuddering, quivering “orgasm”—that, at last, brings about a deep, restful sleep. At the Bar Apollon in Montreal, a male stripper wearing a dark business suit and horn-rimmed glasses readies himself for a hard day’s work. He reads over the various papers and documents that overflow from his briefcase—but he is not able to concentrate. He anxiously checks his watch and readjusts his necktie—but nothing seems to help. Stealthily he pulls out a photograph tucked away in his vest pocket and kisses it. He attempts to pay attention to his papers once more, but his thoughts wander back to the woman in the photo. He removes his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and wipes his brow—but work is still impossible. Finally succumbing to his lust, the character tears off his clothes, and begins to stroke his body. Swept away by desire, he tosses his papers into the air and grinds out a quivering, masturbatory dance. La Bare in Houston presented an act in which a male character receives a “Dear John” letter. A dancer dressed in a preppie-looking outfit enters the stage reading a letter from his girlfriend which ends their relationship. Grief-stricken, he falls to the floor and rolls around. He stumbles to his feet and rubs the letter all over his body—finally crumpling up the note. He slowly and sorrowfully removes his clothes and caresses himself as if he were in the arms of his beloved. Driven to distraction by the situation, he cannot even masturbate. He collapses onto a couch, head in hands, amid the sympathetic sighs, oohs, aahs, coos, and dollar bills of the audience. Like the routines that feature strippers indulging in sensual physical stimuli— such as hot showers, ice water, and lotions—these “private moment” acts portray characters in pressured situations that also appear to wring involuntary responses from their bodies. In each of the scenarios, the fictive off-stage female characters do more than simply threaten the well-being of the men on stage. Scripted as the real instigators of the action, they penetrate the scene by disrupting the characters’ sleep, work, and even will to live. Their infiltration into the minds and bodies of the characters on stage encourages the female spectators watching the show to identify with all the actants in the story. The pressure and intimacy created by the confessional reponses of the dancers’ characters are so persuasive and entertaining that the female patrons also materially crash into the scene through their comments, sighs, cheers, and tipping. While the acts above may outwardly focus on male desires and frustrations, these desires and frustrations are not played out through images of men attempting to control women. Rather, they are represented as private male confessions about being undone by women, about admitting to their own vulnerability. Such scenarios may invoke the age-old cultural trope that women are inherently dangerous or 143

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wicked because they have just this power to drive men crazy. But as Alice Deignan points out, the excitement of being involuntarily driven “mad with desire,” of having one’s everyday equilibrium shattered by another, is “at the heart of sexual pleasure” for females and males alike.25 One may add to Deignan’s formulation that the pleasure we take in being driven mad by our desire for another usually goes hand in hand with the switchback pleasure we take in driving others mad in return—in vicariously enjoying their experiences and confessions of disequilibrium in conjunction with our own. As “Jane,” a long-time patron of Chippendales Los Angeles, put it, “you’re crazy to kiss and touch the guy, and you’d like to make him a little crazy for you too.”26 More disequilibrium: Dangerous situations, shattered bodies, and sexual pleasure Some strip shows intensify the spectators’ experience of forbidden peeping and disequilibrium through routines that suggest bodily harm or potential bodily harm to the performers. Vaudevillian and early Burlesquer Alma Braye thrilled audiences by hanging upside down on a swinging trapeze and “dropping her drawers” without the benefit of a safety net. Star stripper Georgia Sothern created a frenetic type of dancing considered so violent by her peers they named her “the bone-crusher.”27 In the immediate post-Burlesque period, Blaze Starr trained a live, drooling panther to unzip her evening gown; Dawn Delight twirled fire batons and caressed her nude body with the flaming torches; and Yvette Evil ripped off her clothes and performed the illusion of cutting off her own head with a guillotine.28 Contemporary strippers continue the tradition. Dancer and porn queen Porsche Lynn blows flames out of the open palms of her hands. The lead dancer of the Garden of Eden in San Francisco massages her bare nipples with a special lotion and sets them on fire. “Katz,” a dancer for male audiences at the Body Shop and Michelle’s Triple XXX Revue for lesbians in Los Angeles, sweeps flaming torches over her naked body, “swallows” the flames, and sets her crotch on fire.29 At New York Dolls, former ballet dancer “Roxanne” climbs monkey-style to the top of a 12-foot pole, flips upside down, and then hurls herself down in a skin-burning slide only to land upright at the very last second in a split position on the floor. Several dancers at New York Dolls, The Body Shop, the O’Farrell Theatre, New Paris Revue, Goldfingers, and Tropicana specialize in “bone-crushing” acrobatic routines or stylized wrestling acts complete with throws, flips, and pins. At the New Paris Revue, a dancer in a dog collar performs contortionist poses as she whips herself with a riding crop. The pseudo-documentary Stripper, a film about the Golden G-string awards held in Las Vegas in the mid-1980s, features a similar act in which dancer “Danyel” (Kimberly Holcomb) strips out of a black leather outfit and lashes herself with a small whip until her naked body is streaked with fake blood.30 Many feminists and social activists view explicit sexual imagery that features 144

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women in physically harmful or potentially harmful situations as representations that both reflect and encourage the male eroticization of violence against females. Susan Griffin once stated that our male-dominated “pornographic culture” hates and fears women’s sexualities to such an extent—a hatred that women have long internalized—that it constantly attempts to mutilate or “annihilate” the female sex “in both image and event, fact and fantasy” (as in Yvette Evil’s strip act where she cuts off her own head with a guillotine).31 In her landmark anthology about women and sexual agency, Pleasure and Danger, pro-sex feminist Carol Vance nevertheless makes a point of warning her readers to be ever mindful of society’s “old bargain” that offers women “safety” as long as they refrain from exhibiting themselves or overtly pursuing “male-like” sexual freedoms. As with the later feminist arguments that caution against strutting one’s sexual stuff in favor of a politics of invisibility, Vance insists that women and sexual minorities must learn to calculate and to maneuver around the very real corporeal and social risks that dog their quests for agency and pleasure.32 In a similar vein, feminist writer, activist, porn star, and stripper Nina Hartley contends that the current proliferation of explicit images that portray acts of violence against women, or women in physically harmful situations, foregrounds the power that is still exerted by the double standard. Hartley insists that such representations symbolize the social punishments that await any woman who dares to openly express her sexual interests—whether she is “a prostitute, call-girl, or a woman with a higher sex drive.”33 Following Vance and Hartley, it may not be too much of a stretch to interpret the potentially perilous routines performed by female strippers, from the Burlesque era to the present, as re-enactments of the physical risks that women must endure in their quest for pleasure and agency. However, what is also notable, yet seldom addressed in most discussions and theories about violence and sexual representation, is that analogous images featuring near-naked men turn up not only in S/M play or representation (heterosexual and gay), but in a variety of popular entertainments and stories as well. While social activists, politicians, and academics rail against the staggering amount of male violence directed toward other males found in film, television, comic books, and music videos—they rarely examine the ways in which some of these images also have been eroticized. Since the advent of moving pictures, male sex symbols such as Johnny Weissmuller-Tarzan, Errol Flynn—Robin Hood, Steve Reeves—Hercules, Arnold Schwarzenegger—Conan the Barbarian-Terminator, Sylvester Stallone—Rocky I, II, and III, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, et al.—James Bond, have all undergone, as action characters, various tortures or tribulations of the body that take place when they have been stripped half-naked. During these scenes of endurance or torture, which often coincide with the story’s climax, the camera zooms in on the action figure’s quivering muscles and flesh, his chained body whipped raw or stretched on the rack, his face beaded with sweat and grimacing as he strives to stifle his moans. A veritable parade of these characters (e.g., secret agents, bandits, barbarian chieftains, cowboys, policemen, firemen, and soldiers) 145

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is found in almost every strip show for women. The costumes, emblems, and gestures that herald the characters’ social authority or physical prowess and “sexiness” simultaneously suggest a host of potential harms to the body. As Hollander notes, much of men’s occupational clothing, including boiler suits and fireman’s gear, boast “the flavor of either threat or bodily risk” because they are designed specifically for the “protection” of the wearer.34 Since male action heroes serve as “desired objects” for the entertainment of boys and girls, women and men, their various, implied, or potential bodily sufferings may function as symbolic punishments for any gender or social transgressions that their exhibitions also may contain.35 At Big Alice’s in Peoria, blue-jean rebels and leather bad boys perform their own versions of the bone-crushing slam dance as they pummel and grind their bodies into the walls and floor of the performance space. Motorcycle men with dog collars, chains, and leather thongs wrapped tightly around their necks and bodies parade around at Chippendales New York. Dancers at the Sugar Shack fight with swords and perform fantasias on Native American fire rituals as they caress their bare flesh with steel blades and flaming torches. Even the wholesome Donahue television show featured a male stripper who, at the climax of his act, set his jock strap on fire as the onlooking Phil Donahue blanched in disbelief.36 Such routines may embody the element of hostility that Robert Stoller deems innate to all experiences of sexual desire.37 But most likely the “violence” or potential violence to the body portrayed by female and male strippers reflects their attempt to represent the almost impossible to represent—the extreme emotional and physical sensations, the disequilibriums of the mind and body, that are produced by erotic arousal of which “hostility” is a part. Deignan points out that, in most forms of fiction that center on lust and love, scenes containing expressions or metaphors of violence “are not negatively evaluating for the most part” but rather “encode the experiencer’s pleasure at losing touch with his or her rational self.” Representations that suggest bodily harm to fictional actants are also exciting to readers and viewers because they indicate the magnitude to which we, and our respective cultures in the West, both fear and welcome carnal desire for “its potential to disrupt the established patterns of our lives.”38 Thus, one could also consider Yvette Evil’s guillotine number as a visual representation of the cliché of becoming so sexually desirous that one literally “loses one’s head.” As noted, Linda Williams proposes that sexual images which feature extreme physical exertions on the part of the performers, or violence directed toward the performers’ bodies, satisfy (like the stimuli of water or massage) the spectator’s desire to view seemingly raw (i.e., “real”) reactions wrung from the actors.39 Judy Burns observes that this effect is often created in the spectacle of dance through the performer’s use of dangerous equipment or precipitous performance sites.40 In the strip show, flaming torches, live animals, S/M gear, tiny pedestal stages, wobbly table tops, and vertical poles all supply the physical obstacles that threaten to turn the dancers’ choreographed actions into involuntary movements of the body. Burns notes that while physical risk is an implied dimension of all dance, 146

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performances that impose such obstacles, and/or performances that require dancers to project an aura of physical or emotional “wildness,” also play on our culture’s deep-seated taboo (and therefore deep-seated delight) in “deliberately and repeatedly putting the body in a state of elemental disequilibrium.” Rather than distancing the audience, the performers’ seemingly raw bodily reactions break down the last vestiges of the “us/them binary of spectator and performer” by maximizing “the audience’s kinesthetic implication in the dance.”41 Spectators do not experience positions of power or security relative to the dancers’ “wild” display. Instead each precarious position, each violent thud, slap, spin, or fall performed by the dancers reverberates, through the magnifications of the theatrical experience, as shatteringly in the bodies of the viewers. The very titles of several B-movie thrillers about strippers, produced in the late 1980s at the outset of the modern striptease boom, refer directly to this particular reciprocity or shared kinesthetic response between performers and spectators. All of the films feature scenes in which terrified characters are in danger of losing their lives to mysterious assailants. But they also feature scenes that focus on the extreme sensations produced by the force of carnal arousal—and hence the cultural fears and taboos that surround that experience as well. Stripped to Kill (1987), Stripped to Kill II (1989), and Ladykillers (1989) were all remakes of the film Lady of Burlesque (1943)—which was itself an adaptation of Gypsy Rose Lee’s novel, The G-string Murders (1942). Gypsy’s novel and the subsequent films tell tales about strippers who are brutally killed by mysterious assailants.42 Stripped to Kill I and II involve the murders of female strippers, while Ladykillers—set in a strip club for women called by the same name—revolves around the story of several male dancers who are killed off in an exceptionally bloody fashion by an unknown female stalker. A hunky male police officer is brought in as a decoy stripper, while his female partner is planted in the audience for “surveillance.” The titles Stripped to Kill and Ladykillers obviously refer to the physical deaths of the performers at the hands of spectators. However, they also are named for the way female and male strippers regularly “kill” their audiences by driving them wild with desire (as in that stalwart expression of performer satisfaction with the show—“I ‘killed’ them tonight”). Butler suggests that we can “understand the boundaries of the body as the limits of the socially hegemonic.”43 In this way, the breaking of the corporeal body through the use of images and fantasies of violence or death represents the ultimate breaking of social mores. A modern definition for the verb “to die” is “to be consumed with desire.” Its archaic use, along with the extant French expression la petite mort (the little death), also describe the experience of orgasm as a breaking of the corporeal body.44 Like Butler, Bataille and Sontag each propose that images of death, or the risk of death, may conjure up an erotic infinity for the viewer or reader because death signifies an indefinable state.45 This death-like erotic infinity, which defies the limitations and precepts of the social world, can be represented and apprehended only in terms of its tension with the everyday—that is, through a dynamics of transgression in which social, personal, and even “natural” laws are 147

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foregrounded and shattered at the same time. The figure of the vampire is perhaps the most popular embodiment of this vision. In the lore of Nosferatu, the vampire is at once dead and alive—its appetites are unrestricted by traditional expectations of gender or sexual preference—and its victims are always potential fellow bloodsuckers.46 The Chippendales New York One Night of Sin show offered its own version of the omnipresent undead narrative in a routine that presented death both as a form of erotic foreplay and as a portal to a supernatural world of unbounded sex and pleasure. The act opens with a group of male dancers, costumed as monks, carrying the body of a (dead) “white male poet” character who is romantically outfitted in an artist’s loose, white flowing shirt and tight black pants. The monks place the sign of a giant magic pentacle on the ground and gently lay the dead poet on the symbol. They strip off their habits to black thongs and then slowly, sensually, manipulate the limp body of the “dead” young man. Eventually the poet-figure comes back to “life”, swooning all the while. When his strength returns, he performs his own languid striptease, shedding the last of his worldly possessions. Naked except for a G-string, the poet caresses himself as he finally strolls off stage into the Great Beyond. The dead poet dance may play on homoerotics. It may hint at the morbid tease and taboo of necrophilia. However, the larger proposition of the scene clearly is designed to intensify the spectator’s sense of forbidden peeping by combining the dangerous, magical aspects of a death-to-life resurrection with the equally magical, transformative, and therefore “dangerous” experience of sexual desire—an experience that real-life poets have lauded as pleasurable and painful; deathinducing and life-giving. Like the stories surrounding the figure of the vampire, the structures of the strip show—its compulsive repetitions, swerves in the scene, switches of persona, and narratives of secrecy and confession—are designed to both replicate and encourage the transformations of the body as it is caught up in the throes of sexual desire. Such “involuntary” reactions of the body again often complicate traditional expectations about female and body language and physical comportment. The gaps created by the strip show’s swerves, switches, and repetitions foreground the spectator’s simultaneous role as co-producer and target-object of the scene. The more fantastical the scene, the more it underscores a shattering of social and personal boundaries, the closer it comes to representing the almost impossible to represent—the extreme physical and emotional sensations produced by sexual desire. And the more room it allows for expansions on conventional sex roles.

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Figure 5.1 Pole dancer performing “death-defying” stunts at Rick’s Cabaret International, Houston, Texas Source: Photograph courtesy of Bob Glass.

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Figure 5.2 Fire dancer caresses his body with flames at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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6 PERFORMING SPECTATORS The pleasure of mimetic jeopardy

Jay Bildstein, a founder of the famous Manhattan sports and strip bar Scores, presented a workshop at the exclusive St Moritz Hotel in New York City entitled, “How to Own, Manage, Run or Even Dance in a Topless Bar.”1 His presentation was sponsored and advertised by the Learning Annex, a traditional adult education center that also featured seminars on real estate licensing, color co-ordinating one’s wardrobe, and telemarketing. Early on in the session, Bildstein told his rapt and overflowing audience that female strippers can earn anywhere from $200 to $2,000 in tips a night. One of the workshop members raised his hand and blurted out that he could not understand why topless bar patrons would spend that much money “just to look at naked women.” “What really goes on in those clubs?” he asked. Bildstein immediately reassured his audience that prostitution was a rare occurrence in middle-class and upscale strip establishments, specifically because most dancers earn far more than hookers and under much safer conditions. He admitted he wasn’t exactly sure why his customers were willing to empty their wallets for what seemed to be relatively little in terms of traditional ideas about sexual satisfaction. “But, whatever the reason,” Bildstein smiled, “it makes for good business.” He and his audience then shook their heads in wonder over the mystery of the striptease industry—and the questions remained hanging in the air: What exactly are patrons buying—or buying into? What is going on between the spectators and the performers? In Texas strip clubs such as Rick’s, Caligula’s, and the Colorado, a female dancer pauses during her act to stand in front of the men who hold out dollar bills. She bends over, grinds, and exchanges gazes, smiles, and whispers with each new partner. The men sit as if in a trance. They move only to shift positions so that they can better take in the action as they await their turn to tip the stripper and to become the momentary center of her attention and that of their fellow spectators. At the Sugar Shack II, just outside of Chicago, a male dancer completes his routine and goes to stand on a small elevated platform set up directly in front of the main stage. A group of rowdy female patrons line up at this tipping station and, one by one, step into the spotlight to tip, hug, and kiss the dancer as their friends sigh and cheer. During the Satin Angels show in New York City, a female performer cajoles a male customer on to the stage and then unexpectedly handcuffs him to a chair. 151

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She disrobes and dances inches away from her helpless guest while audience members stare in disbelief, roll their eyeballs, and shake their heads at each other. As part of the co-ed striptease shows at Escapes on Long Island, New York (a nightclub that caters to bachelor and bachelorette parties as discussed in Chapter 2), a group of male and female strippers herd a group of female and male spectators on to the stage to participate in an erotic cake-eating contest. The women eat penis and ball cakes, the men eat breast cakes, and the mixed audience applauds and laughs. At Big Alice’s in Peoria, Illinois, the MC invites three female spectators on stage to remove a male stripper’s G-string under the cover of a large towel, using just their teeth. The winner of the contest pockets the G-string to the audience’s howls of approval. While members of Bildstein’s Topless Bar Management class worried that spectators patronize strip clubs to have “real” sex with the dancers, traditional feminist and gender study interpretations of female strip shows for men continue to claim, as Jill Dolan puts it, that male spectators “pay to see the image of the stripper as commodity; they buy control over the gaze.”2 In other words, men go to strip shows for the erotic pleasure of controlling women by paying to participate in rituals of tipping and looking that embody our culture’s patriarchal commodification and objectification of females. Conversely, such interpretations also contend that no matter how long a female spectator looks or how much money she is willing to spend during the event, the male dancers still retain their social and sexual positions of control. Again, as discussed elsewhere, this is a truism because men enjoy greater social and economic power than women in real life, and because men presumably take up the positions of the active desirers (and gazers), while women as a class are taught only to “desire to be desired.” It follows, then, that female patrons attend strip events for the fantasy of being seen and being desired by the male dancers. And in this way, these shows, too, cannot help but reproduce and reinforce the social power and authority of the penis-phallus.3 However, as most dramatically and clearly evidenced by the strip show’s tipping rituals and adjoining spectator activities, using such a system of analysis to explain the dynamics of desire and fantasy in ecdysiastic performance is problematic at best. Both female and male spectators obviously pay, and even tip extra, not only to play the roles of shadowy witnesses to the scene, but for the privilege and commodity of their own stage time—for moments in the spotlight where they can be seen by the dancers and their fellow spectators, where they can become the object of the gaze. Many strip events for women and men alike also include activities in which patrons can play at being coerced into mimetic sex acts initiated by dancers, MCs, and even other patrons. These scenes of induction range from the old “handcuff the patron to a chair or pole” routine to raffle contests and hustling schemes that not only shift the direction of the gaze, but also alter the balance of socio-sexual power by further foregrounding the vulnerability and accessibility of the spectator’s body (and pocketbook). Contemporary strip shows resemble a category of entertainments that Erving 152

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Goffman describes as “the final mingling of fantasy and action.” They feature scenes for hire in which “the customer can be the star performer.” Patrons pur’ chase these activities, not to gain control over others, but as a way to experience the thrill of “jeopardy during a passing moment.”4 This thrill consists of voluntarily exposing oneself to some sort of perceived external danger, such as standing up in front of an audience and being scrutinized by the group. It is the possibility of being carried away or done in by the event; it is the pleasure produced by a mixture of fear, the hope for a positive outcome, and the exhilaration of having experienced “danger.”5 Depending upon the particular bar, club, or theatre, thrill-seeking striptease patrons can physically step into the spotlight through several means: they can pay extra for ringside seating that places them simultaneously within the sightlines of the strippers and their spectating peers; they can tip dancers to perform “tip n’ kiss,” “table-dancing,” and “lap-dancing” acts that shift the site of the performance into the audience areas; and they can purchase the right to leave their official audience seats to perform in footlight tipping ceremonies, mini-dramas, and photo shoots that take place next to or even on the stage with the strippers. These “acts for hire” are played out in concert with the various scenes of induction that often appear to sweep spectators into the spotlight against their will. This chapter focuses on the starring roles and jeopardy positions that female and male spectators perform as an actual part of the strip show on stage. The spectator’s physical action of tipping the dancers—both as payment for their performances and as a way of becoming themselves performers in the scene—is the fulcrum of the event. More than any other aspect of the show such spectator participation highlights both the intersections of, and the gaps between, the social imperatives of everyday life and the mimetic propositions of an event that rests on theatre and sexual fantasy. Ringside spectators: Big spenders, tipping rituals, and sexual surrender Female patrons at Chippendales New York pay an outright $10 tariff on top of the $20 to $25 admission or cover charge for seats that are literally on stage. Male and female striptease devotees in Montreal are expected to tip the maitre d’ for the privilege of front-row seating. In most other clubs, there is an unspoken rule that the spectators positioned nearest the performance areas must tip more extravagantly and more frequently than those seated further away. If patrons do not comply with this expectation, they risk public censure. Dancers may refuse to perform for or next to patrons who improperly tip. Other customers may publicly chastise the offending spectators and tip more themselves to demonstrate the correct procedure and to compensate the dancers for their loss. Managers may also chastise itinerant patrons or ask them to move or leave the club. On one occasion, the manager of Flash Dancers in New York City quietly requested an entire row of male patrons to change seats because they were not tipping enough.6 Such precautions not only 153

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insure the dancers the greatest economic rewards possible, but they also guarantee all the patrons in the club the most “exciting” show. Front-row spectator tipping activities create continuous sex scenes of patronperformer interactions that are viewed by the rest of the audience. These activities may involve strict no-touch exchanges, intricate tipping rituals, and even scenes of intimate touching for female and male patrons alike. Spectators are usually allowed to tip the dancers at any time during their act, but most of the tipping and activities take place after the strippers have reached their final degree of nudity and have completed the formal choreography of their show. Dancers collect tips as they continue to improvise, travel from patron to patron, perform “floor work,” or strike poses “in the buff” while still suggesting the “characters“ they represented in the dance portion of their acts. A good number of clubs for men, including the Baby Doll Lounge and Billy’s in New York City, and a few night spots for women such as Club 281 and the Bar Apollon in Montreal, virtually eliminate all physical contact between spectators and performers by requiring ringside spectators to place their tips on the stage or to hand them to the dancers. Nevertheless, these patrons still play an all-important part in the show. As surrogates for the rest of the audience, they are expected to respond to the dancer’s eye-choreography, patter, and bump and grind acts with a steady stream of dollar bills and other self-contained expressions of desire (e.g., transfixed stares and eye-contact, groans, moans, headshaking, and eyeball-rolling). The spectators who sit ringside may be demonstrating their status as big spenders, but their extravagant proffering of dollars bills also indicates the extent to which they have been “taken” by the dancer and the event. The position of being up close and not being able to touch at all once more reinforces the excitement/pain of sexual yearning that is for some, in and of itself, a profound source of sexual pleasure. Here, too, one’s ability to spend money does not necessarily translate into one’s ability to exert control over others, for the biggest tipper is often labeled the “biggest sucker.” The representation of desire, through acts in which patrons play at or experience being “taken,” “pleasure-pained,” or “suckered,” suggests yet another set of spectator fantasies about their own sexual surrender. These scenes offer the onlooking patrons vicarious participation in such thrills as well. Within this design, the social class of the patrons and the performers (including gender and race) is often clearly defined in terms of who displays and offers money, and who displays and offers flesh. But, these positions readily become destabilized by the strip show’s special conventions which refigure the cultural and philosophic meanings of the traditional signifiers of social and sexual domination—wielding money and sexual gazing. Clubs that feature more intricate tipping rituals for their front-row spectators also constitute desire through the device of “mimetic jeopardy.” Patrons of Rick’s, the Men’s Club, La Bare in Houston, and Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum in New York City are expected to tip the dancers by placing dollar bills, in the correct fashion, into their G-strings, speedos, underwear, or thigh gaiters. According to the house rules of the Houston clubs, female and male spectators are allowed to 154

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tip the dancers only at the sides or hip areas of the G-strings, bikinis, and speedos. In Washington, DC, male patrons are not allowed to place money anywhere on a female stripper’s body while she is moving. In all of the above activities, the strippers have the option of making the tipping game relatively easy or more difficult for the participants. The dancers may pause during their performances and help direct the spectator’s money into the proper place; they may continue to move and tease, forcing the patrons to wait in attendance; or they may pretend to stop dancing and accept tips, but then suddenly begin to move again causing the would-be tippers to fumble in front of the group. As Nelson Foote notes, “any kind of play generates its own morality and values. And the reinforcement of the rules of play becomes the concern of every player because without their observance, the play cannot continue.”7 To agree to abide by the rubrics of any game or event implies from the outset a certain amount of “jeopardy” because one is usually dependent upon the other players, and because there is always the possibility that one may fumble or otherwise make a mistake. Most modern middle-class strip clubs forbid the audience participation practices of some of the strip joints of bygone years, which occasionally included oral sex and coitus between patrons and performers. However, a few contemporary strip shows for male spectators, and many events for female spectators, combine ringside tipping procedures with legal scenes of intimate touching. Show World’s Triple Treat Theatre featured female performers who encouraged front-row patrons to fondle their naked breasts as part of the strip act. The Harmony Theatre allowed spectators to touch the exposed pubic area of the nude dancers as well, as long as they did so at the dancer’s discretion and only when the performer was on stage and the spectator in his or her audience seat.8 It is notable that very few of the spectators, in both of these theatres, actually participated in the intimate acts with the dancers. The majority of front-row patrons were content to tip for the exchange of looks and verbal “niceties.” The spectators who did perform in this sex play rarely grabbed or aggressively handled the dancers’ bodies. Instead, they carefully followed the directions of the strippers as they tentatively, fleetingly, and even delicately performed their tasks. This pattern of spectator behavior suggests that these acts of intimate touching are not only thrilling because of their obvious tactile appeal, but because they are scripted as transgressive even from within the confines of the strip shows. Because of the amount of “jeopardy” involved, ringside seating in all of the above situations can be quite intimidating for some customers. As noted several times in this book, the rules governing spectator behavior often varies from club to club, even within the same city. “Al,” a patron of New York strip clubs, admitted that he had to visit Flash Dancers off and on for almost a year before he was “ready” to sit stageside. He also stated that he wanted to be sure he had adequate funds for his debut in the limelight.9 In some cases, when the customer’s progression from the “‘back row” to the “front” is particularly extended, gazing and tipping rituals function not as signs of control over others, but as a badge of the customer’s sexual courage and daring. A patron’s long-term commitment to improve his social 155

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standing within the club also garners for the establishment and the dancers the greatest rewards. Female spectators can purchase acts of physical intimacy with male dancers that frequently include kissing games not ordinarily found in the shows for men. Strip clubs and events such as Chippendales Los Angeles, Chippendales New York, Big Alice’s in Peoria, the Beefcakes USA touring company, and Escapes on Long Island allow female patrons to tip male dancers in exchange for mutually aggressive hugs, kisses, body caresses, lap-sitting, and dirty dancing. At the Hangar Club, just outside of Washington, DC, women may touch and hold the thighs, buttocks, chests, and nipples of the male dancers. In clubs that permit physical contact between male dancers and female patrons, the stripper’s genital area is usually the only taboo body part. Sin City: An Unusual Guide to New York issues a gentle warning to potential female patrons of the Chippendales male strip show. It explains that, although the women may caress the men in a multitude of ways, “slam-dunking” (i.e., shoving bills or hands into a dancer’s G-string, speedos, or underwear) is not allowed.10 The One Night of Sin show presented at Chippendales New York featured one of the more elaborate and prolonged ringside intimate touching rituals for women. At the end of an S/M motorcycle masturbation strip routine, the featured dancer attached a long leather thong to the spiked dog collar around his neck and then presented himself to the front row spectator who had been the most prolific tipper of the evening—a 53-year-old matron and regular club patron from New Jersey.11 The female patron responded by wrapping her legs around the dancer’s waist and hugging his body close to hers. The dancer played with her hair. They kissed on the lips several times. The audience “oohed” and “aahed.” The male stripper then draped the other end of his neck-collar thong around her throat and took several steps backward so that the rest of the audience could see them bound together by their necks. It was a brief but startling tableau on the spectator-dancer partnership necessary for the event to “work,” and on the oscillation of surrender and control roles in sexual play. The intimate caresses, accompanied by the S/M costume, accoutrements, and gestures of the dancer, underscored the erotic charge produced by ambiguous situations and the pretense of peril. Intimate touching games in strip events blatantly script patrons as co-performers in public sex acts. Because intimate scenes for hire are culturally more taboo than the exchange of money, gazes, and verbal expressions of desire, their participants are expected to be bound even more closely to the rules that support those performances—rules that both uphold and break traditional sex roles. While female patrons usually demonstrate a sexual aggressiveness that is alien to most settings outside the strip show, many male patrons tend to take on what has been dubbed as a “submissive” pattern of behavior.12 Lawyer Keith McWalter, shocked by these goings-on, wrote an article for the New York Times denouncing the Texas strip shows he had seen for producing “a vengeful inversion of the old Victorian injunction, ‘Ladies don’t move.’ Now the men were inert, slouched in their couches and the women were mobile.”13 156

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Reports of aggressive or bully-like patron and dancer behaviors occasionally make the news. Nevertheless, acts of deliberate verbal and physical abuse on the parts of patrons, strippers, or other club employees are the exception rather than the rule. If it does occur, such behavior is usually censured not only by dancers, bouncers, and managers, but by the spectators themselves. For example, in one instance, Trinity Loren (a featured performer at Show World who combined a friendly conversational patter and approach with spectator breast-touching acts) was interrupted during the finale of her routine by a group of noisy tourists headed for the front rows of the Triple Treat Theatre. The tour leader loudly insisted that Trinity should repeat or at least extend her performance because the members of his group would pay her “big money.” Trinity refused, even though she had the space and time to prolong her act. She publicly admonished the group leader for his rudeness and said that if he wanted to see any show at all, he and his group would have to “learn to talk nicely to the dancers.” The other members of Trinity’s audience, as well as the house manager and ushers, spontaneously broke into applause and offered her verbal support as the tour leader and his clan dejectedly and quietly left the theatre. Spectator gazes and intimate touches could not be purchased for any amount of money, because the would-be participants had not first surrendered to the rules of the dancer and the decorum of the house.14 Performing in the aisles: The tip ’n kiss, table-dancing, and lap-dancing In some strip events, spectators can pay dancers to make “seat calls,” not only in the front rows of the theatres, but throughout the other audience areas as well. These acts temporarily shift and split the site of the performance and the gaze of the participants. The “tip ’n kiss” or “orchestrated dollar bill wave” is found exclusively in clubs for women. This activity, usually under the direction of an MC, is in keeping with the outward design of containment projected by many strip events for straight females. After the male dancer completes his formal strip routine onstage, the MC announces that the performer is ready to exchange sexual favors with the audience members for additional tips. The dancer roams around the spectator seating areas as the MC proclaims the rules and expectations of the event. He (or occasionally she) shapes and directs the actions and desires of the spectators with such lines as: “Ladies, do you like what you see? Then wave those dollar bills!”; “Come on—don’t be bashful—have some fun!”; “Ladies, wave those bills—the dancers will show their appreciation for your appreciation!”; “Put those bills anywhere on your body and the beefcake will retrieve them with his lips!”; “One dollar for a kiss!”. The dancer’s travels are frequently accompanied by a follow spot that highlights the momentary starring roles of the tipping spectators as they kiss and fondle the stripper. While the role of the MC suggests one more manifestation of the ways female sexuality is socially manipulated and controlled, it simultaneously functions as a signifier of transgression. The MC plays the part of a challenger who, like the barkers of the amusement parks, dares and encourages 157

