So why do we take our clothes off?

This is something I ask on occasion. And sure, we don't necessarily do take our clothes off, but usually we do. What is the purpose of it. Mostly it seems to be to show off our sexuality. We are stripping, and stripping is a display of skin and sex. If we are paying homage to the "classic burlesque", then we are basically emulating an art form, that from the 1890s, the performer became an "object of male scopic pleasure." These women were doing it for the money, and when you need money, who really has the power? The watched, or the watcher, or maybe the producer behind the scenes? It is really is sex work.

So it is odd to me that neo-feminists latched on this art form as a way to apparently reclaim their sexuality. Have they really conquered the objectification. Where do they retain their power and how do they communicate their message? Especially when you don't have a voice with which to more easily communicate it? Speaking as a dude, often I really don't care what the message is, as long as I get to see boobies. It's easy, as a man, to fall into that mode. But often a lot of performers are just happy to mimic the muted beauties of the past, and just be sexy, and basically to be treated as a sex object. Not that there is necessarily wrong with that, but it seems they could be so much more. While you have their attention, why not fuck with them some, do something a little subversive. Stop being so god damn pretty, and do something funny, or perhaps just wrong. Use that nudity for protest! It's a damn easy way to get someone's attention, but rather than just feeding your vanity or stroke your ego or validate your body image, you should use your brain. How can you be a feminist and just be a cute little baby doll on stage? Come on sister, have some pride.

Of course, things are little more complex than just male-female objectification. We have a lot of gay performers. You could be being objectified by women, men, or something in between. You know sometimes I wonder if some of these feminists rail against the patriarchy just to have the privilege to sexually objectify their sisters just as men did in the past. And that is oh so much better isn't it? Granted, we are all sexual creatures and often we become victim to our lower instincts. That is just the nature of things, for better or for worse. I think my point is that objectification, is objectification, is objectification, it doesn't really matter where it is coming from does it? If it is unwelcome, it's source is irrelevant. It ain't just men that's doing it anymore.

Burlesque started out being a comedic, transgressive form where women could act like men on stage. There wasn't stripping back in 1869, and before then women would even really allowed to say anything on stage, at least here in America. After 1890, came the cooch, and then slowly stripping was introduced with gyrating hips in a progression to maintain the attention of the audience. You always have to keep them coming back for more, so burlesque was doomed to become stripping, as society morals loosened and audience became bored or inured with what they were seeing. They needed to see more, and for a buck, there was always some girl there ready to provide that. So that is what our disrobing comes from. I don't think it's a bad thing, but I think people ought to honest with themselves, know their history, and not try to view it through rose colored lenses. People like fill in the gaps with romantic notions, but it's just fantasy.

Now why do I strip? That's a damn good question. I don't if I have a good answer anymore, more than monkey see, monkey do. I guess it's just funny. Who in hell expects a fat dude to take his clothes off on stage. I'm comic relief, and perhaps, I provide some momentary alternative to excessive sexiness on stage. I'm sure not trying to show off my six pack abs, because I sure don't have them.

Eh, anyway. We are all just trying to have fun, right? And I'm prone to over thinking these things.

Is burlesque truly transgressive?

So I've recently finished reading Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture by Robert C. Allen. It has kind of given me a new way of thinking about burlesque, in a historical context, and wondering about it's relevance today as an art form. When Lydia Thompson came to America with her British Blondes in 1869, and basically exploded on the theater scene of the time, the mere fact that women were on stage and saying anything, especially jokes and puns of a less than pure nature, was truly astounding and shocking to audiences back then. It was truly ground breaking. Allen likes to use the terms transgressive and inversive. You had best read his book to get the proper definitions and application of the terms in this instance. But, to say the least, this was shaking people up all over the place and it perceived to a serious threat to the bourgeois culture of the day. Burlesque of this nature lasted until about 1890 until the cooch dance became popular, and performers progressively lost their "voice".

... the silencing of the sexually expressive woman is burlesque in the 1890s, then, had double significance. The burlesque performer had become objectified both in the sense of becoming an object of male scopic pleasure and in the sense of being removed from the stage as a speaking, ordinating subject. Even if the punning rhymes, slangy exclamations, and impersonations of masculine discourse did not derive from the pen of Lydia Thompson and her sisters in the 1860s, the power of burlesque language to call attention to society's categories and hierarchies was based on the fact that it became the only part of her body that did not move in the cooch dance, the shimmy, and the striptease, she literally and figuratively lost her voice. To be sure she still had her body with its power to enthrall, captivate, and, to some extent, dominate her male partner in burlesque's scopic pax de deux. But without a voice it was all the more difficult for that body to reclaim its subjectivity.

