Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation 9781978828124

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Neo-­Burlesque i

Praise for Neo-­Burlesque “A thorough exploration of the genre, Lynn Sally’s insightful Neo-­Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation has earned its place on the shelf of e­ very neo-­ burlesque academic.”

—­Dita Von Teese

“A smart, feminist tour de force that strips away the stigmas, social, and ­legal bullshit surrounding burlesque and gets down to the nitty-­gritty of this sacred art form and the potentially deeply inspiring experience it holds for performers and audience alike. A must-­read for anybody interested in dance, art, and sexy fun.” —­Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, artists and authors of Assuming the Ecosexual Position “With the deft eye of a performer-­turned-­ethnographer, Lynn Sally provides an insider’s account of the history and stakes of burlesque per­for­ mance. Indeed, Neo-­Burlesque demonstrates that under­neath the performer’s coy wink, tuck, and flash lie a matrix of po­liti­cal entanglements that inform how gender, power, and sexuality shape our society’s engagement with popu­lar entertainment.” —­E . Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot: Black Southern ­Women Who Love ­Women “Lynn Sally taps her secret history as a burlesque dancer as well as multiple histories of the performing female body in this dazzling study of con­ temporary burlesque’s cultural meanings. Smart, funny, and moving, Sally’s stories and insights w ­ ill make you rethink this art form and the w ­ omen who participate in it.” —­Linda Mizejewski, author of Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema

“Artist-­scholar Lynn Sally shines a spotlight on some of the most iconic neo-­ burlesque performers of the past two de­cades. A rich addition to the field of striptease studies, Neo-­Burlesque deftly reveals how ‘unruly’ and ‘awarish’ ­women creatively and critically interrogate their own construction through the wit of a knowing wink.” —­Dr. Sherril Dodds, professor of dance at T ­ emple University and editor of The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies “Neo-­Burlesque is an impassioned manifesto for the transformative power of burlesque per­for­mance. Sally engages her insider perspective to document and theorize how neo-­burlesque performers are remaking gender, sexuality, beauty, and feminist politics through the art of the striptease.” —­Jillian Hernandez, author of Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment “Theoretically sophisticated, rigorously researched, and written with confidence and ease, Neo-­Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation takes aim at blind spots in academic approaches to sexuality, the female body, and the bound­aries between high and low cultures. Sally uses case studies enriched by her own experience as a stripper to argue for the radical potential of neo-­burlesque. At the same time, she brings a critical eye to its failures to disentangle race from the cultural ideals of femininity and female beauty that neo-­burlesque put—­literally—on stage. Sally makes a bold and impor­ tant contribution to the growing body of scholarship on unruly, ‘nasty’ ­women who, with fearlessness and wit, insist on not only being heard but also seen. An engrossing and eye-­opening read!” —­Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, founding director of the cinema studies program and professor emerita at the University of Oregon, ­ oman: Gender and the and author of The Unruly W Genres of Laughter “Through interviews with performers and descriptive analyses of their acts, Sally characterizes burlesque as a complex practice with in­ter­est­ing histori-

cal under­pinnings and unexpected con­temporary manifestations. It is truly special to read an academic book where the author ensures that its primary subjects—­burlesque performers—­get to define, in their own words, what they are ­doing and why. An engaging read that builds ­toward a more holistic understanding of burlesque.” —­Meredith Heller, author of Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-­Bending “Lynn Sally has written the account of rec­ord of the germination of the neo-­ burlesque movement. Her perspective has been formed through her insider position as a performer, producer and emcee, giving her the authority to name the key contributions that the neo-­burlesque movement has made to feminism, politics, sexuality, and gender. This inclusive account of burlesque history ­will be enjoyed by burlesque audiences and scholars of per­for­mance and feminism. It is a book you w ­ ill want to read cover to cover.” —­Dr. Alison J. Carr, artist and author of Viewing Plea­sure and Being a Showgirl: How Do I Look? “Dr. Lynn Sally shares an essential insider’s view of an individualistic performing art and how it combines nostalgia and irony to comment on current events. Entertaining and academically diligent, this book connects all the dots between feminism and fun.” —­Jo Weldon, founder of The New York School of Burlesque and author of Fierce: The History of Leopard Print

Neo-­Burlesque i Striptease as Transformation

Ly n n S a l ly

rutgers u niversity press new bru nswick, camden, and newark, new jersey, and london

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Sally, Lynn, author. Title: Neo-­burlesque : striptease as transformation / Lynn Sally. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2022] |   Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021008396 | ISBN 9781978828087 (paperback) |   ISBN 9781978828094 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978828100 (epub) |   ISBN 9781978828117 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978828124 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Burlesque (Theater)—­New York (State)—­New York—­History. |   Striptease—­New York (State)—­New York. | Theater and society—­United States—­   History. | Feminism. Classification: LCC PN1942 .S25 2022 | DDC 792.709747/1—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008396 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2022 by Lynn Sally All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

  Dedicated to ­Dixie, Marinka, and the legends of burlesque who paved the way for the neo movement.

Contents

Preface: Revelations and Disidentification ​ ​ ​ix

Introduction: Definitions and Methodologies ​ ​ ​1



1 Burlesque as Popu­lar Per­for­mance: MsTickle’s Explicit Body as Palimpsest ​ ​ ​54



2 Burlesque as Monster/Beauty: Beautiful Monsters and the Monstrosity of Beauty in Dita Von Teese ​ ​ ​72



3 Burlesque as Unruly: Dirty Martini and the Po­liti­cal Efficacy of an Invisible Wink ​ ​ ​94



4 Burlesque as Pretty/Funny: The Comedic Stylings of L ­ ittle Brooklyn’s Burlesquing Burlesque ​ ​ ​118



5 Burlesque as Parodic Pageantry: The Agitprop Theatrics of Bambi the Mermaid’s Miss Coney Island Pageant ​ ​ ​147



6 Burlesque as Camp: Gender Becoming in World Famous *BOB*’s “One Man Show” ​ ​ ​170



7 Burlesque as Revolution: The Ridicu­lous Theatre of Julie Atlas Muz ​ ​ ​193

Conclusion: Nasty ­Women and Female Chauvinist Pigs ​ ​ ​226 Acknowl­edgments ​ ​ ​233 Notes ​ ​ ​237 Bibliography ​ ​ ​265 Index ​ ​ ​277 vii

Preface Revelations and Disidentification

I am a stripper. It began, innocently enough, with an invitation from Angie Pontani to dress up as a cigarette girl at a World Famous Pontani S­ ister’s show at a swanky midtown Manhattan supper club. The club, now long gone, had lush red round banquets and gilded mirrors, and cigarette smoke swirled in the air. I recall getting into drag in my professor’s office—­I was a teaching assistant in the drama department and a PhD student in per­for­mance studies at New York University at the time—­and meticulously brushing glitter off his desk into a garbage can. I hoped he would not discover my indiscretion. This was the first of many attempts to cover up my dual identities: professor by day, burlesque performer by night. Since the 1990s, I have been actively engaged in the neo-­burlesque scene as a performer, producer, host, and teacher. (Most burlesquers wear many hats.) At the beginning, I performed a c­ ouple of nights a week in New York City nightclubs and theatres. Then I started touring, headlining festivals, producing shows, and teaching per­for­mance workshops. L ­ ater still I started studying and writing about burlesque. But before I turned my academic gaze to this performing art and participatory culture, I was onstage, backstage, and on the road with the performers I write about in this book. But ­isn’t burlesque dif­fer­ent from stripping? Why not call yourself a per­ for­mance artist? Or a dancer? Or, better yet, an actor? That likely would be an easier road. And of course I am being cheeky, intentionally provocative. ix

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(This book is about burlesque, ­after all.) But the truth remains that for two de­cades I have covered up what I study and what I do. Though ­t hese worlds intersected, I tried to keep them separate. I feared repercussion in academe, a place I once believed in as a utopian space dedicated to f­ ree thought and intellectual inquiry of any kind. It turns out that my fears w ­ ere not unfounded. It is startling how many performers have been terminated from their jobs—­i ncluding professors—­simply ­because of their involvement in burlesque. Performers usually attempt to keep their stage identities separate from their day jobs, though occasionally ­t hose worlds collide. Aphrodite Rose was terminated from a start-up com­pany for her involvement in burlesque. Rose’s man­ag­er informed her that a photo­graph she posted on her personal social media page “was in direct violation of [the com­pany’s] social media policy” and that “­those types of photos tarnish our com­pany brand.”1 The irony in this case is that the com­pany had paid for Rose’s burlesque classes through a “personal growth program.”2 ­After supporting her foray into burlesque, the com­pany proceeded to terminate her for it. Rose describes the effects this had on her: “When you are told that your body image is tarnishing the com­pany brand you ­will feel a sense of low self worth and low self esteem.”3 Sheila Addison lost her appointment as a professor at the John F. ­Kennedy University in California for performing with a burlesque troupe. Addison’s termination letter stated that she had brought “public disrespect, contempt and ridicule to the university.” 4 What brings “disrespect, contempt and ridicule” is open for interpretation and largely de­cided by the institution. Employees have ­little recourse in ­t hese cases. Tenure-­track status does provide some protection, yet many faculty members and administrators are still at-­will employees who can be terminated for cause. Even a contract, as Addison’s case demonstrates, can be terminated at w ­ ill. This creates a culture of fear that is compounded by the scarcity of and difficulty in acquiring full-­ time teaching positions. ­There is a strong undercurrent of conservatism in academia—­and society more broadly—­about bodily expression, a puritan tendency to divorce

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intellectual thought from physical plea­sure. Cognition is valued over kinesthetic knowledge. Feelings are largely suspect in intellectual pursuits, as they may taint research and undermine academic integrity. Starting from the body as a source of knowledge is particularly suspect. In the case of the burlesque body, that embodied knowledge is also bound up in using striptease to celebrate the unveiled and sexually cognizant body. Breaking numerous taboos related to research and knowledge and how the body knows—­and what to do with that knowledge—­may underlie the disavowal of and fears surrounding burlesque. Frankly, I am surprised by the disconnect between p ­ eople’s imaginations and what actually transpires at a prototypical neo-­burlesque show. (Much neo-­burlesque transgresses politics more than it does decorum or morals per se.) Yet the fact remains that participating in burlesque ­today may very well get you terminated tomorrow. The material backlash against burlesque performers is one practical reason why I have kept my per­for­mance identity separate from my academic agenda. I convinced myself that I was protecting my livelihood. I convinced myself that my burlesque performing was too difficult to explain. I convinced myself that defending burlesque at all times and in all contexts was not necessarily a ­battle I wanted to fight. But I started to ask ­whether my silence served as a kind of disavowal that darkened the very t­ hing I hoped to illuminate. I could have approached this proj­ect via a purely academic gaze. Yet to hide ­behind the purported shield of scholarly objectivity would have erased my de­cades of experience with the culture and performing art that I seek to illuminate ­here. Maggie Werner similarly describes her strug­gles with writing “about a subject that is widely perceived as frivolous.” 5 Perhaps even more damagingly, it would give the impression that t­ here’s something shameful about burlesque, something that needs to be hidden from public discourse. Th ­ ere i­ sn’t. And that’s why I want to start ­here—at the messy, controversial place that the stripping body occupies and invokes in popu­lar imaginings and academic discourse alike—as an act of disidentification. Disidentification is defined by José Muñoz as the simultaneous “identifying with and rejecting of a dominant form.” 6 Stating that I am a stripper allows me to identify

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with a disenfranchised subject position as well as to question the fixity of what that label signifies. I hope that this helps move the conversation beyond assumptions about a stripping body and the reductive virgin-­whore dichotomy that undergirds that signifying pro­cess. Elevating burlesque over stripping creates a false hierarchy that valorizes one medium (burlesque) while vilifying the other (stripping). This false division, I believe, does more harm than good. I seek to maintain the word “stripper” for several reasons. The word describes the relevant action—­one that, despite its negative connotations, has a long and rich history. That history and the ­people who lived it are erased when more neutral terms like “dancer” are employed for the sake of decorum. As ­Dixie Evans, curator of the Exotic World Museum and creator of the Miss Exotic World competition, put it, “We w ­ ere strippers. That’s what we did. We stripped.”7 During Evans’s era, burlesque provided ­women with employment opportunities and increased levels of in­de­pen­dence. Performing was not an easy road: ­t here w ­ ere repercussions—­discrimination, bias, and even vio­lence—­for ­women who used their explicit bodies as their work. So for Evans and o ­ thers to claim the word “stripper” and all it signifies can be read as a po­liti­cal act, one that represents the in-­your-­face boldness that characterizes performers of burlesque both past and pre­sent. Understandably, many neo-­burlesque performers prefer to distance themselves from the word (and the work of strippers). Self-­identification is an individual choice, and I understand and re­spect ­t hose who choose distancing practices. The power of language to wound, silence, and police bodies is real. Like other language that has the power to enact, the word “stripper” is largely performative. What comes into being when the word is uttered is an instantaneous rejection of the stripping ­woman and her action: she cannot be trusted, cared about, or considered to be a valuable member of society. This is part of a larger social trend t­ oward slut shaming and the disavowal of w ­ omen who unapologetically seek plea­sure or express their sexuality in public ways. Of course t­ here are material differences between burlesque striptease and commercial stripping. In her recent study, Stripped, Werner thoughtfully

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uses rhetorical genre analy­sis to discuss the differences and similarities between neo-­burlesque and strip clubs.8 Rather than rehearsing the differences that Werner outlines so well, instead I ­will offer ­here what performers have said about the ­matter. Jo Weldon jokes that the difference between strip clubs and burlesque is that no one goes to a strip club and asks what the difference between burlesque and stripping is. The World Famous *BOB*, the subject of chapter 6, quips that the difference between burlesque performers and strippers is that the latter make money and the former make costumes.9 Embedded within ­these answers to the proverbial “what’s the difference between stripping and burlesque” is humor—­a burlesquing, if you ­w ill, that pokes fun at the question. The answers a­ ren’t fully serious (though they may be partially true), and it is through that simultaneity that burlesquing takes shape as a hilarious (and poignant) dismantling of the question itself. Burlesque operates in this way, and poking fun is a marvelous tool to brandish onstage and in books. My self-­revelation h ­ ere likely w ­ ill have consequences. But I hope to “speak in a way that m ­ atters,” as Ruth Behar puts it, to open up my experiences to full scrutiny and pre­sent myself as a “vulnerable observer” and all that that signifies.10 I have de­cided that choking on fear is ultimately more harmful to me, and to a larger feminist agenda, than the vulnerability that comes with self-­revelation. Furthermore, remaining ­silent does not guarantee safety. As Audre Lorde warns in ­Sister Outside, “your silence ­will not protect you.”11 Instead, silence can actually cause harm. “We have been socialized to re­spect fear more than our own needs for language and definition,” Lorde explains, “and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence ­w ill choke us.”12 And as Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry who reveals her own strug­g les with m ­ ental illness, explains: “what­ever the consequences, they are bound to be better than continuing to be ­silent. I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hy­poc­risy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.”13 I, too, am tired of hiding and of my own hy­poc­risy. I hope to summon the same gumption that catapults a burlesque performer onto a stage to tell her story—­one that ends with her unveiled body in the spotlight, her awarishness

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unapologetic and bold. At that momentous reveal, her heart is pounding, the crowd is screaming, and the story has been told. That moment is significant, and it deserves attention, without all the negative repercussions that can arise from a w ­ oman screaming into the scene with unabashed fearlessness, agency, and the gumption to be herself. I hope that this proj­ect helps remove some of the baggage associated with the explicit female body on stage. I further hope that my act of disidentification helps reduce the wielding of language to wound or police ­women and their bodies. Even further, I hope that this book invites divergent voices to discuss burlesque per­for­mance and culture without shame. ­There’s nothing to hide ­here: in fact, burlesque offers a place (and space) where all is laid bare. And what has happened on neo-­burlesque stages around the globe has transformed performers and spectators alike, allowing for expressive per­for­ mances of gender and sexuality that have radically reconfigured how w ­ omen are expected to look and engage on-­and offstage. This is a new kind of feminism, one that uses the stripping body as a performing art and po­liti­cal tool, and it has spurred what is nothing short of a new sexual revolution.