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the participants, goading them into action by pointing out the extraordinary qualities of the entertainment. This challenge adds to the thrill of the experience by underscoring the taboo aspects of the roving lust scenes. At the same time, the MC continually reminds the audience that the social and economic hierarchies have been restructured in the world of this play. Such a convention allows the female patrons the freedom to publicly request sexual exchanges without the stigma of “bad girl” labeling, because they do so as part of a game decorum. This obvious orchestration of desires is not a symbol or sign of female passivity. Rather, it is a mimetic conspiracy, produced by both women and men to once again get around the cultural pressures of the double standard. As previously discussed, the table dance—a more elaborate variation of the dollar bill wave—is available in many clubs for men and a few clubs for women.15 These mini-strip acts, performed alongside of the tables and chairs of patrons seated in the audience, cost $5 to $20 for a two- to six-minute routine. Individual female and male spectators often hire separate table dances for themselves, but the majority of patrons seem to engage in these activities as shared experiences between two or more spectators. In most clubs, patrons can also hire several dancers to perform together at one table. That is, a spectator party of four can engage four strippers to table dance for them simultaneously. In these situations, the different spectator roles of seeing, being seen, and witnessing become even more pronounced and complex. Individual tables or parties of patrons vie with one another for the attention of the larger audience—almost as if they were competing theatre companies cast with traditional stock characters (i.e., the group clown, the group sweet gal or guy, the group leader, etc.). Each member of a table-dancing group interacts directly with the dancers and the patrons of their immediate circle. Samesex dancers may glance at and speak to each other, just as same-sex spectators may glance at and speak to each other. The circulation of sexual interest and sexual power can be both hetero- and homoerotic; both reserved for erotic fantasy and indicative of sexual preference in real life, even though the larger dramatic situation is stated as heterosexual. In addition to this round robin of gazes and varying positions of desire, some cabarets and theatres feature table-dancers who cast their patrons as sex objects by bestowing upon them a variety of real and pretend caresses, thus drawing even more attention to the spectator’s body. In Texas, some female table-dancers massage the necks, chests, and legs of the patrons as they dance. Female and male strippers in Montreal blow into the ears of their customers and slowly circle and outline the bodies of the patrons (frequently in entirety) with their lips—lips that almost, but not quite, touch the spectators’ skin, hair, and clothes. Other clubs in Montreal, as well as a few in New York City, feature female tabledancers who strip off intimate articles of clothing and drape them over the spectators. It is not unusual to see dozens of inert men clustered around tables with bras, panties, and G-strings dangling around their heads and shoulders. The men rarely attempt to remove the items of clothing, but remain frozen in their positions of peril until the dancers retrieve their underwear. At the same 158

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moment that the stripper frees herself from some of the sartorial constraints that have socially and physically shaped her body, the male spectators become bound up by the touch of her discarded garments.16 In all such scenes, table dance activities produce numerous subgroups of female and male patrons who sigh together, shake their heads in unison, collectively roll their eyeballs, giggle, and pretend to slide under the tables or off their chairs. As they perform for one another, the spectators murmur or exclaim statements such as: “I can’t stand it!”; “I can’t take it!”; “I don’t believe this is happening!”. Yet, they continue to engage more “up close and no-touch,” “bound massages,” “airkissing,” and “clothing rack” scenes for themselves and their friends. The role of “I can’t take it,” for female and male patrons alike, more than suggests that the issue of control for many striptease aficionados may have far less to do with discrete and gendered positions of dominating and being dominated than is usually theorized, and much more to do with the spectators’ wish to play at being sexually overwhelmed or to play at jeopardizing their self-control through performance scenarios they at once hire and abandon themselves to. Toepfer, recalling his experience of a group orgiastic performance event for men led by two women (the goddess Sylvia and her nameless attendant), makes a similar point: “My whole body felt exquisitely taut with an intense pressure to exceed an unprecedented threshold of pleasure, but proof of my strength seemed to depend on sustaining this tautness for as long as possible. It was a matter of self-control.”17 While the table dance often spotlights a complete cast of characters, the lap dance, the ultimate seat show, foregrounds the individual. Brought to the general attention of the public by the film Show Girls (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1995), this event allows spectators to hire performers to literally rock and roll on their laps for a charge of about one dollar per minute. Strip shows for women regularly present male dancers who bump and grind on the laps of patrons, but none of them offer the explicit and prolonged lap-dancing entertainments found in some clubs for men. New York City’s Harmony Theatre, and the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre, the Market Street Theatre, and the New Century Theatre in San Francisco feature lap-dancing entertainments in conjunction with elaborate mainstage strip shows. The dancers perform complete, individual exotic dance acts on the stage. They then re-dress or partially re-dress and stroll up and down the aisles of the audience to indicate that they are available for lap-dancing requests while the formal strip show continues. During a lap-dancing act, the patron must remain dressed and seated in his chair at all times, while the dancer must wear underpants. Hand to genital, genital to genital, and oral—genital contacts between performer and spectator are not allowed, but dancers are permitted to caress patrons by “dry humping” or rhythmically rubbing their buttocks against the patron’s genitals through their clothing. On the West Coast, lap-dancing is also called Mardi Gras. Considering the game plan and visual appearance of these events, the term makes some sense. The traditional Mardi Gras or carnival was, and still is in some places, a festival that features parodies, mockeries, and role reversals of the prevailing social order. It 159

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commonly includes culturally condoned excesses of drinking, eating, and sex. Since the Market Street and the New Century theatres have retained their original movie house designs, the lap-dancing performances take on a Felliniesque appearance, with multiple make-out scenes lit by the glow of the big stage. Spectators star in explicit, private moment sex scenes that are exciting because they occur in public places and because the physical constraints and rules of the event allow for a sea of women on top. These events are also obviously thrilling for customers because they most closely resemble, or perhaps in some cases result in, “real sex” (i.e., orgasm) for the spectators. However, since both dancers and patrons are required to keep their genitals covered at all times, and since they must also abide by the rules of the performance situation and municipality, it remains ambiguous or difficult to ascertain, despite the heavy breathing and bodily quiverings, whether the actants ever achieve the “real sex” of an orgasm during the actual act or not. It is also difficult to ascertain whether orgasm is in fact the main intent of the endeavor. Like the questions and troubles surrounding Bill Clinton’s well-publicized “relationship” with Monica Lewinsky, lap-dancing foregrounds the complexities that continue to plague policy makers with regard to defining what legally constitutes “real sex.” Crossing the footlights: Stage side tipping, mini-dramas, and photo shoots Spectators can also co-star in formal striptease acts that take place on stage by temporarily leaving the relative safety of their audience seats and stepping up to, or even on to, the main performance areas of the bars, clubs, and theatres. The most common of these cameos involves footlight tipping rituals where the spectators leave their seats and move alongside of the stage to tip the dancers in front of the entire audience. The female patrons of the Sugar Shack II, however, can make spectacles of themselves in the very act of going to and from the stage. In this nightclub, women tip male hosts (ushers and waiters) to physically pick them up and carry them from their audience seats down the aisles to the main stage. The male hosts cradle the women in their arms, sometimes jogging and twirling as they make their way down the aisles to join the line of tippers at the stage. Once stageside, the ushers lift their charges aloft so that the rest of the viewers can watch their fellow spectators tip and caress the male strippers. This event allows the female participants to enjoy two male sex partners at the same time—one who holds them in his arms and another whom they kiss and caress. Sometimes there are so many requests for the hunky-man taxi ride that the club uses a traffic manager, complete with walkie-talkie, to prevent accidents. The rest of the spectators watch, not only the tipping show next to the stage, but the commotion that takes place up and down the aisles. These dramatic encounters may suggest the traditional position of sexual yielding for women through the motif of “being carried off.” But such scenes also indicate the extent to which female desire and economic control over sex acts can be carried. 160

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Like the Sugar Shack II, Big Alice’s offers its female spectators the opportunity to take part in center-stage tipping games. However, in this club, the patrons who wave the most money are invited on to the stage by the MC. Each spectator is paired with a male stripper who directs her to either stand against the wall that backs the platform stage or to lie down on the floor of the stage. The dollar bills which the patron has proffered to the dancer are placed all over her body—between her breasts and thighs, in strategic pockets, and even in her mouth. The male dancer then slowly removes the bills with his lips. While the dancer also outwardly appears to take the active sex role, the storyline of the tipping game and scene underscores the fact that he is being paid by the female patron for each caress he administers. Joanna’s, Archibald’s, JP’s, and the downstairs space at the Camelot in Washington, DC, feature a “leave your seat, go to the stage, and tip the dancer” routine for their male patrons that, at first glance, appears to be fairly straightforward and almost sedate when compared to the tipping games of the Sugar Shack and Big Alice’s. In order to partake in these activities, spectators are expected to approach the stage one at a time. If the club is crowded, the men usually line up to insure that each tipper has a moment or two alone with the dancer in the spotlight. As noted earlier, the rules of the exotic dancing clubs in our nation’s capital specify that patrons may not even attempt to tip the strippers while they are moving. Thus, the dancer controls the action by casting her tipping suitors as men-inwaiting, who must stand at attention for all to see until she deigns to recognize them by pausing in her act. When the performer finally signals her readiness to accept tips by assuming a stationary pose in which she extends a gartered leg to the patron, the spectator compliments her and exchanges other “niceties” as he carefully fits his money into her garter. After tipping, the spectator looks up into the eyes of the stripper to receive her smile and her “thank you.” On the rare occasion that a spectator deviates from this ceremony, either by leering or by making what the dancer considers to be rude comments, the dancer will publicly punish the patron by refusing to smile at him or to say the “thank you” that provides the closure of the act. The chastised patron is then subject to the ridicule of his peers. A few of the more athletic dancers at JP’s created an acrobatic stunt that they perform in concert with this wait-and-tip game. For this feat, the patron walks up to the stage and stations himself directly opposite a horizontal bar that hangs above the stage. When the topless and bottomless stripper is ready, or feels like it, she grabs the overhead bar by her hands and swings back and forth across the platform. As the dancer flies forward, toward the immobile patron, her exposed genitals almost, but not quite, graze his upturned face.The patron must stand his ground without flinching until the stripper decides to stop swinging and collect her tip. “Janet,” a waitress who has worked for both Joanna’s and JP’s, commented that all of these tipping rituals are so intimidating that some spectators prefer to give her the money to hand to the dancers, rather than to subject themselves to the 161

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risks of performance. Like “Al,” “Brian,” a regular strip show patron stated that when he first began visiting the DC clubs, he studied the actions of the other spectators almost as much as he watched the dancers so that he would not “make a fool of himself during his own routines. He reported that each time he successfully completed a tipping act, he experienced a sensation comprised of “relief” as well as “exhilaration.”18 Other strip clubs and theatres invite spectators to cross the footlights and play leading roles in actual mini-dramas that take place on the stage. Instead of the demure men-in-waiting roles of the stageside ceremonies, such scenes for male patrons usually involve action fights, while those for females feature themes of courtship and romance. These scenarios obviously play on gendered stereotypes, but they include narrative twists and character developments that thwart traditional sex-role norms as well. Many of the larger clubs for men offer regular “lady wrestler” or “foxy boxing” presentations. Goldfingers in Queens, New York, has a special room and stage constructed to look like a boxing ring where male spectators bid to become the coach-managers of the female hot oil wrestlers. It is not unusual for these roles to be auctioned off at $200 to $300 apiece. Once the highest bidders have secured their parts, they are required to follow the directions of the Ringmistress who, for all intents and purposes, becomes the trainer of the novice managers. In the managerial role, the patron-actors are expected to coach and encourage the lady wrestlers during their workouts and fight sequences in the ring. But the men have other responsibilities as well. As supporting characters, they are required to perform the tasks of waterboy and masseur, while the women take the leading action roles. Not only are the performing patrons at the service of the Ringmistress and the dancer-fighters, they are also subject to the continual scrutiny and suggestions of fellow audience members, who frequently behave as if they were at a real fight. The mini-drama “courting scenes” for female spectators duplicate the strip show in miniature. At Chippendales New York and Chippendales Los Angeles, the biggest spender of the evening is beckoned onto the stage by the MC and is seated in the middle of the performance area. From this vantage point, the onstage patron watches a dancer strip directly in front of her as he lip-syncs and mimes a love song. Variations of this routine include multiple sets of spectators and dancers performing the scene on stage together, and patrons and strippers using the basic design to act out specific dramatic situations, such as candlelight dinner dates and bondage games. The Chippendales New York version of the bondage game courting scene opens with three female spectators seated in chairs in the middle of the stage. One male dancer moves from woman to woman as he takes off his clothes. He stares into their eyes, sits on their laps, strokes their bodies, and strokes his own body. In several different viewings of this show, some patrons sat quietly by and allowed the male dancer to take control over the interactions; other participants actively caressed the dancer and, sometimes, directed or limited his behavior. After the lead dancer completes his routine, three more bikini-clad male strippers enter and 162

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wrap crepe paper streamers around the women’s bodies so that they look as if they are tied to their chairs. The trio of strippers then alternately dance for and caress their bound amours. In contrast to the first half of the scene, the women remain motionless. The play concludes with the strippers kissing the captives and then releasing them. The symbolic and practical use of paper bondage in this scene demonstrates the importance of mutual consent in the playing out of such erotic encounters. To be in bondage is presumably to be controlled and therefore to be placed in real jeopardy. But here, “the bonds” are conspicuously under the command of both the dancers and the tied-up spectators. If the show isn’t up to par, the captive women (even though they may be subject to peer pressure and the intimidation of the theatrical scene) can still get up and walk away. While such courting scenes typically represent the male as the initiator of romance and sex, they simultaneously feature women in the process of gazing at sex acts that have been presumably designed for their pleasure. That is, these dramas stage scenes of female sexual looking and desiring. As Dolan suggests in her discussion of the economy and the visibility/invisibility aspects of female gazing, desire, and hegemonic control, “the aim is not to look like men, but to look at all.”19 A number of clubs for both women and men offer their spectators the opportunity to become the center of attention by having their pictures taken with the dancers while their peers gather around to watch. Photo shoots provide patrons with stage time as well as with mementos of the show that extend the act of looking and being seen beyond the initial theatrical encounter.20 In clubs for men, these activities follow the performance and traditional tipping rituals of each featured stripper’s act. Photo shoots can take place on the stage or in the lobby at a cost of $5 to $10 dollars per polaroid. Male spectators are allowed to request how they would like to be pictured with the dancer. Many of the spectator— stripper poses have become so established that patrons can ask for them using a common vocabulary (e.g., “a lap pose,” “a wide lap pose,” “breasts on the head,” “head on the breasts,” “ear muffs,” etc.). Because of this standardization, there is the additional pressure on the participants to perform “correctly” the designs they, themselves, select. While some of the accepted positions place the nude or nearnude strippers in the laps of patrons in Penthouse-like “spread” shots, many others situate the dancers behind patrons. This focuses the audience’s attention on the spectator and also points to the male authorship of a medley of stereotypical sexual fetishes. In most cases, the dancer and her male supporting player gaze toward the camera and the studio audience in a deliberate solicitation of the gaze as they parody the sexual interests and fetishes of straight men through their performance of physical exaggeration and comedy (e.g., the dancer holds her breasts on top of a patron’s head or manipulates them to cover his ears). There is an odd but notable addendum to these naughty pictures. Several regulars at Show World carried small photograph albums around with them. One interviewee explained that his album chronicled eight years of personal photo shoots with dancers. Each time he had his photograph taken with a featured stripper he “challenged himself” to become “more daring” about the type of poses and 163

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intimate touching he requested. The pictures were kept handy so that he and and his fellow patrons could keep track of and appraise their sexual “growth.”21 In between the exotic dance acts, the pomo films, and live photo opportunities, Show World patrons reviewed and compared each other’s sexual performances through theatricalized pictorial histories. Like the spectators who move closer toward sitting in the front row each time they visit a strip club, these pictorial histories catalogued the Show World patrons’ fantasies and desires to be seen in the company of female sexperts, as a progression toward their own sexual expertise. Formal photo shoots for female spectators have a distinctly different slant. At the close of the evening’s entertainment, the MC invites the “ladies” on stage to have their pictures taken with the stars of the show for $5 to $10 dollars a shot. The patrons then gather around the stage to watch their friends stroll into the limelight to pose with the strippers. The scene looks like a photo-op for fans of film and rock stars with groups shots of male dancers and female patrons standing together with their arms around each other’s shoulders or waists. These sessions offer “PG-rated” or “nice and clean” mementos of the show, but female spectators can still obtain and star in their own naughty pictures. Unlike strip shows for men, most events for women allow patrons to take photographs of the performance with their own cameras, lending these participants a measure of control over the content and framing of the recorded scenes.22 (Clubs such as the Bar Apollon and Club 281 in Montreal are the exceptions because the male dancers strip to complete nudity.) Many female spectators spend much of their time taking pictures of one another interacting with the strippers during the show. Part of the game is to capture one’s peers in compromising sexual positions with almost naked men. These shots, like the more formal polaroids for male striptease spectators, may be both explicit and parodic. However, the women have even greater freedom because they are less bound to a particular canon of erotic positions. As with the men, female spectators of strip shows are not simply interested in capturing shots of the dancer, but in getting their own sexual exploits—and those of their friends—into focus as well. Photo shoots for both female and male patrons further indicate that spectators do not consume pornography and other kinds of entertainments whole, but instead become co-producers and objects in the scenes they scrutinize. No matter how expensive the ticket, how generous the tip, or how “pornographic” one may deem the material, photo shoots, mini-dramas, hunkyman taxi rides, table dances, and all other striptease rituals featuring the exchange of money for erotic acts suggest that it is virtually impossible for any participant, male or female, to buy control over all the gazes that can occur in a theatrical encounter. Richard Schechner sums up this complication, foregrounded in ritualistic events such as striptease, but intrinsic to all live performance situations: A person sees the event: he [sic] sees himself; he sees himself seeing the event; he sees himself seeing others who are seeing the event and who, maybe, see themselves seeing the event. Thus there is the performance, the

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performers, the spectators; and the spectator of spectators; and the self-seeingself that can be performer or spectator or spectator of spectators.23 While it is also impossible for theatrical situations to constitute spectator gazes, identifications, and differentiations that are completely fluid, that is, bereft of political signification, such exchanges are likewise never absolutely monolithic, gendered, or classed. Encrusted as the representational apparatus may be with dominant signification, it cannot be construed as an inherently male or hegemonic device, since its very structure encourages many kinds of bi-gender, cross-gender, and cross-cultural identifications (albeit mediated by the social and personal positions of the viewers). In the words of Barbara Freedman, “if theatre has offered men a chance to identify with the place of a mother’s look, to imitate the mother’s desire, and to control the woman’s looking back, theatre also offers the opportunity to reframe that moment from a point of view alien to it.” For Freedman, the strip show is, in fact, “quintessential theatre, its stage the battle place of one’s look.”24 Sexual initiators, sexual inductees, and plays on the penis-phallus Female and male strip show patrons not only play parts in the erotic scenes they actively hire, they are also at risk of being inducted into other sex acts initiated by dancers, MCs, and fellow spectators. Induction games may be designed to look as if their participants are forced into action. However, the consent of all the parties is implied through their continued presence in the arena; through what Goffman calls the “ceremonial order”—the expected and agreed upon exchanges whereby the participants of an event “render themselves accessible and usable for a particular type of communication or activity.”25 In the tradition of Gypsy Rose Lee, who invaded her Broadway audiences to kiss and powder the heads of bald men,26 many contemporary strip shows feature dancers who also stalk their audiences, even without direct spectator requests through the waving of dollar bills. The Beefcake USA strippers climb over the tables, chairs, and even other patrons to single out the spectators of their choice. The Satin Angels dancers travel throughout the audience areas to gyrate in front of and sometimes on top of, male patrons who describe these acts as “very sexy but disturbing” and “intimidating because you can’t do anything.”27 The female and male dancers of the co-ed striptease shows at Escapes randomly drag female and male audience members on to the stage to sing duets about fellatio and cunnilingus entitled, “Eat Me.” The dancers, waiters, and MC at Chippendales New York use the chance elements of raffle contests to coerce spectators into various sex acts. “Winners” of this game are cajoled into performing routines such as dancing with five bumping and grinding bare-chested waiters so that it looks like a group orgy, or chasing and tackling the show’s only “male virgin” to retrieve the free passes to another Chippendales show attached to his crotch. 165

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The New Paris Revue for men in New York City takes the ceremonial order and its scenes of induction one step further. In this club, the performance of live exotic dance acts alternate with porno movies. Almost no tipping takes place during the strip shows because the dancers make their money selling “private dances,” performed in the small enclosed cubicles lining one side of the theatre. The process of selling and purchasing these acts becomes a mainstay of the event. During the film excerpts, the strippers of the New Paris Revue walk around the audience areas and ask individual patrons the question, “Are you ready yet?” The question is posed in such a manner as to put the spectators on the spot in front of their peers. A number of the dancers address potential patrons quite loudly and their attitude suggests a public challenge to the virility of the men. In other words, the question, “Are you ready yet?,” implies that the spectators certainly should be turned on and ready by now for the private strip shows. Several of the strippers incorporate additional comments and jokes about male sexual arousal into their patter. A few performers simply physically drag patrons across the stage and into the cubicles. Screw magazine’s review of this club warns would-be patrons about the “predatory” strippers and laments, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”28 However, the dancers at the New Paris Revue insist that most of their patrons are, in fact, regulars—regulars who go through the same rituals of coercion each time they visit the club. Two strippers commented that a number of their patrons appeared to be members of orthodox religious groups. This makes some sense in the context of a setting that bases its primary sex acts upon scenes of induction in which patrons can play the roles of basically “good men” who are overcome by the all-powerful femmes fatales.29 Some strip clubs and bars for both women and men also feature dancers who stalk patrons for “drinks” and “fantasy dates.” These hustles begin on the sidelines but often become part of the larger show. In drink hustles, performers unabashedly solicit expensive beverages from their customers that can range from $30 for a single “dancer’s drink” to $300 or $400 dollars for one bottle of champagne. As a companion piece to hustling drinks, female and male performers often add thousands of dollars to their income by working “the fantasy date con.” In this setup, dancers imply or pretend that they are willing to go out on dates with certain patrons. Operating under this premise, the infatuated admirers tip the strippers with larger bills and buy them more drinks throughout their shifts. When the show concludes, the dancers disappear leaving lustlorn patrons to contemplate empty wallets and credit card limits. While a few patrons are unwittingly swept into this type of big sucker act by the dancers,30 many other spectators attend such hustle clubs as regulars as well. These patrons know full well the cost of a performer’s drink and the fantasy aspect of a dancer date, but they allow themselves to be inducted into these activities time after time. Texas club owner Robert Watters insisted that patrons who play along with date fantasies “aren’t really interested in going out with the dancers.”31 Rather, these spectators make a pretense of pursuing specific performers to prolong and enhance the strip event’s production of sexual yearning. “Susan,” a former stripper and a writer for Screw magazine, seconds Watters’s interpretation of the fantasy 166

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date and explains that the men who frequent topless bars “may think that they want the girl to come home with them but they really don’t want the fantasy of this teasing to go any further, they may want to touch or to feel, but they’re almost submissive, almost as if they are there just for the tease.”32 “Steve,” a patron of Watters’s club, Rick’s, and a sometimes reader of Screw, admitted that every once in a while he “goes crazy” and spends up to $400 dollars a night just to try to woo a dancer who captures his fancy. Steve stated that he has “never gotten lucky,” but he likes “the excitement—the rush of the chase.”33 In another version of the fantasy date patrons pay to “date” specific dancers, but only within the confines of the club. At Labare, female patrons pay male dancers approximately one dollar a minute to sit and chat with them—over and above the cost of the drinks. A few clubs for men allow patrons to treat dancers to dinner and drinks at a cost of $100 dollars an hour—again not including the expense of the meal. Stripper-anthropologist Katherine Frank writes that she and her fellow performers greatly appreciated this break from dancing. She reports that patrons often purchase the dates well in advance, or they buy their dancerdates gifts that cannot be turned into ready cash, in order to establish a sense of “realness” for the encounters.34 Frank nevertheless insists that the dancer must remain “a fantasy to her customers,” for “the special lighting, the costumes, and the make-up all combine to make her very body imaginary, something that would not be exactly reproducible outside of the club or in a different venue.”35 Like Watters and “Susan,” Frank concludes that most patrons are not interested in “real” dates, “real” sex, or “real” relationships with dancers outside of the club. What drives the customer’s attentions, play acting, and desires is the tension and excitement produced by imagining the possibility of such encounters, not the real thing.36 While it may be difficult to imagine that Watters’s, Frank’s, and Susan’s observations account for all such patron and dancer interactions, their formulations are still useful. They serve to underscore the potency of the much misunderstood and maligned pleasure porn aficionados and other fantasizers take in “desiring to desire.” Drink and date fantasy hustles allow spectators the role of the big spender, the thrill of the pursuit, and the thrill of being overcome by the dancers—all rolled into one long sustained act. Here, economic privilege and the rituals of spending money become yet another avenue for the erotic enslavement of the spectator, rather than a simple patent refrain of the patron’s control over the performer through an act of sexual commodification. In the scheme of most strip shows, female and male patrons are not only at risk of being inducted into scenes by the dancers, but they are also at risk of being coerced into the spotlight by their spectating peers. Strip shows for women encourage patrons to hire spontaneous sex acts for their friends by waving money over the heads of their companions, who are then kissed, hugged, caressed, sat upon, or danced with by the male strippers retrieving the tips. At the Sugar Shack II, the same gesture can engage male hosts to carry one’s friends, à la the hunkyman taxi rides, to the tipping station. In clubs for both women and men, table dances can be purchased for one’s companions in a similar fashion. While the gift-givers 167

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may have the fun of watching their buddies stand up to the pleasures and the hazards they have imposed upon them, they too become part of the action as other audience members can watch them gazing at their handiwork. Spectators also can arrange for friends to become the stars of extended minidramas. These scenes are often arranged during the reservation process and in conjunction with celebratory events such as birthdays, anniversaries, bachelor and bachelorette parties, and divorces. The Satin Angels show features a scene in which a real-life groom-to-be is “forced” to practice for his wedding day by rehearsing with an exotic dancer bride. At the end of the routine, the groom is shackled to a chair on stage to watch his stripper-bride peel off her wedding gown. At Chippendales Los Angeles, gangster-strippers kidnap a birthday girl from her audience seat and hold her hostage on stage. Policemen-strippers rescue her, but then carry her off in handcuffs as the MC muses out loud about the wonderful birthday present she is about to receive backstage. The Chippendales candlelight dinner and bondage dramas, as well as the male coach roles of the foxy boxing and wrestling matches, are just a few of the acts that can be ordered as prearranged gifts. Finally, patrons can induct both dancers and their fellow spectators into public sex scenes during strip shows through their own acts of exhibitionism. While the penis-phallus is a marker of the male’s induction into the ranks of social privilege and authority in our culture, within the realm of the strip show (like money and gazing), it takes on other connotations. At Show World in New York City, male patrons were allowed to perform public acts of self-exposure and masturbation, as long as they remained in their seats and refrained from any physical contact with the dancers and other spectators. During performances in Show World’s Triple Treat Theatre, other patrons pointed, laughed, and stared at the spectatorexhibitionists. They also looked for, and pointed out to each other, the reactions of spectators who appeared to be noticing these performances for the first time. Several Show World regulars stated that the spectator masturbation acts were “just part of the scene” and “the excitement of the show.”37 In this environment, the reaction to the display of the penis was quite different (on the surface at least) from the display of the penis in the Show World-managed theatres that sponsored gay and transsexual strip shows, where erections and semi-erections were regarded by the other audience members with outright desire, concentration, and even reverence. Some of the eyeball rolling and sneering directed toward the exhibitionists in Show World’s heterosexual arenas was most likely due to homophobia. Paradoxically, this behavior also suggested the covert circulation of homoerotic desires among the patrons—but there was another element in play as well. The masturbation routines of the spectator-exhibitionists functioned as props of transgression that added to the thrill of the spectacle for the rest of the audience. Ron Martin, the executive manager of Show World, explained that his organization allowed patrons to masturbate during strip shows because their acts ensured greater audiences and publicity for the sex entertainment center. In his words, “guys could never see anything like this in Iowa.”38 168

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All scenes of patron masturbation in strip clubs are, of course, subject to state and municipal laws, which are then interpreted and upheld as seen fit by the individual clubs. Some routines of patron masturbation also occur in the more sophisticated or sedate environments. “Carol,” a dancer at Rick’s in Houston, related a story about a wealthy businessman who had figured out how to present his own sex show to his peers without ever illegally exposing himself. This patron consistently wore light-colored suits to the strip clubs. After watching the entertainment for a period of time, he would leave his table and stroll around the club, displaying a large stain in his crotch area—a stain that would not have existed or have been visible had he either used a condom or worn a dark suit. Eventually, this patron’s performances became so well known that he was often the focal point of the audience’s attention whether he was seated or on parade.39 In much feminist and psychoanalytic theory, the physical organ of the penis is sutured to the concept of the phallus, as a seemingly immutable symbol of male social power and control. However, since public acts of patron masturbation in middle-class strip clubs for heterosexuals are relatively rare and random (even at Show World), and since the other spectators characteristically ridicule such performances through their laughter, finger-pointing, and eyeball-rolling, the display of the penis in this arrangement does not in any conceivable way stand for social authority. To the contrary, this demonstration depicts male sexual desire as a transgression of traditional mores through a form of social excess. One can hypothesize that strip event audience members identify with (or differentiate themselves from) the house masturbators, not as social and sexual dominators, but as players who confess to being sexually overwhelmed through the breaking of the “last taboo.” They are not only caught looking, they are caught masturbating. But such acts of masturbation still fall within the realm of representation, for despite their contraband status, patron-exhibitionists must continue to abide by the rules of the house on pain of removal from the premises and the premature conclusion of their pleasure. At Show World, not only was the self-exposing patron forbidden to touch other spectators and dancers, he was also forbidden to sit in the front rows of the theatre. If you wanted to sit ringside, a sign warned, “Keep Your Dick in Your Pants.” While such a rule was necessary to the performance of rituals at Show World, Linda Williams insists that the suppression of the dick does not solve the sexual problems of patriarchal power. She states: This feminist critique of explicit pornography fails, however, precisely in its attack on the literal organ of the penis… In attacking the penis we seem to attack the phallic authority that it symbolizes as well. But the tempting conflation of meaning between the two accedes to the impossibility of change.40 Masturbation acts by strip event patrons excite their participants precisely because these performances are not exclusively predicated upon dominant meanings and expectations attached to biological sex, physical display, and sexual performance. 169

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Male genitals are re-engendered through games that represent a usurpation of social traditions and authority. The exposure of the penis as a symbol of social transgression, sexual surrender, and an object of desire also figures in the strip events for women. As discussed in Chapter 4, the dancers of Bar Apollon and Club 281 strip to total nudity during table dances that are performed on tiny portable platforms set up inches away from the chairs of the spectators. During these acts, the strippers suddenly sport “worried,” “surprised,” or “embarrassed” looks and then quickly cover their exposed genitals with their hands and continue to dance. This hand and face choreography is designed to suggest that the attractiveness of the female spectator is luring the male dancer’s penis into an erection against his will. The spectator’s sexiness and the dancer’s wayward member threaten to induct both patron and performer into an illicit act because the display of an erect penis by a stripper is illegal in Montreal. The male dancer’s carefully choreographed performance foregrounds the fact that he is “at risk” for legal and social sanctions if his penis takes phallic shape. At the same time, through his simulation of an erection, the dancer performs a narrative that implies that he, too, has been overwhelmed by sexual desire—by the event. Clubs for women that allow patrons to take naughty pictures of the strip show offer another form of penis play through the genital snapshot game. The female spectator begins this activity by taking pictures and capturing the dancers and her peers on film. Inspired by her actions, one of the dancers “steals” her camera and proceeds to take pictures of his private parts onstage. The performer accomplishes this feat, without ever exposing himself, by angling his underwear so that only the eye of the camera sees the forbidden site. The taboo scripting of the routine is highlighted by the patter of the MC who usually pretends to chastise the itinerant stripper for his bad behavior. In this context, the male dancer metaphorically “gives it up” to the female spectator. The unseen but captured penises locked up in the cameras of female spectators can be conveniently taken home with the patrons. The women can do what they like with the souvenirs—they can view the “exposures” alone, share them with friends, or, if the stills are underdeveloped, or not sexually pleasing in some other way, they can simply discard them. The object of this foray into penile symbolism in strip events is not in any way intended to degrade the male participants or male anatomy, but rather to reinforce Williams’s contention that, “while the physiology of sex is not likely to change, its gendered meanings can.”41 This mutability of meanings in the face of the traditional structures of gender is all important, for as Butler notes, what the epistemological discourse refers to as “agency” is in essence the construction of one’s identity and identifications around resignification.42 The strip show’s various scenes of induction subvert traditional gender positions and labelings, without redrawing the lines of sexual difference, because both female and male participants, spectators and dancers, elect to perform as the initiators of sex acts as well as sex act inductees. The majority of strip events, however politically and socially imperfect, also situate the mutual consent of the participating parties as an integral part of their sexual-erotic games and pleasures. That is, no matter 170

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how compelling a strip event’s induction scenes may seem, in most modern clubs, if things get out of hand, dancers can stop the show or request other club employees to enforce the house rules and even to remove unruly guests.43 And if the proceedings and the club decorum are not acceptable to the patrons, they can leave. One could argue that most females would not consent to participate as sex trade workers in these events if they had other comparably lucrative opportunities or if they were not culturally indoctrinated to think of themselves as objects for male sexual use. But then again, how much of this rhetoric has been informed by the double standard that insists that sexual representations and public expressions of sexual interest are categorically bad for women? Or, if one contends that a good or an authentic expression of female or male sexuality actually exists, then we must continue to ask the question, who defines it? Weene, a feminist and former stripper, states, “I thought I was crazy because both the conventional, maledominated outlook and feminist doctrine defined what I did as bad. I was having forbidden fun… In order to reclaim the feminine power for my own, I gave it a name: feminissima…”44 What do spectators buy, or buy into, when they attend strip shows? What is going on between patrons and dancers? Spectators pay to participate in highly regulated rituals about sex and desire both as viewers and as performers. Their duets with the dancers foreground, more definitely than in any other aspect of the show, that positions of seeing and being seen in adult entertainment (and in sexual play) are not discrete, nor are they absolutely connected to the respective positions of control and surrender, even in the most hegemonic of arenas. Thus, the spectators’ rituals of tipping and centerstage antics also foreground the fact that erotic positions of “desiring,” “desiring to be desired by others,” and even vicariously or narcissistically “desiring oneself through the image of another are indeed interwoven and inseparable experiences for female and male participants in heterosexual contexts—even though aspects of these parts may be played out in forms that reflect the indoctrination of cultural gender norms. In all the instances described, while the strippers are assuredly designated as sex objects, both male and female spectators frequently desire and attempt to take up those roles as well— roles that our culture persists in labeling inherently female and passive.