But today, most performers wouldn't recognize the burlesque before 1890, because it didn't have any striptease, and really only idolize the muted beauties from 1930 to the 50s. Just about the only perform from that time that sort of breaks the mold is Gypsy Rose Lee.

You might ask about Mae West. Allen does mention Mae West quite a bit, but he doesn't put her in burlesque:

The vaudeville and Broadway career of Mae West provides an example of a sexually expressive female performer whose image and persona initially were not constructed in terms of the grotesque and who dared to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight of bourgeois culture.

She started performing when she was six and by 1912 had her first vaudeville act. But she was never accepted into "big-time" vaudeville because of her bawdy character. She finally bypassed vaudeville by going to Broadway, and finally movies. But when she made it to movies, she's was just shadow of herself. Hollywood would just censor itself, so they couldn't handle West in her full glory.

Now, sure, today's performer of burlesque can, and do, tackle some controversial subjects, but we still normally do it without a voice. Granted adding a voice might require a little more talent, either by singing, or improvisation, or writing the words in the first place. But is the Pussy Cat Dolls really transgressive? Is there anything more than just sexual entertainment in their performance? Should burlesque be anything more than just sexual entertainment? As burlesque gets more popular, I fear it will be nothing but. There will be the attempt to adhere closer to cultural norms so as maximize the buck. So you'll just see more Pussy Cat Dolls.

Allen in the conclusion of his book defines a classification for neo-burlesque when he addresses stripping, Jell-O wrestling and carnival performers. "The tightly knit and self-contained world of carnival performers, who are frequently ostracized by straight society, encourages a reordination of social relations, whereby everyone outside of 'the life' is constructed as an object of contempt." He continues:

Such 'internal' reordination does not subvert the system; it merely reorders its terms for some of its actors. It is more negotiation than resistance: making the system work perversely -- not so much against its own interests as unintentionally in addition to them.

And, I think neo-burlesque suffers from this to some degree, because it is such a close knit community, it's a sub-genre. It isn't like 1869 when it was being introduced as a big new thing and taking over popular theater. Burlesque today has never been that popular and probably never will be. Or if it does, it may just become co-opted by the system for it's own purposes, and lose it teeth, much like it did in the 1890s and later.

One possible exception to this here in NYC is Pinchbottom, they combine theater with burlesque and provide something more than just a standard variety burlesque show. If they managed to become more popular they could potentially be trangressive. There might be similar examples around the country, but I'm not familiar with too much outside of NYC.

Now the one big thing that is transgressive is gender queer movement, which seems to be taking place more and more and is really kind of bigger than burlesque. But a lot of burlesque performers, like to fuck with gender, to a degree, and this actually does have some semblance of what was going on back in 1869. Because the women would dress as men. Now we've progressed more than that now and it's gender is more fluid. So you pull in more influences from gay and drag culture, or borrow good from what ever want to and come up with something that is a bit monstrous, in a manner of speaking. Whether this ever really reaches a mainstream of performance under the name of burlesque, I don't know.

Anyway, Allen is going to be up at BurlyCon, it will be interesting what he has to say on the subject. His book was published in 1991, before neo-burlesque had even started, or was just in it's infancy.

Is burlesque sex work?

So I went to TESfest (don't laugh.) I took several classes, all very interesting, of course. One class I took was "Dirty Sexy Money" taught by one Miss Calico. Basically it was a class about sex work, sort of the ends and out of the trade. It kind of turned into philosophical discussion about what sex work is. So I asked her if she thought burlesque is sex work. She basically said that sex work is "doing sexy things for money", so therefore, yes, burlesque would be sex work. Under that broad of definition, almost anything could be sex work. Burlesque is usually sexy, and I suppose we do make money, not a lot, but some. So I can understand that. But I wonder if that might really make some people really nervous to think about, because it seems that some performers are still nervous about burlesque's association with stripping. And to think that burlesque could be associated with protestution or other occupations that are normally associated with sex work, would really make them gag.