Neo-­Burlesque i

Introduction definitions and methodologies

The year is 2005. I walk into my first History of American Burlesque class in the Drama Department at New York University, take one look around the room of fresh f­ aces, and blurt out, “Let’s do a show!” It seemed logical: neo-­ burlesque had been growing in popularity, and t­ here was a vital scene of regular shows popping up all over New York City theatres, nightclubs, and bars. The emerging neo-­burlesque scene was aglow with vitality and experimentation, and I was lucky to be t­ here, watching from the audience, performing from the stage, and discussing it in the classroom—­for not only am I scholar of burlesque, I’m also a practitioner. I see the value of having students do the ­t hing they are studying. That said, I made the per­for­mance optional, since assigning a striptease for college-­ course credit could be misinterpreted. If the topic of the course had been clowning or public speaking or Shakespeare, having students perform as part of their course work would not be controversial. But burlesque elicits a range of responses and emotions. It is charged, electric, and largely misunderstood. I knew I was transgressing a lot of bound­aries. I also knew that burlesque could provide students with a kind of freedom. For that first student showcase, I used my per­for­mance experience to book a show (and all that entails) and help students develop their own acts—­from concept to character, costume, and choreography—­that they would perform in front of a crowd of adoring friends and f­ uture fans. I felt confident that burlesque would allow the student prac­ti­tion­ers to control their image, their 1

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bodies, and the stories they told onstage. Some performed historical monologues, while o ­ thers created candy-­butcher-­inspired comedy routines. But most stripped. Performing burlesque helped concretize the course material. Students also gained increased appreciation for the nuances that go into polished burlesque per­for­mances. (Yes, every­one takes their clothes off ­every day, but ­doing so in an entertaining or thought-­provoking way is another ­matter.) Perhaps even more significant, students experienced being fully in control of what they put onstage. As opposed to traditional theatre, in which actors become characters in a play written by someone ­else, neo-­burlesque is all about self-­authorship. The student performers came off the stage radiant, alive, and buzzing with the freedom of bringing to life their wildest imaginings. That self-­authorship is liberating, since stripping is literally about transformation. And as this book hopes to prove, striptease has the power to transform. The new or neo-­burlesque movement emerged in the mid-1990s largely as an under­ground per­for­mance art movement, and it has since grown in popularity and presence around the globe.1 Neo-­burlesque references burlesque of the 1940s–1960s—­often referred to as the bump ’n’ grind era or the golden age of burlesque—­while recontextualizing it with modern themes.2 Most neo-­burlesque acts last the duration of a song or two, though this varies greatly by regional standards and performer preference, and feature performers ­either undressing or dressing (referred to as a reverse striptease). The acts borrow from a variety of art forms (including dance, acting, clowning, and prop work) to tell a story. Often the story being told has a punch line or po­liti­cal message, but that’s not always or necessarily the case. The short vignette per­for­mances that make up neo-­burlesque shows are highly theatrical and exuberant, with the flamboyant and excessive theatrical dressing encompassing costuming, makeup, wigs, sets, physicality, and an irreverent attitude and stance t­ oward social norms. Exaggerated pre­sen­ta­tion in burlesque is not mere win­dow dressing. Instead, it is an integral component of burlesque’s ethos (and its power to infect). Camp, so central to this exaggerated pre­sen­ta­tion of self, is employed

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as an aesthetic force and a po­liti­cal tool. Claire Nally aligns burlesque per­ for­mance “with camp, with a heavy criticism of hetero-­normative genders, and ultimately with the queering of identities.”3 Central to this “camping” includes an overly theatrical pre­sen­ta­tion of femininity that allows the burlesque performer to, as Catherine Roach puts it, “disrupt norms of femininity by parodying them in her excess.” 4 Through this knowing wit, which scholars have identified as performers being aware of their own awarishness, burlesque has an uncanny power to upend striptease and even dismantle it from its historical and performative connotations.5 That awarishness serves as a reminder that burlesque performers are in the know and that they refuse to avert their gaze or back down (or out of the spotlight). The elaborately dressed and theatrically excessive burlesque performer engages in striptease as part of her ploy to hook the viewer, getting him or her ­ ese stories often (but not always) to engage in the story she tells onstage.6 Th refer to popu­lar culture while offering a broad range of critiques about dominant power structures, including sexism and patriarchy, homophobia and heteronormativity, unattainable beauty ideals, and other hegemonizing forces that seek to silence difference and police w ­ omen’s (explicit) bodily expression. The fact that ­these stories are told through the primary per­for­mance strategy of striptease marks one of the most beguiling—­and difficult to describe and analyze—­premises of neo-­burlesque (and this book). Definitively defining burlesque is somewhat fruitless; it is a dynamic art form that has changed and continues to do so in response to its social and historical contexts. Yet ­t here are some common characteristics that make ­t hese performers and per­for­mances fall ­under the rubric of neo-­burlesque. While deducing what a cabaret-­singing, fire-­eating “faggot” dressed up as a blue bunny has in common with a traditional fan dancer brings methodological challenges, it is impor­tant to begin tracing burlesque patterns not to codify burlesque but rather to open up a critical space that allows for continued dialogue about this ever-­changing art form.7 The defining characteristics offered ­here, then, are in the spirit of encouraging such dialogue. Previously I defined burlesque as “glamorous, campy, parodic, excessive, and salacious (or blue). It has an ‘anything goes’ sentiment that implicates

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both performers and spectators in its all-­consuming path.” 8 I added to that definition that burlesque is “a live per­for­mance art medium comprised of short, vignette-­style narrative acts that stage and play with notions of sexuality, gender, and social expectations by utilizing strategies that often include self-­authorship, humor, over-­t he-­top pre­sen­ta­t ion of self, transformation, storytelling, cultural parody, and camp to poke fun at and potentially destabilize t­ hose same designations.”9 In this proj­ect, I build on my previous definitions of burlesque, now that I have thought more fully about how what happens on the burlesque stage has reverberations offstage as well. ­These definitions, no doubt, ­w ill change again in the f­ uture. In this introduction, I define burlesque as an amateur art form predicated on a participatory culture that defies mainstream commodification due to its content and status as adult entertainment. Each of the parts of this definition is not without its controversies: this book offers up a way—­not the way—to read a provocative art form that has profound cultural, artistic, and po­liti­cal ramifications.10 Burlesque is a performing art and a po­liti­cal strategy that has the potential to destabilize social norms and pre­sent counterhegemonic narratives of gender, desire, and sexuality. This is emblematic, I suggest, of a new kind of feminism that revels in the explicit female body as a site of agency that tells stories full of good-­humored fun, sizzling sexuality, and po­liti­cal import. This new feminism shares some characteristics with second-­wave feminist agitprop theatrics (discussed more fully in chapter 5) and countercultural 1960s–1970s feminist per­for­mance art practices (discussed more fully in chapter 7), yet it is decidedly new. In this book I explore the new generation of w ­ omen who have found liberation through the display of the (explicit) female body onstage. Jack Halberstam has referred to this as “Gaga feminism,” feminism “invested in innovative deployments of femininity” that are “characterized by their excess, their sheer ecstatic embrace of loss of control, and a maverick sense of bodily identity.”11 Burlesque is a ripe place to trace t­ hese transformations in feminism, and the per­for­mances and performers described h ­ ere provide provocative and power­f ul narratives that challenge traditional notions of feminist discourse—­using wit, sexuality, and wildly exaggerated aesthetics to do so.

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Both Gaga feminism and neo-­burlesque are at the forefront of a new kind of feminism and, I argue in this book, a new sexual revolution. Burlesque’s reveal can serve as a type of revelation for performers and spectators alike. The w ­ omen documented in this study individually—­a nd the movement collectively—­provide a provocative spotlight on this new sexual revolution. We are at a crossroad of what feminism looks like, what feminists do, and ultimately what feminism means.

Striptease as Per­f or­m ance Strategy and Po­l iti­c al Tool Burlesque uses motifs, images, and per­for­mance practices historically associated with ­women’s subjugation to subvert ­t hose same signifying practices. This book sheds light on the unnerving paradox that striptease, once unequivocally read as a symbol of ­women’s oppression, can be used as a tool for empowerment. Striptease can serve a feminist, artistic, and/or po­liti­cal agenda (often all at the same time). Recently scholars have begun to unpack the seeming contradiction that burlesque striptease can be liberating.12 In a study of commercial stripping culture that was inspired by a friend’s decision to drop out of gradu­ate school to become a stripper, Roach embarks on a journey to better understand her subject—­from the dancers’ motivation to the operations of strip clubs—as well as the larger trend of the rise in “raunch culture” and “striptease culture.”13 As I discuss more fully throughout this book, the burlesque version of sexuality seems to poke fun at rather than simply reinforce “raunch culture.” Through the use of parody (the burla of burlesque) and striptease as per­for­mance strategies, burlesque puts forth a positive portrayal of ­women’s sexuality onstage.14 As Roach observes, “Sex-­ positive feminism, as exemplified in the neo-­burlesque movement, is a parody of patriarchal norms.”15 In a Brechtian pre­sen­ta­tional way, burlesque performers pre­sent hyperstylized and -­sexualized images of ­women as a form of social commentary.16 On the surface, striptease may appear anachronistic as part of a feminist agenda. Yet in practice, it has provided a flexible, forgiving format in which to stage counterhegemonic narratives of what desire (and desiring) can look

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like. While striptease may be interpreted as oppressive and even regressive, the deeper readings provided h ­ ere show that striptease serves a narrative and theatrical purpose as it empowers performers—­and in turn audiences—to reexamine the signifying potential of the unveiled female form. In neo-­ burlesque, the striptease has become a per­for­mance and po­liti­cal strategy of social transgression. Put another way, burlesque uses the tease to subvert (some of) the social meanings of the strip. As Sherril Dodds observes, “the excessive sexuality employed by artists and the employment of tease as a means to control the act of undressing through a self-­reflexive critique suggests a power­ful sense of agency on the part of the performer.”17 The primary per­for­mance mode of striptease in neo-­burlesque, then, “offers performers a multitude of creative possibilities through which to pre­sent” their original ideas.18 This multitude of creative possibilities is clearly represented in the diversity of topics, narratives, and per­for­mance styles at a typical burlesque show and contributes to burlesque performers’ strong sense of self-­authorship and agency. Striptease is a per­for­mance tool that gives a performer the power to control her image and the audience’s gaze in a way that challenges traditional motions of scopic plea­sure and the male gaze, as offered by Laura Mulvey.19 The burlesque dancer literally shows the audience where she wants them to look, giving her a type of control over the audience’s gaze. For instance, a performer may invite the audience to watch her remove a satin opera glove: she pre­sents the gloved hand and arm in a ceremonial way and builds tension by slowly and teasingly removing the glove to reveal, in this case, the skin of the hand and arm. By focusing the audience’s gaze on what she wants to highlight at that moment, she controls the consumption of her action. As the audience allows itself to be led, this also creates a release: the audience now has permission to look.20 The audience gets to languish in the ­imagined tactile, physical experience of skin on satin or skin on skin. The audience also has permission to look at what the performer’s hands are ­doing—­whether they are gliding seductively across the performer’s body or presenting a charged prop to the audience. This focused kinesthetic thrill is central to understanding the power of engaging striptease.

Figure I.1. ​Perle Noire, known for her dynamic and high-­energy per­for­mances punctuated with sultry and controlled stillness, takes a beat to pre­sent her gloved hand and smoldering stare to an e­ ager audience. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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Throughout this book, I unpack the seeming paradox that striptease is more than just taking off clothing and is also about putting on meaning. The reveal in burlesque, then, can be read as an extended pro­cess of becoming rather than simply an act of exposure, a pro­cess that is central to understanding burlesque’s appeal for performers and audiences alike. As Kate Valentine, aka Miss Astrid, puts it simply yet provocatively, “Stripping, stripped of its codifiers, such as youth and ‘beauty’ leaves the audience to look at what burlesque is at its best, baring oneself unapologetically to the world—­a true reveal.”21 This can be unnerving to critics, and it is difficult to prove that a reveal is not just bodily exposure but also a way to bare one’s self to the world that can have personal and po­liti­cal implications. Reveals serve the narrative arc as they pull the spectator into the specific moment and the performer’s story and worldview. In the case of burlesque that has an explicit message, reveals often (but not always) become a form of social commentary, and striptease (in some but definitely not all contexts) can have a po­liti­cal purpose.22 To understand t­ hose moments when the body and the body politic are exposed requires a reading beyond the literal, as the reveal in striptease is ripe with both physical and symbolic meanings.23

Studying Burlesque Despite neo-­burlesque’s growth in popularity, ­little scholarship has been done on it—­though impor­tant exceptions do exist, and new scholarship and scholars continue to emerge.24 This book seeks to fill that gap in the lit­er­a­ ture by taking a critical (and serious) look at a decidedly lowbrow (and parodic) live entertainment that has had an impact on how desire and sexuality are ­imagined, displayed, and enacted both on-­and offstage. Public enactments of sexuality and desire are central to burlesque as a performing art, and this may also be central to why burlesque has been largely ignored in scholarship about performing arts. Many scholars of dance and per­for­ mance studies focus precisely on the plea­sure of the body and the affect produced by ­t hose performing bodies. As Jane Desmond argues, “dancing is connected with romance, with enticing display, with sensuality. Dance lets

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us look at bodies for plea­sure, indeed, demands that this is what we do.”25 Despite this, Desmond points out that sexuality has largely been ignored by dance scholars, and she suggests that sexuality should be a central component of critical dance analy­sis: “How one moves, and how one moves in relation to ­others, constitutes a public enactment of sexuality and gender.”26 When burlesque has been the subject of serious academic inquiry, controversy has ensued. In Burlesque West, Becki Ross expresses her dismay at the very public backlash against her nationally funded research on erotic entertainment in postwar Vancouver, British Columbia. She admits to being “ill-­prepared for the spiteful, even hateful e-­mails, phone calls,” and letters that decried “the proj­ect’s funding as a farcical, absurd, worthless, and ridicu­ lous squandering of taxpayers’ dollars.”27 What most distressed Ross about the backlash and negative publicity “was the popu­lar belief that striptease was something to be ashamed of, stuffed u ­ nder the carpet, and purged from public discourse.”28 This book seeks to dismantle the negative connotations surrounding stripping and help establish, along with West and other scholars, striptease as a ­v iable and valuable subject of study. The taboo surrounding stripping may be one of the many material reasons why research on neo-­burlesque has lagged far ­behind its increased popularity and import. Yet I think under­lying this taboo is more than simply a fear of the explicit female body. Bodies on a burlesque stage are invited to occupy a space of sexual agency, and when t­ hose bodies are self-­possessed and challenge mainstream ideas of beauty, a number of social taboos are broken. Perhaps it is not burlesque per se that is the root of all this discomfort about ­women’s expressive public displays of their bodies and sexuality—­part of the cause may very well be related to which bodies perform burlesque. One of the noted features about neo-­burlesque is that ­women of all shapes, sizes, ages, ability, and other physical qualities can inhabit the same stages to express their politics, sexuality, and unabashed cele­bration of their bodies.29 When ­t hose bodies take the stage with confidence and bravado—­ and are celebrated for it—­social norms can be disrupted. As Jacki Willson puts it in The Happy Stripper, “burlesque’s ability to cross forms, genders, class, culture and ethnicity, and its ability to break down bound­aries between

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the audience and performer, the theatrical space and society, is what makes burlesque a uniquely corrosive and therefore dangerously anarchic cultural force.”30 Part of the corrosive force of burlesque comes from its ability to tart up and thereby parody the signifiers of patriarchy, particularly the narratives surrounding ideal beauty standards marked as heterosexual, white, and thin (or appropriately curvy but ultimately contained). Neo-­burlesque bodies lay their politics, ideas, and critiques about social issues and norms bare onstage. As a performative act, burlesque can transform performers, audiences, and the larger social order. Social norms police how ­women are expected—­a nd thereby allowed—to inhabit public space. Neo-­burlesque bodies deviate from social norms in many ways: they challenge notions of decorum and self-­restraint by flaunting themselves in self-­expressive, unapologetic ways, highlighting rather than covering up individual idiosyncrasies and imperfections. Neo-­burlesque gives w ­ omen a space to express their ideas, sexuality, and politics in a way that can infect the viewer, inviting w ­ omen in the audience to express their own desires in turn. To put it colloquially, burlesque performers let it all hang out. It is this unabashed cele­bration of the body politic on display by any and all bodies that, I think, is at the root of the backlash against burlesque, the ­women who perform it, and the ­people who choose to study it.