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Source: Photograph courtesy of Edward Keating/New York TImes Pictures (1992).

Figure 6.1 Male front-row patron tipping dancer as a fellow patron watches the scene at Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum in New York (1992)

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Figure 6.2 Tip’n kiss at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Source: Photographs by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 6.3 Female patrons pay for a “hunky-man ride” to the stage at the Sugar Shack II in Chicago, Illinois (1990) Source: Photographs by Katherine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 6.4 Female lap-dancer and patron (1992) Source: Photograph courtesy of “Sophie of Mentertainment®.”

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Source: Photograph by Katherine Liepe-Levinson

Figure 6.5 Female patrons enjoy a crepe-paper bondage game at Chippendales New York which allows them to perform on stage (1990)

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Figure 6.6 Annie Sprinkle demonstrates “boobs on the head” photo shoot with patrons. Actor Corny Littman assists (circa 1992) Source: Photograph by Friedemann Simon, taken during the TV show The Schmidt Show with actor Corny Littman, in Hamburg, Germany. Reproduced courtesy of Annie Sprinkle.

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Figure 6.7 Beverlee Hills gives a patron a breast headlock for his photo-shoot opportunity at New York Dolls (1992) Source: Photograph by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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Figure 6.8 Female patrons get to take, and pose in, their own “naughty” photos with dancers at Big Alice’s in Peoria, Illinois (1990) Source: Photograph by Katharine Liepe-Levinson.

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7 EPILOGUE AS INTERMEZZO The saga of the strip show, or the battles over sexual representation rage on…

New York City 2001: the newly sanitized Times Square area sparkles. The Port Authority Bus Terminal is cleaner, the homeless less visible. The lights that shine on Broadway are virtually free of the neon signs that once announced the presence of porn theatres, X-rated video stores, and strip clubs. Illuminating the Great White Way in their stead are the marquees of a flagship Disney store and several renovated Broadway theatres—including the magnificent New Victory Theatre which presents first-rate family entertainments featuring artists and companies from around the world. Even the old battlehorse, the notorious sex emporium Show World, closed its doors and reopened as a tourist and souvenir center that occasionally features avant-garde theatre productions. According to a former manager, Show World will eventually be transformed again, this time into a virtual reality game arcade that will continue to transfix patrons through the excitation of their senses.1 Around town, the female-owned and operated Harmony Burlesque, and several of the strip bars that lined Queens Boulevard have shut down as well. Many female strippers in the New York area now tease in bikinis, T-shirts, and lingerie for much lower incomes. Other dancers continue to present their totally nude shows in the guise of old-time Burlesque or performance art in avant-garde theatres and cabarets like the Blue Angel and the Alternative Grind.2 Several club owners have moved their establishments to rundown districts outside the showplace of Manhattan (e.g., the district around and under the Queensborough Bridge), while strip bars located in the poorer neighborhoods of the Bronx operate pretty much as usual. Residents of those neighborhoods bitterly complained that Mayor Giuliani used his anti-porn crusade to capture the attention of the rich and powerful for his future political career, while used condoms piled up on their street corners driving down the market value of their hard-earned, working-class homes. At the other end of the striptease spectrum, the venerable Chippendales club for women vacated its prime Upper East Side location due to ever-skyrocketing real estate prices and rent which its female patrons could no longer support. The company now sporadically tours and performs in the city, sharing small cabarets, dance clubs, and performance spaces with other types of entertainments. The upscale Danielle’s, located in a ritzy part of Queens, also went out of business. The former night club 180

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reopened as Melange, a restaurant that no longer features male strip events for women or female lingerie shows for men. New Yorkers and tourists alike remark that the newly shined-up Big Apple is so much “nicer.” Some insist that it is “safer” as well. Others express outright relief that they no longer have to “shield” children and guests from “outlandish billboards” hawking sexual entertainment. Mayor Giuliani, fresh from his first victories over the strip clubs, and basking in the praise of his constituents, proceeded with his campaign to purge New York by threatening to withdraw funding or shut down the Brooklyn Museum of Art for displays he also found offensive. From 1998 to 1999, he attacked the museum for its controversial show, “Sensation,” an exhibition that had successfully toured the art capitals of the world. In the last year of his office, battling both prostate cancer and his wife Donna Hanover over a messy divorce involving “another woman,” Giuliani embarked on “phase-two” of his war against the strip clubs and other mimetic displays of “immorality” and “indecency.” In the spring of 2001 he again attacked the Brooklyn Museum of Art—this time for the exhibition of a single photograph. The work in question, Yo Mama’s Last Supper (1996) by Rene Cox, was part of the “Committed to the Image/ Contemporary Black Photographers” show. The mayor claimed that Cox’s work was disrespectful to Catholics, even though her photograph and the show had been well received in other US cities and in countries where Catholicism predominated.3 Giuliani nevetheless used his latest grievance against the museum to announce his formation of a “decency panel” or cultural advisory committee, which would henceforth review all art work for publicly funded organizations in the city. His chosen panel members included his divorce lawyer, Raoul Felder.4 Almost within the same political breath, the mayor revealed his plan to rewrite the zoning codes of New York one last time before leaving office. His intent was to eliminate or rework the 40/60 rule that had allowed strip clubs and porn shops to operate in mixed-zone areas provided that only 40 percent of their stock and space was geared to sexually explicit materials. The mayor originally included the 40/60 rule in his 1995 zoning revision to protect himself and the city against charges of violating the First Amendment. The purpose of the rule was to allow local news-stands and video stores the right to sell the odd gentlemen’s magazine or porn video, while doing away with all dedicated sexually oriented businesses. As discussed in Chapter 2, many of the strip clubs and porn shops began stocking 60 percent of their spaces with souvenirs and guide books to comply with the ordinance, thus thwarting Giuliani’s attempts to shut them down. To rally a recalcitrant press to his farewell campaign against the hitherto legal sex trades, the mayor suggested that instead of touring the clubs and shops to investigate the situation for themselves, local news reporters should rent videos of another morality tale and mimetic display of indecency, Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, to catch a glimpse of the horrific Times Square of old.5 In the midst of Giuliani’s last call to arms against the strip clubs and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Broadway show The Full Monty, a musical about a male strip show for women that reveals everything, received acclaim rather than controversy. 181

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And as New York City strip clubs carefully maneuvered around the censors to stay in business, the hottest discotheques and “regular” nightclubs in Manhattan began promoting a new social dance craze called “Rear-Ending.” Scantily-clad couples, heterosexual and same-sex, gyrated away the night by rubbing up against one another in mimic of the lap dances featured in gentlemen’s clubs across North America during the 1990s. Journalist Julia Chaplin dubbed “Rear-Ending” as a natural extension of the music videos featured on MTV. The directors and choreographers of such entertainments had long-recruited strippers to dance in their productions because of their sensual, yet sexually aggressive way of moving. The rear-ending action found in the swankiest of dance clubs and on cable television harkened back to another time in the city, the Burlesque era of the 1920s, when strippers and social dancers (flappers) likewise shared music and moves.6 Elsewhere in the United States and Canada, strippers ply their trade more or less as usual. In Montreal, some clubs have closed, others have changed hands and names—but shows for male and female patrons, straight and gay, still thrive in the popular shopping and business districts that run along Saint Catherine Street. Big Al’s of Peoria, Illinois, no longer presents its Big Alice strip shows for women— but female and male dancers continue to grind day and night at the Hangar Club located just outside of Washington, DC. Escapes on Long Island, New York, did away with its co-ed exotic dance events and mixed bachelor and bachelorette parties to focus exclusively on male strip shows for women. Danna Montana, on the other hand, updated her Chicago-based Sugar Shack all-male dance revue to include separate female strip shows for men under the club’s new name, Dreamers. Many of the upscale gentlemen’s clubs in Washington, DC, and Houston (including Rick’s) have acquired new owners who also have enlarged or renovated their places to keep up with the times. The Lusty Lady of Seattle and San Francisco has changed hands as well, but their management teams continue to involve the female performers in decisions about the day-to-day operation of the clubs. The litany above is meant neither as a mournful eulogy for the beleaguered striptease industry of New York City, nor as a celebration for its apparent preservation in other parts of the country. McClintock rightly cautions us that given the sexism and other bigotries that exist in contemporary culture, it is hard to imagine that even a form of porn as “quaint” as striptease could inhabit a remote or completely safe place “behind the green door of the mind.”7 Like society at large, some aspects of female and male strip shows remain sexist, heterosexist, and classist. Nevertheless, the fundamental arrangements and dynamics of these events still offer patrons an opportunity for sex role experimentation that interrogates the very basis of such prejudices. In strip shows for both women and men, the dynamics of desire are not represented through a tidy version of the Oedipal narrative or Lacanian-lack which presupposes diametric positions of (male) erotic control and (female) surrender. Instead, carnal desire is portrayed as a form of social and personal excess (i.e., “too many bodies,” “too much pleasure,” “too much money waved around and offered to the performers,” “too many rituals of erotic control,” “too many rituals of erotic 182

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surrender” to play out in a lifetime). These theatrical excesses foreground and encourage the customers’ interest in the pleasure-pain of sexual yearning (the desire to desire), which is itself a primary rather than subsidiary pleasure of the pornographic enterprise. As enacted by dancers and customers, such excesses, and the pleasures they inspire, confound many commonly held beliefs about gender norms and sexual arousal, especially with regard to assumptions about the innate male need to dominate others in order to experience sexual pleasure. In most cases, contemporary strip clubs and shows carefully manage or control the excesses they proffer by shaping them into a series of strict rituals and games for dancers and patrons to act out. Live games provide their players with the “security” of clear-cut rules and the excitement of “risk” inherent to all game playing. Strip shows magnify this interplay between security and risk because the rules of their games and rituals (which almost always follow the letter of municipal law) also include aspects that simultaneously uphold and break traditional gender norms. The tandem experience of safety and jeopardy, of oscillating positions of control and surrender, is portrayed in all aspects of the shows for female and male participants alike—from billboards plastered with giant women who threaten to engulf the little guy on the street, to female spectators who pay to be “tied” to their chairs with crepe paper streamers while big strong men perform for their pleasure, to adult women costumed as demure baby dolls who nevertheless skillfully manipulate their male audience, to the luxury clubs and dancer tipping rituals designed to “take” the rich and the powerful for all they are worth whatever their carnal interests. This coupling of security and danger appears to be at the heart of sexual fantasy and sexual arousal for many female and male actants. As the chapters on costume, choreography, and spectator participation indicate, women and men do indeed express their erotic desires and pleasures in distinct or gendered ways. But in the throes of sexual attraction, they also reveal their desires through behaviors that overlap. Both sexes may exchange coy gazes as well as direct looks in their sexual gazing. Both may touch or display certain parts of their anatomy (consciously or unconsciously) to interest the subjects of their lust. The strip show captures and highlights all of these overlaps and gender inconsistencies because the club owners, managers, dancers, and spectators are themselves ethnographers of sexual desire and seduction. Within the spectacle of the strip show, such acts of sexual display are frequently represented through other forms of excess such as parodies, exaggerations, and compressions of time. In this way, the fiction and fantasy of the show, and the fictions and fantasies that constitute erotic desire are always situated in the foreground. All told, the strip events discussed in this book reveal not only the extent to which both female and male sexual desires are designed and managed by cultural dictates, but, again, the fact that neither women nor men respond passively to such conditioning. Within the transgressive “poetics” of the strip show, depictions of female and male sexual interests take the form of active, dialogic conversations with the cultural imposition of sexual “normalcy.” As indicated throughout this book, the most obvious and formal aspects of the strip show’s production and performance—the exterior and 183

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interior designs of the clubs, bars, and theatres; the costumes and choreography of the strippers; and the rituals and games performed by the spectators—alternately depict the theatrical excesses that constitute sexual desire and fantasy as “sleazy,” “alien,” “exotic,” “forbidden,” “show biz-like,” “opulent,” “capricious,” “comical,” “overwhelming,” “absurd,” “whimsical,” and even “deadly.” None of these designs, however, represents desire in terms of heterosexual fantasies and arousal as merely ordinary or “natural.” The strip show’s signifiers of “unnatural” desire reproduce and intensify the ambivalent, inconsistent, and contradictory aspects of female and male sex roles and sex play that exist in, and are natural to, everyday experience, but that have been rendered unreadable and unspeakable through the pressures of the hegemony and, unfortunately, sometimes through the very polemical arguments that seek to relieve those pressures. Theory and performance, social fear and sexual representation One of the greatest difficulties in describing and analyzing sexual representations and their inconsistent, oscillating roles of erotic control and surrender is the task of dealing with inculcated popular confusions and fears about those roles. In American culture, erotic roles of surrender and control continue to be defined almost exclusively in terms of their connections to the inequitable, gendered hierarchies of the social world. As a result, erotic positions of control are categorized as “masculine” and “oppressive,” whether they are performed by men or women.8 Similarly, erotic roles of surrender are viewed as “passive” positions inexorably bound up with the social powerlessness of women. While the sex object role is considered dangerous for females because it represents and maintains the cultural disenfranchisement of women in all walks of life, it is dubbed just as perilous for men. For in a homophobic society such as ours, any perceived feminization of the male includes the possibility of his being gay. Despite the social mandates that caution both women and men against the hazards of taking up sex object or erotic surrender positions, the second most prevalent heterosexual fantasy for females and males is the fantasy of being overcome or ravished by someone of the opposite sex. (The first fantasy for women and men is having sex with a new or different partner.9) While romantic fiction is arguably the most established panderer of the “being taken” narrative for women, a male version of this fantasy is neatly illustrated by a cartoon that was featured in Mentertainment, a trade paper and guide to strip clubs and topless bars for straight men in the United States. In the comic strip, “Sexley’s Believe It or Nuts,” an “average guy” walks down a city street and fantasizes that he is accosted by a group of women. The leader of the group yells, “Hey Girls!! Check out this sex machine!! C’mon, you stud!! We know you want it!!” As he is pinned to the ground, his attackers shout, “Resistance is futile!! Surrender yourself to carnal desires.” The vision evaporates, and the man sighs with pleasure as he goes on his way.10 While there is an obvious disjuncture between male and female ravishment 184

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fantasies because males do not have to live with the historical baggage and continued threat of real rape and other types of physical abuse, such fantasies, nevertheless, provide a similar function for both women and men. A number of psychoanalytical interpretations of the ravishment fantasy propose that such scenarios allow good girls (and boys) to sexually experiment, but still retain their pure or good person status because “the story” says they were forced into the act. However, many of these theories continue to categorize the “being taken” or sex object role as a position of complete passivity—which is inaccurate. As the rituals of the strip show so clearly illustrate, one of the lures of sex objects, female or male, is their immense power to render their spectators “helpless slaves of passion.”11 In his 1937 doctoral dissertation, “Burlesque as a Cultural Phenomenon,” Police officer David Dressler observed that the traditional Burlesque show featured numerous scenes in which male characters, crazed with passion, instantaneously got the girl(s) of their dreams—not through the brute force of ravishment, but through “magical” means instead. Dressler writes that the typical male Burlesquer only had to wave “a whoozis before a girl’s face” to make her “stop in her perambulations and moan, ‘Oh, daddy, give it to me.’” One can almost hear Dressler sigh as he notes, “How much easier to press a button and have the girl all ready to be seduced.” Later he adds, “Here is a gay world where every girl wants to go to bed.”12 Some feminist critics, including Nancy Hartsock and Susan Griffin, have proposed that at the heart of all pornography—“Daddy, give it to me” and ravishment scenarios alike—there skulks the male fear of female rejection.13 While such scenes and images may reflect the dominant male fantasy of having access to multiple female partners who are always “ready to go,” these narratives, as suggested by the cartoon in Mentertainment, also have something to say about our culture’s manipulation and repression of men’s desires. In almost every interview for this book, dancers, patrons, managers, and club owners stated that one reason both females and males patronize strip events is to experience the fantasy of “being wanted,” “being desired,” “being liked,” or simply “being noticed.” “Nick,” a regular strip club patron from New York City explained that it “is a big thrill to have women come on to you because it doesn’t exist like that in reality.” “Carol,” a stripper at Rick’s in Houston, asked “where else could a 60-plus guy get approached first in a nice environment by a beautiful young woman?” Bildstein, the creator of the infamous Scores club in Manhattan, also suggested that men like “up close and personal” entertainments because it helps them fantasize that women “really notice them” and “get turned on by them.”14 Some critics insist that pornographic entertainments, and the fantasies they encourage, ultimately deceive their consumers. Instead of delivering up a genuine product (e.g., real sex with a real person; a real object to display, have, and hold) pornography palms off a phony substitute (fantasy) that only further exacerbates the consumer’s insatiable desire to desire which can never be satisfied.15 Other critics of explicit imagery—including New York City’s Mayor Giuliani—suggest that since men typically use pornography as foreplay for masturbation or coitus, it makes sense that many consumers of legal sexual entertainments will wind up as 185

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real life “Johns” or patrons of prostitutes. Gertrude Koch contends that both of these views “miss the point” because they “assume the primacy of genital pleasure over that which arises out of the ‘component instincts,’ one of which is voyeurism, visual sensuality, Schaulust” (literally looking pleasure). Koch describes Schaulust, a term she borrows from Walter Serner, as “a terrifying lust…the kind of rush that makes the blood boil and the head spin until that baffling potent excitement, common to every passion races through the flesh.”16 Andrea Dworkin and Catharine Mackinnon, among others, consider Schaulust to be an ever-objectifying and degrading force. When one pays for the experience of Schaulust, one further degrades the subjects under scrutiny by objectifying them through commodification. However, as discussed throughout this book, strip show patrons conspicuously also pay to become the objects of the dancers’ desires (as in “Oh, daddy, give it to me”), and sometimes they pay to become the focus of their fellow spectators’ desires as well. By becoming the object of another’s lust and/or admiration, the fantasizer-viewer enhances his or her own role as a powerful sexual subject. While it is quite true that most spectators of strip shows never fully relinquish the social positions and stances they assume in everyday life, the mimetic empathy required by Schaulust and the process of fantasy further complicates the way objectification and erotic surrender and control roles in sexual play and representation are usually theorized. Even if most viewer-fantasizers find one particular role more compelling than the others in the scene, like the playwright, they still must trigger and complete the action of the representation for themselves by also imagining, however much in passing, the desires and responses of the other characters.17 Instead of regarding the dancers merely as dehumanized objects by virtue of their nudity, representational availability, or commodification, many patrons also make a game of attempting to discover the “real person” behind the dancer’s iconic character(s). As noted in the introduction, one of Gypsy Rose Lee’s most famous acts made fun of this seemingly ubiquitous patron obsession over questions such as: “Why do strippers strip?”; “What do strippers like to do in ‘real life’?”; and, most importantly, “What do strippers really think about when they perform?” Gypsy responded to these questions by parodying them in a routine in which she listed, in verse, the various subjects that crossed her mind when she took off her clothes and “acted sexy” on stage. According to her patter, Gypsy’s striptease stream of consciousness included thoughts about how much to give to charity, the life of the great actress Eleanor Duse, and the third chapter of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire…in other words, almost everything except sex.18 As Gypsy’s act suggests, one may never know exactly what goes on in the minds of sexual performers—or for that matter, what goes on in the minds of sexual fantasizers, consumers, and spectators who “lust in their hearts”—regardless of what they all may say in interviews. In the traditional world of theatre, however, one can assume that it is rare for the general spectator to contemplate what an actor playing Hamlet may be thinking about when he kills the character of Polonius, or what a ballerina does for run when she is not performing Swan Lake. It is the 186

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stripper’s very performance of upholding and transgressing the social norms that most likely leads patrons to ask such questions in the first place. Strip show patrons may ask these questions to set themselves apart from the social stigmas attached to the dancers (e.g., female dancers are prostitutes, male dancers are gay). They may delight in identifying with the cultural strangeness or taboo aspects of the dancers’ exotic act. But such questions also seem to bespeak the fantasy that many spectators pay for—the fantasy that the dancers are, in fact, interested in them, that they do find them desirable. The spectators’ excitement in imagining that the dancers actively desire them paradoxically locates the sexual and social position of the dancers as free agents within the mimetic scene. For the spectators’ fantasy of being actively and freely desired by the dancers again serves to enhance their role and position as powerful sexual subjects. The strip events described in this book do not expressly advocate social change. Rather, their significance lies in the fact that they clearly indicate that sexual desires and pleasures, even in the most stereotypical or hegemonic of arenas, are not uniformly predicated upon the “total control” of the “socially powerful.” Rather, sexual desire and its pleasures rest on a circulation of culturally constructed, and often contradictory, erotic roles that underscore the theatricality and therefore the potential mutability of those parts. Such performances of gender and desire do not function as a preventive against the social forces that may co-opt erotic pleasure as part and parcel of social oppression. But, again, they strongly suggest that dominant sexual pleasures and the inequities of our cultural hierarchies do not operate as a single seamless system. From Freud’s question, “What do women want?”; to the rhetoric and actions of marginalized communities forced to fight for social equality; to the debates over what constitutes sexual harassment—desire is indeed about power. As such, desire is about fear as well.19 Traditional, liberal, and radical views of sexual difference, sexual preference, and sexual arousal continue to revolve around differing anxieties about personal and social safety. Such anxieties have permeated cultural stories as disparate as Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden; the rhetoric of “family values”; feminist, gay, and queer theory discourses; and the various “backlashes” against all of the above. And yet, in the wake of this transhistorical onslaught of fears and harms, sexual desire, in representation and in “real life,” is also about the pleasures of mysterious brain and body chemistries. It is about taking and yielding control. It is about the pursuit and ownership of pleasure—of social- and self-determination. It is about the much assailed but inalienable right to “the pursuit of happiness” between consenting adults—with all the political and legislative consequences that includes. And for this much roused participant-observer, perhaps above all else, desire like theatre with its many social encrustations still speaks about possibility—about the open-endedness (rather than the closure) of discourse, even the hegemonic. For desire inspires the “as ifs” of role-playing that may help us imagine and explore other ways of seeing and being. And in doing so, desire also offers the all-important “what ifs” that underlie so much of invention and intervention—both the personal and the political.20 187

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Postscript, 15 September 2001 I concluded the final revisions for this book on the morning of 11 September 2001—the day of the World Trade Center catastrophe. I saw the twin towers burning from my window. With all of the difficulties and yet-to-be resolved complications that go hand in hand with a free speech society, I feel so very grateful, so very privileged that we have the right to voice our differences and debate vital social issues—which is the essence of personal and political freedom.

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APPENDIX

Strip bars, clubs, and theatres reviewed for this book at the height of the modern striptease boom (1990–1993) Chicago, Illinois Playpen Promises Sugar Shack II

Club Le Scandal Club Super Sexe Club 281 La Cave du Sexe L’Axe Disco Sex

Houston, Texas Caligula XXI Colorado Bar and Grill La Bare The Men’s Club of Houston Rick’s

New York City The Baby Doll Lounge Billy’s Chippendales Danielle’s The Doll House (New York Dolls) Dominique’s Harmony Burlesque Theatre El Morocco Presents Thee Dollhouse Escapes (Long Island) Gallagher’s Goldfingers (Manhattan) Goldfingers (Queens) Honey Buns The Kit Kat Klub (Flash Dancers) Merry Go Round Paradise Club Scores Show Follies Show Palace Show World Center Spectrum Stringfellows Presents Pure f Platinum Virginia’s

Los Angeles, California Aladdin The Body Shop Chippendales at Carlos’n Charlie’s Crazy House Jumbo’s Clown Room Rose Tattoo Seventh Veil Star Strip Montreal, Canada Bar Apollon Bistro Bunnies Cabaret Penthouse Cabaret Showgirls The Campus Castel Tina Chateau du Sexe Chez Jean Pierre Chez Paree 189

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Peoria, Illinois Big Al’s Big Alice’s

Nob Hill Cinema The Tearoom Theatre Washington, DC Archibald’s Camelot Nite Club Good Guys Hangar Club (Maryland) Joanna’s 1819 Club JP’s Royal Palace

San Francisco, California Big Al’s Garden of Eden (Paradise) Hungry “I”s Lusty Lady Theatre Market Street Cinema Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre New Century

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INTRODUCTION 1

For analyses of striptease as the Freudian primal scene of sexual difference and the male castration and “Oedipal” complex, see, for example, Jean Baudrillard, L’Echange symbolique et la mort (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 155–156; David Lodge, Small World: An Academic Romance (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1984), 31–43; Martin Grotjahn, Beyond Laughter: Humor and the Subconscious (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966), 108–109; Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 22–23; Rebecca Schneider, The Explicit Body in Performance (London: Routledge, 1997), 79–80. For analyses of striptease as various forms of social purgation, see David Dressler, “Burlesque as a Cultural Phenomenon” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1937), 81; Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957; repr., New York: The Noonday Press, 1988), 84, 86; Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Burlesque (New York: Bonanza Books, 1965), 9, 70; Robert C.Toll, The Entertainment Machine: American Show Business in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 195; Jill Dolan, “‘What No Beans?’ Images of Women and Sexuality in Burlesque Comedy,” Journal of Popular Culture 18 (1984):36–47. For analyses of striptease as representative of male degradation of women, see Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature (New York: Harper &. Row, 1981), 29–31; Susanne Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 58, 63–81; dancers Karen English and Angel cited in Syvia Plachy and James Ridgeway, Red Light: Inside the Sex Industry (New York: Powerhouse Books, 1996), 191,196; Susan Brownmiller, Femininity (New York: Ballantine Books, Random House, Inc., 1985), 27, 44, 84, 96; idem, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York: Random House, Inc., 1999), 304–308. For striptease as female rebellion against the double standard, see Seph Weene, “Venus,” Heresies 3, no. 4 (1981):36; Amber Cooke, “Sex Trade Workers and Feminists: Myths and Illusions,” interview by Lauri Bell in Good Girls & Bad Girls: Feminists and Sex Trade Workers Face to Face (Proceedings of a Toronto Conference on the Politics of Prostitution and Pornography, Held in Toronto 22–24 November 1985), ed. Laurie Bell (Toronto: The Seal Press, 1987), 190–191; Margaret Dragu and A.S.A. Harrison, Revelations: Essays on Striptease and Sexuality (London, Ontario: Nightwood Editions, 1989); Heidi Mattson, Ivy League Stripper (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995); Carol Queen, Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture (San Francisco, California: Cleis Press Inc., 1997). For striptease as an authentic instigator of vice and crime, see Catharine A. MacKinnon’s seminal work on the legislative control over pornography, Only Words (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993). MacKinnon argues that