Methodologies: Per­f or­m ance Studies and New Ethnography Live per­for­mance is difficult to study. Studying burlesque brings up limitations that all scholars of live per­for­mance face. Live per­for­mance’s “only life is in the pre­sent,” a concept advanced by the per­for­mance studies scholar Peggy Phelan.31 Attempts to document the live turn it into something ­else: “Per­for­mance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or other­wise participate in the circulation of repre­sen­ta­tions of repre­sen­ta­tions: once it does so, it becomes something other than per­for­mance. To the degree that per­for­ mance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessons the promise of its own ontology. Per­for­mance’s being, like the ontology of

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subjectivity proposed ­here, becomes itself through disappearance.”32 Videos that document burlesque, for example, turn that live per­for­mance experienced by a participatory audience into something e­ lse. The burlesque video of an act stored and circulated through social media is even more removed from the original per­for­mance: it can have a dif­fer­ent context and goal, perhaps for the performer to obtain a per­for­mance booking. This type of reproduction “lessens the promise” of the per­for­mance, according to Phelan, and suggests that per­for­mance “becomes itself through disappearance,” making studying burlesque particularly challenging as much of what happens never gets documented.33 With live per­for­mance, you had to be ­t here, as they say, and I was in the audience, onstage, and in the classroom discussing the per­for­mances and cultural scene I discuss in this book. Like other per­for­mance studies scholars, I borrow from several disciplines and interdisciplinary methodologies, including ethnography, critical theory, cultural studies, gender studies, and queer theory.34 Most notably, I have been collecting data in the field (in formal and informal ways) for over two de­cades through my participation in neo-­burlesque as a performer and researcher, as I discuss more fully in the preface. This proj­ect relies heavi­ly on ­those lived, material experiences that I have used as data to read the early neo-­burlesque per­for­mance art scene in New York City. I have supplemented ­those data with interviews I conducted with the performers that inspired this book. In traditional ethnography, the cultural scene is often new to the researcher, and through a variety of data-­collecting techniques—­including interviews, participant observation, mapping, and focus groups—­ethnographers interpret their experiences and the data they have collected to make meaning of that culture’s unique characteristics. This is a qualitative methodology, one deeply indebted to the centrality of the researcher as the collector and interpreter or of data and ultimately the maker of meaning about that culture. Being an outsider supposedly gives ethnographic researchers a distance from (and objectivity about) the culture being studied, though how the researchers interpret their data to describe that culture is informed by their worldviews.

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Being entrenched in a culture as an insider brings a dif­fer­ent kind of relationship to the material, information, and ways of knowing. Historically, insider status has been met with opposition from anthropologists who consider using it to conflict with traditional ethnographic methods. Zora Neale Hurston’s return to her native Florida to collect folk stories of Black southerners was met with suspicion both from locals turned in­for­mants (who questioned her motives) and from some anthropologists (who questioned her ability to maintain an objective scientific gaze while studying a culture so intimately linked to her own upbringing). Yet how better to understand a culture than to have lived in it, not just as a participant observer but as a fully participating member? I am intentionally using “participating” to describe my decades-­long immersion in neo-­burlesque. That word concretizes the action as central to the knowledge production: the term “participant observer” prioritizes the researcher, while “participating” prioritizes the action. Switching back and forth between participating and observing allow ethnographers to make sense of the cultural scene. Instead, my participating in burlesque culture was lived, embodied experience, while my observation began almost a de­cade l­ater as I started to think about, cata­logue, analyze, and reflect on burlesque per­for­ mance and burlesque as a cultural scene. The embodied knowledge and lived experience I accumulated serve as data that I use h ­ ere in my descriptions of, reflections on, and analy­sis of neo-­burlesque as a new sexual revolution. I have since supplemented this experiential data with formal and informal interviews, focus groups, and per­for­mance analy­sis using critical theory. But most of my knowledge does not come from secondary sources or data collected using traditional anthropological methods. Instead, it comes from being onstage and backstage. It comes from talking and being with burlesque performers as friends first, not as in­for­mants. It comes from living as a participating member of the burlesque community. The study of culture is always mediated. So-­called objective descriptions of culture are ultimately interpretations by the researcher who makes meaning of the cultural scene. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz warns, “what we call our data are ­really our own constructions of other ­people’s con-

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structions of what they and their compatriots are up to.”35 Ruth Behar also confronts this methodological stumbling block, noting that “­because t­ here is no clear and easy route by which to confront the self who observes, most professional observers develop defenses, namely ‘methods.’ ”36 Behar teases out the limitations of ethnographic research, namely the “deeply paradoxical” mission of anthropology, in a way that is full of re­spect and love for her discipline.37 The result is a methodology that embraces the researcher as integral to the making of meaning and theoretical frameworks that value both embodied and subjective knowledges. No longer is it assumed that a strictly objective gaze is pos­si­ble or even desirable. This book is deeply indebted to the work of new ethnography and critical per­for­mance ethnography, both of which implode the assumptions of traditional ethnography in several impor­tant ways. In a traditional model, an ethnographer makes sense of a cultural scene through a kind of distance. However, new ethnographers acknowledge that their presence is central to that meaning-­making enterprise. Behar characterizes ethnography as a form of “witnessing,” while H. L. Goodall Jr. describes it as “creative narratives ­shaped out of a writer’s personal experience within a culture and addressed to academic and public audiences.”38 E. Patrick Johnson’s critical per­for­mance ethnography adds the role of the researcher’s “co-­performance” to bring to light the “meanings and symbols embedded in the act of storytelling—of bearing witness to one’s life and then co-­performatively interpreting the significance of that story.”39 New forms of ethnography, then, are bound up in telling stories as researchers weave their own reflections, experiences, and stories into an integrated narrative. New approaches to writing ethnography encourage scholars to create dialogues with readers and pre­sent qualitative data in in­ter­est­ing and engaging ways. Goodall suggests that “new ethnographers have an obligation to write about their lives.” 40 That is an obligation I have taken as central to this proj­ect, for to write about my life in burlesque serves both methodological, personal, and po­liti­cal purposes. Goodall implores writers to be reflective not only about how they write, but also about how they read and respond to texts. The most profound academic texts, he suggests, are t­ hose that ponder

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larger questions by telling stories that engage the reader. Finding the story in one’s research and telling it in a way that’s reflective and compelling is the writer or academic’s duty. As Behar puts it, “we need other forms of criticism, which are rigorous yet not disinterested, forms of criticism which are not immune to catharsis, forms of criticism which can respond vulnerably.” 41 Scholars like Behar and Johnson show that good academic writing does not have to be convoluted and that employing storytelling helps expand the audience for the research and engage the reader. The performers interviewed for and discussed in this book are also friends and colleagues, and we have shared cultural experiences. My intimate familiarity with the performers and per­for­mances has helped me guide the discussions of key concepts that, in turn, have become the central theoretical under­pinnings for each chapter. This “dialogic exchange” is a key feature of Johnson’s “co-­performative critical ethnography” and serves as a “valuable tool in engaging the lives of the other, the self, and the self and the other.” 42 As I listened to what the performers had to say, I changed the scope of my proj­ect several times. I came to realize that the most fascinating material came directly from how performers described their pro­cess and what burlesque means to them. As a result, I aim for co-­performance that “entails ‘paying attention,’ ” as Johnson describes it, “in a way that engages the bodily presence of the researcher and the researched in the moment of the narrative event.” 43 I theorize from this place in a way that I hope is “rigorous yet not disinterested,” as Behar recommends.44 Storytelling has become a key methodological tool for this book. Each chapter focuses on an early neo-­burlesque innovator in the New York City scene, using original interviews and critical theory to illuminate the meaning of the innovator’s work. The focus of each chapter has been deeply informed by the interviews I conducted, and I quote extensively from them. Chelsea Haith recommends allowing “the performers of (Neo)-­burlesque themselves to speak,” noting that this is “an approach that the current lit­er­a­ture lacks.” 45 This proj­ect seeks to address that criticism, for what I learned from listening to performers transformed this proj­ect. ­Little Brooklyn’s comment that she sought to “burlesque burlesque” became central to how I read both

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her approach to comic burlesque and burlesque’s approach to its own canon. I call this phenomenon “burlesquing burlesque,” and if it h ­ adn’t been for my interview with Brooklyn, I likely would not have come up with that concept. Similarly, my interview with World Famous *BOB* became an extended witnessing of the beauty and power of storytelling. I realized then that storytelling had to be central to how I approached writing not only chapter 6 but the entire book. It also became the impetus for the concept of gender becoming that I offer ­t here. As performers told stories about their acts and lives, t­ hose stories became integral to how I read and interpreted their per­for­mances and the cultural scene. Through storytelling, this book seeks to document and share neo-­ burlesque as an art form and participatory culture that has brought joy and liberation to prac­ti­tion­ers and fans alike. Burlesque deserves to be placed center stage as the significant cultural phenomenon and legitimate theatrical art form that it is, and the performers in this book deserve to be heard and seen—as does the movement as a ­whole. I hope I have listened carefully so that I may retell the stories that drive t­ hese performers and their per­for­ mances (as well as neo-­burlesque as a cultural movement) so that they continue shine h ­ ere as brightly as they do onstage. And I hope this book invites ­people to tell new narratives, new theories, and new stories on-­and offstage, in nightclubs, in classrooms, and on the page.

Con­t emporary Burlesque as Neo-­B urlesque I use the term “neo-­burlesque” to indicate a historical, cultural, and performative break from traditional American burlesque, notably the burlesque of the golden age or bump ’n’ grind era. In Horrible Prettiness, Robert Allen traces the emergence of American burlesque to Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes in 1868, as I discuss more fully in chapter 2.46 The Blondes’ version of burlesque as theatrical parody continued u ­ ntil the early twentieth ­century, though shows had moved from full parodic plays to variety shows by then. When striptease emerged in the 1920s, the variety format remained. Striptease was but one act among many in a burlesque show, and

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shows’ venues varied from high-­end theatres to road­houses and nightclubs. This era offered more per­for­mance opportunities for burlesque performers, and t­ hose opportunities would continue to increase through the 1950s and 1960s, though some lament that this period also marked a diminishment in burlesque’s theatrical ele­ments. Despite this, the golden age marked an incredible explosion of opportunities for performers who brought unique approaches to burlesque, exotic dancing, and self-­promotion. Con­temporary burlesque finds much inspiration in the golden age of burlesque. Most scholars of and commentators on the burlesque revival make a distinction between two versions of the art form t­ oday: classic burlesque and neo-­burlesque.47 Some use the term “neo-­burlesque” to refer to con­temporary burlesque, while o ­ thers use it more specifically as shorthand for the more avant-­garde, nontraditional, and performance-­art side of con­temporary burlesque per­for­mance. Haith importantly notes that “neo” refers to the “con­ temporary period but also . . . ​t he subversion of the genre that is related to the queerness of the space.” 48 The use of the term “neo-­burlesque,” then, often contrasts ­those performing art practices with classic burlesque. In turn, this division between neo-­burlesque and classic burlesque can come to be attached to par­tic­u­lar performers, venues, and shows. Classic burlesque tends to ­favor stock burlesque tropes such as fan dancing, boa work, stocking and glove peels, tassel twirling, and floor work, to name a few, most often performed to traditional ­music (though many performers mix genres and use classical tropes with modern m ­ usic).. Many performers (and audiences) prefer to perform (and watch) classic burlesque, while ­others prefer con­temporary burlesque that does not necessarily adhere closely to the classic tropes. Bambi the Mermaid provides her interpretation of the distinction between dif­fer­ent types of burlesque: I still have a very fundamental belief that ­t here are s­ ister branches of burlesque. ­There is [sic] the burlesque revivalists—­which is the costuming and the classic and that pageantry, and you are basing yourself off of that aesthetic and the image of that. And then t­ here’s the neo-­burlesque which has always been absurd and comedic. I think it’s two totally dif­fer­ent lineages

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Figure I.2. ​Midnite Martini performs a classic stocking peel. Her extreme flexibility and impressive aerial artistry helped earn her the title of “Reigning Queen of Burlesque” at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in 2014. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission. of where you are coming from and the footsteps you are following. And ­t hey’re separate. Th ­ ey’re related, but we a­ ren’t all one big art form. It’s a big beautiful tree. It’s very beautiful, but it’s a w ­ hole separate branch.49

Performers and observers often make this distinction between neo-­and classic burlesque. Meghann Montgomery formulates a slightly altered division between the prototypical classic and neo-­burlesque by using the terms “aesthetic burlesque” and “po­liti­cal burlesque.” 50 She explains that aesthetic burlesque “seeks glamour in a play of refined cultural cues and does not

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subvert them. Aesthetic burlesque produces a consciously self-­made feminine rather than a critique of the common ideals of the feminine.” 51 In contrast, po­liti­cal burlesque “often takes a po­liti­cal feminist stance, deconstructing the aesthetics, histories and conventions of burlesque and ‘femininity.’ This style is unequivocally power­f ul, resisting cultural ideals that have impacted negatively on w ­ omen, displaying clearly conceptualized storytelling and parody.” 52 While both aesthetic burlesque and po­liti­cal burlesque can contain parody, the message is “primary” with po­liti­cal burlesque, which aims for a “clear message,” and more “secondary” with aesthetic burlesque, which “invites ambiguity” by telling stories “through the use of objects, ­music and imagery.” 53 Montgomery acknowledges that a performer such as Dirty Martini “successfully combines” aspects of both aesthetic burlesque and neo-­burlesque.54 ­Others have brought attention to the “neo” of neo-­burlesque. Haith uses brackets around the “neo” to highlight the distinction between what she refers to as “vintage burlesque” (Montgomery’s “aesthetic burlesque”) and subversive neo-­burlesque (Montgomery’s “po­liti­cal burlesque”). Haith’s brackets mark the inherent ambiguity about (neo)-­burlesque as a potentially subversive feminist and/or queer practice. ­Those “brackets indicate an intentional ambiguity that highlights the tension between subversion and postfeminism” in (neo)-­burlesque—­and such tensions, according to Haith, “have the potential to produce si­mul­ta­neously problematic and generative new discourses about the production of femininity and the concept and application of feminism in this genre.” 55 Haith’s distinction ­here is impor­tant, as she carves out a productive space for burlesque’s ambiguity as a definitively feminist or subversive art form—­a space that allows for contrasting opinions from scholars and critics alike.56 I agree with much of the distinction made by scholars and performers between neo-­burlesque and aesthetic (or classic) burlesque. But ­here I want to offer something slightly dif­fer­ent, an offering that respectfully acknowledges the impor­tant distinctions o ­ thers have made. I want to suggest that all con­temporary burlesque is neo-­burlesque, despite differences in per­for­ mance styles, messages, or approaches to the art form, and that the distinc-

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Figure I.3. ​Dirty Martini’s innovative approach to classic burlesque includes her “Leda and the Swan” act that cleverly refers to the Greek myth and the half-­and-­half archetype in neo-­burlesque. Photo by Steven Menendez. Printed by permission.

tion between classic and neo-­burlesque is a false division that confines through exclusion more than it defines. Con­temporary burlesque is marked by a redefining, reframing, and re-­ presentation of burlesque from the golden age and its derivatives. What I refer to broadly as neo-­burlesque does not seek historic reenactment as its