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2

3 4

5

6

the law’s proper concern is not what “speech” or expression says, but what it does (29). See also Susan G.Cole, Power Surge: Sex, Violence & Pornography (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1995); Len Munsil, How To Legally Stop Nude Dancing in Your Community, materials distributed by the National Family Legal Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona (1994), cited in Judith Lynne Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment and Corseting the Striptease Dancer,” The Drama Review 42, no. 2 (1998):42. For court cases and city resolutions based on the “harmful” secondary-effects produced by strip clubs, see Justice David H.Souter’s arguments in the US Supreme Court’s ruling on nude dancing and the freedom of speech, Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 US. 560 (1991); The City of New York, Resolution No. 1322, Application No. N 950384 ZRY, which amended the city’s zoning laws governing sexually oriented businesses (1995); and numerous other court cases including Carchio v. Ft.Lauderdale, No. 96–06697 and No. 96–06698, 17th Circuit Court of Broward County, Florida (1996); Erie v. Pap’s A.M., No. 98–1161, Municipal Court of Erie, Pennsylvania (2000). For an analyses of male striptease for women as “turning the tables,” see one of the first writings on the topic—Paula L.Dressel and David M.Petersen, “Gender Roles, Sexuality, and the Male Strip Show: The Structuring of Sexual Opportunity,” Sociological Focus 15, no. 2 (April 1982):156–158; Danna Montana’s story of her club, Sugar Shack, as told to Jo Collins and Bob Parkinson, Sugar Shack: The Danna Montana Story (New York: Triangle Classics, 1988); and Katherine Liepe-Levinson, “Striptease: Desire, Mimetic Jeopardy, and Performing Spectators,” The Drama Review 42, no. 2 (1998):9–38. In this article I discuss “turning the tables,” or female spectator control, as one aspect of the strip show’s transgressive dynamic of upholding and breaking gender norms. For male strip acts as affirmations of the status quo or as an inadequate imitation of male lust, see Dolan’s much-quoted “Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat,” The Drama Review 33 (Spring 1989):61–62; and idem, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 64–66, 77–80. See also social historian John R. Gillis, quoted in Georgia Dullea, “For the Bachelorette, A Wilder Last Fling,” The New York Times, 13 May 1990, sec. 1:34; and Harrison in Dragu and Harrison, 62. Here Harrison notes that “popular opinion is echoed in the statement of a columnist who writes that when women strip for men, the men are in control, and when men strip for women, the men are still in control. This is a matter of seeing what you believe” (82). For male striptease for women as a “joke” or “just a laugh,” see Susan Demuth, “Get ‘Em Off… Boys!,” What’s On in London, 11–18 January 1989:9. Gypsy Rose Lee, Gypsy: A Memoir, with a Foreword by Whoopi Goldberg and Afterword by Erik Lee Preminger (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1986), 308. Bill Gladstone, “Fifty Years of Striptease,” Weekend Magazine, 3 February 1979:10; Lee 307–308; Morton Minsky and Milt Machlin, Minsk’s Burksque (New York: Arbor House, 1986), 267; H.M.Alexander, Strip Tease: The Vanished Art of Burlesque (New York: Knight Publishers, 1938), xi, 39. For a concise summary of the jazz era and its cross-cultural and racial exchanges, flappers, dances, and youthful rebellion, see Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H.Soukhanov, Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 334–339. For examinations of cross-cultural and white co-optations of the work of AfricanAmerican and Caribbean-American artists, see Marianna D.Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1995); Charley Gerard, Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1998). Broadway houses that circumvented the original ban on stripping by presenting plays

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8

9

and musicals that featured ecdysiasts as “characters” included Star and Garter (Music Box Theatre, 1942), The Naked Genius (Plymouth Theatre, 1943); and the later productions of Gypsy (Broadway Theatre, 1959), The Loss of Roses (Eugene O’Neill Theater, 1959); and Sugar Babies (Mark Hellinger Theatre, 1979). Contemporary stage productions that have featured strippers as characters include the Broadway adaptation of the film, The Full Monty (Eugene O’Neill Theatre, 2000– 2001); Closer by Patrick Marber (The Music Box Theatre, 1999); True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl by Jill Morley (Red Room Theatre at KGB, New York City, 1997); Striptease by Robin Moran Miller (Westbeth Theater Center, New York City, 1992); the revival of the musical Gypsy on Broadway (St.James Theatre, 16 November 1989– 6 January 1991; the Marquee Theatre, 28 April 1991–July 1991); GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS, LIVE ON STAGE TOTALLY NUDE by Sharon Evans (Live Bait Theatrical Company, Chicago, 1990); A Particular Class of Women by Janet Feindel (WOW Cafe, New York City, June 1990). Contemporary films, television movies, and videos about strippers include G-String Divas, dir. Patti Kaplan, a 13-part “docu-soap series” about the lives and work of 13 dancers in a strip club in Pennsylvania, HBO Productions US (2000); The Full Monty, dir. Peter Cattaneo GB (1997, C-95 min.); The Unveiling, dir. Rodney Evan, documentary US (1996, 60 mm, BW-93 min.); Striptease, dir. Andrew Bergman, starring Demi Moore, US (1996, C-115 min.); Show Girls, dir. Paul Verhoeven US (1995, C131 min.); Exotica, dir. AtomEgoyan, Can. (1994, C-104 min.); Stripped to Kill & II, dir. Katt Shea Ruben, Concorde videocassette, US (1987, 1989, 83 min.); Blaze, dir. Ron Shelton, starring Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich, US (1989, C-119 min.); Ladykillers, dir. Robert Lewis, starring Marilu Henner, Leslie-Ann Down, Joan Collins, Susan Blakely, Barry Weitz Films in association with ABC Circle Films, US (1988, 90 min.); Males in Motion, Ero-Tron Productions, videocassette, US (1985, 60 min.); Stripper, dir. Jerome Gary, Key Video, videocassette, US (1985, 90 min.). Novels, autobiographies, and cartoons about strippers include Erika Langley, The Lusty Lady (New York: Scalo, 1997); Jay Bildstein, King of Clubs (New York: Barricade Books, 1996): Mattson’s 1995 memoir, Ivy League Stripper, op cit.; Keith Mano’s bestseller Topless: A Novel (New York: Random House, 1991); Yvette Paris, Queen of Burlesque (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1990); Sylvie Rancourt’s autobiographical cartoons about her life as an exotic dancer in Montreal, Canada, collected, translated, and published in English by Sylvie Rancourt and Jacques Boiven in the comic book anthology The Orgies of Abitibi: Melody Book One (Princeton, Wisconsin: Kitchen Sink Press, Inc., 1991); Laurie Lewin, Naked is the Best Disguise: My Life as a Stripper (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1984); and Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir, Gypsy originally published in 1957 by Harper & Brothers and reissued by Simon & Schuster, Inc., in 1986. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Learning Annex in New York City—an established, traditional adult education center—scheduled regular workshops on the art of stripping for female participants that were taught by various professional strippers and porn stars. The Learning Annex also featured “field trips” for women to the famed Chippendales male strip show. From June to September of 1992, this education center presented several lectures by Jay Bildstein, the co-owner of the Manhattan eroticdancing sportsbar, Scores. Barnes, et al. v. Glen Theatre, Inc. The US Supreme Court ruled that nudity in strip clubs is not necessarily protected by freedom of speech. The Court decided that nudity may be banned in strip clubs (i.e., the determination that female dancers must wear pasties and at least a G-string) if a city or state deems that it interferes with “social order” or promotes negative secondary effects such as prostitution or neighborhood decline. New York Post, Saturday, 22/23 June 1991.

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10 Rob Abner, former analyst for E.F.Hutton and publisher of Stripper Magazine, cited in Eric Schlosser, “The Business of Pornography,” US News and World Report, 10 February 1997:44; Richard K.Miller, Terri C.Walker, and Christen E.Pursell, The 1998 Entertainment and Leisure Market Research Handbook (Norcross, Georgia: Richard K. Miller and Associates, Inc., 1998), xx. 11 Other North American cities noted for their quantity or variety of strip shows were also considered for the project (e.g., Windsor and Toronto in Ontario, Canada and Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Boston, and New Orleans in the US). They were eventually eliminated mainly because of financial and time constraints, but also because the cities that were selected appeared to offer similar or more interesting events and clubs. 12 Rob Abner, cited in Schlosser, 48. 13 For a detailed account about the National Endowment for the Arts controversy and the steps taken by the four solo performance artists in question (Holly Hughes, Karen Finley, John Fleck, and Tim Miller) to regain their funding, see Richard Meyer, ‘“Have You Heard the One about the Lesbian Who Goes to the Supreme Court?’: Holly Hughes and the Case Against Censorship,” Theatre Journal 52 (December 2000): 543–552. 14 See Pat Califia’s discussions throughout Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex (San Francisco, California: Cleis Press, 1994) as well as similar themes in her works, The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader (Los Angeles, California: Alyson Publications, 1997) and Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism (San Francisco, California: Cleis Press, 1997). “Sexual minorities” is the term Califia uses for actants who refuse to subscribe to the gender and sex role norms of dominant culture. The term includes lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transsexuals—as well as others (both straight and gay) whose main carnal interests exceed “vanilla sex” (e.g., S/M, cross-dressing, etc.). Califia notes that this marginalized group is by no means a unified one. She points out that many contentions and prejudices exist between the varying communities that make up this classification. Towards the end of her book Public Sex, Califia also wryly suggests that the term, “sexual minorities,” is most likely a misnomer given the very narrow perimeters of what is commonly thought of as “normal sex” (212). The somewhat less puritanical and hypocritical view about sex that resulted from the expansion of legal sex trades in North America can also be attributed, in large part, to the gay pride movement, and to the work of gay, lesbian, and queer theorists. It should be noted, however, that some activists and theorists, such as Robin Morgan, continue to voice concerns about sexual practices like S/M because they believe that it replicates traditional male/female power positions. For discussions and analyses about such controversies within the gay community, see, for example, Lynda Hart, Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) and David Allyn, Make Love, Not War, The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2000). 15 I attended gay strip events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal, and New York City; and transsexual strip events at Show World in New York City (located in a theatre in the basement of the Show World complex). Lesbian strip events, like many of those for straight women, tend to be subset within other events and entertainments (e.g., parties, dance clubs, and bars not exclusively devoted to strip shows). The subsetting aspect of strip events for females, straight and lesbian (discussed in detail in Chapter 1), coupled with my own heterocentric limitations, rendered lesbian performances less visible for me as a researcher. In addition to the party circuits and ad hoc performances in bars and clubs, strip events for lesbians researched in the initial stages of the study included the Brooklyn dance club, Spectrum Disco, which featured the performances of one male and one female stripper on weekend nights for mixed audiences; Tracks, a gay club in

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Washington, DC, which presented a weekly event called “Lesbo-a-Go-Go” (an exotic dance show for lesbians that included stripping, but no actual nudity); Debi Sundahl’s “BurLEZk” show which originated at the Baybrick in San Francisco; and the venerable Clit Club in New York City also known for its “spicy” go-go girls. (Again for further discussion see Chapter 1.) Katherine Liepe-Levinson, “A Striptease Poetics” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 11993). The Resolution No. 1322 (Application No. N 950384 ZRY) proposed by the City Planning Commission to amend New York City’s Zoning Laws governing sexually oriented businesses (L.U. No. 713) was granted its final approval by the City Council, 10 April 1995. Citing the research conducted by the Center for the Community Interest (CCI), Leonard Koerner, chief executive counsel for New York City, averred that in areas where adult stores flourish, non-sex trades went out of business leading to municipal “dead zones.” Koerner is quoted in Betty M.Cooney, “State’s Highest Court Reviews The City’s Porn Shop Zoning Law,” Queens Chronicle, 22 January 1998:4. For a discussion and citations about the National Family Legal Foundation, see Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 52–54; idem, “Toying with the Striptease Dancer and the First Amendment,” in Stuart Reifel, ed., Play and Culture Studies, Vol. 2 (Greenwich, Connecticut: Ablex, 1999), 44–45. Souter in Barnes v. Glen Theatre (1991) wrote that cities could simply assume that strip clubs produced tangible negative secondary effects. Souter later recanted this view in City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M. (2000). Souter’s statements about his new stance on the strip clubs were also quoted in Linda Greenhouse, “Justices Uphold Laws Banning Nude Dancing,” The New York Times, 3 March 2000, sec. A:22. For an extended discussion about the events that led to the closing of strip clubs in New York City (1998–2000), and this particular phenomenon, see Chapter 1. Deborah Bosley and Jamie Jensen, The Real Guide: San Francisco and the Bay Area, ed. Martin Dunford (New York: Prentice-Hall Press, 1991), 63. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 20, n4. By the end of the 1990s, heterosexual couples who patronized strip clubs were becoming more common—especially on weekend nights as part of the general clubbing scene in larger cities. A few places now sport signs that read “couples welcome.” Rocky Blackwell (bartender-manager of Joanna’s), interview-conversation with author, Washington, DC, 21 April 1990, and Winter 1992. This is not to say that instances of prostitution never took place in these venues, but simply that such activities were not the norm in most contemporary middle-class strip clubs and bars from the late 1980s through the year 2000. See also Hanna’s concurring research on US strip clubs, urban planning, and the law. Hanna investigated court cases and municipal laws in Seattle, Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Ft. Lauderdale, Cleveland, Roanoke, and San Francisco. She reviewed dissertations, articles, and city reports from many other cities. Hanna found that while some dancers take drugs and/or “hook,” most do not (“Undressing the First Amendment,” 41–43). When I began this book, I was given a letter from my doctoral advisor in the theatre program at the Graduate Center, CUNY, that stated that I was a “legitimate researcher.” The letter, however absurd in terms of its definition of a “legitimate researcher,” stood me in good stead, because, in my conversations with many of the dancers, I discovered that some were angered by other writers and reporters who attempted to pass themselves off as strip club regulars or would-be dancers to pump them for information. There is no denying that such a letter of introduction and “legitimacy,” along with the “pad and pencil” method of announcing my intentions, may have distanced me from some of the nitty-gritty aspects of the immediate experience. But any such

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distancing-effect was modified at the outset by my choice, personal interest, and stake in the subject of engagement. Lila Abu Lughod, “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?,” Women & Performance: Feminist Ethnography and Performance 5, no. 1 (1990):26. As Marvin Carlson and others have also pointed out, the field researcher participates and performs not only in the initial experience of the event, but also in the subsequent transmittal of that experience to others. In this way, ethnography moves into the complex field of intercultural performance. Marvin Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 1996), 32. The field of performance studies was first framed in the United States through an exchange of ideas and collaborations between anthropologists Victor Turner and Dwight Conquergood, sociologist Erving Goffman, and theatre practitioner and theorist Richard Schechner during the 1960s and 1970s. A special issue of The Drama Review (Fall 1973), “Theatre and the Social Sciences,” edited by Richard Schechner, was devoted to this convergence of ideas. Performance theory currently borrows from disciplines as various as psychology, culture, and gender studies (including feminist, gay, lesbian, and queer theory), semiotics, post-structural criticism, linguistics, historiography, anthropology, and sociology. In the words of Carlson, under this wide-ranging umbrella of inquiry, performance becomes “not only a subject for study, but also an interpretive grid laid upon the process of study itself” (Performance: A Critical Introduction, 190). For an in-depth overview and analysis of performance as theory, see Carlson’s Performance: A Critical Introduction. For the later trends in performance theory, in which the researcher/theorist turns her gaze from the behavioral relationship of the performer and spectator to focus on the ideological consequences of that interaction and her own performance of theorizing, see Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds, The Ends of Performance (New York: New York University Press, 1998). For example, see Jacqueline Miels Boles, “The Nightclub Stripper: A Sociological Study of a Deviant Occupation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1973); Marilyn Salutin, “Stripper Morality,” Trans-Action 8, no. 8 (June 1971):12–22, James K.Skipper and Charles H.McCaghy, “Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant Occupation,” Social Problems 17, no. 3 (1970):391–405. While these studies suggest that female strippers were forced into their profession because of oppressive factors in their personal and social lives, studies on male strippers suggest that men enter and view the business as a positive social and sexual outlet (i.e., they enjoy the attention, adulation, and sexual opportunities such work offers). See Paula L.Dressel and David M.Petersen, “Becoming a Male Stripper: Recruitment, Socialization, and Ideological Development,” Work and Occupations 9, no. 3 (August 1982):387–405; J. B.Roebuch and W.Frese, “The After-Hours Club: An Illegal Social Organization and its Client System,” Urban Life 5 (1976):131–164. For a more recent study that examines striptease performers and the constitution of social “deviancy,” see Carol Rambo-Ronai, “Deviance and Resistance in the Biographical work of Exotic Dancers” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1993). RamboRonai’s study differs from the earlier ones because she treats “deviance” as only one of a number of defining frames by which dancers construct their identities. Other frames include the dancer’s trangressions of, and resistance to, the oppressive structures of gender roles in Western culture. According to a number of reports, court cases, and personal anecdotes, some females do enter the striptease industry because they were forced into it by pimps, abusive spouses or partners, drugs, and poverty. The plight of such women should not be ignored. More interventions are needed to prevent such occurrences in the future—whether through counseling centers, shelters, police awareness and protection programs, or grassroots activism. It is nevertheless inaccurate to suggest that these situations, however heinous, are a mainstay of the contemporary striptease industry.

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Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 42–43; Katherine L.Frank, “The Production of Identity, and the Negotiation of Intimacy in a ‘Gentleman’s Club,’” Sexuolities 1, no. 2 (1998):175–198; idem, “Intimate Labors: Masculinity, Consumption, and Authenticity in Five Gentleman’s Clubs” (Ph.D. diss., Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, 1999), 17, 30–37. See, for example, Mattson’s memoir, Ivy League Stripper; Langley, The Lusty Lady; and Frank, “Intimate Labors,” 30–37. The “already alternative lifestyles” of strippers includes performers who are artists, writers, and night owls, and those who identify themselves as sexual minorities. Dancers were interviewed on this subject by the author at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco, June 1990. See also interviews with dancers in Rose Dean, “Women & Porn: Is ‘Feminist Sex Worker’ A Self-Canceling Phrase?,” S.F.Weekly, 19 July 1989:1, 6, 7. “Lily,” interview with author, Baby Doll Lounge, New York City, 14 April 1992. Anthropologist and exotic dancer, Frank, has specifically researched the relationship between dancers and their “regular” customers. She also describes how most strippers combine fact with fiction in creating personas that would appeal to different patrons, “The Production of Identity, and the Negotiation of Intimacy in a ‘Gentleman’s Club,’” 182–183, 191–194; idem, “Intimate Labors,” 234–240. Roxanne, interview with author, New York Dolls, New York City, 7 June 1990. Frank, “Intimate Labors,” 135–136. Frank rightly points out that most dancers participate and perform to get paid, while spectators participate and pay to be entertained. “Michael,” lead dancer with Chippendales New York, circa 1989–1991, telephone interview with author, 25 July 1992. Many clubs engage exotic dancers not as regular employees, but as independent vendors who rent the performance space to sell their own individual shows of seduction and desire. Most places operating on the vendor or contract system charge dancers, who make anywhere from $200 to $2,000 per night or day, a reasonable $15–$75 dollars per shift for club space. Female and male dancer interviews with author in various parts of the United States, 1990–1993. With reference to the topic of dancer abuse or exploitation, these interviewees asked not to be identified. Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Perigee Books, 1979); idem, Intercourse (New York: Free Press, 1987); idem, Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women (New York: The Free Press, 1997). Dworkin’s ideas about male violence and the sexualization of male violence again women are carried over to her latest work, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation (New York: The Free Press, 2000). Catharine A.MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987); idem, Only Words (1993) op cit.; MacKinnon and Dworkin, In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997). For descriptions of Freudian and Lacanian theories of sexual difference and feminist reworkings of those theories specifically in terms of theatrical performance, see the classic works of Sue-Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre (New York: Methuen, 1988), 114, 119–120, 128–129; Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 12, 42, 49, 56, 83. For discussions about the problems of feminist use or co-optations of psychoanalytic theories, see Judith Mayne, “Review: Feminist Film Theory and Criticism,” Signs (Autumn 1985):92–94; Barbara Freedman, “Frame-Up: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Theatre,” in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Practice, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 74; Phyllis Grosskurth, “The New Psychology of Women,” New York Review of Books, 24 October 1991:32; Lynne Segal, Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure (Berkeley, California:

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University of California Press, 1994), 117–164; idem, Why Feminism? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 149–173. It is also interesting to note that Laura Mulvey—whose 1973 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” was perhaps the single greatest influence on feminist writing in the latter part of the last century—also moved away from the Oedipal of writers such as Terence Turner, Victor Turner, Arnold van Gennep, and Mikhail narratives of traditional psychoanalysis. In mid-career, Mulvey turned to the works Bakhtin, to explore “liminal” or “transitional” events, such as carnivals and rites of passage, where inconsistent and conflicting cultural symbols openly confront each other. Mulvey explains her theoretical shift in her collection of essays, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989), vii, 159–176. See, for example, Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 59–81 and Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (New York: Longman, 1983). Less orthodox versions return to these classifications as well for they persist in defining sexual desire in hegemonic arenas solely in terms of a (male) social position of power that is most apparent in (male) acts of producing, selling, and purchasing sexual goods. See, for example, Schneider, The Explicit Body in Performance, op. cit., and Mady Schutzman, The Real Thing: Performance, Hysteria, & Advertising (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1999). Julia Query, interview-participant in “Shop Talk,” The New York Times Magazine, 18 June 2000:30, 32. In this interview, Query, a union organizer and codirector of the documentary, Live Nude Girls Unite!, reports on the significance and the power exerted by the Exotic Dancers Union, a chapter of Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U. 790). Lily Burana—a dancer, activist, and writer—discussed similar instances in which strippers took on the roles of activists and workplace reformers, “Strip Tease: Art, Pornography, and the Wages of the Skin,” The Speaking Out series at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Bruno Walter Auditorium Lincoln Center, New York City, 7 March 1996. For other references to exotic dancers as social activists, see also Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 59–61; idem, “Helping Dancers, Helping Business?,” Exotic Dancer Bulletin, February 2000:52. Berkeley Kaite, “The Pornographer’s Body Double: Transgression is the Law,” in Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America, edited and with an Introduction by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 155. Peggy Phelan, “Shifting Positionalities: Interrogating Cultural Pluralism” (paper presented at the Women and Theatre Conference, an affiliate of ATHE, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1992). Phelan rhetorically asked her audience, “What kind of link exists between the ‘real’ and the represented in terms of how we experience both and how they each shape our experience?” See Lesley Stern’s discussion about this strategy in Stern, “The Body As Evidence,” The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 199–203. Williams, Hard Core, 265–266. Williams quotes from Kate Millet’s contradictory statement about pornography in the documentary film, Not a Love Story, dir. Bonnie Sherr Klein, prods. Dorothy Todd Henaut and Kathleen Shannon, Can., Archive of the National Film Board of Canada (1981 C-68 min.). Here Millet explains that explicitness can be useful because it may help us overcome the “dreadful patriarchal ideas that sex is evil and that the evil in it is women.” Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,” in Formations of Fantasy, ed., Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (New York: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1986), 26–27. This formulation, which posits that desire is driven not by objects but by entire settings, has been employed by a number of theorists

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of gender and representation, including Judith Butler. See for example, Butler, “The Force of Fantasy: Feminism, Mapplethorpe, and Discursive Excess,” differences 2, no. 2 (1990):109–110; Elizabeth Cowie, “Pornography and Fantasy: Psychoanalytic Perspectives,” in Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, ed. Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 136–137; and Hart, 97, 99. Hart states, “If, as Laplanche and Pontalis have made clear, sexual fantasy is a location, a scene, not an ideation, then we are always in Blau’s theater where there can be no performance whatsoever unless one takes into account who is seeing and from what position” (99). Laplanche and Pontalis, 26–29; Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 65–71; Hart, 99; Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field of Vision (London: Verso, 1988), 210; and Linda Williams, Hard Core, 214–218; Robert Stoller, Observing the Erotic Imagination (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985); and Laura Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (New York: Grove Press, 1996), 196–199. Paul Willemen, “Letter to John,” Screen 21, no. 2 (Summer 1980):56. It is also notable that Playboy Magazine, Playgirl Magazine, and Cosmopolitan Magazine all include sections in which their centerfolds or cover models give brief interviews about themselves. In Playboy and Playgirl, the interviews include the centerfolds’ favorite “turn ons” and “turn offs.” Like the stories and “autobiographies” of the strippers, one might imagine that these “interviews” straddle the realms of fantasy and fiction as well. Lee’s son, Eric L.Preminger, offers a detailed description of this act complete with Gypsy’s entire patter in his memoir, Gypsy & Me: At Home and on the Road with Gypsy Rose Lee (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 1984), 16–18. This act was, in turn, recorded and parodied by John O’Hara in his novel and subsequent musical, Pal Joey. O’Hara, Pal Joey, novel and musical libretto by O’Hara, lyrics by Lorenz Hart (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 181–182. 1 URBAN LOCATIONS OF DESIRE

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5 6 7

Adrienne Rich, “Notes Toward a Politics of Location,” in Women, Feminist Identity, and Society in the 1980’s: Selected Papers., ed. Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz and Iris M.Zavala (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Benjamins, 1985), 8. Rob Abner cited in Schlosser, 48; Miller et al., xx. “Dirty Dancing: Is Nude Dancing Harmless Entertainment?” photos by Lisa Stone, Seattle Weekly, 14 August 1991:35. The Council of the City of New York Resolution, No. 1322 (Lu.U.No. 713). See also David Saltonstall, “Exile for Porn Shops: Rudy Seeking Big Reduction of XXX Businesses,” Daily News, 11 September 1994:5, 47; Nick Ravo, “Recent Key Court Rulings,” The Sunday New York Times, 6 March 1994, sec. 10:6. Ravo notes that Giuliani’s ordinance was similar to a bill proposed in 1977 “that died under intense opposition to any restrictions on sex-oriented businesses, mostly because many members of the city’s Board of Estimate believed that the businesses were constitutionally protected from such restrictions” (6). Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 52–54; idem, “Toying with the Striptease Dancer,” 44–45. Leonard Koerner, Karen Koslowitz, Dennis Saffran, quoted in Betty M.Cooney, 4. Harold Fahringer, quoted in Angela Mosconi, “Giuliani: Smut Is Going Down,” New York Post Sunday, 1 March 1998:5. (Harold Fahringer was also a former advocate for Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw magazine, and for Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler.) Fahringer was quoted in the same article as stating that he personally hates Hustler-

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like materials, but that he would always defend freedom of speech—“the right of choice, which is essential to our democratic system” (4). This discussion occurred on Giuliani’s weekly radio talk show, “Mayor Rudy Giuliani,” WABC in New York, 15 May 1998. The quotes of Giuliani, Norman Segal, and Fahringer were also cited in Robert Polner, “Shoot to Scare,” Newsday, 17 May 1998, sec. A:8. Robin Morgan, “Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape,” in Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography, ed. Laura Lederer (New York: Morrow, 1980), 139. Carlson, Places of Performance (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), 2, 98; Leslie Wade, “Bourbon Street Burlesque: The Urban Erotic Zone,” Mid-American Theatre Conference, Eleventh Annual Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 16 March 1990, photocopied, 1–2. This paper was later reworked and published as “New Orleans’ Bourbon Street: The Evolution of an Entertainment District,” in The Cultures of Celebrations, ed. Ray B.Browne and Michael T.Marshden (Bowling Green, Kentucky: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1994) 181–201. In the published version, Wade concentrates on the history of the district, rather than on an urban semiotics of the erotic. David Low and Julia Lisella, eds, Fodor’s Montreal & Quebec City (New York: Fodor’s Travel Publications, Inc., 1990), 78–82. Anne McClintock, “Maid to Order: Commercial S/M and Gender Power,” in Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson with an Introduction by Carol J.Clover (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1993), 111; idem, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 147–148; Laura Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (New York: Grove Press, 1996), 8, 21–22; Pat Califia, Public Sex, 158. Nancy Friday, Men in Love: Men’s Sexual Fantasies (New York: Arrow Books, 1980). Fred Small, “Pornography and Censorship,” in Men Confront Pornography, ed. Michael S.Kimmel (New York: Crown, 1989), 63. As noted elsewhere, Harrison also suggests that strip shows relieve men of the burden of their expected roles of sexual initiators or pursuers (130). Kaite, 150–152; Kipnis, Bound and Gagged, 149–151. Carol J.Clover, Introduction to Dirty Looks, 3. Jillian Magalaner, ed., Fodor’s ’91 Washington DC (New York: Fodor Travel Publications, 1991), 208. “Mike,” a patron of DC strip clubs, interview with author at the club Joanna’s, Washington, DC, 23 June 1990. Nancy van Itallie, ed., Fodor’s 93 USA: A Complete Guide to the 50 States (New York: Fodor’s Travel Publications, Inc., 1993), 724. See also Andrew Beresky, ed., Fodor’s Texas, 7th edn (New York: Fodor’s Travel Publications, Inc., 1990), 91–92. Beresky, 91–92. Architect Robert Schuh, interview with author at Caligula XXI, Houston, Texas, 11 April 1990. Elizabeth Cowie, “Pornography and Fantasy: Psychoanalytic Perspectives,” in Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, ed. Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 134. Califia, Public Sex, 212. Kappeler, 63–81; Schneider, 1, 126–152. See Chapter 6 for a detailed discussion about sexual pleasure, risk, and mimetic jeopardy. In the mid- to late 1980s the Women Against Pornography organization (located at 358 West 47th Street in New York City) offered tours of Times Square porn shops and sex emporiums for a contribution of $10. The author participated in several of these

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tours from 1987 to 1989. See also Brownmiller’s description of WAP’s activities, In Our Time, 304–306. Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 61–62; Bruce R.McLaughlin, “Adult Uses: Zoning and Land Use Issues, A Technical Update,” paper presented at the First Amendment Lawyers’ Association meeting, summer 1994; idem, “Adult Uses: Zoning and Land Use Issues, A Technical Update,” paper presented at the First Amendment Lawyers’ Association meeting, summer 1995 (based on his studies that were conducted from 1988 to 1995); Terry A.Danner, “Do Adult Cabarets Affect Neighborhood Crime Volumes?,” unpublished manuscript, Department of Criminology, Saint Leo College, 1996; cited in Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 61–62. Kipnis, Bound and Gagged, 145–146, 180–186. Jo Weldon, “Baring my Teeth (and whatever else I like),” Vixen 1, no. 1 (1998). See also Scigliano, 35–47. Like Hanna, Scigliano’s research on the “skinpressarios” indicated that the majority of urban studies on strip clubs were instigated by city administrations bent on getting rid of the clubs. Despite this diversity, it should also be mentioned that the top executives and owners of Show World have indeed been “white men.” Nevertheless, one can speculate that Show World was also such an “eye-sore” for the Giuliani administration because of the diversity of its patrons, performers, on-site managers, and other employees. Sobel, 9. Damon Runyon, “Runyon Views: Poor Man Has Been Robbed,” distributed by International News Service, King Features Syndicate, Inc., most likely in the Herald Tribune, 30 January 1942: n.p. (The Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the Performing Arts Research Center, The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center). Norman Siegel quoted in Clyde Haberman, “Live, Nude, And OK With City Hall,” The New York Times, 15 December 1998, sec. B:1. City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M. Excerpts of Justice Souter’s opinion and his statements about his new stance on the strip clubs were quoted in Linda Greenhouse, “Justices Uphold Laws Banning Nude Dancing,” The New York Times, 3 March 2000, sec. A:2. Ibid. Mary Rakauskas, Frommer’s San Francisco (New York: Prentice-Hall Press, 1989), 137– 139. Deborah Bosley and Jamie Jensen, 63. See Faye Hammel, Frommer’s Comprehensive Travel Guide: New York ’92 (New York: Prentice-Hall Travel, 1992), 207–213, 225–230, 236–241; Suzanne De Galan, ed., Fodor’s ’93 New York City (New York: Fodor’s Travel Publications, Inc., 1992), 56, 73– 76, 122–129; Mark Leeds, Ethnic New York: A Complete Guide to the Many Faces and Cultures of New York (Lincoln, Illinois: Passport Books, 1991), 106–108. As a 17-year resident of Forest Hills in New York City’s borough of Queens, I have long patronized the stores, restaurants, and nightspots of both Queens Boulevard and Austin Street. By far the greatest problem typically discussed at neighborhood and community meetings were those caused not by the strip clubs, but by the other kinds of entertainment businesses in the area. Reports from the 112th Police Precinct also bear this out. Laura Michaels, cited in Robert Lipsyte, “Topless Club’s Good-Neighbor Policy,” The New York Times, 19 July 1998, sec. 14:1. Michaels lives in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. See also Richard Weir’s report on a similar situation in Queens, New York, where the strip club, Naked City, was transformed into the Adrenalin Teen Club which created even more havoc in the immediate area. Weir, “Strippers Go; Problems Stay,” The New York Times, 21 February 1999, sec. 14:25. Milton Anthony and Edward Kirkland quoted in Dan Barry, “Topless and Dancing on the Edge,” The New York Times, 29 April 1998, sec. B:4. Hanna also points out that the managements of most strip clubs and bars geared to middle-class businessmen have a vested interest in making sure that the streets and clubs are safe for their customers. “Undressing the First Amendment,” 62.

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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49

For discussions about the 40/60 law and Justice Stephen Crane, who ruled in favor of the clubs by rejecting a revenue-based interpretation of the law, see Betty M.Cooney, “Language of Law Reopens Wiggles,” Queens Chronicle, 24 September 1998:1, 3; Jim Yardley, “Sex Shops on the Defensive, But Far From Stamped Out,” The New York Times, 26 January 1998:A1, B6; Gersh Kuntzman and Clemente Lisi, ‘“60–40’ Ruling Saves Adult stores from XXX-tinction,” New York Post, 29 August 1998:6. On 4 May 2000, the New York State Court of Appeals stated that the Giuliani administration had again been “overzealous” in its attempts to enforce a zoning law that restricted sex-related businesses in the case of the city versus the VIP Club, a topless bar in Chelsea. In response to the outcome, Steven M.Fishner, Giuliani’s criminal justice coordinator, released a statement averring that the city would continue “vigorous enforcement” of the law. If this failed, the city would then consider new revisions to the law to protect the citizens of New York. Fishner, cited in Richard Perez-Pena, “City Loses Another Round in Fight With Topless Bars,” The New York Times, 5 May 2000, sec. B:3. Anthony Ramirez, “After Eluding Past Attempts, Show World Is Closed Down,” The New York Times, 28 May 2000, sec. B:4. Show World allows off-off-Broadway theatre companies to use its old striptease theatres free of charge, but takes part of the box office. Shaila K.Dewan, “Show World Takes It Off-Off Broadway,” The New York Times, 2 May 2000, sec. B:1. Abby Goodnough, “Strip Clubs for Minors? Giuliani Objects,” The New York Times, 6 November 1998, sec. B: 4; no author, “Strip Club Admits Minors in Bid to Circumvent Zoning Ban,” The New York Times, 5 January 1999, sec. B:7. Califia, Public Sex, 205. Doorman at the Camelot club, interview with author, Washington, DC, 21 April 1990; “Brad” and two other male patrons at Archibald’s, interview with author, Washington, DC, 13 February 1992. Robert Watters and Bob Fury (assistant to Watters), interview with author, Houston, Texas, 13 April 1990. My visit to the Colorado club also confirmed the observations of Watters and Fury, 13–14 April 1990. “Maurice” (manager of the Apollon), interview with author, 7 July 1990, Montreal, Canada. Liepe-Levinson, “The Striptease Power Paradox” (New York City, Empire State College, The Annual Women’s Conference, 1990); idem, “A Striptease Poetics: Costume and Body Disguises” (New York City, Dixon Place, Writing Bodies: A Non-Fiction Series curated by Jessie Allen, 19 December 1991); idem, “A General Semantics ‘View’ of Male and Female Striptease Performances or The Naked ‘Truth’ Unveiled” (New York City, Pen and Brush Club, sponsored by the New York Society for General Semantics, 30 January 1992); idem, “Striptease: Feminist Theory and Censorship” (The Women’s Center, Colgate University, April 1995). The sexual orientation of female and male exotic dancers was discussed by Ron Martin (former executive officer of Show World, the gay theatre Show Palace, and subsidiaries, New York City), interview with author, 18 July 1990, New York City; Benjamin Glover (manager of the gay theatre, Show Palace), interview with author, 26 July 1990, New York City; “Ron” (owner-manager of the gay club Chez Jean Pierre, Montreal, Quebec), interview with author, 8 July 1990, Montreal, Quebec; manager of the Nob Hill Cinema (name not noted), San Francisco, interview with author, 20 August 1990; Debi Sundahl, telephone interview with author, Spring 1990; Stripper Johnny Rotten, telephone interview with author, 4 May 1990; Stripper Karl (exotic dancer at Chez Jean Pierre), interview with author, 8 July 1990, Montreal, Quebec; a male dancer at Show Palace, interview with author, late July 1990, New York; featured stripper Donna Foxx, interview with author, 26 July 1990, New York City; former Baltimore stripper “Brian,”

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53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62

interview with author, Spring 1991, New York City. See also Marilyn Salutin, “Stripper Morality,” Trans-Action 8, no. 8 (1971): 16–17; Debi Sundahl, “Stripper,” in Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry, ed. Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Cleis Press, 1987), 177–179. With all of this said, it is, nevertheless, significant that lesbians who perform sex shows for straight men are usually not stigmatized in the way that gay male performers are—because straight male fantasies of watching sex between two women are so much a part of the dominant cultural storehouse of erotic narratives. Brandon Holley and Gia Kourlas, in Brandon Holley, Gia Kourlas, and Michael Mailer, “The Naked City,” Time Out/New York, 14–21 November 1996:7. “Josie” quoted in Holley, Kourlas, and Mailer, 7. The interviewees also included “Barbara,” a patron of the Washington, DC, clubs for men, who stated that she regularly visited strip bars “on the sly” (i.e., without her livein boyfriend at the time) to the enjoy the private pleasure of imagining herself as a stripper (interviews with author, Washington, DC, and New York City, 1990–1994). A number of straight and gay female participants who attended the “How to Strip for Your Lover” workshops, sponsored by the Learning Annex in New York City throughout the early 1990s, spoke of similar fantasies of imagining themselves as strippers and imagining themselves having sex with strippers. For additional discussions about these workshops, see Chapter 4. For female fantasies about the same or similar topics, see, for example, Nancy Friday, Forbidden Flowers (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1975); idem, Women on Top (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1991). Teresa de Lauretis, “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988):169–171. Butler, Gender Trouble, 145. Lynn Segal, Straight Sex, 104. Elin Diamond, “Mimesis, Mimicry, and the True Real,”’ Modern Drama 32 (1989):59. See also, idem, Unmasking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre (New York: Routledge, 1997). Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction, 183. In the same work, Carlson also elegantly summarizes the arguments of de Lauretis, Phelan, Butler, and Diamond on female subjectivity and identity politics (180–183). Butler, “The Force of Fantasy: Feminism, Mapplethorpe, and Discursive Excess,” differences 2 (1990):113; also cited in Carlson, Performance, 183. Michele Levy’s XXX club in Los Angeles was one of the night spots used by documentary filmmaker Rodney Evans in his film on gay and lesbian striptease, The Unveiling, US BW & C-60mm (1996). Discussions about lesbian striptease include Debi Sundahl, telephone interview with author, spring 1990; Jim Deely (display art manager for the Washington Blade), telephone interview with author, 13 November 1991; “Tony” (an employee of Tracks), telephone interview with author, 13 November 1991; “Susan,” the female manager of the male gay and straight dance troupe of the Rose Tattoo, Los Angeles, summer 1990; and other interviews with dancers and lesbian bar owners in Montreal and San Francisco. See also Sundahl, 177–179; ABC’s Phil Donahue on “Lesbo-A-Go-Go,” air date 15 November 1991; Annie Sprinkle, Annie Sprinkle, Post-Post Porn Modernist (Amsterdam: Torch Books 1991). Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” in Powers of Desire, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stowsell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 200, see also 189–190. Camille A.Paglia, guest on “Lesbo-A-Go-Go,” Phil Donahue Show, NBC air date 15 November 1991. Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 119, 120. Dolan is also rightly concerned that heterosexual audiences usually do not consider the cultural differences in the production

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65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73

74

75 76

of meaning in lesbian performances (explicitly sexual or otherwise), nor do they contextualize them within the frame of social oppression. For another debate on this issue during the same time period, see Sue-Ellen Case and Holly Hughes, “A Case Concerning Hughes, Letters from Sue-Ellen Case and Holly Hughes,” The Drama Review 33 (Winter 1989):10–17. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked (London: Routledge, 1993), 148, 152–153. Joan Nestle, interview with Phil Donahue on “Lesbo-A-Go-Go,” 15 November 1991. See also Nestle’s position in A Restricted Country: Documents of Desire and Resistance (London: Pandora, 1996); idem, A Fragile Union: New & Selected Writings (San Francisco, California: Cleis Press, 1998). Califia, Public Sex, 209. Ibid., 212–213. See Chapters 3, 4, and 5 on bodies, costumes, and choreography for a further discussion about this misconception. Martin Dunford and Jack Holland, The Real Guide: New York (New York: PrenticeHall Travel, 1992), 157–158. Exceptions to this subsetting aspect of strip shows for women include the Bar Apollon and Club 281 in Montreal, and the La Bare in Houston. However, both the Bar Apollon and Club 281 open their doors to male patrons accompanied by female escorts. “Danna Montana’s Sugar Shack Dancers,” souvenir program, obtained 10 August 1990 (Chicago, Illinois), 6. For discussions about female aggressiveness in strip shows, see, for example, Harrison, 79–83; Ben-Shitta, 37; Dressel and Petersen, “Equal Time for Women,” 197–204; idem, “Gender Roles, Sexuality and the Male Strip Show: The Structuring of Sexual Opportunity,” Sociological Focus 15, no. 2 (April 1982): 151, 154, 156–160. This point was also demonstrated on NYW’s (FOX) Montel Williams on “Male and Female Strippers,” air date 30 November 1992. “Sheila,” interview with author, Chippendales New York, New York City, July 1992. Johnny Rotten, telephone interview-conversation with author, 4 May 1990. See also similar comments in Dressel and Petersen, 202–204. Kappeler and others have suggested that women like “Sheila” are not really expressing authentic female desires in these situations, but are instead attempting to copy the objectifying desires of males (Kappeler, 78–79). In the words of Dolan, however, such critics may be “caught in a restrictive, literal interpretation of desire as male that limits their ability to see the potentialities of representation” (The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 77–81). Fredric A.Strom, Zoning Control of Sex Businesses (New York: Clark Boardman, Ltd., 1977), 21. In theory, Giuliani’s anti-sex trade ordinance also had the aim of separating the sex trades from everyday city life rather than suppressing them. However, with the enforcement of the 40/60 rule, and Giuliani’s own actions and allegiance to conservative politics, one could surmise that the real goal of his ordinance was to bring about the demise of all dedicated sexually oriented businesses in New York City. Wade, “Bourbon Street Burlesque: The Urban Erotic Zone,” 16; idem, “New Orleans’ Bourbon Street: The Evolution of an Entertainment District,” 181–201. Frank, “Intimate Labors,” 129–177. Frank takes her concept of “tourism,” and her vision of strip show patrons as “tourists,” from the work of Chris Rojeck and John Urry, eds, Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory (London: Routledge, 1997); Rojeck, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1993); Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage Publications, 1990). Frank differentiates between her use of the term “tourist” and the sociological term “tourist” which often refers to the social and economic privileges of the upper and

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80

middle classes that allows them to travel (i.e., “go slumming”) in the first place. Such privileges presumably encourage these travelers to remain “detached” from the action— to “survey” another culture and scene without mussing up their travel gear. Frank states that in her use of the word, tourist can be understood in terms of the adjective “touristic,” which describes the experience of stepping out of one’s ordinary world to pursue pleasure in another “foreign” world—often as a temporary escape from the difficulties of daily living, no matter how wealthy the actants. Frank also points out that most men who visit strip clubs are themselves still laborers in the “real world.” Therefore, they cannot be theorized as being absolutely “powerful” in comparison with their fellow laborers—the dancers. For customers, descriptions of strip clubs as destinations that offer “safety” as well as adventure and peril, see also idem, “Intimate Labors,” 107–120. Dressler, 67. Steven Swann Jones, “The Structure of Snow White,” in Fairytales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm, ed. Ruth B.Bottigheimer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 168. Mulvey, 171. In her essay, “Changes: Thoughts on Myth, Narrative and Historical Experience,” Mulvey also cites Victor Turner’s concept of liminality in Turner, Dramas, Fields, Metaphors, Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1974). Turner’s work is based on van Gennep’s theory of the liminal as well, as discussed in van Gennep, Rites of Passage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960). Linda Wolfe, The Cosmo Report, with a foreword by Helen Gurley Brown (New York: Arbor House, 1981), 34; Laplanche and Pontalis, 26–29; Rose, 210–213; Hart; 165. 2 INTERIORS

1 2 3

4 5

6 7

8

9

Kaite, 151–152. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1962), 11. Cowie, 133. Cowie states that, for men and women alike, sexual desire is created by connotation—a system of signification that is, in fact, “fantasy” (135). The ability to fantasize in turn produces what we understand as “sexuality” because “the emergence of desire is the emergence of fantasy” (135–136). Cowie, 136. Frank, “Intimate Labors,” 145–147. As noted in Chapter 1, Frank describes the social and psychological gestalt of strip clubs for men as being “away” from everyday life. She therefore also describes the men who patronize the clubs as “tourists.” Frank states that in her use of the word, a “tourist” is one who attempts to step out of the ordinary world to pursue pleasure through the “foreign.” See Chapter 6 of this book for detailed discussions about the spectator behavior and participation required by the different strip clubs and events. Most of the larger upscale clubs also tend to hire traditionally beautiful performers (i.e., Penthouse- or model-type female strippers and body-builder or model-type male strippers). Smaller strip bars, clubs, and touring groups usually feature performers with more diverse body types (or in terms of hegemonic standards less “high-class” body types). The patrons’ wide-ranging reasons for attending strip clubs were a constant topic of conversation in patron interviews with the author (1989–1999). For similar discussions, see also Hanna, “Undressing the First Amendment,” 49; Frank, “Intimate Labors,” 86–129; Dragu and Harrison, 127–143. Richard Schechner, Environmental Theatre (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973), 1–37, 91.

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15 16

17

18 19 20 21 22

Sherri Cavan, Liquor License: An Ethnography of Bar Behavior (Chicago, Illinois: Aldine Publishing Company, 1966), 49–51, 67, 76–77. “Mark,” a patron of JP’s and Good Guys, interview with author, Good Guys, Washington, DC, April 1990. “Paul,” a patron of Good Guys, interview with author, Good Guys, Washington, DC, April 1990. Author’s discussion with a policeman “Bob”, posted on the premises of Good Guys. “Bob” stated that it was his job to make sure that the dancers kept their acts “upright” and “clean.” (Good Guys, Washington, DC, 15 February 1992). Dan Harris (manager/owner of Archibald’s), interview with author, Washington DC, 20 April 1990; Manager/owner of Joanna’s (name not noted), interview with author, Washington DC, 20 April 1990; Rocky Blackwell (bartender/manager of Joanna’s), interview with author, Washington, DC, 21 April 1990. Clover, 3. McClintock, “Maid to Order,” 216; idem, Imperial Leather, 152–154. Here, McClintock is specifically referring to the social and political symbolism of “dirt” for the Victorian age. By the end of the nineteenth century, “dirt” was synonymous with manual labor and thus also with the working classes and the poor, who were shunned by the burgeoning middle classes. For the Victorians “dirt” was “scandalous.” Hence, “the iconography of ‘dirt’ became deeply integrated in the policing and transgression of social boundary” (“Maid to Order,” 216). McClintock bases her ideas on Mary Douglas’s discussions of “dirt” and “pollution” as signifiers of social transgression. Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). McClintock contends that our society allows boys and men active identifications with males only. This limitation produces, for boys and men alike, a “disjunction between women as object-choice and women as desirable to identify with.” This social and psychic split found in males remains “unresolved, policed by social shame and stigma” (“Maid to Order,” 213). Such desires and identifications (as in the patron expression, “that’s right, make it squeaky clean”) are driven underground, only to resurface through the props and the fantasies of sexual rituals and fetishes. William S.Pollack and Tom Shuster make similar observations about the isolation and limited identifications available for boys and young men in dominant Western culture. Pollack and Shuster, Real Boy’s Voices (New York: Random House, 2000). Preminger, 16–18. Dominique, interview with author, Harmony Burlesque, New York City, 29 May 1990. Ironically, as noted earlier, Dominique’s club was one of the first closed down in the summer of 1998 by Mayor Guiliani’s anti-porn zoning campaign. Robert Stoller, Observing the Erotic Imagination (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985), 155. For descriptions of Freudian and Lacanian theories of sexual difference and classical feminist reworkings of those theories in terms of theatrical performance, see again Case, 114, 119–120, 128–129; Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 12, 42, 49, 56, 83. Laplanche and Pontalis, 27. In her discussion of fantasy, desire, and pornography, Cowie views fantasy as a staging of a lack of satisfaction through an entire mise en scène of desire, rather than as a lack of simple objects (137). For this writer, Cowie’s theoretical investment and return to the concept of lack fall short here because it is still bound up in the binary formulations of traditional psychoanalytic theory. Rather than theorizing fantasy and desire as a staging of a lock of satisfaction, they could be alternatively viewed—as the mises en scène of the strip clubs suggest—as a staging of sexual possibilities, opportunites, and erotic positions of surrender and control that exceed conventional social mores and expectations (which is why they are simultaneously prohibited by the hegemony).

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26 27 28 29 30

31

32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

Beresky, 91–92. Robert Watters, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 10 April 1990. Karl Toepfer, Theatre, Aristocracy, and Pornocracy: The Orgy Calculus (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1991), 10. Toepfer writes that “‘Enough’ is an ideologically defined condition… [M]ost people everywhere perceive almost every pleasure (satisfaction of desire) to be ‘never enough,’ rather than ‘more than enough’; and this constant lack of opportunity to reach a threshold and then exceed it means that the phenomenon of orgy exists above all as an object of fantasy” (10). In his book, Toepfer primarily analyzes the orgy through various events and theatrical stagings in pre-Revolutionary Paris. However, his theories can be readily applied to contemporary events and spectacles. Toepfer, 9. Ibid., 10–11, 14–19. Robert Schuh, architect for the creation and renovation of Caligula XXI, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 11–12 April 1990. Ibid. Brooks McNamara coined the term “entertainment environment” to describe recreational places that offered several usually related activities simultaneously—such as carnivals, amusement parks, arcades, and malls. Brooks McNamara, “Defining Popular Entertainment,” (International Symposium on Popular Entertainment: As a Reflection of Identity, New York City, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 9 October 1987), 4, 8–10, photocopied. For general discussion about popular culture and entertainment, see also idem, “Defining Popular Culture,” Keynote address for the Mid-America Theatre Conference, Theatre History Studies 18 (1998):3–12. Frank, “Intimate Labors,” 105. For traditional sociological analyses on games and “thrill seeking” behavior, see Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Pace Behavior (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 185–187, 195–197, 262–269; and Bakhtin on games, fate, and the risk of loss, Rabelais and his World, 235–237. Bill Sanderson, “He Says,” The New York Post, 1 March 1998:4. According to Lonnie Hanover, public relations director for Scores, the once Mob-associated club is now also a completely “legit operation.” Lonnie Hanover, telephone-interview with the author, April 2001. Watters and Fury, interview-conversation with author, Houston, Texas, 13 April 1990. Kappeler, 63–81. “Sofie,” interview with author at the Colorado, Houston, Texas, 11 April 1990. “Ginger” quoted in G-String Divas, dir. Patti Kaplan, HBO Productions, premiere air date 12 August 2000. Cowie, 136–137. Cowie, 134–136; Laplanche and Pontalis, 27–28. In counterpoint to these theorists, Schneider argues that acts of selling and buying such luxury “commodities” both promote and represent the insatiable desire that drives the alienating marketplace of Western culture and capitalism (89–90). One may then need to ask how the traditional Marxist concept of consumption translates into the consumption of fantasies in which the purchaser/daydreamer also endeavors to become an object in the scene for sale. The process by which commercially produced fantasies are purchased and consumed is discussed further in Chapter 5 of this book. MC “Martin” at Escapes show, Merrick, New York, 12 May 1990. “Chippendale’s Stung With Suit: Three Women Say Bouncers Beat Them in Beefcake Club,” The New York Post, 8 February 1989:9. “Susan” and “Cherly,” interview with author, Chippendales, New York City, November 1992. Many strippers, managers, and patrons interviewed for this book mentioned incidents

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43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

51

52

in which male striptease spectators were treated “roughly” by club managers and bouncers. In her doctoral dissertation, “The Nightclub Stripper,” Boles cites a few examples of rowdy male patrons who were “cut,” hit, or otherwise abused by club employees and dancers (195). Bildstein, former owner of Scores, fielded audience questions about potential patron abuse by bouncers during one of his lectures on topless club management sponsored by the Learning Annex of New York City. Bildstein averred that “talking” was the best approach when dealing with the few unruly male customers (“How to Own, Manage, Run or Even Dance in a Topless Bar,” St Moritz Hotel, 1 June 1992). For citations about bouncers and misbehaving patrons in mainstream dance clubs, see, for example, Felice Quuinto, Studio 54: The Legend (New York: Te Neues Publishing Company, 1997), 23, 27. The idea that sexual identities and practices are, in large part, produced and defined through social prohibition is a major theme of Foucault’s history of sex. See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (1976), trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978); idem, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume II (1984), trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1985). Harrison, “The Cock’s Dance” in Harrison and Dragu, 80, 83; “Simon,” a dancer in Montreal, interview with author at Club 281, Montreal, Canada, July 1990; “Ellie,” a strip show patron, interview with author at Club 281, Montreal, Canada, July 1990. Danna Montana as told to Jo Collins and Bob Parkinson, Sugar Shack: The Danna Montana Story (New York: Triangle Classics, 1988), 280–282. Ibid., 289–290. See Chapter 6 for further discussion about these acts. Montana, 298. Despite Montana’s claim that her club is exclusively dedicated to the pleasure of women—it does become a co-ed disco after the strip show. The club’s transformation may indeed be for the enjoyment of her female patrons—but one assumes that males patronize the disco for their own pleasures and self-interests as well. The “after hours” disco, with its pricey bar and cover charge for men, is also most likely one reason for the financial success of the Sugar Shack. Nevertheless, its co-ed disco aspect cannot detract from the fact that Montana’s club is an anomaly—a special place reserved for the pleasure of a “comparative few” who have the money, the time, and willingness to indulge in such socially transgressive activities. Toepfer, 10–11. Dressler, 63. Laplanche and Pontalis, 25–27, n. 64; Freud, “‘A Child is Being Beaten’: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions” (1919) in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, ed. by Phillip Rieff (New York: Collier, 1963), 107–132. Other feminist discourses that refer to Freud’s essay “A Child is Being Beaten,” and the fantasizer’s oscillations between active, passive, and witness roles include Williams, Hard Core, 211–218: Parveen Adams, “Per Os(cillation),” Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism and Film Theory 17 (1988):7–29, cited in Williams as well; Cowie, 143–146. These theorists argue that in the realm of sexual representation, identification, and arousal, both female signs and male signs allow fantasizers to image themselves sliding between positions of being desired by others, desiring others, narcissistically desiring themselves through the images of another’s desire, and bearing witness to all of the above. “Victoria,” administrative assistant for Caligula XXI, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 11 April 1990; “Terri Jo,” female manager for the Men’s Club, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 12 April 1990; Dan Harris, owner-manager of Archibald’s, interview with author, Washington, DC, 20 April 1990. Dave M.Kirchoff of Capital Design (one of the companies that helped to create the assembly lines for Saturn cars) and the 1995 Sales & Marketing Management survey are both cited in Robyn Meredith, “Strip Clubs Under Siege as Salesman’s Haven,” The New York Times, 20 September 1997, sec. A: 1, sec. D: 1, 3.

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55 56

57 58 59

Lorrie Beno quoted in Meredith, sec. D:3. On the other side of the issue, Colleen M. Bullinger, a wine and liquor seller for J.Lewis Cooper Company in Detroit, insisted that she had no problem entertaining clients in strip clubs because “women can do anything that men can do.” While Bullinger may be commended for her optimism, statistics continue to indicate severe gaps between women and men in terms of job pay for equal work, job promotions, and job status. See, for example, Susan Estrich’s research and discussion of the gender disparities that still exist in the hiring and promotion of executives in Fortune 500 companies. Estrich, Sex & Power (New York: Riverhead Books, 2000), 69–90. Significantly, the study conducted by Sales & Marketing Management magazine involved only strip clubs targeted to straight men. The activity of the “business deal,” accordingly, almost never occurs in strip events for women because of the limited time frame of the entertainment—and because, as Beno’s story illustrates, most jobs with expense accounts hefty enough to cover the costs of such amusements are still distributed to men. Colleen M.Bullinger also quoted in Meredith, sec. D: 3. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Sexualism and the Citizen of the World: Wycherley, Stern, and Male Homosocial Desire,” Critical Inquiry 11 (December 1984):227. See also idem, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 83–97, 184. Sedgwick developed her ideas about homosocial desires and bonds from Gayle Rubin’s essay, “The Traffic of Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 157–210. Annette Fuentes, “Male bonding, female bondage,” New York Newsday, 21 April 1992:82. Rocky Blackwell and a group of female dancers from Joanna’s, interview-conversation with author, Washington, DC, 21 April 1990. Other female and male dancers interviewed by the author from 1990–2000 also mentioned or discussed this distinction between “obnoxious” groups of men and the generally more submissive behavior of “regulars” and “single” patrons. Watters, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 10 April 1990. Toepfer, 11, 13, 14. Many clubs for men feature dee jays who announce the performers and describe special events at the club. But the deejay does not have the effect on audience control as the ever-present and ever-commenting MC found in the majority of strip clubs for women. 3 COSTUME DRAMAS AND SEXUAL SUBJECTIVITY

1 2 3 4

5

Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 2–3. Harold Minsky, “Topless No Threat to Strip,” interview by Job Cohen, Variety, 2 June 1965. NBC’s Donahue on “Unisex Strip Club,” air date, 8 February 1990, Journal Graphics, transcript #2878. For example, Robert Watters, former proprietor of two upscale “nude dancing” clubs in Texas (Rick’s and the Colorado) offers his female performers several photograph albums of carefully displayed costume suggestions—including lingerie, leather apparel, street clothing, cocktail dresses, and evening gowns. Watters stated that he put together these costume albums to help his dancers create “drama” and “interest” for their customers. Robert Watters, interview with author, 10 April 1990, Houston, Texas. The G-string consists of a tiny triangle of material that just covers the dancers pubic area. It is attached to the body by strings or elastic bands that encircle the performer’s waist or hips. According to William Safire, the original geestring was a loincloth, or a

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8

9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21

string or thong supporting a piece of cloth enclosing the genitals, that was worn by Native Americans and some of the early white male settlers. Safire states that Harper’s Magazine mistakenly referred to the geestring as a “G-string” worn by the boys out on the prairie. Safire also cites Robert Hendrickson’s suggestion that the “G” stood for “groin” which was not considered a polite word at the turn of the last century. Safire, “Ode on a G-String,” The New York Times Magazine, 8 April 1991:12; Robert Hendrickson, Word and Phrase Origins, revised and expanded edition (New York: Checkmark Books, 1997). Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 88. Hollander also points out that in dance performances, as well as in ritual and emblematic productions, such as masques, tableaux, and pageants, costumes function in a manner closely allied to those in figurative or pictorial art where, in the words of Hollander, “costumes are the drama” (Seeing Through Clothes, 237–238). For a brief description of similar types of panel skirts used in spectacles of the Victorian theatre, see Tracy C.Davis, “The Spectacle of Absent Costume: Nudity on the Victorian Stage,” New Theatre Quarterly 5, no. 20 (November 1989): 328. See also Davis’s descriptions and analysis of see-through ballet skirts and other peekaboo costumes used by Victorian performers that created the “theme of clothed nudity” in Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), 105–122, 131–136. Zeidman, 153. Ibid., 152. Ann Corio and Joe DiMona, This Was Burlesque (New York: Madison Square Press, 1968), 90. Zeidman, 152. See Davis, “The Spectacle of Absent Costume,” 326. Davis also addresses the notion of “good” and “bad” peeking positions, particularly with regard to the ballet skirt and tights. However, she does not suggest a good/bad split experience for individual viewers, but argues instead that this costume design allowed certain audience members to play “bad” or naughty spectators, while other viewers of the same event played “good” patrons of the arts. Chicago Municipal Code 16–16–110, Prior Code 194C-4.1, amended 29 July 1987. Strippers could still ply their trade for private parties and events serving alcohol, and for activities such as strip-o-grams. “Gary,” a patron of the Playpen and Promises on Mannheim Road in Chicago, interview with author, 10 August 1990. Victoria’s Secret is a popular store chain that specializes in “romantic” (i.e., sexy) women’s underwear, sleep wear, and lingerie. During the mid-1990s, the chain inspired the television show, Victoria’s Closet—a sitcom about the lingerie industry starring well-known American actress Kirstie Alley. James Laver, The Concise History of Costume and Fashion (New York: Abrams, 1969), 268–269, 272–273. Brownmiller, Femininity, 33–35, 41–46. For a brief “history” of writers and critics who have examined the “new” fashion trend of underwear and peekaboo looks for men, and the ensuing public eroticization of men’s bodies beginning in the mid-1980s, see Andrew Sullivan, “Flogging Underwear,” The New Republic, 18 January 1988:20; Lena Williams, “Bodies Go Public: It’s Men’s Turn Now,” The New York Times, 31 October 1990, sec. C: 6; Dan Shaw, “Mirror, Mirror: Men More Conscious of their Appearance,” The Sunday New York Times, 29 May 1994, sec. 9:6; Susan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1999). Bordo, 179. Johnny Rotten, performances with Beefcakes USA, Danielle’s, Forest Hills (Queens),

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27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37

New York, 3 May 1990; Rotten, performances with Escapes “couples” strip show, Merrick, New York, 12 May 1990. Male strip act performances, Apollon, Montreal, Canada, 6 & 7 July 1990; Bistro Bunnies, Montreal, Canada, 6 & 7 July 1990; and Club 281, Montreal, Canada, 7 July 1990. Arthur Asa Berger, “The Clothed Mind: Cultural Studies,” Et cetera 47, no. 3 (Fall 1990):236–238. Mario Perniola, “Between Clothing and Nudity,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part Two, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (New York: Urzone, Inc., 1989), 237. Laplanche and Pontalis, 22–26. Cowie, 136–137. Again, Cowie insists that fantasy is “characterized not by the achievement of wished-for objects,” but by the staging of an entire “mise en scene” of desire. She states that this mise en scène is a representation about “lack,” about “what is absent.” However, it is not a representation about making what is lacked “present,” or what the fantasizer desires necessarily obtainable. All sexual fantasy, like pornography, is first and foremost about the pleasure of desiring to desire even if it ultimately ends in masturbation and orgasm, or coitus and orgasm. “It is the continuing imagining of a possible sexual satisfaction that drives desire” (137). For this writer, Cowie’s theoretical investment in a bottom-line formulation of “desire as lack” is still bound up with the strict, binary paradigms of traditional psychoanalytic theory. Rather than theorizing fantasy and desire exclusively as a staging of “a lack of satisfaction,” some such scenes also could be conceived (as discussed in the previous chapter, and implied by Cowie herself) as a staging of sexual possibilities or opportunities that exceed both traditional social mores and one’s own personal expectations of pleasure. Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes, with a new Introduction by Lurie and illustrations assembled by Doris Palca (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1983, repr. 2000), 230. See also Marti Hohmann’s discussion about leatherdykes in “Leatherdykes Under the Skin,” The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review 4, no. 2, 30 April 1997:37–40; Amy M.Spindler, “What Your Clothes Make of You: Dressing and Identity,” The New York Times Magazine, 14 November 1999:85–87. Lurie, 17. Hollander, Sex and Suits (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1994), 175–176. MC’s “patter” for the One Night of Sin show at Chippendales, New York City, March 1992. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 162. Club 281, Montreal, Canada, 7 July 1990. I was seated at a small bistro table less than two feet away from the actants described in this scene. Cowie, 146. Stallybrass and White, 154–163. Annie Sprinkle, interview with author, 17 July 1990, New York City; idem, follow-up telephone conversations with author, 20 July 1990, and 21 July 1990; Discussions with Liepe-Levinson and Sprinkle on “Pornography, Costume, ‘Sluts,’ and ‘Goddesses,’” Dixon Place, New York City, 19 December 1991. Post-Post Porn Modernist, created and performed by Annie Sprinkle at the Sandy Meisner Theater in New York City, 1991. See also Sprinkle, Post-Post Porn Modernist (Amsterdam: Torch Books, 1991). Gabriel “Dolly” quoted in Laura D’Angelo’s descriptions of stripper police acts, teacher routines, and “mommy” numbers regularly performed in the bars of Staten Island in “Bumps and Grinds in Life of a Stripper,” Staten Island Advance, 15 November 1990, sec. C: 1. McClintock, “Maid to Order,” 218. See also idem, Imperial Leather, 84–89, 147.