Figure I.4. ​Neo-­burlesque performers layer classic tropes with unexpected twists to surprise and entertain. ­Here Darlinda Just Darlinda performers a glove peel wearing a bear’s head at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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singular purpose. “Tribute acts” to burlesque legends have become increasingly popu­ lar, and new performers painstakingly research the costume, ­music, choreography, and performer they are paying tribute to. Yet the act that the new performer creates is never an exact replica of the original: performers seek to add their own twist to the source text. Dirty Martini’s spider­web act, for instance, was inspired by a per­for­mance by Zorita that she discovered on a Something Weird Video, as I discuss more fully in chapter 3. In ­Little Brooklyn’s tribute to the canonical half-­man, half-­woman act, discussed in chapter  4, she performs as both King Kong and Fay Wray. Tribute acts, then, both pay homage to burlesque past while reinventing it with modern sensibilities of con­temporary performers and per­for­mance practices. Burlesque performers are constantly seeking new and original ways to approach the burlesque canon. ­There are countless examples—­and new ones are in­ven­ted e­ very day—of innovative approaches to traditional tropes that reinvigorate classic burlesque with original impulses and modern sensibilities. This leads to innovative per­for­mances that pay tribute to, while modernizing, stock burlesque tropes. For example, Julie Atlas Muz (the primary subject of chapter 7) subverts Sally Rand’s famed ­bubble dance by getting inside a g­ iant balloon. Midnite Martini (2014 Queen of Burlesque, Burlesque Hall of Fame) came up with an original and acrobatic stocking peel that she performs while in a shoulder stand: with her upper body supported by a chair and her legs extending into the air in a high V, she hooks one toe over the top of her thigh-­high stocking, runs her foot slowly and seductively up the length of her other leg, and teases the audience—­amplified by her acrobatic strength—­w ith the tension of the stocking before flicking the stocking off her foot. I have since seen several performers remove stockings in a similar way, demonstrating how Martini’s innovation of a classic burlesque trope has become integrated back into neo-­burlesque’s movement vocabulary. Classic burlesque celebrates the past while inscribing it with a con­ temporary context. ­These innovative approaches then become staples in neo-­burlesque per­for­mance, highlighting the way burlesque—­even traditional or classic burlesque—is always already new. The citationality of burlesque tropes is central to burlesque’s parodic roots. In fact, like Jacques

Figure I.5. ​Neo-­burlesque performers reinvent classic burlesque tropes with innovation and originally. ­Here Midnite Martini performs an acrobatic stocking removal on her lyra. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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Derrida’s citationality, parodic citationality is a necessary possibility for burlesque’s being.57 In “Signature Event Context,” Derrida turns to citationality as a necessary possibility for the performative to come into being. ­Those moments of citation, excluded by J. L. Austin in How to Do Th ­ ings with Words as nonserious and parasitic, are for Derrida full of potential for understanding how language functions, acknowledging the paradox that “a successful performative is necessarily an ‘impure’ performative.” 58 Similarly, the citationality of burlesque is a necessary possibility for neo-­burlesque’s being. Though a par­tic­u­lar burlesque per­for­mance is one of a kind, citationality marks all con­temporary burlesque, and that citationality brings the possibility of t­ hose new iterations being reintegrated back into the canon. Reading neo-­burlesque as a failure of classic burlesque, or reading classic burlesque solely as recreationist, misses the way the art form functions through repetition and revision. Con­temporary burlesque is continuously harking back and looking forward, making neo-­burlesque a constantly changing and inherently self-­reflective art form. ­These new historical, social, and cultural contexts mean all con­temporary burlesque has shared characteristics that make it distinct from burlesque of prior eras. The art form continues to evolve as movement and aesthetics constantly change, so what is designated as classic burlesque ­today is radically dif­fer­ent from what was given the same name a de­cade ago and w ­ ill be dif­fer­ent from what is called classic burlesque tomorrow. Thus, at its root, classic burlesque is a type of neo-­burlesque. Pushing this further, I want to suggest that all con­temporary burlesque is neo-­burlesque. Ultimately, the false division between classic burlesque and neo-­burlesque is neither accurate nor productive. The ideological and performative division created by the binary reduces the endless creative possibility of burlesque by limiting it to one of two options: classic per­for­mance or per­for­ mance that is po­liti­cal (or funny or avant-­garde). If a per­for­mance strays too far from classic burlesque tropes, it can get labeled “neo”—­a designation that for some means that the act is not true to the burlesque form or that it is, at the very least, something ­else. (Comedic burlesque, which I discuss more fully in chapter 4, is often subsumed u ­ nder this “something e­ lse” designation.) Such

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labels can lessen an act’s efficacy. Alternatively, o ­ thers seek to emulate such labels as a badge of honor. In all cases, the classic-­neo divide creates a false division that lessens burlesque’s efficacy. I employ the term “neo-­burlesque” to describe the new generation of burlesque performers and per­for­mances, regardless of per­for­mance aesthetics or style. As Jo Weldon explains, “To me it’s all neo-­burlesque ­because it is created in a dif­fer­ent environment and system than what preceded it.” 59 Neo-­ burlesque refers to a set of per­for­mance practices that push against the bound­aries of social norms as performers pre­sent narratives of desire, sexuality, and self-­expression in public and po­liti­cal ways. “By controlling her own spectacle as sexualized, feminized, and ‘low,’ ” Willson argues in The Happy Stripper, “the burlesque performer powerfully makes transparent deeper power imbalances, instabilities and anx­i­eties at play in society at large.” 60 Pushing bound­aries and making “transparent deeper power imbalances” is not relegated to “arty” or avant-­garde burlesque that may f­avor po­liti­cal commentary and narrative form. Rather, pushing bound­aries is evident throughout burlesque, where w ­ omen unabashedly expose their bodies, politics, and desires onstage in very public and irreverent ways. And they use striptease to do that work, a commonality across neo-­burlesque per­for­ mance that has the power to unify rather than divide.

Burlesque as Amateur Art Form and Participatory Culture Burlesque is an amateur art form that began as an alternative, participatory culture. In the early revival period, it was largely under­ground and countercultural. It had a DIY aesthetic and sensibility that depended on performers crafting their own costumes and props, creating their own acts, and managing most if not all of the components of their artistic production. Performers ­were responsible for their own bookings and promotion (though some performers have agents). Burlesque performers can be described as professional generalists, a kind of nouveau Re­nais­sance ­woman, as they often possess—or quickly acquire—­many skills.

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Burlesque requires performers to wear many hats. In traditional performing arts, specialists perform par­tic­u­lar tasks: theatre is created through the specialized skill of designers, actors, producers, and directors. But in burlesque, performers play most (and often all) of t­ hese roles si­mul­ta­neously. As Weldon explains, heightened self-­authorship is an attractive feature for neo-­burlesque performers: “The agency that p ­ eople have to make up their numbers; this is very empowering. They can choose the ­music, choose the choreography, choose the costume, choose the theme. And if ­t here’s not an audience for it, then [they] can make one.” 61 The self-­authorship in burlesque attracts performers and fans alike to the art form. But the flip side is that participating in burlesque does not necessarily require mastering a par­tic­ u­lar skill, as is the case in other performing arts. Some ­w ill object to my depiction of burlesque as an amateur art form. To suggest that burlesque is an amateur art form does not mean that some neo-­burlesque performers are not highly experienced and skilled entertainers, or that burlesque per­for­mance does not benefit from professional standards. This does not preclude the possibility of the professional burlesque performer or the professional-­level per­for­mance. Many performers come to the burlesque stage having been trained in other performing arts (including dance, acting, singing, and design) and bring those skills to their art, and most performers continue their professionalization through classes and workshops. Furthermore, becoming a seasoned burlesque performer takes time, talent, and effort, and performing a striptease act well is both a skill and an art. That said, it does not take specific training to perform burlesque. In recent years burlesque has shifted away from a strong DIY culture as performers increasingly turn to semiprofessional and professional costumers, instructors, photog­raphers, choreographers, and other artists and artisans to help craft their acts, costumes, promotional materials, and c­ areers. The forgiving nature of the medium has changed (and w ­ ill continue to do so) as burlesque has gained in popularity, with shows moving from under­ ground venues supported by cultural participants to mainstream venues with audiences whose members may have l­imited experience with burlesque. That said, performers spending more money on their craft does not necessarily

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translate into stronger per­for­mances or a professional industry. More experienced performers have increasing numbers of per­for­mance opportunities with corporate clients or larger-­scale static or traveling shows that require professionally made costumes and highly polished acts. However, ­these professional opportunities are anomalies that do not necessarily represent the majority of burlesque per­for­mance. Additionally, this is a relatively recent phenomenon and, I would argue, does not alter my claim that neo-­ burlesque began as and continues to be an amateur art form that celebrates the “professional amateur.” The amateurism of burlesque has been noted by cultural critics and scholars alike.62 As Ben Walters puts it, “amateurism—or at least a kind of permeability between performer and audience—is sometimes the point.” 63 Joan Acocella, dance critic for the New Yorker, acknowledges that burlesque is a “serious art form,” though she highlights “amateurism” as a “major compo­ ill nent” of new burlesque.64 At a prototypical burlesque show, audiences w likely experience a broad range of performers with vari­ous experience levels and per­for­mance styles, from Montgomery’s “aesthetic burlesque” to nerdlesque to high-­energy dancing to skilled variety to hilarious social parody and anything (and every­thing) in between (and beyond).65 Though technically the audience knows what w ­ ill happen when a performer steps onstage, it’s the unfolding of that known narrative in unlimited ways that provides excitement and newness with each act. The often unexpected and original ways performers use striptease to tell engaging stories onstage is what makes neo-­burlesque both innovative and entertaining. Anything can—­and does—­happen at a burlesque show. Defining burlesque as an amateur art form may, on the surface, appear to undermine its potential as a legitimate art form. But I believe that amateurism is central to understanding the characteristics that make burlesque unique as a performing art. The flexibility of burlesque is further supported by the forgiving nature of the medium overall. Though most burlesque performers and audience members would agree that experiencing a high-­quality act is preferable to experiencing a visibly challenged one, it is the broad support of the performers writ large that makes this performing art radically

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dif­fer­ent from other art forms where mastery is a primary goal. I have seen audiences respond wildly to a per­for­mance that had clearly gone awry, and the performer’s ability to keep ­going despite unintended mis­haps is one of the ­t hings that makes watching—­and performing—­burlesque exhilarating. The performer who goes for it with gusto is often celebrated over polished perfection (though ­t hese two categories are not mutually exclusive by any means). Shows can feel more like a talent show than a professional production of highly polished acts, and as at a talent show, the audience shows appreciation for the performer who “goes for it.” Audiences come to expect some degree of the unexpected (such as costume malfunctions and performer nerves), regardless of the caliber of the show. In fact, some of the most enthusiastic audience responses I have witnessed come as a result of mis­haps and at student showcases.66 At student showcases, the audience carries the performer through her act with wild applause, hoots, and hollers, and in turn the performer becomes animated in her per­for­mance, encouraged by that response. Regardless of the quality of her act, the performer usually comes offstage elated, and the audience is entertained through that escalating expression of energy. Weldon describes this is an empowering aspect of burlesque: “In this moment, you are appreciated for your physical being, your imagination, your creativity, this t­ hing you created yourself. I think that’s empowering.” 67 ­Because the audience is such an integral part of the show, its response to mis­haps and ­mistakes helps support the performer and creates a feeling that it’s more impor­tant to go for it than it is to get the choreography right. The goal may not be perfection, but rather the performer’s response to the unexpected and the give-­and-­ take exchange with the audience that fuels the excitement and kinesthetic energy found at neo-­burlesque shows. Burlesque is largely a demo­cratic art form. As performers are celebrated for g­ oing for it, getting on a burlesque stage in the first place is open to most ­people who care to try it. This open-­stage policy has been central to burlesque as a performing art: performing it does not require extensive training or skill. In many markets, burlesque is predicated on the assumption that anyone who wants to perform—­regardless of experience, age, size, gender(s), or

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physical appearance—­can. In contrast to other performing arts, such as ­music or dance, in which the craft must be mastered to some degree before one is invited to perform, t­ here’s l­ ittle formal standardized training in burlesque. Though no specific training is required, knowledge exchange happens in informal ways, and hopeful burlesque performers often take classes to learn basic moves, develop acts, and obtain guidance and support. ­There is an increasing number of schools around the globe that teach burlesque, and burlesque performers can take classes with more experienced performers and legends to learn new skills and develop their per­for­mance practice. BurlyCon is a “community-­oriented professional growth and educational organ­ization for burlesque performers, fans, and aficionado” that holds a yearly convention in Seattle, at which newer and experienced performers gather to share knowledge, take classes, and network.68 Though on the surface the increase in the numbers of burlesque classes and schools may seem to contradict my claim that burlesque does not require par­tic­u­lar training, much of what happens in t­ hese classes can be broadly categorized as community building. A burlesque student may be learning a par­tic­u­lar skill in a class, but she is also meeting other performers, being mentored by a more experienced performer, and becoming part of a community. Gathering together for crafting, for example, creates opportunities for chatting, sharing knowledge, and informal networking, and the exchange of ideas and the giving and receiving of feedback creates a bond between the members of the group that also ties them into a larger community. Burlesque schools and classes, then, are as much about becoming part of a community, and specifically a participatory culture, as they are about learning skills related to burlesque per­for­mance. Becoming part of a community is integral to understanding burlesque’s efficacy. In this sense, burlesque can be read as a type of folk art, defined by Sally Banes as “the art of traditional communities.” 69 Like burlesque, “folk art is embedded in the social process—it is art by the community for the community. Furthermore, it is made outside the sphere of professionalism: it need not compete in the con­temporary marketplace, and its makers are not trained ­toward that end. W ­ hether this art is an object or a per­for­mance,

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it often appears unpolished and lively, since it is handmade and unique.”70 Burlesque indeed embodies this notion of lively, handmade, unique, and yes, at times, unpolished art that comes from and is performed for the community (in this case, of burlesque fans and followers). As folk artists, burlesque performers both produce and consume the culture they create. Fans become performers or producers (or, in many cases, both). ­These fans turned performers then become integral members of the community who contribute to and influence the culture that they continue to consume, representing what Henry Jenkins describes as a “participatory culture.” In Jenkins’s groundbreaking and still influential Textual Poachers, he reconfigures “fans” from ­simple consumers to active producers of culture and participants in a community.71 Alvin Toffler builds on this concept in The Third Wave by offering the concept of a “prosumer” (a consumer and producer), marked by a larger economic and social “shift from passive consumer to active prosumer.”72 The prosumer represents a movement t­ oward consumers d ­ oing t­ hings for themselves—­specifically, tasks that previously would have been done by o ­ thers. The DIY sensibility and style so celebrated in burlesque exemplifies Toffler’s concept of prosumers on a heightened level. The prosumer’s motivation is largely an economic one, as “the customer pays a bit less but works a bit harder,” but in burlesque, the customer pays more and works harder, as the payoff for l­ abor is often not proportionate to compensation, and working harder is bound up in the art form itself.73 ­There’s ­great pride in the prosumer burlesque performer who rhinestones her own shoes or creates an elaborate backdrop for a photo shoot, work that may not be eco­nom­ically feasible to pay someone ­else to do. But t­ here’s also another reason for burlesque performers working “a bit harder”: for many, the l­abor they put into creating their personas and costumes, as well as promoting their image and per­for­mance, is an integral component of their art-­making pro­cess. Burlesque celebrates over-­the-­top de­cadence via elaborate visuals and self-­ promotion, and this creation of dream worlds is dependent on performers being engaged in creating ­t hose images. B ­ ecause it is a culture that is created through the participants and their participation, burlesque does not

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Figure I.6. ​Kate Valentine hosting as Miss Astrid. Her acerbic wit as a host and innovation as a producer of the Va Va Voom helped usher in the neo-­ burlesque movement. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

enter into the same economy of exchange as other industries do. A performer ­w ill rarely be compensated for all her ­labor, but the pride that comes from creating an escalation of spectacle, something unimaginably beautiful or extravagantly weird, provides satisfaction to the burlesque prosumer. If Toffler’s prosumer had to work “a bit harder,” the burlesque prosumer does

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so exponentially, and that work represents a type of ­labor that is also a form of art. The burlesque prosumer has had an impact on the industry. In her “State of the Union” address, Valentine offers a lucid take on the status of professionalism in burlesque.74 According to Valentine, neo-­burlesque performers can be divided into two main camps: the professional performers and the hobbyists. The hobbyists, characterized by Valentine as “Stitch n’ Bitch burlesque performers,” are “huge fans of the genre and they got involved ­because they wanted to explore their sexuality, their body issues, or their love of retro clothing. They wanted to find a community of like-­minded, fun, supportive party ­people.”75 She concedes that t­ here’s room for both the professional and the hobbyist in burlesque, and that both are “totally valid and extremely valuable,” but that the “prob­lem” arises when the “Stitch n’ Bitch performers are ­under the impression that they are members of the professional group.”76 Valentine’s honest and provocative take provides an impor­ tant insight ­here, for she intelligently sums up what’s unique and liberating about neo-­burlesque as a performing art while si­mul­ta­neously questioning its potential for sustainability and longevity. I agree with Valentine that t­ here can be confusion on the part of performers who perform in (and audiences who experience) shows that feature a mix of hobbyists and professionals. But do burlesque shows suffer when they feature both types of performers? Or is that simultaneity precisely what contributes to the excitement and unexpectedness at an average burlesque show? When does a hobbyist become a professional, and is the difference solely about making a full-­time commitment to perform? Is the status of professional a necessary goal for neo-­burlesque performers who have no intention (for a number of reasons that may or may not be related to income, personal obligations, c­ areers, and even talent) of becoming full-­time performers? The solution Valentine proposes is not the elimination of the hobbyist. Instead, she suggests that “the only way to preserve neo-­burlesque as an art form is to create high professional standards within the genre.”77 For Valentine, professionalization is the solution. However, I want to suggest a third category for her impor­tant discussion—­namely, that of the professional amateur.