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39

40 41 42

43 44

Even the most “normal” experience of falling in love (or lust) may include a return to infantile states of consciousness in which the finding of a new love object is often a refinding of the first—the all-powerful figure of the mother in relation to the child. Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905),” in Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works, Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1977), 145. The return to infantile states of consciousness as a result of erotic arousal is also discussed in Wendy Langford’s “Bunnikins, I Love Your Snugly in Your Warren,” in Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance, and Intimacy, ed. Keith Harvey and Celia Shalom (London: Routledge, 1997), 171–185. McClintock, “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap: Portraying the Female and Male Orgasm,” in Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, ed. Lynne Segal and Mary McIntosh (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 111–112. McClintock is careful to discuss the contradictory nature of pornography and spectator responses. She relates another incident in which she watched a porn film in an adult movie house. On screen, a male actor “beat” his female partner across the face with his penis. The movie audience broke into “a roar of glad baritone cries,” which McClintock describes as a “barrage of male hostility” that doused any arousal that she experienced (112). Anne-Marie Schiro, “Baby Dolls, Naughty and Nice,” The New York Times Fashion Sunday, 21 October 1990:54. Corio, in Corio and DiMona, 80. Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (New York: Longman, 1983), 172. For Hartsock, pornography represents the woman’s body as a thing that is exciting because it arouses shame. Pornography (and by extension male desire) is built around the dualities of the mind or spirit and the body. The male viewer rids himself of his shameful (irrational, emotional and physical) feelings and maintains his control by projecting his shame onto the body of the female sex object. Nancy Friday, Men In Love: Men’s Sexual Fantasies, the Triumph of Love Over Rage (New York: Dell Publishing, 1980), 512. Dworkin, op. cit., Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1979); Intercourse (1987); idem, Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women (1997); idem, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation (2000). Brownmiller op. cit., Femininity (1985); idem, In Our Time (2000). Carol Vance, ed., Introduction to Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston, Massachusetts: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 1–3. In her classic essay, pro-sex feminist Vance lists rape, battering, sexual harassment, and being labeled a whore as some of the social and personal risks that women must endure in their pursuit of sexual agency and pleasure. The periodical Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture devoted an entire issue to sex, women’s pursuit of pleasure in the face of physical and social danger, and the feminist debates over pornography. According to Lisa Jervis, the editor and a contributor to Bitch, the hopes and concerns voiced by Vance and other writers in Pleasure and Danger are just as relevant today. Jervis sees sexual repression as a major source of violence to women and views feminist censorship of pornography as regressive and reactionary. Nevertheless, she too voices her concern about the risks that women still must face in their pursuit of sexual agency—whether in the form of date rape or the ever-increasing violence and “punishment” of sexually expressive female characters that are represented in film and television shows. Jervis, Introduction to the Sex Issue of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 2, no.1, 30 April 1997:i; idem, review of Cherie Matrix and the Feminist Against Censorship Staff, eds., Tales from the Clit: A Female Experience of Pornography (San Francisco, California: AK Press, 1996) in same issue of Bitch: 24. The concerns of Vance and Jervis, of course, also parallel those of Phelan (1993) and other feminists (outlined in Chapter 1 of this book) who have

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45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55

56 57

argued that women and sexual minorities should take up a political stance of “invisibility” as a way of protecting themselves and undermining the hegemony. “Charlene,” a stripper working in the New York City area, interview with author, Billy’s, New York City, December 1992. “Lily,” interview with author, Baby Doll Lounge, New York City, 14 April 1992. Frank, in her article about the strip club’s production of fantasy and “authentic” relationships between dancers and their regular patrons, also mentions a dancer who used a similar technique of pretending that she was a virgin in order to excite her customers and garner extra cash. Frank, “The Production of Identity,” 193–194. MC’s “patter” for the One Night of Sin show at Chippendales, New York City, March 1992. Michael Balint, Thrills and Regressions (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1959), 23–24; also cited in Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 197. Cowie, 152. “Ivy,” an exotic dancer at Rick’s in Houston, Texas, telephone interview with author, April 1990. Stallybrass and White, 200. Ibid., 193. Ibid., Stallybrass and Whites’s hypothesis of an “identity-in-difference,” produced through one’s encounter(s) with the “grotesque” or the “alien,” is similar to Toepfer’s description of the dynamics of the orgy which, however aristocratic in origin, also allows its actants the experience of becoming momentarily “other” than their normal selves (Toepfer, 11, 13–14; also discussed in Chapter 2 of this book). Stallybrass and White have been criticized by other post-structural theorists for situating their examples of transgression in the binary (structuralist) terms of “low” cultural violations of “high” culture. However, it should be noted that their book also examines what has been commonly defined as “low” and “high” culture in terms of an intertwined and dialogical relationship. As Rebecca Schneider and other feminist and gender studies scholars have pointed out, just when non-mainstream theorists began to explore transgression in terms of the sexual agency of women, sexual minorities, and the disenfranchised classes, the “big boys” of post-structuralist theory decided that transgression as a concept really did not matter because all transgressions of dominant views and mores ultimately served to redefine the lines between the socially normal and the socially outcast. Schneider, 3–5, 150, 206. Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S.Roudiez (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969; repr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 43. For arguments about how unruly female figures, whether tamed at the end of the story or not, question social norms, see Natalie Zemon Davis in “Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Political Disorder in Early Modern Europe,” in The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, ed. and intro. Barbara Babcock (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1978), 147–190; Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women (New York: Methuen, 1982); Carol Thurston, The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Jayne Ann Krentz, ed., Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996). In the 1997 season alone Springer devoted eight shows to female strippers. See Jerry Springer and Lara Morton, Jerry Springer Ringmaster! (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 261–264. Rosalind Coward, Female Desires: How They Are Sought, Bought, and Packaged (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1985), 195. Modleski and Bordo also note that underneath the hard bodies and hard hearts of

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59 60

61

62

most romantic action heroes, one finds them masochistically “groveling” in their worship of the women they love. Modleski, 45; Bordo 46. Bordo suggests that the hero’s worship of the heroine stems from intense emotional bonds. But, as the contemporary romance novel’s usual array of graphic sex scenes demonstrates, the heroine also captivates her man through her sexual abandon and instinctual sexual prowess. McClintock states that the exaggerated emphasis on costume in S/M play represents social power as being scripted rather than due to some natural law of order. “Indeed the outrage of S/M is precisely its hostility to the idea of nature as the custodian of social power; S/M refuses to read power as fate or destiny” (“Maid to Order,” 210). Williams, Hard Core, 213–228; Hart, 165; Jessica Benjamin, 69–70. Stoller, Observing the Erotic Imagination, vii. Lynda Hart interestingly reverses Stoller’s proposition by insisting “what has been dubbed ‘Vanilla’ sex by lesbian sadomasochists is scarcely absent from s/m narratives. Even in a story as hard-core as ‘Calyx of Isis,’ tenderness, trust, commitment, fidelity and equality are strongly valued” (154). Like McClintock, Stoller sees an actant’s use of “hostility” in sexual play as a coping mechanism to deal with past childhood traumas involving a quest for intimacy with others. But, again, perhaps one could view “hostility” in sexual play—ritualistically enacted between consenting adults or privately imagined—as less a pathological condition, than a theatrical convention (like the staged bodily risks found in horror, fairy, and folktales) that ignites and sustains the thrilling arc of dramatic uncertainty that seems to be at the root of sexual desire as it is drawn and articulated in the West. Many feminist theories about sexual identifications and desire are based on the psychoanalytic school of object-relations. In a departure from Freud and Lacan, the school of object-relations (beginning with Melanie Klein) emphasizes the relationship of the mother and child and the various areas of mothering that form the subject. The school of object-relations highlights the Mother as a device or object that enables the infant to experience first fusion and then gradual separation and independence from parental control and care as the way to healthy selfhood. While boys and men learn to construct strong ego boundaries and separate from the Mother by identifying in opposition to her, females achieve both their separation and identifications with the Mother through the men who penetrate them and thus enable them to become Mothers themselves. In all cases, actants are first object-seeking in terms of relationships, rather than pleasure-seeking. As Lynn Segal points out, such formulations once again mute female sexual desires and agency by reinscribing women in the role of the disenfranchised but sought-after objects. Object-relations theories reaffirm traditional gender polarities by supporting “compulsory heterosexuality” through their insistence that “healthy” identifications and relationships result only from same-sex identifications and oppositional sexual interests. It should be noted, however, that Nancy Chodorow, in her formulation and analysis of object-relations, argues that parenting should be shared equally between mother and father to create healthy identifications and selfhood for the children. In this way, Chodorow’s theories also undermine existing structures and assumptions of female and male sex roles. Segal, Straight Sex, 141–147, 237; Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). Here, Adams discusses sexual identity and identifications by reworking Freud’s “A Child Is Being Beaten” essay to show that a fantasizer’s identifications with the roles of “beater,” “beaten,” or “onlooker” are not a matter of fixed masculine or feminine identities which revolve around oppositional or clear-cut object choices. Rather, the very process of fantasy turns on the fantasizer’s oscillating and multiple identifications with the positions offered in the scene. Adams, “Per Os(cillation),” 7–29, also cited in Williams, Hard Core, 215–216. As S/M lesbian Pat Califia also attests: “If I had a choice of being shipwrecked on

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67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80

81

a desert island with a vanilla lesbian and a hot male masochist, I’d pick the boy” (Public Sex, 158). Ricard Schechner, Environmental Theatre (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973), 88, 91. Lauri Lewin, Naked is the Best Disguise: My Life as a Stripper (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984), 30. Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes, 84. The first performance of Morris’s Striptease was presented in Boston at Northeastern University, 27 February 1986. It eventually became part of Morris’s larger three-section dance work, Mythologies. This trilogy was inspired by two other essays (on soap powders and championship wrestling) also written by Barthes, collected in Barthes, Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (New York: Noonday Press, 1988). I first reviewed Morris’s complete trilogy of pieces at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom in New York City and interviewed him after the show, 7 May 1987. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 84. Arlene Croce, review of Striptease, by Mark Morris (Northeastern University, Boston), The New Yorker, 1 December 1986:103. Jennifer Dunning, “Morris, in ‘Mythologies,’ Turns Words into Dance,” The New York Times, 5 May 1987, sec. C:13. Lewin, 75. “Karl,” an exotic dancer at the gay club Chez Jean Pierre, Montreal, Canada, interview with author, 8 July 1990, Montreal, Canada. “Ben,” a performer at the Bar Apollon, Montreal, Canada, interview with author, 6 July 1990, Montreal, Canada. “Superman” in Males in Motion (60 min., Ero-Tron Productions, 1985, videocassette). NBC’s Donahue on “Unisex Strip Club,” air date, 8 February 1990, Journal Graphics, transcript #2878. Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes, xiii. See also xii–xiii, 85–86. Hollander offers numerous examples of pictorial nudes whose waist lines, busts, and hips are represented, not according to the lines of the natural body, but according to the dictates of period fashion—from the seemingly pregnant belly of the ideal female figure of the Medieval Ages to the tightly corseted hourglass female figure popular in the early twentieth century. E.Adamson Hoebel, “Clothing and Ornament,” in Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, ed. Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Bubolz Eicher (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965), 16. Tanning often produces what is commonly referred to as “bikini lines” on the naked body—markings which visually and materially recreate Hollander’s idea of nude bodies wearing the ghosts of absent clothing. Alison Susan Pate, interview with author, 10 January 1992, New York City. “Kenneth,” an exotic dancer for La Bare in Houston, interview with author, 11 April 1990, Houston, Texas. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Penguin Books, 1977). Here, Berger attempts to make a distinction between a mystical, authentic, or natural nakedness and the artificialities that constitute the nude figures of most representations resulting from Western capitalism and its practices of production and consumption. Brownmiller op. cit. (1985, 1999); Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1991); Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1992); idem, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How to Use It (New York: Random House 1994); idem, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood (New York: FAWC, 1998); Elizabeth Haiken, Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Throughout her

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83 84 85

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book, Haiken sees cosmetic surgery as a means to exact social conformity. In her chapter, “The Michael Jackson Factor: Race, Ethnicity, and Cosmetic Surgery,” Haiken suggests that women of color are caught in the immigrants’ struggle to not only “keep up with the Jones” but look like them too (157–227). See also Jill M.Duquaine’s discussion of the music video industry’s promotion of impossible cultural standards of female beauty, women’s hatred of their bodies, and male violence directed at women in “Women Objectified: Gender, Violence, and Mass Media,” Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources 20, no. 2, 31 January 1999:10. Kevin Colleary, “Tarzan Bulks Up,” The New York Times, 22 June 1999: sec. A: 27. See also Harrison G.Pope Jr., Katharine A.Phillips, and Roberto Olivardia, The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession (New York: The Free Press, 2000). The three psychiatrist-authors write about men’s unhealthy preoccupation with unattainable body ideals. Despite Colleary’s concerns about men’s health in terms of their bodies and self-esteem, historically women have been forced to bear the brunt of the damaging physical adjustments to the body—again from corsets and foot-binding to genital mutilation. Butler, Gender Trouble, 139, 147. “Megan,” New York City exotic dancer, interview with author, New York City, 10 June 1997. Similar statements about women exerting social and personal control over their bodies through “extra-ordinary” tinkerings and manipulations (e.g., tattoos and body building) are voiced in Ophira Edut, ed., Body Outlaws: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity, with a Foreword by Rebecca Walker (Seattle, Washington: Seal Press, 2000), 201–210, 211–218. This book was originally published under the title Adios Barbie!, but Edut and Seal Press were forced to change the name because Mattel filed suit. Edut’s collection points out the self-esteem problems created in young women by our Barbie culture. However, cultural celebrity Cindy Jackson (an American woman who has had 29 plastic surgeries in order to become a living Barbie Doll) insists that her body now represents “the ultimate feminist statement.” In her words, “I refuse to let nature decide my fate”, Jackson quoted in Stephen T.Asma, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Work in Progress,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 January 2001, sec. B:17–18. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985): 76, 78. Irigaray insists that women who take on a look or stance of hyperfemininity frequently convert “a form of subordination into an affirmation” (78); Mary Anne Doane, “Film and Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” Screen 23, nos. 3–4, 1982:74–87; idem, “Masquerade Reconsidered: Further Thoughts on the Female Spectator,” Discourse 11, no. 1, 1989:42–54; also cited in Williams, Hard Core, 214. Williams states that this “masquerade of femininity” is not only a strategy used by women as a defense against a position of fixed female masochism and passivity, but it (and by extension, femininity itself) is “actually an oscillation within sadomasochism which is not identical to pure passivity.” For less theoretical and current feminist defenses of women’s pursuit of beauty or hyperfemininity, see Karen Lehrman, The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex, & Power in the Real World (New York: Anchor Books, 1998); Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1999). The basic stance here is that feminine “beauty” is in equal parts “fun” (i.e., auto-erotically or narcissistically pleasing to its possessors) and (as it always has been) potentially a material tool of power for women and men alike. See, for example, “Mayo Clinic Office Visit: Auto Immune Diseases, an Interview with Dr Sherine E.Gabriel,” Supplement to Mayo Clinic Women’s Healthsource, October

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1999. Dr Gabriel states that auto-immune diseases are probably caused by a mix of reasons and triggers—genetic, hormonal, and environmental: To get an autoimmune disease, first you have to be genetically susceptible. Then you have to be exposed to an environmental trigger, such as a virus. These two are seen as keys. If that happens when your hormones are in a particular state (such as during pregnancy), that could push you over. I don’t think the cause will turn out to be one thing. It will be a combination of factors.

88 89

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91 92 93 94

Other studies and books on the American breast implant débâcle include Nora Jacobson, Cleavage: Technology, Controversy, and the Ironies of the Man-Made Breast (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000); H.J.Roberts, MD, Breast Implants or Aspartame (Nutrasweet Disease?): The Suppressed Opinion About Perceived Medicolegal Travesty (West Palm Beach, Florida: Sunshine Sentinel Press, 1999); Marcia Angell, MD, Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1997). See also transcripts of the FDA regulation of medical devices, including the status of breast implants: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations and the Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, 1 August 1995. For reports that refuse to accept the analyses of the Mayo Clinic, the American Medical Society, and the British Ministry of Health, see “Betrayed: Breast Implants: One Woman’s Nightmare” (author anonymous), in HUES: Hear Us Emerging Sisters 3, no. 1, 31 July 1997:44; Hallie Levine, “When Good Implants Go Bust: Docs now question safety of even saline-filled devices,” The New York Post, 16 March 2000:30–33. For a recent work that views both cosmetic surgeons and their clients as victims of impossible cultural standards of beauty, see Deborah A.Sullivan, Cosmetic Surgery: The Cutting Edge of Commercial Medicine in America (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001). Alev Aktar, “Perker Uppers,” The Daily News, 31 August 2000:67. Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, 1998). Peiss states that “when women put on a face, they continue to express ideas of naturalness and artifice, authenticity and deception, propriety and danger, modernity and tradition” (270). Foucault views the body as a key site for disciplinary practices, for the kind of social surveillance that turns bodies (and sexualities) into properly classed citizens. But for Foucault, the body is always, at the same time, a site of resistance. See Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); idem, The History of Sexuality,Volume One: An Introduction (1976); idem, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume Two (1984). Irene Lacher, “Girls of a Feather,” Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1991, sec. E:3. Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes, 178. Cowie, 138–139. Jennifer Wicke, “Through a Gaze Darkly: Pornography’s Academic Market,” in Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson, eds, Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, and Power, with an introduction by Carol J.Clover (London: British Film Institute, 1993). Wicke states that “objectification in the liminal form of images or words encountered in private may in fact be a sine qua non of desire; how this is translated into social relations of equality and justice is a pressing issue, if not the pressing issue” (79). Jill Dolan has contemplated this idea as well. But she has suggested that the only way around replicating the potentially degrading power of such a (male) gaze, and the

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only true form of mutual desire, would have to be lesbian. Dolan, “Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat,” 63–64. Towards the end of this essay, Dolan also states: “Rather than gazing through the representational window at their commodification as women, lesbians are generating and buying their own desire on a different representational economy. Perhaps the lesbian subject can offer a model for women spectators that will appropriate the male gaze” (64). Stoller suggests that all instances of sexual excitement turn on fantasies structured like a playwright’s plot, no matter how perverse or normal, elaborate or casual (Observing the Erotic Imagination, 49). See also similar ideas in Laplanche and Pontalis, 26–29. 4 CHOREOGRAPHY I: THE BASIC MOVES

1 2 3

4

5 6

7

8

Hanna, Dance, Sex, and Gender, 22. Butler, Gender Trouble, 140, 33. See, for example, Ray Birdwhistell, Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion and Communication (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970); Nancy M. Henley, Body Politics: Power, Sex, and Nonverbal Communication, with drawings by Deirdre Patrick (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1977); Clara Mayo and Nancy M.Henley, eds, Gender and Nonverbal Behavior (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1981); and Judith Hall, Nonverbal Sex Differences: Communication Accuracy and Expressive Style (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). The modern vogue for the study of human body language and non-verbal behavior began in the early 1960s. It attracted considerable popular attention from the 1970s to the mid- 1980s. However, in recent times, social scientists have all but ignored this area of research. See also Hanna’s compilation of the findings of these researchers in her tables, “SexRelated Traits in America” and (Western) “Stereotypic Nonverbal Gender Behavior” in Dance, Sex and Gender, 11, 160–161. Contrary to the above findings, Hall proposes that the smaller and more detailed movements generally used by women may not be simple demonstrations of their subordination to men. Rather, women’s body language may be smaller and more nuanced because females as a group focus on communication goals more than males (126–127). Hanna, Dance, Sex and Gender, 11, 160–161. “Angel,” a dancer in Montreal, interview with author, Montreal, July 1992. See also Dragu, “Consumer’s Guide to Strippers,” in Dragu and Harrison, 32. According to Dragu, “jockette” strippers titillate and “shock” their audiences because they transgressively combine overtly sexual gestures with the “wholesome, and even virginal air” of athletic types (36). Butler, Gender Trouble, 145. In her later works, Butler revisits this post-structural or deconstructionist idea that the tools of the dominant discourse, used to maintain the traditional binary ways of seeing and thinking about gender and desire, are often the very tools that marginalized communities employ to alter, vary, or undermine the hegemony’s oppressive two-dimensional structures. See, for example, idem, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993); and idem, The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997). Lucinda Jarrett, Stripping in Time: A History of Erotic Dancing (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 59–83; A. Owen Aldridge, “American Burlesque at Home and Abroad: Together with the Etymology of Go-Go Girl,” Journal of Popular Culture 5, no. 3 (Winter 1971):569; Gladstone, 8–9; William Green, “Strippers and Coochers— the Quintessence of American Burlesque,” in David Mayer and Kenneth Richards, eds, Western Popular Theatre: A Symposium Sponsored by the Manchester University Department of Drama (London: Methuen and Company, Ltd., 1980), 160–162; Sobel, 57–60; Zeidman, 36, 43, 61, 173; Hanna, Dance, Sex and Gender, 62–64; Robert C. 218

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10

11

12 13

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16 17 18

Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, foreword by Alan Trachtenberg (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 228–232. Ibid. Jarrett notes that many historians who cite the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair as the harbinger of the strip show point to a single dancer, who called herself “Little Egypt” (rather than six dancers from different parts of the Middle East as court records indicate). Jarrett insists that there is no extant documentation that verifies that a single star dancer called Little Egypt existed during the time period of the Exposition. However, years later one of the six dancers of record, Fahreda Mahzur, insisted that she was the original “Little Egypt” of the 1893 Exposition. Mahzur also stated that she considered the name “Little Egypt” to be insulting—a racial slur—because Egypt, like the United States, is the name of a country and not the name of a girl. As Jarrett puts it, regardless of the source, “the name ‘Little Egypt’ came to signify the eroticism and mystery of the Orient. The dark unconquered sexuality of the North African coast was tamed and domesticated only by the addition of the diminutive ‘little’ before the word ‘Egypt’” (60). In addition to the popular entertainment formats that included the “low art” of “cooch” dancing, Mary Garden presented her “high culture” version of the “Dance of the Seven Veils” at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City in Richard Strauss’s Salome in 1907. Sobel, 117, 122; Zeidman, 63. Allen, 248; Rowland Barber, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960); Boles and Garbin, 42; Boles, “Stripping for a Living,” Afterword in Marilyn Suriani Futterman, Dancing Naked in the Material World (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992), 124; Corio, 72–74; Gladstone, 9. Again, for a concise summary of the jazz era and its cross-cultural and racial exchanges, flappers, dances, and youthful rebellion, see op. cit., Flexner and Soukhanov, Speaking Freely, 334–339; Torgovnick, Gone Primitive; Douglas, Terrible Honesty, Gerard, Jazz in Black and White. Zeidman, 142. The “bump,” the “grind,” the “shimmy,” and the “strut” are listed in the appendix of H. M.Alexander’s 1938 book, Strip Tease: The Vanished Art of Burlesque, under the heading “Glossary of Burlesque Slang.” Theatre historian Zeidman lauds Hinda Wassau as the first stripteaser to specialize in running her hands over her entire body in autoerotic ecstasy (155–156). Alexander discusses the merits of strippers who project “personality” through their facial expressions as well as their bodies (120). How to Strip for Your Man, L.Suarez/La Gioconda Enterprises, Ltd., 1987, videocassette. This video was still on the market in self-help and adult video catalogues in the year 2000. I attended one of Hart’s workshops for straight women and lesbians. I also interviewed her and a number of the participants before and after the workshop. Veronica Hart, “How to Strip for Your Lover” workshop, New York City, sponsored by the Learning Annex, 18 July 1990. Many clubs for men allow customers to sit directly around the stages and bars. Because of the customers’ proximity to the action, female strippers who perform “floor work” are often able to “dance” within a few inches of the patrons’ faces, while being partially obscured from the view of the other spectators further away. This set-up promotes a pretense of privacy for the dancer’s closest patrons. In theory, it also makes it easier for dancers to illegally flash their genitals or nipples. However, in the cities and clubs where such exposure is forbidden, most female strippers who gyrate on the floor or right next to their customers never really engage in this practice. Instead, they tease their patrons by pretending that they are about to reveal their contraband parts, but then never follow through. Watters, interview with author, 10 April 1990, Houston, Texas. Flexner and Soukhanov, 334–339. Zeidman, 115; Lee, 194.

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24 25

26

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28 29 30 31

The Hangar Club, 13–15 February 1992, Camp Springs, Maryland (just outside of Washington, DC). “Superman” in Males in Motion, op. cit. Roger Horrocks, Masculinity in Crisis: Myths, Fantasies, and Realities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 160. Zeidman, 155–156. In her discussions about porn films and displays of violence, Linda Williams suggests that staged violence or torture in films and in contractual sexual play is exciting for some viewers and participants because it produces, like orgasm, involuntary spasms of the body. Since women’s orgasms are hidden even from the eye of the camera, staged “violence” can make the hidden mimetically visible (Hard Core, 194, 203–204). Hanna, Dance, Sex and Gender, 11. See for example, David D.Gilmore, Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990). Hall also makes the point that men in many Western cultures attempt to avoid any movements and gestures that may appear too sensual or delicate for fear of being labeled “feminine” or worse (119). John Money, Gay, Straight, and In-between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 128–129. See also the work of T.Perper, which Money uses in his analysis; Perper, Sex Signals: The Biology of Love (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: ISI Press, 1985). As noted, I attended one of Hart’s workshop (18 July 1990), and also interviewed Hart and a number of the other participants before and after the workshop. I also spoke with Hart and several of the workshop members by telephone several days later. Hart stated that she usually had 20–30 female students in every class. On the evening I attended, several women arrived directly from work and had to negotiate the various moves of the dance dressed in conservative business suits. About one-third of the participants insisted that they were actively contemplating stripping as a career or as a temporary break from their current careers. Several other women reported that they decided to attend the workshop because they had always wanted to go to a strip club, but were “too afraid” or did “not have the nerve” to do so. Two participants of the 30 attendees identified themselves as lesbians who were taking the workshop to “wow” lovers. PIX’s “Geraldo” on “All-Male National Dancathon,” air date 24 May 1988, Journal Graphics, transcript #177. Re-aired a number of times during the early 1990s. Again, the vogue for research on female and male body language and human nonverbal communication was in high gear from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Currently there seems to be very little interest this field. Henley, 164–166; Hall, 78, 84. For differences between aggressive staring and visual attention see Henley, 151–154. Hall, 84. For a discussion on data that indicates that high status people receive more looks from others and gaze less in return, see Virginia P.Richmond, James C.McCroskey, and Steven K.Payne, NonVerbal Behavior in Interpersonal Relations (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987), 78–83. For gaze aversion as a marker of defiance or chastisement of the looker, see, for example, Richmond, McCroskey, and Payne, 75–80; M.von Cranach, “The Role of Orienting Behavior in Human Interaction,” in A.H.Esser, ed., Behavior and Environment: The Use of Space by Animals and Men (New York: Plenum, 1971), 217–237; R.V.Exline and B.J.Fehr, “The Assessment of Gaze and Mutual Gaze,” in K.R.Schere and P.Ekman, eds, Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982), 91–135. In light of data that suggests that women as a group both look more and receive more looks than men, Henley rhetorically asks how women could be subordinate and superior at the same time. She posits that women typically gaze more than men to protect and advance themselves by taking the time to carefully “read” the cues of others (154).

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35

36 37

38 39

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41 42 43

44 45

Hall also acknowledges the part gender plays in looking and social power, but she takes a much firmer stance against viewing the many verbal and non-verbal interactions between men and women, men and men, and women and women through the lens of “oppression theories” alone (148–154). Money, 128–129. Beverlee Hills, featured stripper, The Doll House (later renamed New York Dolls), June 1990; Hills, interview with author, June 1990, New York City. The dancers’ “Uh-oh-I-have-an-Erection” routine was so prevalent in the clubs of Montreal during the early 1990s, that one could assume that most performers were acting. When I asked a number of dancers from the Bar Apollon and Club 281 whether this bit was “real” or pretend none of them deigned to answer the question directly. Instead, most smiled or laughed, and a few asked me whether I thought their erections were “real,” or whether I was “turned-on” by watching them perform. For further discussion about these routines in terms of how they question social authority and complicate the traditional phallic symbolism of the penis, see Chapter 6. Henley, 151–152. Norman Ashcraft and Albert E.Scheflen also have suggested that prolonged, direct eye-contact in Western societies is an invitation for engagement on the part of the looker, Ashcraft and Scheflen, People Space: The Making and Breaking of Human Boundaries (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press, 1976), 12. “Candy,” a stripper and assistant manager for the Seattle Lusty Lady club, telephone conversation with author, April 2001. Some feminist critics such as Brownmiller liken the wearing of high heels in the West to the shackles of prisoners. Brownmiller, Femininity, 184–186. However, for some women and men, high heels as sex tools or “spikes” in sexual play can also signify female dominance. Henley, 171–175; Hall, 62. The historical development of the porn film industry, and its later interest in and attempts of depicting female pleasure and desire, are the central theme of Williams’s book, Hard Core. According to Williams, the porn industry’s belated obsession with female sexual desire and satisfaction is not limited to the X-rated films produced by women for lesbians, straight women, or heterosexual couples. It is also evidenced in the films produced by men that target traditional straight male audiences. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 43–52. Lacqueur also notes that the claim that female orgasm was necessary for conception, while commonly believed by the public and championed by midwives, was challenged throughout the ages by both philosophers and medical doctors (66–70). Cowie, 146–147. For further discussion about dancers with sexual orientations that differ from that of their audiences, see Chapter 2 of this book. Susan G.Cole, “Pornography: What Do We Want?,” in Good Girls/Bad Girls: Feminists and Sex Trade Workers Face to Face, Proceedings of a Toronto Conference on the Politics of Prostitution and Pornography, 22–24 November 1985, ed. Laurie Bell (Toronto: Seal Press, 1987), 160–161. Phelan, Unmarked, 148, 152–153. Schneider, 92–104. Here, Schneider is referring specifically to the images of “dream girls” used in popular advertisements to sell cars, chocolate, liquor, suntan lotion, and so on. But in other chapters of her book, The Explicit Body in Performance, she also discusses female sex trade workers in similar terms. Schneider attempts to distinguish the passive dream girls used in mainstream advertising and pornography for men from the images produced by radical feminist porn stars and contemporary performance artists who, unlike their presumably more conventional or retro sisters, use their bodies to interrogate social norms and habituated ways of seeing (51, 67–83, 107–117).