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Rather than a strict division between amateur and professional, burlesque celebrates the professional amateur, or what Charles Leadbeater refers to as a “Pro-­A m.”78 Leadbeater traces the emergence of the Pro-­A m as a “new social hybrid” that is a distinct product of commerce, culture, and lifestyle at the end of the twentieth ­century and that cuts across fields.79 His description of the Pro-­Am has much in common with the majority of neo-­burlesque performers: “A Pro-­A m pursues an activity as an amateur, mainly for the love of it, but sets a professional standard. Pro-­Ams are unlikely to earn more than a small portion of their income from their pastime, but they pursue it with the dedication and commitment associated with a professional. For Pro-­Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory.” 80 The Pro-­Am represents the participatory nature of burlesque as both a performing art and a community culture. Rather than tainting the integrity of burlesque as an art form, the Pro-­A m is one of the defining features of neo-­burlesque. The Pro-­Am burlesquer may not support herself entirely through per­for­ mance, but she has gained live per­for­mance experience that moves her beyond the newbie performer. She may have developed a signature act that gets her booked for shows or festivals. While she may not be at the level of the performers described in this book, she is respected and her per­for­mances are enjoyed by her peers and audiences alike. She has become a better burlesque performer and w ­ ill continue to grow, but becoming a full-­time performer able to dedicate herself exclusively to her craft may not be her goal (and may be unattainable for a variety of reasons). Valentine may c­ ounter that t­ hese are “Stitch n’ Bitch” performers u ­ nder the (false) impression that they are professional, but I would ­counter that the professional amateur is a key feature of burlesque, and that the Pro-­A m has become an impor­tant and noteworthy part of its propagation. I have seen several generations of new performers become Pro-­Ams and legitimate full-­time performing artists as they gain experience over time, and it is the fluidity and mixing of the categories of the amateur and professional that make burlesque unique as a performing art. In neo-­burlesque, much of the skill needed to become a seasoned performer happens on the job and

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along the way. Valentine laments that performers should acquire ample experience before teaching, and I agree ­wholeheartedly. But the fact is that the training period in burlesque is short—­sometimes just a few weeks or months—­and the path to obtaining stage experience is relatively straightforward and available to most. Additionally, burlesque attracts ­women with lots of personality, confidence, gumption, and intelligence, so it’s logical that ­t hese w ­ omen figure out a way to promote themselves, produce their own shows, and branch out into teaching. Burlesque performers get more gigs not necessarily b ­ ecause they are the best performers but b ­ ecause they hustle. Burlesque is, ­after all, not only an amateur art form but a participatory culture that is predicated on fluidity between the categories of fans and performers. All of ­t hese ­factors are not detrimental but rather foundational to neo-­burlesque as a performing art and participatory culture.

Burlesque as Adult Entertainment: The Pastie Goes from Raunch to Retail The previous section defined neo-­burlesque as an amateur art form and participatory culture. H ­ ere I want to further that definition with a (likely controversial) proposition: burlesque is an adult form of entertainment that defines mainstream commodification. Through blue humor, explicit (and implicit) sexuality, innuendo, and po­liti­cal punch lines that often require a knowledge of popu­lar culture, politics, and world events, burlesque is created and performed for adult audiences. Burlesque’s blue humor is communicated via winks and double entendres, and comprehending ­those requires reading the inflection of the voice and the gesture of the body. In short, it takes a critical mind to decipher the meaning of burlesque acts.81 Neo-­burlesque performers toy with sexuality, ­whether it’s raw, explicit sexuality or a parody of sexuality. Explicit sexuality is an integral part of many performers’ moves and personas, while for ­others, sexuality serves as a tool used—in combination with o ­ thers such as theatricality and exaggerated aesthetics—to express a message. While one could say that pornography’s raison d’être is to excite viewers physically, burlesque seeks to excite

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viewers intellectually, po­liti­cally, and creatively. With burlesque, titillation may be an end product, but it is not necessarily the primary goal. Not all performers are explic­itly sexual (though many are), and implicit sexuality is evident throughout most neo-­burlesque. The taboo surrounding burlesque is partially grounded in this implicit (and often explicit) sexuality and a concern oscillating around the (f)act that (mostly) w ­ omen choose to remove their clothes in public as a form of entertainment and self-­expression. Burlesque may not be family-­f riendly entertainment, but neither is it staged in venues for ­t hose types of audiences. Neo-­burlesque is performed primarily in nightclubs, mixed-­use bars and restaurants, and small to midsize theatres. Liveness is one of the defining characteristics of burlesque (as well as other performing arts). I want to take this a step further and suggest that burlesque defies mainstream commodification ­because it is intended to be experienced live in venues that cater to adults. This limits the production and consumption of burlesque, which, in turn, affects how it is perceived (and how it is studied). Some w ­ ill object to my defining neo-­burlesque as adult entertainment, as that can invoke pornography and commercial stripping. This connection to adult entertainment is precisely what some burlesque attempts to distances itself from, as discussed above. Yet I think that this notion of adult entertainment gets at the heart of what makes burlesque recognizable and distinct from other displays of the unveiled female body in popu­lar culture, such as scantily dressed pop stars or the proliferation of pasties in the mainstream. Burlesque performers are adults performing for adults with adult topics in adult venues. Public displays of nudity have become pervasive in popu­lar culture. Celebrities often reveal as much as—if not more than—­your average burlesque dancer. Scholars have pointed to the increased presence of sexual display in popu­lar media and its impact on how w ­ omen are seen and, in turn, behave. In Striptease Culture, Brian McNair traces this broad “cultural sexualization” that Ariel Levy characterized in Female Chauvinist Pigs as a rise in “raunch culture.” 82 Levy laments that “spectacles of naked ladies have moved from seedy side streets to center stage, where every­one—­men and

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­women—­can watch them in broad daylight,” a depiction that collapses all public displays of the explicit female body, regardless of context.83 McNair’s argument is slightly more nuanced as he distinguishes between the rise of “porno-­chic,” created by professional performers and media makers, and “striptease culture,” defined as “ordinary ­people talking about sex and their own sexualities, revealing intimate details of their feelings and their bodies in the public sphere,” thereby placing this phenomenon in a larger context of what media scholars have characterized as the confessional mode, particularly in the tele­v i­sion talk show format.84 Both Levy’s and McNair’s perspectives are impor­tant for understanding the display of w ­ omen’s bodies and expressions of sexuality in public and popu­lar media, but they provide few insights that can be applied to neo-­ burlesque. Burlesque may be a public per­for­mance of seminudity and sexual display, but it does not take place in public venues, such as McNair’s tele­v i­sion talk shows or Levy’s mainstream videos, like the Girls Gone Wild series. Similarly, attempts to bring burlesque into the mainstream ultimately turn it into something ­else. For example, the Hollywood film Burlesque, starring Christina Aguilera and Cher, is a coming-­of-­age story that uses a nightclub as a backdrop rather than being a film that places burlesque sensibility and per­for­mance at the center of the story.85 The per­for­mances in Burlesque feature more lip-­synching than striptease, production numbers more Vegas showgirl than the tongue-­in-­cheek, wink-­and-­nudge sensibility central to burlesque. Burlesque is a mildly entertaining but mistitled film. Though the word “burlesque” and its aesthetic sensibility may get co-­ opted by the mainstream, ultimately burlesque’s sensibility defies mainstream commodification. Taking a comprehensive approach to prove this claim is impossible in this short space. Instead, I would like to focus on one version of this phenomenon—­namely, the co-­opting of the pastie by pop stars and musicians in public and per­for­mance contexts. Pasties ­were in­ven­ ted by burlesque performers to circumvent nudity laws by covering the nipple and areola. Carrie Finnell is credited with inventing “comic ‘tassel twirling’ ” in the 1920s, an act that capitalized on what she referred to as her “educated bosom.” 86 Finnell could “pop” her breasts out of her costume and

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control the speed of the twirl of her tassels with her pectoral muscles, gimmicks that she performed throughout her c­ areer.87 Ironically, the pastie used by striptease performers to shield the naked nipple has since became a sparkly way to attract attention to that same body part. Almost a c­ entury a­ fter its invention, the pastie, once unequivocally a signifier of striptease, has garnered increased exposure in popu­lar and celebrity culture. Pasties have “hit the mainstream,” as they increasingly are worn by pop stars and musicians and featured in fashion lines.88 Lil’ Kim wore pasties to the MTV Video ­Music Awards in 1999, and other pop musicians have followed suit—­including Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, and Rita Ora, all whom have been noted for wearing pasties on red carpets and in per­for­mances. Cher, ever the fashion icon, wore pasties during her 2017 per­for­mance at the Billboard M ­ usic Awards. Cher’s barely-­t here outfit was composed of rhinestone trim that was draped provocatively over her body like liquid chains. She was essentially topless except for a thin triangle of trim that framed her breasts and pastie-­covered nipples.89 She was seventy-­ one at the time, and her outfit—­and her body—­would give a Las Vegas showgirl a run for her money. Though not new to fashion, the pastie has become an increasingly popu­ lar (and, one could suggest, less shocking the more it is used) fashion accessory. The pastie has gone from raunch to retail as designers from Tom Ford to Yves Saint Laurent have incorporated the iconic symbol into their fashion collections. Several designers presenting their 2017 lines at the Salon International de la Lingerie in Paris included the pastie as a fashion accessory, and Saint Laurent’s single silver pastie featured on the runway during fashion week was part of a sort of pastie zeitgeist. Robin Givhan contextualized the Saint Laurent pastie, “a pastie with historical significance and Instagram appeal,” by rehearsing the fashion world’s inclusion of pasties through several iconic moments.90 In January 2017 a member of the Kardashian empire, Kendall Jenner, was spotted wearing a pair of star-­shaped pasties u ­ nder a see-­t hrough top while strolling down the streets of Paris. As cultural influencers are wearing the pastie both on-­and offstage, its meaning has shifted from a signifier of burlesque to a sparkly fashion accessory.

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Yet the pastie’s infiltration into mainstream culture does not indicate that burlesque in toto has been commodified and integrated into that culture. Jane Halpern picks up on this paradox that the fashion industry embraces some aspects of strip culture but not strippers per se.91 What has been commodified is the easily transferrable part, the pastie—­which alludes to but ultimately shields nudity. The reconfiguration of the pastie as a fashion accessory does not necessarily mean that ­there is an increased mainstream appreciation for stripping or burlesque. What has not been commodified is burlesque’s sensibility, style, and performative efficacy, its ability to poke fun at cultural institutions and the art form of burlesque itself. ­Because of its suggestive nature and tendency to mock and poke fun at all social conventions—­from the profane to the sacred, and from light popu­ lar culture to significant po­liti­cal issues—­burlesque likely w ­ ill not be wholly commercialized and offered in mainstream venues. Though some performers, like Dita Von Teese, have become financially and commercially successful, at its core burlesque is a fringe art form. As Dodds aptly and succinctly puts it, “the less the per­for­mance disturbs, the wider the audience it attracts.”92 What burlesque sells is not necessarily of interest to the average consumer of culture, and not simply b ­ ecause of the explicit body on display. What burlesque sells is the pre­sen­ta­tion of female-­centered self-­authorship, a narrative that is always already radical as it features an “unruly w ­ oman” who chooses to put herself and her body on display.93 The female body of burlesque disturbs not only b ­ ecause of its explicitness but also ­because of its fearless refusal to behave. As the above discussion suggests, the taboo surrounding burlesque is not solely about the display of the unveiled female body. Sexually explicit images proliferate in the mainstream. It is not seminudity that’s challenging, but rather a fear of ­women’s unapologetic refusal to remain covered and contained, physically and meta­phor­ ically. It is a fear of sexual agency or the “sexual persona,” as Camille Paglia defines it, “this kind of brashly individualistic ­woman, harsh, aggressive, raunchy, and physical.”94 Paglia’s sexual persona permeates neo-­burlesque: performers who celebrate their bodies and sexuality in unabashed and public ways.

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The fear of sexual agency is amplified by bodies that may challenge mainstream conventions of beauty ideals. “This excess of imperfect flesh suggests an unruly body,” Dodds notes, “one that cannot be controlled or contained by the disciplinary frameworks of modern capitalism that seek to delimit and regulate the female body through a wealth of cosmetic and physical regimes.”95 The burlesque body’s excess—­excess of spectacle, excess of flesh, excess of flamboyance—­indicates an unruly body that defies expectations. Through that excess, the burlesque body is able to circumvent capitalism’s identifying denying protocols and defy mainstream commodification as it luxuriates in its unexpected, uncontained, and unapologetic display.

Limitations of this Book This book makes inroads into categorizing and theorizing the fascinating world of neo-­burlesque as both a performing art and participatory culture. Admittedly, ­there is much that this book does not do. It is not a comprehensive study of neo-­burlesque. It does not attempt to fully document neo-­ burlesque’s emergence and subsequent growth in global popularity, nor does it provide a comprehensive history of the popu­lar and performing arts that precede—­and have influenced—­burlesque and neo-­burlesque. It does not address the emergence of burlesque in dif­fer­ent geographic areas or regional differences in per­for­mance styles, nor does it discuss how touring performers and the world wide web have influenced performers and the work they create. It does not attempt to outline, define, or differentiate new subsets of burlesque such as nerdlesque, boylesque, bearlesque, or other offshoots of neo-­burlesque. Th ­ ese limitations may dissatisfy readers of the book and fans of neo-­burlesque alike. This book is not intended to be a definitive work. Instead, it seeks to document and analyze par­tic­u­lar per­for­mances by groundbreaking neo-­ burlesque performers and offer some theoretical frameworks for understanding neo-­burlesque as a performing art, participatory culture, and new sexual revolution. Each chapter is dedicated to a neo-­burlesque performer

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or style of per­for­mance, focusing on how performers use their bodies to create art and tell stories that challenge the status quo. Rather than providing a comprehensive history, this book offers stories that reflect new ways of performing gender using the body (often the explicit body) as a primary agent of self-­expression. Per­for­mance and the body can serve both as text and a kind of voice, and this book seeks to analyze both uses. The theoretical underpinning in each chapter is deeply informed by the original interviews I conducted with performers. Each chapter also serves as a kind of character sketch, providing insights into a par­tic­u­lar performer’s thoughts, beliefs, and creative pro­cesses and illuminating the new burlesque w ­ oman who dreams up and creates an alternative world in which ­women are in control of their self-­authored images. The goal of the book is to illuminate t­ hose performers and their per­for­mances in all their sparkly exuberance and signifying meaning, in the hope that we can continue to conduct research and have dialogues about this vibrant art form. At its root, burlesque is parody, poking fun. It is not always polite, and even its pre­sen­ta­tion of glamour has a tongue-­in-­cheek quality. It can be crass and shocking. At its core, burlesque is not intended to be comforting in an Aristotelean cathartic way. Instead, burlesque is meant to be Brechtian Epic Theatre. It is meant to wake you up. In its early days, it was messy and irreverent, not for the faint of heart. Burlesque once was, as Muz describes it, “a night out with dangerous w ­ omen.”96 Some readers w ­ ill interpret this as an excuse to propagate unsafe spaces that cause harm and further maintain the status quo. Burlesque’s “anything goes” approach to art making and social commentary can be a breath of fresh air in a corporate culture-­ making world, but it can also have hurtful repercussions—­particularly when we take into account the fact that much of the iconography from which burlesque borrows comes from an era in which choices w ­ ere l­imited for many segments of the population. Appropriating an archetype or image born in racialist and/or racist contexts can carry the residual weight of that harm, which continues to reverberate and has the power to wound. Next we ­w ill address that in part as we turn to the lack of racial diversity in neo-­burlesque, particularly in the early emergence of the scene in New

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York City, and how that impacted the scene and this book. Though recently discussions about race and exclusionary practices in burlesque have increased, ­t here is much work left to be done.

“Fleck of Pepper in a Sea of Salt”: Race in Neo-­B urlesque Though I describe burlesque as a participatory culture and a demo­cratic art form, ­there are some significant limitations to that claim. Burlesque has been criticized for its lack of racial and ethnic diversity. Desiré D’Amour, a burlesque performer and CFO of the Burlesque Hall of Fame, acknowledges that “burlesque is definitely more something for white ­people at ­every slice of it from the audience up to the producers.”97 This perception that burlesque is by white ­people and for white p ­ eople has had an impact on the form, one that can be seen throughout burlesque as a performing art and cultural scene. As Maggie Werner points out, though ­women of color “have a substantial legacy in burlesque,” it continues to be represented by “predominantly able-­ bodied white cis w ­ omen.”98 This book is guilty of perpetuating this disconnect between legacy and repre­sen­ta­tion. This book documents the early emergence of neo-­burlesque in New York City, and the majority of performers at the time ­there ­were white. The primary subjects of each chapter identify as white, cisgender w ­ omen, except for World Famous *BOB*, who identifies as gender nonconforming. To note that and move on, however, is insufficient. Framing the movement as primarily white and focusing on white performers neither excuses this lack of repre­sen­ta­t ion nor does much to unpack how exclusionary practices have had an impact on the movement over all. What I would like to offer h ­ ere, though admittedly incomplete, focuses on the experiences of several performers of color with the early neo-­burlesque scene framed by scholarship on embodiment, sexuality, and race. The perspectives offered ­here are not intended to be comprehensive. Instead, the goal is to hear directly from performers about what they experienced in the early neo-­burlesque scene and how their experiences impacted the art they created.

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Miss AuroraBoobRealis, cofounder of Brown Girls Burlesque (BGB), describes her attraction to neo-­burlesque as an art form and her being perplexed by the lack of racial diversity onstage and in the audience. She recalls falling “in love” with burlesque ­after seeing her first show—­!BadAss! Burlesque at the Knitting Factory—­around 2004:99 I became a fan. I started ­going to burlesque shows semi regularly in New York over the next c­ ouple of years. From 2004 to 2007 while I was in grad school, I saw one brown body onstage in New York City in three fucking years. And I was like, we are in New York City—­one of the most diverse places—­t here’s got to be other ­people of color that are ­doing this. Why am I not seeing them? Are they not getting booked? What’s ­going on?100

Part of what was ­going on was that neo-­burlesque catered to white patrons, and though p ­ eople of color may not have been explic­itly excluded, they did not feel included. Chicava HoneyChild, who joined BGB a­ fter its inaugural show, describes wanting to go to places like Blue Stockings (a radical feminist bookstore) and the Slipper Room (a burlesque and variety nightclub), both located at the time on the same street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side: “I wanted to go so badly. And I c­ ouldn’t articulate it then. But the reason I ­didn’t go is b ­ ecause I d ­ idn’t feel comfortable g­ oing as a Black w ­ oman. I d ­ idn’t think t­ here would be a place for me.”101 That nagging, inexplicable feeling of not belonging is one of the psychic residues of noninclusionary practices. Not feeling “comfortable” in the audience influences repre­sen­ta­t ions onstage and vice versa. As D’Amour explains, “When you go to a show and you d ­ on’t see very many p ­ eople of color onstage, y­ ou’re definitely ­going to ask yourself, ‘Am I wanted?’ ”102 Though D’Amour’s experience performing in the San Francisco Bay Area was dif­fer­ent than performers’ experience in New York City—­“we had our Harlem Shake and me and several ­people of mixed race, but the truth was we ­were ­really a tiny ­little dot”—­she also describes burlesque performers, shows, and audiences as primarily white. Maya D. Haynes, cofounder of BGB, characterizes that “tiny ­little dot” as a “fleck of pepper in a sea of salt”103 AuroraBoobRealis adds that predominantly

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white audiences are not necessarily an accidental ­thing: “I used to hear producers being like, ‘Well, I ­don’t know. ­We’re ­really opening and welcoming. I ­don’t know why our audiences are all white. Anyone is welcome to come,’ type of ­thing. And I was always like, ‘Um hmmm.’ Look at your show.”104 D’Amour describes the alienating feeling of performing to white audiences: “What p ­ eople d ­ on’t think about—­imagine you are up on that stage from that marginalized group and you look out and you d ­ on’t see anybody that looks like you out t­ here. And that’s a r­ eally weird feeling. When I look out into a crowd and I see all white ­people it affects what ­music I dance to, it affects what dances I choose to do.”105 That lack of diversity both onstage and in the audience are mutually constituting, and it further impacts the per­ for­mances and culture of burlesque. BGB directly responded to the whiteness of neo-­burlesque in New York City by creating shows in which they saw themselves represented onstage and in the audience. Haynes describes the impetus b ­ ehind founding BGB: Our mission was to create a space for p ­ eople of color onstage. B ­ ecause I had gone to burlesque shows and I very much enjoyed them. Th ­ ere ­wasn’t what I saw at the time a lot of diversity of per­for­mance. . . . ​A nd it was entertaining. But t­ here ­were very few acts I could remember as sticking. And t­here w ­ ere no POCs [­people of color]. If I did see somebody I called it a ‘fleck of pepper in a sea of salt.’ It was like ‘Oh, t­ here we are!’106

The idea of an all-­people-­of-­color troupe was the brain child of AuroraBoob­ Realis. While at a Slipper Room show in March 2007, she mentioned her idea to Haynes, who responded, “Let’s do it.”107 They reached out to POC artists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, met regularly, and workshopped acts together. Rather than booking talent for a show, they booked a show and then developed the talent. BGB staged its first show in October 2007. AuroraBoobRealis characterizes Black and Brown bodies taking the neo-­burlesque stage as a po­liti­cal act: Us stepping onstage, especially in 2007, was a po­liti­cal act. To see a ­whole show of just w ­ omen of color at that time in New York City was a r­ eally

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big ­t hing. ­There are a lot more ­people of color in burlesque now, but it’s still an issue. But then it had so much meaning to be onstage and own the complexity of our experiences and our imaginations and unapologetically in a way that we all know that burlesque, at [its] best—­burlesque can be that for somebody.108

The po­liti­cal act of creating an all-­POC show had a direct impact on the audiences who came to the shows. “From the get-go our audiences ­were ­t hese wild, amazing Brown and Black bodies, queer, incredible, high energy,” AuroraBoobrealis remembers. “They ­were just waiting for some ­people who inspired them and looked like them and spoke in the languages and had the same cultural reflections.”109 The personal experiences of members of BGB inspired them to put t­ hose experiences onstage for audiences that w ­ ere as diverse as the troupe was. The focus h ­ ere on BGB is not meant to minimize the role of other POC performers and troupes, nor is it meant to suggest that BGB offered a solution to the inequities that continue to plague neo-­burlesque.110 Instead, I want to use this troupe’s response to the epoch described in this book to frame several intersecting f­actors that have an impact on the participation of ­women of color in burlesque per­for­mance and culture. Burlesque is a microcosm of the larger social order, and the same social inequities and systematic social stratification that exist in American culture are replicated in neo-­ burlesque. Of par­tic­u­lar importance h ­ ere are three intersecting categories, all of which deserve a book-­length treatise of their own: the collapsing of beauty ideals with whiteness, the oversexualization of the bodies of w ­ omen of color, and the central trope of the exotic in neo-­burlesque. The historical legacy of beauty ideals pathologizes w ­ omen of color and valorizes whiteness as the epitome of beauty. From fashion magazines and beauty pageants to neo-­burlesque stages, the whiteness of beauty ideals that is so deeply embedded throughout our culture continues to misrepresent, distort, and objectify bodies. The residue of that legacy often stains the practices and psyche of ­women of color. I return to the collapsing of whiteness with beauty ideals in chapter 5, when I discuss beauty pageants and what

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I refer to as “parodic pageantry” in neo-­burlesque. But ­here I hope to tease out another damaging repercussion of beauty ideals—­namely, how ste­reo­ typical physical characteristics have become markers of attractiveness and sexiness for par­tic­u­lar races and ethnicities. D’Amour, a biracial performer who identifies as Black, articulates some of the damaging effects of race-­ specific beauty standards: The cliché of a Black body is a big butt, relatively trim waist, and usually smaller breasts. The big butt is kinda the focus of what a Black girl has and what ­people are interested in. . . . ​As a stripper I have seen a lot of bodies. And ­they’re so all incredibly dif­fer­ent. I’ve seen white bodies that look like a ste­reo­t ypical version of what a black body looks like. And I’ve seen black bodies that ­couldn’t look any more ste­reo­t ypically Japa­nese. No one race has just one body type. Definitely ­t here are broad characteristics in dif­fer­ent races. But y­ ou’re g­ oing to see it all. And what happens by oversexualizing a body type of a certain race—­you are ­going to make ­every female in that race that ­doesn’t have that body type feel lesser than, lesser than their own race even. I have strug­gled for years about not having a bigger butt and not being blacker in my body type. It’s damaging on so many more levels than I think w ­ e’re even thinking about. ­We’re setting up standards of what’s sexy per race, and then every­one in that race who i­ sn’t that is questioning themselves on a w ­ hole other level.111

D’Amour’s strug­gle with “not being blacker” in her own body invokes “booty capitalism.” In Aesthetics of Excess, Jillian Hernandez uses Ruth Nicole Brown’s notion of “booty capitalism” to demonstrate the “double bind for Black Girls”: “They are expected to embody the desired sexual excess of bootyliciousness, yet this per­for­mance does not result in the promised payoffs of heteronormativity. Instead, embodying bootyliciousness more often punishes Black Girls.”112 The “punishment” for being “bootylicious” has real-­ world consequences: for instance, sexually excessive styling can reduce someone’s professional opportunities. But that punishment can also be psychological or psychic, as Black ­women who ­don’t embody that characteristic may begin to question their sexiness and even their own racial identity,

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as D’Amour’s comment above demonstrates. Black w ­ omen are forced to grapple with the material and psychic residue of “booty capitalism,” a double bind that becomes further amplified on neo-­burlesque stages that celebrate ­these same stagings of racialized sexual excess. The oversexualization of the bodies of w ­ omen of color is often noted, and it is impor­tant to acknowledge, recognize, and unpack this material real­ity. Haynes explains: “­Women in general are so othered and objectified, but Brown ­women in particular—we are hypersexualized, we are oversexualized. We are almost like a decoration.”113 The sexualization of Black ­women’s bodies in Amer­i­ca is intricately linked to slavery, which stripped Black ­women of personhood and reduced them to flesh. Hortense Spillers coined the term “pornotroping” to describe “the captive body [that] reduces to a t­ hing, becoming being for the capture,” flesh that is always available for the capturer to sexually possess.114 This results in the “absence from a subject position” and “sheer physical powerlessness.”115 Pornotroping constructs Black sexualities and bodies as always available for consumption. Navigating that painful history of being reduced to an object and rendered powerless further complicates Black w ­ omen’s public expressions of sexuality. Thus, it is clear that although neo-­burlesque celebrates expressive displays of sexuality on-­and offstage—­including in the audience and on social media—­ not all repre­sen­ta­tions have an equal playing field. D’Amour describes some of the effects of pornotroping: “Let’s face it, ­women are far more hypersexualized in this country. . . . ​Being a ­woman, especially a w ­ oman of color—­t he ­mental baggage ­there. And then you decide to go onstage and work out some baggage. . . . ​W hen you get onstage and put that out t­ here, it’s a lot. When the crowd thinks y­ ou’re brave and courageous, they d ­ on’t even know the half of it.”116 Neo-­burlesque ­can’t fix this prob­lem, but it is impor­tant to recognize how it has perpetuated the under­lying pornotroping and other examples of the oversexualization of the bodies of ­women of color. That oversexualization is pervasive, though it is by no means monolithic. As Juana María Rodríguez puts it, “To suggest that feelings, acts, and words might be shared across dif­fer­ent kinds of bodies is not to say that they are the same.”117 Asian w ­ omen’s bodies have been constructed as exotic and

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other from colonial discourse that endures to this day, and even that comment woefully collapses the dif­fer­ent histories and experiences of Asian ­women. Sexualized ste­reo­types of Japa­nese w ­ omen are radically dif­fer­ent from ­those of Chinese w ­ omen and Southeast Asian ­women, and even categorizing Asian ste­reo­types collapses diverse cultural differences into one amorphous category of Asian ­women readily available for consumption.118 Native American ­women are rarely depicted in popu­lar culture beyond extremely limiting ste­reo­t ypes, and the underrepre­sen­ta­tion of their bodies in discourse about embodiment and sexuality is complicated by the ­co-­opting and appropriation of Native and Indigenous ­people’s dress and culture in ­those same spaces. Latin@ ­women have been ste­reo­typed as “hot” and “fiery”—­“the Latina body is always read as pure body,” as Amber Jumilla Musser succinctly puts it—so that cultural expressiveness becomes a marker of excessive sexuality.119 Rodríguez adds: “As Latin@s and as queers, we are often represented, if not identified, by our seemingly over-­the-­top gestures, our bodies betraying—or gleefully luxuriating in—­our intentions to exceed the norms of proper corporeal containment.”120 This practice of Black and Brown bodies luxuriating in an over-­the-­top aesthetics is explored in Hernandez’s “aesthetics of excess” and Musser’s “Brown jouissance.”121 Th ­ ese and other scholars have begun to unpack how the hypersexualization of the bodies of ­women of color is not monolithic, as individual ethnic and racial groups have radically dif­fer­ent histories, legacies, and experiences that need telling. Cultural appropriation has run rampant in burlesque. Embodying problematic ste­reo­t ypes is not only offensive but deeply damaging: it perpetuates the ste­reo­t ype while further removing the possibility that voice and agency ­will be used to undo or redesignate ­those cultural references. Though by definition burlesque is parody, not all cultural references are suitable for appropriation and poking fun. D’Amour honestly describes her experience with cultural appropriation: I did an Asian-­inspired, culturally inappropriate act in 2005 based on Asian tropes and clichés and ste­reo­t ypes. If I had been more confident

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in the w ­ oman I was and my ability to put together an act that was attractive to audiences I likely would not have fallen on a lazy ste­reo­t ype like that. If I felt I as a Black ­woman had something to offer through my own culture. And I’m not blaming anyone ­else. But if I had more ­people talking to me about what makes me attractive and in­ter­est­ing, and what ­music I move to so well, I ­don’t think that act would have necessarily happened.122

Cultural appropriation is an “easy way out” of creating original work as it depends on perpetuating “lazy ste­reo­t ypes,” as D’Amour characterizes it. The appropriation of ethnic and racial ste­reo­t ypes is not an anomaly in neo-­ burlesque as stagings of the exotic have plagued burlesque stages since its inception. The cele­bration of the exotic is a particularly complicated component of neo-­burlesque per­for­mance and culture, and it requires teasing out two distinctly dif­fer­ent uses of the term. “I think it would be helpful if ­people would understand that that term represents two dif­fer­ent ­things,” D’Amour says, “and that it’s OK to honor the ­thing it represents and why Exotic World got named Exotic World but also why it’s hurtful to ­people of dif­fer­ent races.”123 “Exotic dance” became a euphemism for stripping in the m ­ iddle of the twentieth ­century, and this meaning of “exotic” cannot be completely divorced from the use of ethnic and racialized ste­reo­types in burlesque since that is where the term originated. D’Amour explains that when she worked as a stripper in commercial strip clubs, what she did was referred to as “exotic dancing”: And the funny ­t hing was that it ­wasn’t that exotic. . . . ​I think what ­we’re seeing happen ­today is this tension using the term ‘exotic’—­because if ­you’re talking about exotic dancing, which is what Jennie Lee and Tempest Storm and D ­ ixie Evans [did] and what we want to honor them for—­ Jennie and ­Dixie created ‘Exotic World.’ That means one t­hing over ­here. . . . ​However, as we all try to understand each other more, I hope ­people understand that for ­people of color, exoticism does exist.124

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The exotic of exotic dance, then, is always already laden with the exotic as having or possessing qualities of otherness. Andrea Lee explains that “exotic” “comes from the Greek exotikos, ‘foreign,’ which in turn comes from the prefix exo, meaning ‘outside.’ ”125 Lee adds that the exotic has two strands: “ ‘ from a distant place,’ and ‘striking and attractive b ­ ecause unfamiliar.’ So, a s­ imple conflation of strangeness and desire.”126 That “conflation of strangeness and desire” fuels the appropriation of the exotic on neo-­burlesque stages. Lee adds to her definition some of the negative repercussions of the term: “­There is always an ele­ment of owner­ship and control about ‘exotic’—­because the dreamer controls the fantasy—­which is the downfall of real contact.”127 At the heart of the damage caused by appropriating the exotic on stages and in culture is this notion of owner­ ship: the “dreamer controls the fantasy” and, by extension, the images and bodies portrayed. The purpose of this much-­needed, though admittedly incomplete, discussion of the whiteness of neo-­burlesque is to help frame the cultural scene and performing art that is the subject of this book. Th ­ ere are limits to defining neo-­burlesque as a participatory culture, since not every­one feels comfortable participating in a culture that ­either explic­itly or implicitly denies access to certain bodies, commodifies ste­reo­t ypical images, or perpetuates the exotification or oversexualization of the bodies of w ­ omen of color. With #blacklivesmatter and #metoo, ­there has been a shift in social reckonings related to exclusionary and discriminatory practices. Burlesque is attempting to right some of the exclusionary practices that ­ utures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina have been built into it. In Sexual F Longings, Rodríguez works to “theorize the work of queer sociality through the erotic” by highlighting the “importance of sex” “as a social world-­ making practice” not devoid from the act but intimately linked to it.128 Though we are far from a time and place in which all bodies have equal stage time, we can find hope in Rodríguez’s call to prioritize the “importance of sex”—­a nd the sexualized bodies i­ magined, celebrated, and amplified in neo-­burlesque and culture more broadly—as a form of social world making.