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48 49 50 51 52 53

Schneider, 94–95. Schneider’s analysis of late twentieth-century capitalism, and the insatiable desire to accumulate goods that it produces, is an intricate reworking of the “keeping up with the Jones’s” trope. The Jones’s trope of capitalism dovetails with Lacanian theories because its driving force is also predicated upon “lack” or perceived “lack.” However, Schneider’s formulation cannot account for all the dynamics of desire that surround the consumption of pornographic or other fantasy entertainments. Unlike the insatiable desire of the capitalistic market place (which, like gambling, also has its own satisfactions and highs in terms of the experience of the pleasure of anticipating “killings”), desiring to desire in erotic fantasy is often the endpoint or the main satisfaction of the enterprise. As discussed in previous chapters, the porn customer’s experience of desiring to desire may include the pleasure of identifying with and playing a number of contradictory roles in the process of fantasizing. In taking up such contradictory roles and positions (whose inconsistencies, in turn, also may interrogate cultural notions of masculinity and femininity), the fantasizer becomes part of a scene of plenitude rather than a scene of lack (however encrusted that scene may be with traditional gender markings). Again Cowie points out that fantasizers typically delay the consummation of the sexual scene for as long as possible to prolong the primary satisfaction of the endeavor, which is the pleasure of titillation. Laplanche and Pontalis posit that it is through the pleasure and titillation of fantasy, through the experience of desire and yearning that we become wholly sexual human beings. Thus sexual desire, even as it is drawn and articulated in mainstream culture, cannot be understood merely as a historically marked drive of Lacanian lack. Laplanche and Pontalis, 5–28; Cowie 134–137. Schneider, 104. Debi Sundahl, 176–177. See also Dolan’s citation of part of Sundahl’s discussion on this topic in “Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat,” 63. Seph Weene, “Venus” in Heresies 3, no. 4, 1981:36. Lily Burana, panel member for “Strip Tease: Art, Pornography, and the Wages of the Skin,” The Speaking Out series at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Bruno Walter Auditorium Lincoln Center, New York City, 7 March 1996. Dolan, “Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat,” 63–64; The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 79– 81; Sundahl, “Stripper” in Alexander and Delacoste, 175–180. Harrison, in Dragu and Harrison, 82. 5 CHOREOGRAPHY II: STRUCTURE, PLEASURE, AND “CONFESSIONAL” NARRATIVES OF THE BODY

1 2

3 4

5

McClintock, “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap,” 125. The Bar Apollon, Club 281, and La Bare strip events for female spectators fall somewhere in between this gendered difference in the length of the show. Because their events range from four to six hours long, they also include both formally choreographed and improvised strip routines and table dances. See again, for example, Cowie, 134–136; Laplanche and Pontalis, 27–28. Exotic dance acts performed by “Starr,” Triple Treat Theatre, Show World, New York City, 2 June 1990. Again most strippers work without health benefits or other jobrelated compensations so Starr’s experiment may well have been due to boredom, illness, or exhaustion, or a combination of factors. But her two contrasting routines, along with the audience’s reactions to them, very clearly affirmed the primacy of spectacle in producing sexual desire and pleasure for the male patrons at Show World. Georges Bataille, Eroticism: Death & Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957; repr., San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986), 40–48, 94–108, 164– 178; Susan Sontag, “The Pornographic Imagination,” in Styles of Radical Will (New

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9

10

York: Delta, 1981), 58–73; Michel Foucault, “Preface to Transgression,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. Donald F.Bouchard, trans. Donald F.Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), 35, 29–52. See, for example, Schneider, 79; Neo-Bakhtinian theorists, including Laura Mulvey (during her “middle period”) and Jaye Berman, suggest that traditional social hierarchies are continuously riven by rebellious figures, carnival-like events, and culturally “grotesque” representations because some of their violations of conventional mores are eventually absorbed into the “ordinary” world— thus creating ever-new (and sometimes more progressive) versions of the “status quo.” Mulvey insists that the “disruptive desire” expressed through “the gestures, emblems, and metaphors of carnivalesque ritual can provide an almost invisible breeding ground for a language of protest and resistance.” Berman observes that rebellious characters may offer a means to critique dominant culture. Mulvey, 169–171; Jaye Berman, “A Quote of Many Colors: Women and Masquerade in Donald Barthelme’s Postmodern Parody Novels,” in Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic, 28–29. As discussed in Chapter 3 on the body and costume, Mario Perniola proposes that representations of partially clad bodies are arousing for women and men alike, not because they offer spectators positions of absolute control over the mimetic scene, but because they create an arc of action that moves the viewers and the subjects of the representation “from one state to another.” This cycle or movement, which Perniola names “the transit,” ends only upon the spectators’ disengagement from the representation (237). Schneider, 79–80; Gertrude Koch, “The Body’s Shadow Realm,” trans. Jan Christopher Horak and Joyce Rheuban, October 50 (Fall 1989):3–29, cited in Schneider, 79–80. As Schneider describes it, “perspectivalism” encourages the viewers to remain detached from the scene—to disavow their ability to enter the action imaginatively. Thus the subject/objects of the viewers’ desire also remain forever outside their grasp, disappearing at the “vanishing point” of the scene’s horizon. The vanishing point helps to produce the scene’s “perspective” or illusion of three-dimensions—a “realness” that piques the viewers’ desire to desire the objects and satisfactions offered by the scene—objects and satisfactions that simultaneously always seem to be just beyond the viewers’ grasp. In this way, the viewer/fantasizers are never really satisfied—and it is their inevitable and unceasing lack of satisfaction that in turn supports the commodity market of capitalism (64–79). Schneider also cites Koch’s proposition that men indulge in pornography to try to discover the woman’s “secret penis”—which, of course, is never found. The male viewer’s disappointment in the ever-elusive female phallus has to be appeased by the porn film’s endless displays of male erections, potency, and “cum shots” (i.e., men ejaculating outside of the woman’s body), which in the end have the effect of also returning the viewer’s attention to his own castration anxiety. This anxiety detaches him from the mimetic action and encourages him to objectify the subjects of the scene to maintain a sense of control. However, as this chapter discusses, the narratives and structures of many strip routines materially demonstrate the means by which dream figures, pornographic or otherwise, can satisfyingly linger in the scopic field and mimetic arms of the spectating fantasizers. McClintock describes porn as a “theatrical performance of sexual risk, ritually staging pleasure and danger under remote control” (“Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap,” 125). Here, one can infer that McClintock is not discussing control in terms of the viewer’s domination over the scene and its subjects, but rather as a way to ensure safety for oneself so that one can enjoy the experience of risk.

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Jan Marsh, quoted in Joseph Mitchell, “The Strip-Tease to Storm B’Way,” New York World-Telegraph, 21 April 1937, unpaginated (The Billy Rose Theatre Collection). Erik Lee Preminger, Gypsy & Me: At Home and On the Road with Gypsy Rose Lee (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 1984), 10–11, 14–19. See, for example, Brownmiller’s discussions on pornography in In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999); Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991); MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987). Here, MacKinnon goes so far as to propose that the right to an “abortion facilitates women’s heterosexual availability” (99). Linda Grant is far more circumspect in her discussion about the existence, value, and problems created by the Sexual Revolution. She reminds her readers that there were, in fact, two revolutions, the heterosexual revolution inspired by the advent of the Pill, and the Stonewall rebellion and gay pride movement that outwardly “legalized” homosexuality. Grant states that, despite the continuing bigotry, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have actively worked to keep their revolution alive—while the lazier heterosexuals—lazier because they complacently viewed their new found freedoms as a right—have all but allowed the revolutionary flames to die out. Women remain under the threat of rape; sexually active teenage girls are still called sluts by their friends and boyfriends; birth control is not yet foolproof and remains women’s responsibility; and “anyone can possess a woman now, through sex, through pornography, through ‘suburban transvestism.’” Grant, Sexing the Millennium: Women and the Sexual Revolution (New York: Grove Press 1994), 1–19. Jervis, Sex Issue of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 2, no. 1, 30 April 1997; Matrix and the Feminist Against Censorship Staff, eds, Tales from the Clit: A Female Experience of Pornography (San Francisco, California: AK Press, 1996); Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 125–145; Sallie Tisdale, Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1–17, 133–140, 147–150; Segal, Straight Sex, 309–318, Williams, Hard Core, 256–329; and Cowie, 132–152. Butler v. Regina, 1 S.C.R. (1992, Canada). Bordo, 198–199. In other words, as 1 have argued throughout this book, fantasy and pornography may function, not simply as foreplay or a substitute for coitus, but as the “main event,” the primary sexual pleasure and satisfaction for the actant. Phelan, 148, 152–153. Paul Derval, The Folies Bergère, trans. Lucienne Hill (London: Methuen, 1955); quoted in Charles Castle, The Folies Bergère (London: Methuen London Ltd., 1982; repr., New York: Franklin Watts, 1985), 96–97. Schneider, 72. Gladstone, 10; Zeidman, 158. Here It Is, Burlesque! 90 min., 1979, Home Box Office, Vestron Video, videocassette. Michael Taussig discusses Marx’s theory of commodity fetish in terms of Walter Benjamin’s optimistic view that the “new” mimetic machinery of the camera will make us more aware of how the representational apparatus operates. In Taussig’s words, mimesis is both “a copying or imitation, and a palpable, sensuous, connection between the very body of the perceiver and the perceived.” Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993), 20–32. Marx’s optical analogy suggests that when we see a copy of something, we see it as an entity unto itself—we lose track of how we co-produce what we see in the very act of looking. Therefore the commodity objects of the marketplace exert great power over us. Benjamin suggests that the mimetic power of the camera—and, in particular, how the camera is used in advertising—paradoxically can make us more aware of the

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36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43

contact-sensuousness (or our co-production) of the objects we see and desire. This is so because advertising is aimed at hitting us between the eyes, at viscerally touching our minds and bodies. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 72; Walter Benjamin, “A Small History of Photography,” One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. E.Jephcott and K.Shorter (London: New Left Books, 1979), 234–244; idem, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), 222–240; all also cited in Taussig. Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women’s Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 180, also cited in Schneider, 75. Deignan 28–30. Deignan also points out that, in much of fiction, desire is described in terms of external physical forces that are also beyond one’s immediate control (e.g., a torrent of passion, a wave of desire, a fever of desire, falling in love, etc.). “Jane,” a customer at Chippendales, interview with author, Los Angeles, Summer 1990. Alexander, 40–41. Gladstone, 7, 11. See also “Katz” performing in The Unveiling, a documentary on contemporary striptease, Rodney Evans, dir., US (1996, BW & C-60mm). Stripper, dir. Jerome Gary, US (1985, C-90 mins.). Griffin, 217. Carol Vance, ed., Introduction to Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston, Massachusetts: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 1–3. Vance lists rape, battering, sexual harassment, and being labeled a whore as a few of the social and personal risks women must endure in their pursuit of sexual agency and pleasure. Nina Hartley quoted in Rose Dean, “Women and Porn,” San Francisco Weekly, 19 July 1989:7. See also Stoller’s interview with Hartley in Stoller, Porn: Myths for the Twentieth Century (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1991), 137–154. Hollander, Sex and Suits, 176. Reid Gilbert states that if men pose as sexual objects without suggesting a conspicuous stance of masculine control, those images will often include visual “punishments” for the model’s infractions of gender norms. Gilbert, “That’s Why I Go to the Gym: Sexual Identity and the Body of the Male Performer,” Theatre Journal 46, no. 4, 1994:483. A rebroadcast of a clip from NBC’s Donahue on NBC’s “Channel 4, 11:00 (p.m.) News,” air date 11 February 1992. Stoller, Observing the Erotic Imagination, vii. Deignan, 30, 40. Williams, 194. Judy Burns, “Wild Bodies/Wilder Minds: Streb/Ringside and Spectacle,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 7, no. 1 (1994):104, 108, 110, 112. Ibid., 104, 108, 110, 112. In this article Burns discusses the idea of “wildness” in terms of the work of performance artist and choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her dance group. Stripped to Kill I and II, dir. Katt Shea Ruben, Concorde videocassette, US (1987, 1989, 83 min.); Ladykillers, dir. Robert Lewis, with actors Marilu Henner, Leslie-Ann Down, Joan Collins, Susan Blakely, Barry Weitz, ABC Circle Films, US (air date 9 November 1988, C-90 min.). See also John J.O’Conner, “Male Strippers in ‘Ladykillers’ on ABC,” New York Times, 9 November 1988, sec. C:26; Lady of Burlesque, dir. William Wellman US (1943, BW-91 min.), adaptation of Gypsy Rose Lee’s 1942 novel (presumably ghost-written by Craig Rice), The G-String Murders (New York: Penguin, 1984). Here Butler states that she is making a “poststructuralist appropriation” of Mary

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Douglas’s theory of the social body. Douglas insists that we understand or view the body in terms of the cultural taboos placed on it. Therefore the boundaries of the body signify the limits of social control. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London, Boston, Massachusetts, and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969), 4, 113, cited in Butler, 131. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, s.v. “die.” Bataille, 40–48, 94–108, 164–178; Sontag, 58–73. See also Jessica Benjamin, “The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination,” Feminist Studies 6, no. 1 (Spring 1980):144–171; idem, The Bonds of Love, 51–84. See David Buchbinder’s analyses of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and in the later novels of Ann Rice in Buchbinder, Performance Anxieties: Re-Producing Masculinity (Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 83–92, 171–176. Buchbinder points out that the “undead,” or female and male vampires of Stoker’s novel, break all the rules of Victorian gender decorum. Good strong males are rendered the passive victims of aggressive female predators. Male vampires are sustained and enthralled by their female victims who, in turn, become vampires themselves. In Rice’s stories, the homoerotic aspects of the vampire are at the center of the plot. 6 PERFORMING SPECTATORS: THE PLEASURE OF MIMETIC JEOPARDY

1 2

3 4

5

6 7 8

9 10 11

Jay Bildstein, “How to Own, Manage, Run or Even Dance in a Topless Bar,” lecture presented at the St Moritz, New York City, sponsored by the Learning Annex, 1 June 1992. While Dolan notes that the relations between female strippers and male spectators are “complex and subtle, as power circulates between the two positions,” she ultimately posits that exotic dancing acts produce male spectator pleasure because they offer men the experience of control over women. Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 65. For an abbreviated discussion, see also Dolan, “Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat,” 59–65. Dolan, 64–65. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 268–269. For similar discussions see also Richard Schechner, The End of Humanism (New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1982), 28–29; Susan Bennett, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (New York: Routledge, 1990), 114. Goffman builds his general theory of mimetic jeopardy and action in entertainment events on Michael Balint’s concept of the “thrill” in Balint, Thrills and Transgressions (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1959), 23–24; cited in Goffman, 197. Flash Dancers, New York City, 6 April 1991. Nelson Foote, “Sex as Play,” Social Problems 1 (April 1954):161. The Harmony Theatre house rules were explained by Dominique, the owner-manager of the club, interview with author, New York City, 28 May 1990. I also noted, when observing the strip events at the Harmony in May 1990, the strict adherence to these rubrics. “Al,” a patron of New York strip clubs, interview with author, New York City, January 1993. N.Ryder, Sin City: An Unusual Guide to New York (New York: Nautilus Books Inc., 1990), 41. A reader of an early version of this chapter asked me whether the woman involved in this interaction wasn’t really a “plant”—that is, a person who was paid or asked by someone in the Chippendales show to act out this routine. The woman from New Jersey and her companion (both of whom requested to remain nameless) reported that while

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13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24

they were in fact strip club regulars, no one had coached them or asked them to perform in this act. However, even if these patrons had been less than honest in their description of their relationship with the show, the scene they helped produce on stage nevertheless still featured a narrative about oscillating roles of surrender and control in sexual play. There is a tendency for female striptease spectators to behave “aggressively” and a tendency for male striptease spectators to behave “passively.” However, some women sit quietly through an entire show, while some college boys who visit strip clubs on weekend nights, along with the other occasional male patrons, may be far more rowdy than the regular attendees. Keith McWalter, “Couch Dancing,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, 6 December 1987:138. Trinity Lopez, featured exotic dancer, 10:30 p.m. show, Triple Treat Theatre in Show World, New York City, 3 November 1990. In general, the managers and owners of most contemporary clubs support the dancers’ decisions about their interactions with patrons. Managers in clubs that feature “drink hustling” may monitor and reward dancers in terms of the amount of liquor they sell, but they will usually only intervene or chastise performers if the dancers break the law or are overtly abusive to customers— such as cursing at or attempting to physically harm them. Clubs that featured table-dancing performances for male patrons included Rick’s, Caligula’s, the Men’s Club, and the Colorado in Houston; Big Al’s in Peoria; Cabaret Showgirls, Cabaret Penthouse, Le Sexe Scandal, and Le Super Sexe in Montreal; and Scores, Flash Dancers, Show World’s Big Top Lounge, Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum, and Goldfingers in New York City. La Bare in Houston, and Club 281 and the Bar Apollon in Montreal featured table-dancing entertainments for female patrons. Valerie Steele writes in her essay on the erotic appeal of women’s clothing, “the more intimate the connection between body and clothes, the sexier the clothes will be. In a sense, the sexual power and charm of the body ‘rub off’ onto the clothes” (56). Toepfer, 153. “Brian,” a patron of strip clubs in Washington, DC, interview with author, Winter 1992. Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 64. Clubs that featured photo shoots as part of their strip events included Flash Dancers, New York Dolls, Chippendales, and Show World in New York City; Cabaret Showgirls in Montreal; Chippendales in Los Angeles; and the Sugar Shack II in Chicago. “King” and “Eddy,” Show World “regulars,” interview with author, New York City, 2 June 1990. One can speculate that clubs for men ban customers from taking ad hoc pictures of regular house strippers in order to protect the more vulnerable female dancers from later exploitation or harassment on the streets. Because of the double standard and cultural attitude to female sex trade workers in general, it stands to reason that many dancers feel the need to conceal their occupation from family and friends. The very few strip shows and clubs for women that feature all-nude male dancers, such as the Bar Apollon and Club 281, also ban customers from taking ad hoc photographs that may later cause embarassment to the dancers. In contrast, featured female strippers— by virtue of being somewhat “untouchable” vis-à-vis their star status—and by controlling the means and cost of their images, run less risk of harassment and exploitation. Many featured female strippers are also porn stars who have already publicly asserted their right to perform sex work. Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 297. Barbara Freedman, “Frame-Up: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Theatre,” in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 74.

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25 26

27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44

Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 169. Lee, 230, 296–297. Gypsy Rose Lee also joked about the importance of her audience interactions with bald-headed men during her strip acts by stating that she “built a career on heads like that,” Lee quoted in Jack Hamilton, “Gypsy Rose Lee: Dowager Stripper,” Look, 22 February 1966:62. Danny Rogovin, patron of the Satin Angels show, interview with author, New York City, July 1990. Capsule review of the New Paris Revue, “Naked City: The Consumer’s Guide to Erotic Entertainment,” Screw, 28 May 1990:23. “Sheeba,” “Alice,” and other dancers interviewed by author over the course of a number of visits to the New Paris Revue, New York City, May-July 1990. Screw magazine’s review section of topless bars and cabarets used to carefully note the amount of hustling that characteristically occurred in each place of business. According to interviews with dancers, managers, and patrons, drink hustling was a common occurrence in almost all the strip bars and clubs in New York City and elsewhere until about 1992. There appears to be a movement away from this activity, particularly in the more upscale clubs. Watters, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 10–11 April 1990. “Susan”, quoted in Sophie Ben-Shitta, “Susan of Screw Interview with Sophie of Mentertainment, Part I,” Mentertainment, June/July 1992:36. “Steve,” a patron of Rick’s, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 11 April 1990. Frank, “The Production of Identity, and the Negotiation of Intimacy in a ‘Gentleman’s Club,”’ 180, 187–188. Ibid., 190, 193. Ibid., 189, 193. “King” and “Eddy,” Show World patrons and “regulars,” interview with author, Show World, New York City, 2 June 1990. Ron Martin, interview-conversation with author 18 July 1990, New York City. “Carol,” a dancer at Rick’s, interview with author, Houston, Texas, 11 April 1990; follow-up telephone interview with author, summer 1990. Williams, Hard Core, 266. Ibid., 267. Butler, Gender Trouble, 145. At the El Morocco Presents Thee Doll House in New York City, one stripper employed a different tactic to control the behavior of her patrons. She refused to disrobe during her set and performed her act fully clothed in an evening gown and gloves because a few of the patrons were laughing and not tipping enough (Thee Doll House, Errol Flynn Dining Room stage, 17 October 1992). As another exotic dancer noted on CBS’s Jane Whitney Show, the old adage “the customer is always right” does not apply to strip shows. The Jane Whitney Show on “Strip clubs,” CBS, 16 October 1992. Weene, 37. 7 EPILOGUE AS INTERMEZZO: THE SAGA OF THE STRIP SHOW, OR THE BATTLES OVER SEXUAL REPRESENTATION RAGE ON…

1 2 3 4

Ramirez, 4. Angela Tribelli, “Burlesque’s Back, a Step Ahead of the Law,” The Sunday New York Times, 4 October 1998, sec. 9:4. Yo Mama’s Last Supper by Rene Cox (1996) was exhibited at the Brookyn Museum of Art, February–April 2001. It suggests the bibical scene of the Last Supper with a slender, beatific-looking nude woman (Cox herself) as the Christ-figure. See Elizabeth Kolbert’s biting commentary on Giuliani’s new “Arts Advisory Panel,” in Kolbert, “Yo Mayor’s Last Panel,” The New Yorker, 16 April 2001:27–28.

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17

18

19 20

Rudolph Giuliani, interviews on WNY1 News All Day (New York City’s local television news channel), January—February 2001. Maggie Haberman, “Rudy Bids to Close Sex-shop Loophole,” The New York Post, 2 January 2001:8; Julia Chaplin, “New Club Dance Craze: Rear-Ending,” The Sunday New York Times (31 December 2000), sec. 9:2. McClintock, “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap,” 113. Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, 68. Masters and Johnson, cited in McCutcheon, 48. Ace Backwords, “Sexley’s Believe It or Nuts” comic strip, Mentertainment NY (June/ July 1992), 27. Coward, 196. Dressler, 68–69. Hartsock, 170; Griffin, 21. Bildstein, “How to Own, Manage, Run…,” St Moritz, New York City, 1 June 1992. For example, Jacqueline Miels Boles suggests that strip clubs are “bad” because they produce a counterfeit of intimacy, “The Nightclub Stripper: A Sociological Study of A Deviant Occupation” (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973). See also Katherine Frank’s debate with Jacqueline Boles on this topic throughout her own doctoral dissertation, “Intimate Labors: Masculinity, Consumption, and Authenticity in Five Gentlemen’s Clubs” (PhD diss., Duke University, 1999). Koch, “The Body’s Shadow Realm,” in Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson (London: BFI Publishers, 1993), 29–30. Stoller, Observing the Erotic Imagination, 49. Again, Stoller insists that all instances of sexual excitement turn on fantasies structured like a playwright’s plot, no matter how perverse or normal, elaborate or casual. See also similar ideas in Laplanche and Pontalis, 26–29. Lee’s act quoted and described by Preminger, 16–18. Gypsy’s routine was also immortalized by John O’Hara in his musical adaptation of his novel, Pal Joey, In the play, newspaper colunmist “Melba” describes her interview with Gypsy Rose Lee as among the strangest of her career as a journalist because Gypsy insisted that when she performs she thinks about everything except sex, including the theories of Schopenhauer. “Melba,” in Lorenz Hart, lyrics, and John O’Hara, Pal Joey (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 181–182. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965), 596. In what some consider Aristotle’s “defense” of theatre in his Poetics, Aristotle suggests that theatre does not deceive its patrons or the actors through its pretenses, because the purpose of theatre is not to copy life, but like poetry, to portray possibility or what may be. “It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened but what may happen.” Aristotle, Book IX in the Poetics, trans. S.H.Butcher, in Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan and Co., 1902), excerpted in Bernard F.Dukore, Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1974), 39. Constantin Stanislavski’s concept of the “Magic As If,” a technique for actors, reiterates Aristotle’s idea about the function of art and theatre as an expression of “possibility.” Stanislavski suggests that the actor creates character, in part, by imagining what she would do if she were in the situation of the character. The “As If’ relieves the actor of having to try to be the character in favor of imagining what it would be like to be in the character’s shoes, herself—and what actions she would then take to deal with the Given Circumstances of the character’s life and situation. Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares (1948), trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, intro. by John Gielgud (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1984), 51–67.

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Books, dissertations, published plays Adonis, Peter. Ladies Night Out: The Best of Male Burlesque/The Peter Adonis Traveling Fantasy Show. New York: Putnam Sons, 1982. Alexander, H.M. Strip Tease: The Vanished Art of Burksque. New York: Knight Publishers, 1938. Allen, Ralph G. “Our Native Theatre: Honky-tonk, Minstrel Shows, Burlesque.” In The American Theater: A Sum of its Parts. Edited and with an introduction by Henry B. Williams. London: Samuel French, Inc., 1971. ——Sugar Babies. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1983. Allen, Robert C. Horrible, Prettiness; Burlesque and American Culture. Foreword by Alan Trachtenberg. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Allyn, David. Make Love, Not War, The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2000. Angell, Marcia. Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1997. Angioli, Michael D. “Body Image Perception and Locus of Control in Semi-Nude and Nude Female Dancers.” PhD diss., United States International University, 1982. Ashcraft, Norman, and Albert E.Scheflen. People. Space: The Making and Breaking of Human Boundaries. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press, 1976. Bailey, Peter, ed. Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1962. ——The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Edited by Michael Holquist. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981. ——Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated and edited by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Balint, Michael. Thrills and Regressions. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1959. Baral, Robert. Revue: A Nostalgic Reprise of the Great Broadway Period. New York: Fleet Press Corporation, 1962. Barber, Rowland. The Night They Raided Minsky’s: A Fanciful Expedition to the Lost Atlantis of Show Business. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. Barnes, Peter. The Ruling Class. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1980.

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Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Noonday Press, 1988. Baruch, Elaine Hoffman. Women, Love and Power: Literary and Psychoanalytic Perspectives. New York: New York University Press, 1991. Bataille, Georges. Eroticism: Death & Sensuality. Translated by Mary Dalwood. San Francisco, California: City Lights Books, 1986. Baudrillard, Jean. L’Échange symbolique et la mort. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. ——The Ecstasy of Communication. Edited by Sylvere Lotringer and translated by Bernard Schutze and Caroline Schutze. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia, 1988. Beautoy, Simon. The Full Monty Handbook: How to Undress for Success. New York: St. Martins Press, 1997. Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis: Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. ——“A Small History of Photography.” In One-Way Street and Other Writings. Translated by E.Jephcott and K.Shorter. London: New Left Books, 1979. Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. New York: Routledge, 1990. Beresky, Andrew, ed. Fodor’s Texas, 7th edn New York: Fodor’s Travel Publications, Inc., 1990. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Berman, Jaye. “A Quote of Many Colors: Women and Masquerade. Donald Barthelme’s Postmodern Parody Novels.” In Feminism, Bakhtin and the Dialogic. Edited by Dale M. Bauer and S.Jaret McKinstry. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. Bernard, Jessie. The Female World. New York: Free Press, 1981. Bildstein, Jay. King of Clubs. New York: Barricade Books, 1996. Birdwhistell, Ray. Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion and Communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Bogatyrev, Petr. “Kro jako znak.” [Costume as a Sign (The Functional and Structural Concept in Ethnography)] Slovo a slovesnost 2 (1936). Translated by Y.Lockwood in Semiotics of Art, edited by Ladislav Matejka and Irwin R.Titunik. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989. Boles, Jacqueline Miels. “The Nightclub Stripper: A Sociological Study of a Deviant Occupation.” PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973. ——“Stripping for a Living.” Afterword for Dancing Naked in the Material World, by Marilyn Suriani Futterman. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992. Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1999. Bosley, Deborah, and Jamie Jensen. The Real Guide: San Francisco and the Bay Area. Edited by Martin Dunford. New York: Prentice-Hall Press, 1991. Bratton, J.S., ed. Music Hall: Performance & Style. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986. Brownmiller, Susan. Femininity. New York: Ballantine Books, Random House, Inc., 1985. ——In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. New York: Random House, Inc., 1999. Buchbinder, David. Performance Anxieties: Re-Producing Masculinity. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998.

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“A Case Concerning Hughes, Letters from Sue-Ellen Case and Holly Hughes.” The Drama Review 33, no. 4 (Winter 1989):10–17. Capsule review of the New Paris Revue. “Naked City: The Consumer’s Guide to Erotic Entertainment.” Screw, 28 May 1990, 23. Chaplin, Julia. “New Club Dance Craze: Rear-Ending.” The Sunday New York Times, 31 December 2000, Sec. 9, p. 2. “Chippendales Stung With Suit.” The New York Post, 8 February 1989, 9. Colleary, Kevin. “Tarzan Bulks Up.” The New York Times, 22 June 1999, sec. A, p. 27. Cooney, Betty M. “State’s Highest Court Reviews The City’s Porn Shop Zoning Law.” Queens Chronicle, 22 January 1998, 4. Cooper, H.E. “Pink Tights—British Blondes.” Dance Magazine, October 1926, 28–29, 50. ——“Glorifying the American Leg.” Dance Magazine, March 1927, 26–27, 56. ——“Variety, Vaudeville, Virtue, Naughty Nineties to Respectability.” Dance Magazine, December 1929. Croce, Arlene. Review of Striptease, by Mark Morris. New Yorker, 1 December 1986, 103. D’Angelo, Laura. “Bumps and Grinds in the Life of a Stripper.” Staten Island Advance, 15 November 1990, sec. C, pp. 1, 3. Davis, George. “Strip Teaser.” Vanity Fair, February 1936, 51. Davis, Hal. “Model ‘Squashed’ by Male Stripper Wins Suit.” The New York Post, 10 November 1990, 5. Davis, Tracy. “The Spectacle of Absent Costume: Nudity on the Victorian Stage.” New Theatre Quarterly 5, no. 20 (November 1989):321–332. Davy, Kate. “Constructing the Spectator: Reception, Context, and Address in Lesbian Performance.” Performing Arts Journal 29 (1986):43–53. Dean, Rose. “Women and Porn.” San Francisco Weekly, 19 July 1989, 7. de Lauretis, Teresa. “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation.” Theatre Journal 40 (1988):169–171. Demuth, Susan. “Get ‘Em Off…Boys!” What’s On in London, 11–18 January 1989, 9. Dewan, Shaila K. “Show World Takes It Off-Off Broadway.” The New York Times, 2 May 2000, sec. B, pp. 1, 10. Dolan, Jill. “‘What No Beans?’: Images of Women and Sexuality in Burlesque Comedy.” Journal of Popular Culture 18 (1984):33–47. ——“Gender Impersonation Onstage: Destroying or Maintaining the Mirror of Gender Roles.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 2, no. 2 (1985):5–11. ——“Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat.” The Drama Review 33 (Spring 1989):59–67. Dressel, Paula L., and David M.Petersen. “Gender Roles, Sexuality, and the Male Strip Show: The Structuring of Sexual Opportunity.” Sociological Focus 15, no. 2 (April 1982):151–162. ——“Equal Time for Women: Social Notes on the Male Strip Show.” Urban Life 11, no. 2 (July 1982):185–208. ——‘Becoming a Male Stripper: Recruitment, Socialization, and Ideological Development.” Work & Occupations 9, no. 3 (August 1982):387–406. Dullea, Georgia. “For the Bachelorette, A Wilder Last Fling.” The New York Times, 13 May 1990, sec. 1, p. 34. Dunning, Jennifer. “Morris, in ‘Mythologies,’ Turns Words into Dance.” The New York Times, 5 May 1987, sec. C, p. 13. Duquaine, Jill M. “Women Objectified: Gender, Violence, and Mass Media.” Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources 20, no. 2, 31 January 1999:10.