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Overview of the Book Burlesque is a women-­centered art form that provides a provocative, albeit controversial, stage on which to imagine, create, and bring into being larger-­ than-­life characters, engaging stories, and aesthetically stunning visuals. From conception to execution and promotion, neo-­burlesque performers are fully in control of their image, a type of nouveau Re­nais­sance w ­ oman whose prowess is predicated on learning (and mastering) multiple skills, the most notable of which is striptease. The acts and performers described in this study strip to reveal not just body parts but ideas, po­liti­cal provocation, creative psyches, and an unbridled pre­sen­ta­tion of self. Burlesque is an ideal microcosm in which to study this nouveau Re­nais­sance ­Woman or new new ­woman who takes delight in shock, spectacle, and striptease, flaunting her sexuality not in spite of but to support her feminist agenda. In short, burlesque carves out a performative space where w ­ omen are able to stage their wit and bodies in self-­directed ways full of voice and agency. Individually and collectively, ­these ­women and their per­for­mances constitute a new sexual revolution that has the potential for transgression and insubordination onstage and beyond. In the two de­cades of being immersed in this cultural scene, I have seen something that is difficult to quantify but undeniably evident. ­Women come to burlesque for a host of reasons, but they leave transformed to their core. ­These ­women learn to come up with an idea and then figure out how to make it happen, which often involves a staggering amount of commitment to stagecraft, prop and costume building, and broadcasting their personas to ensure that their visions are realized and seen. ­These ­women author their own displays of sexuality, glamour, and excess, each of which is as unique as a fingerprint. They gain confidence and a self-­determination that has real-­world reverberations as well. They learn how to work their unique bodies and develop a signature style that is wholly original. They become empowered to grab their time in the spotlight and work to keep the audience’s attention. They demand to be seen and heard in ways that are in radical opposition to con­temporary narratives that dictate what be­hav­ior is acceptable in the public sphere. This radical reconfiguration—or explosion—of gender expectations

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has reverberations both on-­and offstage. O ­ thers may call burlesque performers and fans “female chauvinist pigs,” w ­ omen who, according to Levy, perpetuate their own oppression by placing their bodies on display.129 I call what is happening a new sexual revolution.

Chapter Overview Building on my previously published definitions of burlesque, this introduction has defined neo-­burlesque as an amateur art form predicated on a participatory culture that, as an adult form of entertainment, defies mainstream commodification. I explained the use of the term “neo-­burlesque” to designate a per­for­mance practice and participatory culture that is connected to, but represents a historical and per­for­mance break from, antecedent forms of burlesque. The introduction has also presented research methodologies and theoretical frameworks used to conduct the research for this proj­ect. The purpose has been to set the stage to study neo-­burlesque as a new sexual revolution that has transformed how w ­ omen are expected to behave, both on-­and offstage. Beginning with a prototypical burlesque mise-­en-­scène, chapter 1 demonstrates how an audience is integral to a burlesque show. Using Dodds’s notion of “popu­lar dance,” chapter 1 explores burlesque as popu­lar per­for­mance.130 Burlesque is firmly rooted in in-­the-­moment liveness that, in burlesque, is marked by the cele­bration of novelty and the unexpected. This chapter offers a close reading of a per­for­mance by MsTickle. In this act, she transforms several times and, t­ oward the end of her act, literally writes a provocative message on her own body, thereby enacting what I have termed the explicit female body as palimpsest. This palimpsest suggests that though ­women’s bodies are marked by the textual renderings of patriarchal culture, ­women can write over prescribed gender norms. By acknowledging that traces of patriarchy are always already subtexts of public per­for­mances of gender, both staged and real, the explicit female body onstage as palimpsest offers a counternarrative that flaunts, teases, and throws gassumptions about gender to the wind.131

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Chapter 2 begins with nineteenth-­century critiques of burlesque performers, citing William Dean Howells’s shock at what he called the “horrible prettiness” of Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes.132 Applying this description of “horrible prettiness” and Joanna Frueh’s concept of “monster/ beauty” to neo-­burlesque, I suggest that monstrosity is one of burlesque’s defining characteristics. This chapter analyzes and discusses several performers who explic­itly use monsters and monstrosity in their work, including Bambi the Mermaid and her Freak Pin-­Up series, as well as the ways that extreme beauty can be monstrous, as demonstrated by the more commercially successful Dita Von Teese. Through a close reading of a misrecognition of female-­bodied burlesque performers in neo-­burlesque per­for­mance spaces, the chapter argues that burlesque creates a queer space that challenges, disrupts, and even subverts gender norms.133 Chapter 3 turns to the international burlesque superstar Dirty Martini, noted for her mesmerizing stage presence and proverbial pre­sen­ta­tion of an invisible wink. This chapter uses the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s famed description of thick description via the multiple pos­si­ble meanings of a wink.134 For Geertz and for this proj­ect, reading the meaning(s) of the wink is central to the task of understanding cultural phenomena. Through both a literal and a figurative wink, Dirty Martini challenges social conventions by presenting an alternative to the desiring or desirable body in mainstream culture. This chapter uses Kathleen Rowe’s concept of the “unruly ­woman” to read Martini’s “unruly body” and her significant influence on the cele­bration of the womanly body in burlesque.135 Central to much of burlesque’s efficacy is the use of humor and comedy as tools to engage the audience and deploy a message. Chapter 4 focuses on the ways that burlesque pokes fun at social conventions by examining the per­for­mances and artistic pro­cess of L ­ ittle Brooklyn, known as the “Lucille Ball of Burlesque.” Brooklyn’s use of burlesquing burlesque is central to understanding neo-­burlesque’s use of humor and comedy to poke fun at the art form. Chapter 4 dismantles what Linda Mizejewski describes as the historic assumption that funny ­women are not pretty, and conversely that pretty ­women are not funny—­further challenging Sigmund Freud’s theory of

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sexual comedy.136 This chapter instead suggests that ­women can be both funny and pretty, and that humor and wit are central per­for­mance strategies of neo-­burlesque. Chapter 5 focuses on Bambi the Mermaid’s Miss Coney Island Pageant, an annual event that serves si­mul­ta­neously as a tribute to and subversion of the traditional beauty pageant. Burlesque celebrates artifice and pageantry, often in self-­reflective and ironic ways. This chapter contextualizes the agitprop theatrics used in the second-­wave feminist movement’s protest of the Miss Amer­i­ca pageant as a legacy to the neo-­burlesque movement’s employment of what I term “parodic pageantry.” Parodic pageantry celebrates the ridicu­lous and irreverent, poking fun at real beauty pageants, gender roles, and hegemonic beauty ideals. Chapter 6 explores burlesque’s indebtedness to camp as a per­for­mance strategy. This chapter turns to World Famous *BOB*’s over-­t he-­top blonde bombshell hybrid as a carefully constructed gender (and gendered per­for­ mance) that, on the surface, appears to ascribe to normalized gender roles. Yet *BOB*’s identification as queer and a “gender nonconforming person that pre­sents high femme” complicates a ­simple reading of how she “pre­sents.”137 Through her public per­for­mances of her blonde bombshell hybrid to her full-­length solo shows that describe her journey of becoming a drag queen so that she could ultimately accept being a ­woman, *BOB* invokes “queer parody” that has the potential to circumvent normativity and explode gender norms.138 Through close readings of her use of storytelling and camp, I offer the concept of gender becoming to conceptualize the ways *BOB* complicates a binary model of gender. Using Meredith Heller’s notion of “female-­femmeing,” this chapter shows how a female-­bodied performer flaunting her femininity can be read as queer.139 Chapter 7 focuses on the downtown per­for­mance artist Julie Atlas Muz, a revered figure in legitimate art circles and burlesque communities alike. Muz has stayed committed to burlesque sensibility throughout her work, as she infuses her signature style of irreverence and commitment to the bizarre and beautiful in her short-­and long-­format work. This chapter views Muz’s work as part of a rich lineage of per­for­mance and theatrical artists from

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Brecht’s Epic Theatre to the Ridicu­lous Theatre Movement, the explicit female per­for­mance artists of the 1960s–1970s, and “art cabaret.”140 The forgiving nature of nightlife per­for­mance has allowed Muz to experiment and improvise, using the possibility of failure as a productive force. Using Halberstam’s Queer Art of Failure and the work (and words) of Muz’s fellow downtown per­for­mance artist, Taylor Mac, this chapter pre­sents the possibility of failure as a po­liti­cal refusal to conform. Muz is at the forefront of burlesque as a new sexual revolution, using her explicit body in ways that invoke ­these radical art traditions while creating a new sexual revolution in which dangerous ­women take the stage with abandon. A thick description of Muz’s rope escape act, set to the song “You ­Don’t Own Me,” unpacks the seeming contradiction that stripping can be used by feminists to dismantle patriarchal bonds. The conclusion takes up some remaining concerns about ­women who put their bodies on display, focusing on the reclaiming of language wielded with the intention to wound. As w ­ omen claim the signifier “nasty w ­ oman” in public ways, the conclusion shows how the sexually liberated burlesque body has become a power­ful symbol for a feminist agenda in the twenty-­first ­century. Taking up Levy’s critique of “female chauvinist pigs,” the conclusion proposes that burlesque represents a new wave of feminism that uses the explicit body onstage as a per­for­mance and po­liti­cal tool. Reclaiming nasty w ­ omen is a counterargument to the reductive assumption that public displays of the explicit body are setting ­women back and are antifeminist. Instead, I suggest that the neo-­burlesque body is one version of what a con­ temporary kind of feminism—­and feminist—­can look like.

chapter 1

i

Burlesque as Popu­lar Per­for­mance mstickle’s explicit body as palimpsest It is ­after 10:00 p.m. in the darkened room. Friends cluster around cabaret ­tables, chatting, drinking, and eagerly anticipating the start of the show. A few patrons stand near the velvet-­curtained win­dows that span two floors. On the balcony above, an ornate, wrought-­iron fence allows spectators to peer at the action below. On the weekend, the venue fills to standing-­ room-­only capacity. To­night, a comfortable fifty or so patrons litter the space for the Wiggle Room, one of several weekly burlesque shows at the Slipper Room, a burlesque and variety arts venue on the Lower East Side of New York City. The Slipper Room has a de­cadent, Victorian feel, with flowered wall­paper, dark wood trim, and curtains and paint in burgundy and gold. At the apex of the proscenium stage, a red spotlight illuminates a ­woman’s face as surreal video montages are projected on the red velvet curtains. A drum roll dramatizes the commencement of the show. Audience members, intoxicated from alcohol and the anticipation built up by the delayed start time, hoot and holler in response. The curtains part slightly as Bradford Scobie, the host of the show, steps onto the small go-go platform—­a nod to the Minsky B ­ rothers’ introduction of the runway to American burlesque audiences in the 1910s.1 The curtains w ­ ill open and close between each act, giving a theatrical flair to the eve­ning’s per­for­mance. “Welcome to the Wiggle Room,” Scobie announces in a fake British accent, flashing a large, painted-on gap between his front teeth in an exaggerated greeting. “I am Sir Richard ­Castle,” he adds and bows low from the waist.2 54

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Figure 1.1. ​Sir Richard ­Castle (played by Bradford Scobie) invites audience response and participation with his signature exaggerated physicality at the Wiggle Room, his weekly show at the Slipper Room in New York City. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

­Castle is clad in a tuxedo, and his jet-­black hair is slicked back and has a sharp part and painted-on white stripe. Scobie then stands upright, his arms outstretched, inviting applause. The audience obliges and cheers wildly. Noticing that the curtains are still slightly parted b ­ ehind him, Scobie breaks his ­Castle character and screams backstage: “Close it, close it, close it!” The stage curtains, operated by one of the few performers in the show, close ­behind him. “Fuck me. What a shit show,” he jokes. “Welcome to the Slipper Room,” he booms, rolling his tongue and prolonging the “sl” of “Slipper.” “A fine-­oiled show business machine. Showing you we can be wildly entertaining without the dull drudgery of rehearsal.”3 The audience laughs uproariously. Neo-­burlesque audiences are encouraged to show their enthusiasm—­and participate in the performance—­through applause and verbal responses. The participatory nature of burlesque encourages this: laughter and libations flow, fostering an environment of lighthearted fun and the momentary suspension of social norms. Acknowledging “­mistakes” is a refreshing way to start a show, as it draws the audience in while subverting their expectations

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of a theatrical per­for­mance. It also indicates that anything can happen in a neo-­burlesque show, and the unpredictability implicates both performers and spectators in its all-­consuming flow. Through sarcasm and humor, the host highlights burlesque’s cele­bration of liveness. Spectators are encouraged to engage in burlesque per­for­mance not simply as spectators but as “spect-­ actors,” to invoke Augusto Boal’s provocative concept that spectators are involved as observers and participants in the action on stage.4 This chapter begins with a description of a prototypical neo-­burlesque show to illustrate the type of environment in which neo-­burlesque was born and continues to flourish. Similar scenes are being replayed at venues across the country and around the globe, as the neo-­burlesque movement grows in popularity. Burlesque borrows from and in turn has had a direct impact on theatrical and cultural institutions—­including traditional and avant-­ garde theatre, per­for­mance art, dance, drag per­for­mance, and nightlife culture—­while si­mul­ta­neously subverting their conventions through parody. The opening scene of this chapter, then, sets the stage for the literal show ­t here and the theoretical one ­here. H ­ ere I offer readings grounded in per­ for­mance practices and theories about ­t hose practices to help unpack burlesque as a performing art and participatory culture. The goal is to better understand the ways the explicit female body on the neo-­burlesque stage is written and in turn writes counternarratives of gender repre­sen­ta­tion and desire. I turn to a close reading of a provocative per­for­mance by MsTickle to illustrate this. But first, I elaborate on the audience’s role in neo-­burlesque as popu­lar per­for­mance.