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Duval, Betty. “The Strip…for Action.” Dance Magazine, July 1956, 30–33. Fee, Walter. “Bare Market: For New Upscale Topless Clubs, It’s Boom and Bust.” New York Newsday, 20 December 1992, 7, 50, 51. Fetherston, Drew. “Strippers Peel Away Old Image.” New York Newsday, 23 September 1991, 33. Foote, Nelson. “Sex as Play.” Social Problems 1 (April 1954):161. Frank, Katherine L. “The Production of Identity, and the Negotiation of Intimacy in a ‘Gentleman’s Club.”’ Sexualities 1, no. 2 (1998):175–198. Freedley, George. “The Stage Today, Old Howard, Second Oldest Theater in America, New Home of Burlesque.” Morning Telegraph, 8 July 1941. Fuchs, Elinor. “Staging the Obscene Body.” The Drama Review 33, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 33– 58. Fuentes, Annette. “Male bonding, female bondage,” New York Newsday, 21 April 1992, 82. Gabriel, Sherine E. Supplement to Mayo Clinic Women’s Healthsource, October 1999. Gilbert, Reid. “That’s Why I Go to the Gym: Sexual Identity and the Body of the Male Performer.” Theatre Journal 46, no. 4 (1994):477–488. Gladstone, Bill. “Fifty Years of Striptease.” Weekend Magazine, 3 February 1979, 7–11. Goodnough, Abby. “Strip Clubs for Minors? Giuliani Objects,” The New York Times, 6 November 1998, sec. B., p. 4. Greenhouse, Linda. “Justices Uphold Laws Banning Nude Dancing.” The New York Times, 3 March 2000, sec. A, pp. 1, 22. Gross, Michael. “Sex in the ‘90s.” New York Magazine, 8 June 1992, 34–42. Grosskurth, Phyllis. “The New Psychology of Women.” New York Review of Books, 24 October 1991, 25–32. Haberman, Clyde. “Live, Nude, And OK With City Hall.” The New York Times, 15 December 1998, sec. B, p. 1. Haberman, Maggie. “Rudy Bids to Close Sex-shop Loophole.” The New York Post, 2 January 2001, 8. Hanna, Judith Lynne. “Undressing the First Amendment and Corseting the Striptease Dancer.” The Drama Review 42, no. 2 (1998):38–69. ——“Helping Dancers, Helping Business?.” Exotic Dancer Bulletin, February 2000, 52. “High Court Gives States Right to Ban Nudes.” The New York Post, 22/23 June 1991, 51. Hodgetts, Victoria. “Reporter Tries Burlesque: I’ll Cry Tomorrow But I’ll Strip Tonight.” Village Voice, 8 March 1976, 108–109. Hohmann, Marti. “Leatherdykes Under the Skin.” The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review 4, no. 2 (30 April 1997):37–40. Holley, Brandon and Gia Kourlas, and Michael Mailer. “The Naked City.” Time Out/New York, 14–21 November 1996, 7. Jervis, Lisa, Introduction. Sex Issue of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 2, no.1 (30 April 1997):i. Kando, Thomas. “Males, Females, and Transsexuals: A Comparative Study of Sexual Conservatism.” Journal of Homosexuality 1, no. 1 (Fall 1974):45–64. Koch, Gertrude. “The Body’s Shadow Realm.” Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power. Edited by Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson. London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1993. Also translated by Jan Christopher Horak and Joyce Rheuban. In October 50 (Fall 1989):3–29.

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Kolakowski, Leszek. “An Epistemology of the Striptease.” Triquarterly 22 (Fall 1971): 49– 67. Kolbert, Elizabeth. “Yo Mayor’s Last Panel.” The New Yorker, 16 April 2001, 27–28. Kuntzman, Gersh, and Clemente Lisi. “‘60–40’ Ruling Saves Adult stores from XXXtinction.” New York Post, 29 August 1998, 6. Lacher, Irene. “Girls of a Feather: Golden Era Strippers Gather at Their Desert Hall of Fame Reunion.” Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1991, sec. E, pp. 1 and 3. Landman, Beth. “Stringfellows Busts Out of Mold.” The New York Post, 6 December 1991, 43. Levine, Hallie. “When Good Implants Go Bust: Docs now question safety of even salinefilled devices.” The New York Post, 16 March 2000, 30–33. Liepe-Levinson, Katherine. “Striptease: Desire, Mimetic Jeopardy, and Performing Spectators.” The Drama Review 42, no. 2 (1998):9–38. Lipsyte, Robert. “Topless Club’s Good-Neighbor Policy.” The New York Times, 19 July 1998, sec. 14, p. 1. Lipton, Eric. “Giuliani to Seek Rewritten Law in New Attack on Sex Shops.” The New York Times, 26 March 2001, sec. B, p. 3. Loy, Pamela, and Janet Brown. “Red Hot Mamas, Sex Kittens, and Sweet Young Things.” International Journal of Women’s Studies 5 (September–October 1982):338–347. Lughod, Lila Abu. “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?” Women & Performance: Feminist Ethnography and Performance 5, no. 1 (1990):7–27. Mayne, Judith. “Review Essay: Feminist Film Theory and Criticism.” Signs 11, no. 1 (Autumn 1985):81–100. McNamara, Brooks. “Defining Popular Culture,” Keynote address for the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Theatre History Studies 18 (1998):3–12. McWalter, Keith. “Couch Dancing.” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, 6 December 1987, 138. Meredith, Robyn. “Strip Clubs Under Siege as Salesman’s Haven.” The New York Times, 20 September 1997, sec. A, p. 1, sec. D, pp. 1, 3. Meyer, Richard. “‘Have You Heard the One about the Lesbian Who Goes to the Supreme Court?’: Holly Hughes and the Case Against Censorship.” Theatre Journal 52 (December 2000):543–552. Minsky, Harold. “Topless No Threat to Strip.” Interview by Job Cohen. Variety, 2 June 1965. Mitchell, Joseph. “The Strip-Tease To Storm B’Way.” New York World-Telegraph, 21 April 1937. Mosconi, Angela. “Giuliani: Smut Is Going Down.” The New York Post Sunday 1 March 1998, 5. “Naked City: The Consumer’s Guide to Erotic Entertainment.” Screw, 28 May 1990, 23. O’Conner, John J. “Male Strippers in ‘Ladykillers’ on ABC.” The New York Times, 9 November 1988, sec. C, p. 26. Perez-Pena, Richard. “City Loses Another Round in Fight With Topless Bars.” The New York Times, 5 May 2000, sec. B, p. 3. Petersen, David M., and Paula L.Dressel. “Equal Time for Women: Social Notes on the Male Strip Show.” Urban Life 11, no. 2 (July 1982):185–208. Polner, Robert. “Shoot to Scare.” Newsday 17 May 1998, sec. A, p. 8. Query, Julia. “Shop Talk.” The New York Times Magazine, 18 June 2000, 30, 32. Ramirez, Anthony. “After Eluding Past Attempts, Show World Is Closed Down.” The New York Times, 28 May 2000, sec. B, p. 4.

246

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ravo, Nick. “Topless Bars for a Crowd in Pin Stripes.” The New York Times, 15 April 1992, sec. C, pp. 1 and 12. ——“Recent Key Court Rulings.” The Sunday New York Times, 6 March 1994, sec. 10, p. 6. Reno, Robert. “The Topless Issue is Revealing in Many Other Ways.” New York Newsday, 7 August 1992, 36. Runyon, Damon. “Poor Man Has Been Robbed,” in “Runyon Views.” Distributed by International News Service, King Features Syndicate, Inc. Most likely in the Herald Tribune, 30 January 1942. The Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the Performing Arts Research Center, The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. Safire, William. “Ode on a G-String.” The Sunday New York Times Magazine, 8 April 1991, 12. Saltonstall, David. “Exile for Porn Shops: Rudy Seeking Big Reduction of XXX Businesses.” Daily News, 11 September 1994, 5, 47 Salutin, Marilyn. “Stripper Morality.” Trans-Action 8, no. 8 (June 1971):12–22. Sanderson, Bill. “He Says,” The New York Post, 1 March 1998, 4. Schiro, Anne-Marie. “Baby Dolls, Naughty and Nice.” The Sunday New York Times Fashion, 21 October 1990, 54. Schlosser, Eric. “The Business of Pornography.” US News and World Report, 10 February 1997, 43–52. Scigliano, Eric. “The Skinpresarios.” Seattle Weekly, 14 August 1991, 35–47. Shaw, Dan. “Mirror, Mirror: Men More Conscious of their Appearance.” The Sunday New York Times, 29 May 1994, sec. 9, pp. 1, 6. Skipper, James K., and Charles H.McCaghy. “Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant Occupation.” Social Problems 17, no. 3 (1970):391–405. Sullivan, Andrew. “Flogging Underwear.” New Republic, 18 January 1988, 20–23. Tribelli, Angela. “Burlesque’s Back, a Step Ahead of the Law.” The Sunday New York Times. 4 October 1998, sec. 9, p. 4. UPI Newsfeatures. “Unionized Stripteasers Seek Fed Welfare Aid.” Daily News, 30 July 1972. Weene, Seph. “Venus.” Heresies 3, no. 4 (1981):36–38. Weir, Richard. “Strippers Go; Problems Stay.” The New York Times, 21 February 1999, sec. 14, p. 25. Willemen, Paul. “Letter to John.” Screen 21, no. 2 (Summer 1980):56. Williams, Lena. “Bodies Go Public: It’s Men’s Turn Now.” The New York Times, 31 October 1990, sec. C, pp. 1, 6. Wilson, Earl. “Last Night: Strips for Ladies.” The New York Post, 1 July 1981, 44. Yardley, Jim. “Sex Shops on the Defensive, But Far From Stamped Out.” The New York Times, 26 January 1998, pp. A1, B6.

Films, videos, TV transcripts, unpublished plays An Officer and A Gentleman. Directed by Taylor Hackford. Starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger. 125 min. US. 1982. Motion Picture. Blaze. Directed by Ron Shelton. Starring Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich. 119 min. US. 1989. Motion Picture. “Donahue.” On “Unisex Strip Club.” NBC. Air date 8 February 1990. Journal Graphics transcript #2878.

247

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——On “Satin Angels: Female Chippendales.” NBC. Air date 11 July 1990. Journal Graphics transcript #2987. ——On “Male Strippers Who Have Appeared on Donahue.” NBC. Air date 22 July 1991. Journal Graphics transcript #3254. ——On “Female Strippers Who Have Appeared on Donahue.” NBC. Air date 23 July 1991. Journal Graphics transcript #3255. ——On “Lesbo-A-Go-Go.” NBC. Air date 15 November 1991. Early Dance Programs. Produced by George Auberg. 27 min. 1945. Many selections were originally produced by American Mutoscope & Biographs Co. and by Thomas Edison. Circa 1898 through 1907. Includes scenes with Little Egypt. Film clips. The Dance Collection of the Performing Arts Research Center, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, the Jerome Robbins Archives. Exotica. Directed by Atom Egoyan. Starring Bruce Greenwood and Mia Kirshner 104 min. Can. 1994. Motion Picture. The Full Monty. Directed by Peter Cattaneo. Starring Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, Paul Barber, Steven Huison, Hugo Speer, Lesley Sharp. 95 min. GB. 1997. Motion Picture. The Full Monty. Book by Terrence McNally. Music and Lyrics by David Yazbeck. Eugene O’Neill Theatre (2000). Broadway Musical. “Geraldo.” On “Male and Female Strippers.” PIX. Air date 3 November 1978. Journal Graphics transcript # 32. ——On “People Who Have Survived X-Rated Pasts.” PIX. Air date 16 February 1988. Journal Graphics transcript #107. ——“Chippendale Fantasy.” PIX. Air date 19 February 1988. Journal Graphics transcript #110. ——On “Pornography Addiction.” PIX. Air date 25 February 1988. Journal Graphics transcript #113. ——On “G-Rated Women in X-Rated Jobs.” PIX. Air date 26 February 1988. Journal Graphics transcript #114. ——On “Couch Dancing.” PIX. Air date 14 April 1988. Journal Graphics transcript #148. ——On “All-Male National Dancathon.” PIX. Air date 24 May 1988. Journal Graphics transcript #177. Gigi. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold. 116 min. US. 1958. Motion Picture. GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS, LIVE ON STAGE TOTALLY NUDE. By Sharon Evans. Live Bait Theatrical Company, Chicago. 1990. G-String Divas. Directed by Patti Kaplan. Thirteen-part “docu-soap series” about the lives and work of 13 dancers in a strip club in Pennsylvania. Home Box Off Productions (HBO). US (2000). Here It Is, Burlesque. 90 min. Home Box Office, Vestron Video, 1979. Videocassette. How to Strip for Your Man. L.Starring Gio. Suarez/La Gioconda Enterprises, Ltd. 60 min. 1987. Videocassette. “Jane Whitney” on “Strip Clubs.” CBS. Air date 16 October 1992. Lady of Burlesque. Directed by William Wellman. Starring Barbara Stanwyck. Adaptation of Gypsy Rose Lee’s G-String Murders (1942). 91 min. US. 1943. Motion Picture. Ladykillers. Directed by Robert Lewis. Starring Marilu Henner, Leslie-Ann Down, Joan Collins, Susan Blakely. 90 min. Barry Weitz Films in association with ABC Circle Films. 1988. Air date 9 November 1988. Made for television movie.

248

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Males in Motion. 60 min. Ero-Tron Productions. 1985. Videocassette. Naked. Directed by Mike Leigh. Starring David Thewlis, Lesley Sharpe, Katrin Cartlidge. 126 min. GB. 1993. Motion Picture. The Naked Genius. Play by Gypsy Rose. Plymouth Theatre (1943). Typescript. In the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. New York City. Not a Love Story. Directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein. Produced by Dorothy Todd Henaut and Kathleen Shannon. 68 min. Can. 1981. Motion Picture. Archive of the National Film Board of Canada. Show Girls. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Starring Elizabeth Berkley. 131 min. US. 1995. Motion Picture. Star and Garter. Book and Lyrics by Bobby Clark. Music by Irving Berlin, Lester Lee, Harold Rome, Jerry Seelen. Starring Gypsy Rose Lee. Music Box Theatre, 1942. Stripped to Kill. Directed by Katt Shea Ruben. 88 min. US. Concorde. 1987. Videocassette. Stripped to Kill II. Directed by Katt Shea Ruben. 83 min. US. Concorde. 1989. Videocassette. Stripper. Directed by Jerome Gary. 90 min. Jerome Gary-Visionaire Communications, Inc. US. 1985. Videocassette. Strippers. Directed by Robert Deubel, narrated by Gwen Verdon. Produced by Concepts Unlimited. 45 min. US. 1983. Documentary. Videocassette. The Dance Collection of the Performing Arts Research Center, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, the Jerome Robbins Archives. Striptease. Directed by Andrew Bergman. Starring Demi Moore. 115 min. US. 1996. Motion Picture. Striptease (play). By Robin Moran Miller. Westbeth Theater Center, New York City. 1992. The Unveiling. Directed by Rodney Evan. BW 60 mm. 93 min. US. 1996. Documentary. True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl. Written and performed by Jill Morley. Red Room Theatre at KGB, New York City. 1997.

Legal documents Erie v.Pap’s A.M., No. 98–1161 Mun (2000). Carchio v. Ft. Lauderdale, No. 96–06697 and No. 96–06698 17th Cir (1996). The City of New York, Resolution No. 1322, Application No. N950384ZRY (1995). Butler v. Regina, 1 S.C.R. Can (1992). Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 US 560 (1991). Chicago Municipal Code 16–16–110 Amendment, Prior Code 194C-4.1 (1987).

249

INDEX

Note: Page references in italics are to illustrations abortion 137 Abu Lughod, Lila 8 acrobatic routines 144 Adams, Parveen 93–4 adolescents 87 Aktar, Alev 99 American Medical Society 98 Anthony, Milton 30 Archibald’s club, Washington 53–4, 67, 139, 161 Austin Street, New York 29, 38 ‘autobiographies’ of strippers 9

Bildstein, Jay 151–2, 185 “black light” 55 Bloom, Sol 110 Bloomingdale’s department store 57 The Blue Room 28 body-builders as performers 114 body language 108–9 Body Perks 98–9 body-stroking 115–17, 130 bondage games 162–3, 176 bonding beween men 67–9 Bordo, Susan 79, 138 Braye, Alma 144 breast implants 97–8 breast-popping 113–14 Breyer, Stephen G. 28 Brooklyn Museum of Art 181 Brownmiller, Susan 79–80, 87, 97, 137 Bruce, Lenny 2, 111 Buchanan, Pat 16 “bumping” 112–13 Burana, Lily 125 Burlesque shows 2, 7, 19, 27–8, 42, 65–6, 82, 110–11, 141, 182, 185 Burns, Judy 146–7 business deals done in clubs 67, 69 Butler, Judith 35, 97, 108–9, 124, 126, 136, 147, 170 Butler v. Regina 138

Baby Doll Lounge, New York 66, 154 baby-doll outfits and routines 85–9 Bakhtin, Mikhail 50 Balint, Michael 90 Bar Apollon 32–3, 117, 119, 143, 154, 164, 170 La Bare, Houston 63, 143, 154 Barghini, Lari 99 Barnes v. Glen Theatre 28 Barthes, Roland 94 Basciano, Richard 30 Bataille, Georges 134, 147 beauty, conceptions of 97 Beefcakes USA 116, 156, 165 Behind the Green Door 26, 58 belly dancing 110 Benjamin, Jessica 14, 93 Beno, Lorrie 67 Berger, Arthur Asa 80 Berger, John 96 Berman, Jaye 135 Besserer, Rob 95 Big Al’s and Big Alice’s, Peoria 11–2, 95, 146, 152, 156, 161, 179, 182

Califia, Pat 23, 25, 31–2, 37, 40 Caligula XXI club, Houston 58, 67 Camelot club, Washington 54–5, 161 Canadian Supreme Court 138 capitalism 124, 133, 141 Carlson, Marvin 22, 35 Caron, Leslie 89

251

INDEX

castration anxiety 135 Cavan, Sherri 52 Chaplin, Julia 182 Chapman, Tracy 36 Chicago 77–8; World’s Fair (1893) 110 Chippendales Los Angeles club 83, 156, 162, 168 Chippendales Micro Film Strip Shows 18 Chippendales New York club 38–9, 49, 62–3, 75, 83, 89–90, 105, 109, 112, 116, 120–1, 128, 130, 138–9, 142–3, 146, 148, 153, 156, 165, 176, 180 choreography 109–11, 133; facial 120–1 class divisions 51, 54–5, 154 cleanliness of strip club environment 53– 6, 115 Clinton, Bill 160 Closer 2 Clover, Carol 24, 53–4 Club 281, Montreal 63–4, 84, 117, 119, 154, 164, 170 “cock-twirling” 115 Cole, Susan G. 123 Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle 88 Colleary, Kevin 97 Colorado club, Houston 60, 74 commodification of sex 10, 124 Connery, Sean 145 conspicuous consumption 65 constitutional rights see freedom of speech contraception 137 Corio, Ann 2, 77, 86, 141 Cosmopolitan magazine 42, 79 “couch-dancing” 112 Le Coucher d’Yvette 140 “courting scenes” 162–3 Coward, Rosalind 93–4 Cowie, Elizabeth 25, 50, 61, 81, 84, 90, 99, 122, 124 Cox, Rene 181 Croce, Arlene 94

Dix, Mae 110 Doane, Mary Anne 97 Dolan, Jill 37, 125, 152, 163 dollar-bill waves 157–8 Dolly Sisters 9, 85–6 dominatrix role 22–3, 84–5 Donahue 146 Donahue, Phil 76 double standard 171 Dragu, Marilyn 85 “dream girls” 124, 139 Dressler, David 42, 65–6, 185 drink hustles 166–7 Dworkin, Andrea 10–13, 87, 186 empowerment, sexual 125 equal pay 137 erections 120, 168, 170 Erie v. Pap’s A.M. 28 erogenous zones 79 erotic roles 184, 187 Escapes club 62, 152, 156, 165, 182 exhibitionism 99–100, 141, 168 exotic costumes 90–1 Exotic Dancers Union 12 eye-contact 117–20 facial choreography 120–1 Fahringer, Harold 20–1 Faludi, Susan 97, 137 family values 5 Fanny Fatale see Sundahl, Debi fantasy 23, 50–1, 56, 88–93 passim, 100, 124, 185–6; goal of 61, 81; see also date fantasies; rape fantasies fashion 79 “fashion shows” 78 Feindl, Janet 36 Felder, Raoul 181 Fem-Dom play 54 feminism 6, 10–11, 37, 100, 169 feminist ethnography 8 fiction see romance novels Finnel, Carrie 110, 113 First Amendment see freedom of speech flappers 110–11, 182 Flash Dancers, New York 153, 155 flashing 112 Flynn, Errol 145 Fodor’s travel guides 24–5 Foote, Nelson 155 formal dress worn by strippers 82–3, 94

Dalton, Timothy 145 Danielle’s nightclub, New York 61, 78, 180–1 date fantasies 166–7 Dawn Delight 144 de Lauretis, Teresa 34–5 DeGeneres, Ellen 36 Deignan, Alice 144, 146 Dewan, Shaila K. 31 Diamond, Elin 35

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INDEX

Foster, Jodie 88–9 Foucault, Michel 63, 99, 134 Foxx, Donna 33, 84 France, Jeanine 99 Frank, Katharine 41, 50, 167 free speech 181 Freedman, Barbara 165 freedom of speech 3–5, 20, 28 Friday, Nancy 23, 87–8 friends of patrons, involvement of 167–8 Frommer’s travel guide 29 Fuentes, Annette 68 The Full Monty 2, 181 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 87 Fury, Bob 60

Here It Is, Burlesque! 141 Hills, Beverlee 119, 178 Hoebel, E.Adamson 96 Hollander, Anne 76–7, 82, 94–5, 99, 146 Holley, Brandon 33–4 homosexuality 123 Horrocks, Roger 114 House Immigration Committee 2 Houston 24–5, 32, 57–8, 154–5, 182 How to Strip for Your Man 111 Hustler magazine 23 Irigaray, Luce 97 Jervis, Lisa 87, 137 Joanna’s 1819 club, Washington 53–4, 161 Johnny Rotten 33, 41, 80, 101 Johnson, Samuel 28 Jordan, Louis 88

Geertz, Clifford 7 “gentlemen’s” clubs 3, 6, 34, 58–60, 82, 182 Gere, Richard 83 gifts arranged for friends of patrons 168 Gigi 88 Giuliani, Rudolph 5–6, 10, 19–21, 27, 30– 1, 40, 141, 180–1, 185 glamour 56 Goffman, Erving 152–3, 165 Golden Era Strippers 99 Goldfingers club 162 Good Guys 52–3, 121 Grant, Linda 137 Griffin, Susan 145, 185 “grinding” 112–13 G-String Divas 2, 60 The G-String Murders 147

Kaite, Berkeley 12, 23–4, 50 Keating, Charles 5, 10, 19, 21, 141 Kennedy, Anthony M. 28 Kidman, Nicole 28 Kipnis, Laura 14, 23–4, 27 Kirchoff, Dave M. 67, 69 Kirkland, Edward 30 kissing games 156–7 Koch, Gertrude 135, 186 Koerner, Leonard 5, 20 Koslowitz, Karen 20 Kourlas, Gia 33–4 Kristeva, Julia 92 Lacanian see ‘lack’ ‘lack’, Lacanian concept of 56, 182 Ladykillers 147 lap-dancing 30, 153, 159–60, 175 Laplanche, Jean 14, 42, 50, 56, 61, 66–7, 81 Laqueur, Thomas 122 Laver, James 79 Learning Annex 111, 117, 151 Lee, Gypsy Rose 2, 16, 17, 55, 136–9, 147, 165, 186 Lewin, Lauri 94–5 Lewinsky, Monica 160 lingerie performers 78 “little girl” routines 88–9 Littman, Corny 177 Live Nude Girls Unite 12 Lolita 88–9

Haiken, Elizabeth 97 Hangar Club 112, 132, 156, 182 “hangout strip bars” 52–6 Hanna, Judith Lynn 27, 108, 116 Hanover, Donna 181 harm to performers 144–6 Harmony BurlesqueTheatre 30, 63 155, 159, 180 Harrison, A.S.A. 126 Hart, Lynda 14, 93 Hart, Margie 77 Hart, Veronica 84, 111, 117, 119 Hartley, Nina 85, 120, 131, 145 Hartsock, Nancy 86–7, 185 Helms, Jessy 16 Henley, Nancy M. 118–20 Henry, Dorothy 141

253

INDEX

Loren, Trinity 157 Lurie, Alison 81 Lusty Lady clubs 131, 182

New Jersey 78 New Paris Revue, New York 166 New York City 5–6, 19–21, 25–7, 29–31, 36, 141, 158, 180–2 New York Civil Liberties Union 20–1 New York Dolls 178 New York Post 3 New York Times 86, 89, 156 “normal trouble” 52, 68 No. Five Orange Club 109

McClintock, Anne 23, 54, 85–6, 133, 135, 182 McElroy, Wendy 137 MacKinnon, Catharine 10–13, 137, 186 McLaughlin, Bruce 27 McWalter, Keith 156 Madonna 97 magazines, erotic 123 Magna International 67 “male gaze” 118 Males in Motion 95, 114 Malibu-Barbie and Malibu-Ken 76, 95 Mardi Gras 159–60 Mars, Shelly 36 Marsh, Jan 136 Martin, Ron 168 Marxist theory 10–11, 124 masturbation 112–13, 143; by club patrons 168–9 masturbatory fantasy 133–4 Matrix, Cheri 137 Mayne, Judith 142 Mayo Clinic 98 MCs 69–70, 89–90, 157–8, 162, 164 Meese, Edwin 5, 10, 19, 21, 141 Men’s Club, Houston 58, 154 Mentertainment 184 Michaels, Laura 30 mini-dramas 162–4, 168 Minsky, Harold 76 Mitchell Brothers 26, 58 Molière 87 Money, John 117, 119 Montana, Danna 64–5, 182 Montreal 22–4, 32–3, 43–4, 117, 120, 158, 170, 182 Moore, Demi 3 Moore, Roger 145 Morgan, Robin 21 Morris, Mark 94–5 motives of strip show patrons 51, 152, 185 Mulvey, Laura 42, 135

O’Connor, Sandra Day 28 O’Farrell Theatre 26, 47, 58–9, 159 An Officer and a Gentleman 83 orgasm 160 orgy theory 57–8, 65, 69, 159 “Other”, concept of 91 Paglia, Camille A. 37 participant-observation 7 Pate, Alison Susan 96 pedophilia 88–9 peekaboo costume 14, 80–2 Peeping Toms 140–2 penile symbolism 170 Perniola, Mario 80–1, 93, 135 personal lives and backgrounds of strippers 8–9 Phelan, Peggy 12–13, 37, 40, 123, 139 photo shoots 163–4, 179 Plautus 87 Playgirl 123 policing of strips clubs 55, 62–3 Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand 14, 42, 50, 56, 61, 66–7, 81 “pornographic body” 53–4 “pornographic culture” 145 pornography 84, 122, 135–8, 183; goal of 81 Porsche Lynn 144 Post-Post Porn Modernist 85 Preminger, Eric 137 Pretty Baby 88 prostitution 7, 10, 112, 151, 185–6 psychoanalytic theory 10, 14 Pure Platinum strip clubs 71–2, 78–9, 154, 172

Nabokov, Vladimir 88 Naked 141 nakedness as costume 94–5, 99 National Endowment for the Arts 4 National Family Legal Foundation 5–6, 19 Nestle, Joan 37

Queens Boulevard, New York 29, 180 Query, Julia 12 rape, theories of as a result of pornography 10, 21, 87–8

254

INDEX

rape fantasies 90, 184–5 “Rear-Ending” 182 Reeves, Steve 145 Rehnquist, William H. 28 research methods 7–8 Rich, Adrienne 19, 36 Rick’s Cabaret International 3, 57–8, 68, 72, 78, 102, 127, 149, 154, 167, 169, 182 ringside seating 153–6 rites of passage 42 Rivera, Geraldo 118 romance novels 51, 92–4, 122 Rose, Jacqueline 14, 42 Runyon, Damon 28

“show biz” clubs 52, 56–8 Show Girls 159 Show World, New York 26–7, 30–1, 36, 45–6, 86, 95, 134, 155, 157, 163–4, 168–9, 180 side effects of strip shows see secondary effects Siegel, Norman 28 Small, Fred 23 Sobel, Bernard 2, 27–8 Sondheim, Stephen 87 Sontag, Susan 134, 147 Sothern, Georgia 144 Souter, David H. 5–6, 28, 98 Springer, Jerry 16, 92 Sprinkle, Annie 36, 85, 103, 113, 129, 177 Stallone, Sylvester 145 Stallybrass, Peter 83, 85, 91, 93–4 Star Strip club, Los Angeles 66 Star Trek 50–1 Starr, Blaze 144 steroids, use of 96 Stoller, Robert 14, 93, 146 Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum 71– 2, 154, 172 strip clubs: expenditure in 3; location of 22; number of 4 Stripped to Kill 147 Stripper 144 Striptease 94–5 strutting 121–5, 132 Sugar Shack II 39, 64–5, 104, 106–7, 112, 146, 150, 151, 160, 167, 173, 174, 182 Sundahl, Debi 33, 36, 85, 124–5 Supreme Court see Canadian Supreme Court; United States Supreme Court Swain, Dominique 89

Saffran, Dennis 20 Sales & Marketing Management magazine 67 San Francisco 6, 25–6, 29, 36, 48 Sanderson, Bill 60 Satin Angels 151–2, 165, 168 Saturday Night Fever 138 Scalia, Antonln 28 Schaulust 186 Schechner, Richard 51, 94, 164–5 Schneider, Rebecca 124, 133, 135, 138–9, 141 School for Wives 87–8 Schuh, Robert 25, 58 Schwarzennegger, Arnold 145 Scigliano, Eric 19 scopic drive 15 Scores club, New York 59–60, 73, 185 Screw magazine 166 “seat calls” 157 seating plans 66–9; see also ringside seating secondary effects of strip shows 5–6, 21, 24, 27–9, 32, 98 secure cities plans 5, 19, 21, 40 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 67–8 Segal, Lynne 35, 137 Segal, Norman 21 self-exposure by patrons 168 sensuality 116–17, 130 Serner, Walter 186 “sex emporium” shows 52, 58, 120 sexism 137, 182 sexology 35 sexual desire 183–4, 187 sexual harassment 122–4 Shields, Brooke 88 “shimmies” 113–115

table-dancing 68–9, 117–18, 153, 158–9, 164, 167, 170 Tableaux Vivants 111 taboos 87, 99, 116, 135, 139, 147–8, 156, 158, 169, 187 Tarzan 97 “tassel-twirling” 113–15 Taxi Driver 88–9, 181 Tenderloin area 6, 25–6, 29, 36 “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” 88 Thomas, Clarence 28 threshold-crossing 42 Times Square 25–7, 29, 36, 180–1 “tip’n kiss” 157

255

INDEX

tipping 4, 10, 54, 151–4, 160–2 Toepfer, Karl 57–8, 65, 69, 159 Tolentino, Julie 36 touching conventions 155–6 transgender dancers 27 transgressions 134–6, 155, 157, 168–70, 187 transgressive characters 92–3 Travolta, John 138–9 Trump, Donald 57

Washington, DC 24–5, 31–2, 52–5, 155, 182 Wassau, Hinda 110, 115 Watters, Robert 32, 57, 60, 68, 112, 166 Weene, Seph 125, 171 Weissmuller, Johnny 145 Weksler, Terri 95 Weldon, Jo 27 White, Allan 83, 85, 91, 93–4 Wicke, Jennifer 100 Willemen, Paul 15 Williams, Linda 13–14, 93, 122, 137, 146, 169–70 Wilson, Elizabeth 76 Wolf, Naomi 97 Wolfe, Linda 42 women, strip shows for 36–41, 61–4, 69, 83, 116, 122, 133–4, 156, 167, 170 Women Against Pornography 10, 27 Women and Theatre Conference 4 working conditions in strip clubs 9–12 working hours in strip clubs 134

uniforms, symbolism of 81–5 United States Supreme Court 3–7, 28 US News and World Report 3–4 vampires 148 van Gennep, Arnold 42 Vance, Carol 87, 145 Variety 76–7 violence, portrayals of 145–7 virginity 86–90; male 90 Viva 123 voyeurism 99, 141–2, 186

Yvette Evil 144–6 Zeidman, Irving 77 zoning policies 5–7, 19–22, 28, 40, 181

Wade, Leslie 22, 41

256