Burlesque as Popu­l ar Per­f or­m ance Neo-­burlesque is a theatrical art form, but it also refutes the sanctity of theatre. Neo-­burlesque employs conventions of traditional theatre and performance—­ including the use of a proscenium stage, lights and m ­ usic to enhance the per­for­mance, choreographed movement, and character-­driven costumes and makeup—to deliver a narrative to a live audience. Yet in contrast to a traditional model in which rehearsals lead, it is hoped, to a seamless per­for­mance,

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burlesque prefers to capitalize on the surprise of the live. The tradition of theatre, so revered in other contexts, becomes the butt of a joke in burlesque. Burlesque celebrates and is rooted in the pre­sent, and it is this in-­the-­moment liveness that makes burlesque exciting for audiences and performers alike. Interaction between the audience and performers is highly celebrated in neo-­burlesque. Hosts speak directly to the audience, and the audience is invited and encouraged to respond through call and response, audience participation, and direct address, thereby dissolving the strict division between spectator and performer as well as the proverbial fourth wall of traditional theatre. This interaction is often fueled by “­mistakes”—­stuck costume pieces, misremembered choreography, and props that go awry. Rather than covering up ­those unplanned moments, the seasoned burlesque performer acknowledges and exaggerates t­ hose mis­haps for comedic effect through physical and/ or verbal commentary. This exaggerated commentary (both choreographed and improvised) allows the performer and spectators to acknowledge what’s happening in the live and lived experience of popu­lar per­for­mance. By acknowledging ­mistakes, neo-­burlesque celebrates the unexpected whimsy of popu­lar per­for­mance that traditional per­for­mance often attempts to routinize. Perfection, as in hitting all one’s marks in a highly choreographed dance or playing all the notes in a classical composition, may come second to another set of criteria in neo-­burlesque: remaining in the moment, staying connected to the audience, and ­going for it. This depiction of burlesque as popu­lar per­for­mance is indebted to Sherril Dodds’s defining and contextualizing of popu­lar dance as “an approach” rather than a fixed site.5 Dodds shows how the popu­lar has been categorically dismissed as “mere entertainment” that caters to the “lowest common denominator,” a dismissal that misses its productive qualities.6 As the popu­ lar is rarely subsidized, it is often produced at low cost by the same entities that perform it.7 Creators of popu­lar dance, then, are often artists and producers, a duality evident in much neo-­burlesque. This duality helps contribute to the creation of close-­k nit communities and creative autonomy. As Dodds points out, “the neo-­burlesque scene propagates a popu­lar dancing body valued for its creative autonomy, corporeal diversity, and strategies for

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audience access and inclusion.” 8 Reading burlesque as an approach that “takes place ­u nder a range of conditions” helps illuminate some of the productive qualities of burlesque as a popu­lar per­for­mance.9 The “range of conditions” of popu­lar per­for­mance span four major categories. First, popu­lar per­for­mance is rooted firmly in the pre­sent—­the in-­ the-­moment liveness marked by the cele­bration of the unexpected. Second, the strict division between spectator and performer is eradicated and replaced with active participation from the audience. Extending beyond s­imple audience applause or response, the spectator-­performer interaction in neo-­ burlesque is central to understanding it as a participatory culture. Third, novelty is celebrated, and the nonsensical and frivolous become productive forces that mark the creativity of and artistic commentary celebrated in neo-­ burlesque. Fourth, neo-­burlesque performers create characters (often with separate identities, histories, and per­for­mance modes) that become synonymous with the performer. This last condition in par­tic­u ­lar creates the potential for burlesque performers to transgress social norms. To demonstrate this and show how striptease can be used as a form of social commentary that parodies patriarchal culture requires reading and analyzing live per­for­mance practice. This book employs case studies to understand neo-­burlesque as live per­ for­mance, focusing on the emergence of the neo-­burlesque movement in New York City. As Robert Allen demonstrates in Horrible Prettiness, studying burlesque as popu­lar culture requires the use of case histories rather than an exhaustive historical approach. As culture is difficult to quantify and define, the case history “attempts to make a prob­lem intelligible without requiring . . . ​historical comprehensiveness or conclusive proof.”10 The knowledge produced via such an approach is always tentative and open for revision.11 Studies of burlesque as a live performing art must be open to this type of continual revision, as the art constantly morphs and changes. Furthermore, case histories allow for close, focused readings of performers and per­for­mance practices. This book employs this approach throughout. The remainder of this chapter offers a case study of MsTickle, a renowned and influential neo-­burlesque performer. Through a close reading of one of her

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most iconic acts, this chapter argues that the explicit female body serves as a palimpsest. The explicit body as palimpsest offers a canvas on which—­though traces of patriarchy may still be legible—­the burlesque performer is able to rewrite her own image on top of t­ hose remnants and remains, a reinscription that has the potential to scream loudly in its transgression of social norms.

MsTickle’s Layers of Becoming MsTickle began performing in New York City’s under­ground nightclub scene in the 1990s as a solo performer, go-go dancer, and member of the Bombshell Girls, a troupe she formed with the iconic neo-­burlesque performer and producer Lady Ace. The two both pushed bound­aries and made art in public spaces, usually nightclubs. Throughout her ­career, MsTickle has gained a reputation as one of the most respected and innovative neo-­burlesque figures, known for her stunning costumes and props (which she designs and fabricates herself) and cutting-­edge, conceptual acts. Her engaging and beautiful per­for­ mances leave the audience pondering her message far beyond her final reveal. MsTickle’s “Blow-­Up Doll” act, one of her most original and provocative, tells a compelling narrative through layers of imagery and meaning. MsTickle glides onto the stage wearing a regal red velvet cape, her left arm extended, fin­gers reaching for the light. As she slowly crosses the stage, a red runway carpet begins to magically roll off her body and unfold ­behind her, literally (and figuratively) creating a space for her to inhabit her own celebrity. A strobe light flickers on and off, mimicking the flashbulbs of the paparazzi. A woeful moan is heard over the electric, bass-­heavy ­music. Right before the lyr­ics begin, MsTickle removes her red cloak and the runway carpet, presenting herself as an iconic Hollywood starlet—­complete with a blonde Marilyn Monroe–­esque wig and plastered smile. Waving and blowing kisses to her hy­po­thet­i­cal fans, she struts around the stage in a gold-­sequin wiggle gown (a form-­fitting design with a fishtail-­curved bottom that exaggerates aw ­ oman’s curves), opera-­length red satin gloves, and a red bolero jacket. The back of her dress features a large bow covered with rhinestones that glitter in the stage lights.

Figure 1.2. ​The Bombshell Girls, a troupe consisting of MsTickle (left) and Lady Ace (right) (­here with Julie Atlas Muz [center]), perform at Darklight for Blue Burlesque. The performers use their innovative costumes to make in­ter­est­ing shapes and interact with each other and the spectators as they move through the space and dance on the bar. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

Figure 1.3. ​MsTickle competes at the Burlesque Hall of Fame for the Reigning Queen of Burlesque award in 2011 wearing a red-­carpet runway attached to her costume. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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MsTickle’s movement gains meaning when juxtaposed against the song’s longing lyr­ics. She slowly removes one glove as the song laments celebrity: “If I could live forever / I w ­ ouldn’t ask what price: fame.”12 MsTickle struts for a few beats and then removes her other glove to the chorus: “I want to be a super star / I want to have a ­house on Sunset.”13 She wraps the gloves around her wrists and lifts her arms above her head in pseudobondage, wiggling her body in mock seduction as, front and center, she ­faces the audience. Her face is expressionless, fixed in a one-­note plastic smile that hints at the superficiality of celebrity culture. The act then takes an incredible and unexpected turn. At the next instrumental break, MsTickle leans forward and lets her red bolero jacket fall off. While stooped over, she unzips her gold gown, steps out of it, removes her blonde wig, and peels off the fixed smile. She stands upright again and pauses, elbows bent at her sides, hands reaching ­toward the audience. At this point the audience realizes that under­neath the Hollywood starlet’s mask is another mask and another iconic figure, that of a blow-up doll. Wearing a full-­body, plastic, blow-­up–­doll suit with exaggerated lips sculpted into a permanent phallus-­receptive “O,” MsTickle’s movement changes from the canned Hollywood starlet greeting her fans to the mechanical, stilted, and explicit gestures of the blow-up doll come to life. The lyr­ics contribute to her message: “I’m public property sacrifice me/let ­there be no mystery you have made me/I am the main attraction kept in a gilded cage.”14 ­Here MsTickle teeters unstably around the stage, pausing numerous times to execute several obscene gestures, including ­t hose suggesting fellatio, fisting, and exaggerated and mechanical masturbation. MsTickle then transforms again and pre­sents another equally evocative image. She literally peels out of the full-­body, blow up–­doll suit to reveal thigh-­high boots, a tiny G-­string, and pasties fabricated from baby ­bottle nipples, creating an exaggerated and cartoonish look. She celebrates her liberation from the confines of the blow-­up–­doll artifice: she rubs her hands seductively on her skin, flips her natu­ral hair, and luxuriates in her own exposed body. She digs into her tiny G-­string and removes a lipstick that she uses to touch up her makeup before writing a provocative message on her

Figure 1.4. ​MsTickle constructs her own costumes and props. In this act, she constructed a mask out of a mold of her own face. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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Figure 1.5. ​MsTickle performs as a h ­ uman blow-up doll in an act that offers a compelling narrative of w ­ omen’s continued subjugation through layers of costuming, imagery, and meaning. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

exposed midriff: “FOR SALE,” MsTickle then waves and blows kisses to the audience, returning to the physicality of the Hollywood starlet with which the act began. MsTickle’s per­for­mance is a commentary on the obsession with celebrity culture as well as a startling reminder of the continued commodification of

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Figure 1.6. ​MsTickle uses her body as a canvas on which to write a provocative message that demonstrates the concept of the explicit body as palimpsest. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

­women’s bodies. She has identified the layers in this act as a pro­cess of “uncovering.”15 ­Under the masks and layers are more layers—­shocking, unexpected, and explicit—­that individually and collectively convey a message. MsTickle identifies using the “blow-up doll as sex object” to suggest that “under­neath all that glamour begs the question: how much are we selling

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ourselves for?”16 The removal of the female body as sex object reveals another layer “that is a real body, but it’s still stripper-­esque,” suggesting that ­women are unable to escape from the signifying practices of a sexualizing patriarchal culture.17 MsTickle consciously chose this theme of sexual display as a commentary on objectification, and ultimately identity, and she asks: “When we strip down the layers, what’s under­neath?”18 She answers this question, to some degree, in the final moments of the act by literally writing her message on her bare body: “FOR SALE.” In the context of the narrative of this act, this ­simple message has layers itself. This description of MsTickle’s act comes from a per­for­mance at the Burlesque Hall of Fame (BHOF) competition, a large-­scale, high-­stakes show that occurs once a year in Las Vegas.19 MsTickle says that she added the runway effect to her act for the competition partly to “take up more space” but also to help “set up the narrative”—­a narrative that, according to her, plays with the “icon of glamour and vanity, all the stuff we are taught to admire and aspire to.”20 Although for many performers and fans this type of radical per­ for­ mance art is what’s compelling about and representative of neo-­ burlesque acts, it is unlikely that MsTickle’s act would be accepted to compete for BHOF’s Reigning Queen of Burlesque title. As Kaitlyn Regehr explains, “the diverse repre­sen­ta­tions of bodies, gender, and sexuality” pre­sent in neo-­ burlesque “are often omitted from the pageant and, in par­tic­u­lar, the ‘winner’s circle’ at the Burlesque Hall of Fame.”21 At BHOF, acts that diverge from classic burlesque tend to be in the realm of variety and skill-­set diversity (more so than body, race, age, and performance-­style diversity). That said, in recent years ­there have been concerted efforts to remedy this by accepting bodies of per­for­mances and performers who more accurately represent the neo-­burlesque canon. MsTickle was guaranteed a highly coveted spot to compete for the Reigning Queen of Burlesque award in 2011 when she was crowned Best Newbie in 2010.22 MsTickle says she “knew instantly” that she wanted to do her blow-­ up–­doll act the next year. “Especially coming from New York City where [burlesque] used to be commentary, po­liti­cal, cutting edge,” she explains, “I wanted to represent my work, and represent p ­ eople d ­ oing in­ter­est­ing,

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conceptual stuff.”23 Regehr explains that “when competing for Miss Exotic World, most dancers opt for subtler or less subversive routines than they might choose to perform on the neoburlesque cabaret cir­cuit.”24 MsTickle did not take this expected route, claiming that she considered it her duty to represent the per­for­mance art side of burlesque. This act in par­tic­u­lar, and MsTickle’s work more broadly, represents the type of avant-­garde and po­liti­cal neo-­burlesque that has bubbled up in small-­ scale, under­ground venues that encourage performer experimentation and audience participation alike. As Dodds suggests, performers in small-­ scale venues “prove far more radical,” while more “commercially” successful burlesque performers put forth a more “conservative image.”25 I agree with Dodds that radical burlesque often is located in small-­scale venues: a quick survey of fringe and under­ground art clearly indicates that art tends to lose its edge when it becomes commodified and packaged for a mainstream audience. As Dodds sums up, “the less the per­for­mance disturbs, the wider the audience it attracts.”26 I ­w ill discuss this point further in chapter  2, but ­here I would like to expand on how MsTickle’s act on the BHOF stage si­mul­ta­neously proves and complicates Dodds’s argument. MsTickle’s act gained new meaning on the BHOF stage. Taken out of the context of a small-­scale venue and placed on the stage of the Titans of Tease Showcase at BHOF, MsTickle’s act became, intentionally or unintentionally, a direct commentary on the beauty ideal embedded within the pageant structure of the competition (a point I ­w ill return to in chapter 5). Dodds correctly aligns radical per­for­mance with small-­scale venues, and that’s where MsTickle’s act was born. But maintaining this strict division between commercial and small-­scale burlesque seems to limit rather than expand burlesque’s radical potential and opportunities for gender expression. By removing the possibility of po­liti­cal efficacy in commercial burlesque, or by confining subversive burlesque to small-­stage and cabaret venues, we lose some of burlesque’s radical potential. We lose the playful juxtaposition of serious issues with trivial theatrics. We lose the plea­sure in the delightful absurdity of someone’s competing for the Reigning Queen of Burlesque award at the Burlesque Hall of Fame as a ­human blow-up doll. We lose the

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parody—­poking fun at something, often through the use of incongruous juxtapositions—­that is at the root of burlesque. And we lose burlesque’s cele­ bration of frivolity as central to its creative spirit. MsTickle’s act is both a protest against and a cele­bration of the explicit female body, one that gains new meaning in the more high-­stakes context of the BHOF stage.

“Becoming W ­ omen”: The Explicit Female Body as Palimpsest Jack Halberstam takes up similar themes in his Gaga Feminism—­a “symbol of a new kind of feminism” embodied in (but not reducible to) the pop figure Lady Gaga—­that has reinvented gender expression.27 Halberstam describes Lady Gaga as a “loud voice for dif­fer­ent arrangements of gender, sexuality, visibility, and desire,” arrangements that play themselves out on the neo-­burlesque stage in challenging and provocative ways.28 As Halberstam explains, “­t hese feminists are ‘becoming ­women’ in the sense of coming to consciousness; they are unbecoming w ­ omen in e­ very sense—­t hey undo the category rather than rounding it out, they dress it up and down, take it apart like a car engine and then rebuild it so that it is louder and faster.”29 This imagery of the female body as an engine—­“undoing” the “category” of ­women, “dressing it up,” and “rebuild[ing] it so that it is louder and faster—is an apt way to think about neo-­burlesque per­for­mance sensibilities. Such “undoing” and “dressing up” are also primary per­for­mance tools of striptease. The joining of femininity to artifice celebrated in Gaga feminism is similarly a key feature in neo-­burlesque.30 Neo-­burlesque performers “ ‘ham it up’ with sensual gusto,” as Jacki Willson puts it in The Happy Stripper: “They are exquisitely fake.”31 The fake and the phony, then, get reconfigured with productive qualities. The “exquisitely fake” persona i­ magined and flaunted on neo-­burlesque stages challenges expected gender(ed) be­hav­ior, and in a strange twist, over-­t he-­top phoniness becomes a way to c­ ounter and potentially dismantle gender norms. This “new version of feminism looks into the shadows of history” and finds “sheroes” “loudly refusing the categories that have been assigned to them.”32

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Gaga feminism and neo-­burlesque help us understand the ways that gender—­and more specifically, hyper-­stylized pre­sen­ta­tions of gender—­can destabilize rather than simply reinscribe gender norms. Though it may initially seem an oxymoron, the exploitation of sexuality via the signifiers of gender normally ascribed to patriarchy can be used as a tool to unpack that system. As Halberstam puts it, Gaga feminism “strives to wrap itself around per­for­mances of excess; crazy, unreadable appearances of wild genders; and gender experimentation.”33 This pre­sen­ta­tion of self manipulates preexisting iconography, but it is through that decontextualization and reconfiguration that gendered repre­sen­ta­tions become self-­authored. In the case of MsTickle’s multilayered per­for­mance, she uses startling gender stereotypes—­t he Hollywood starlet, the blow-up doll, and the stripper—to make a bold comment about the continued oppression of ­women. Femininity is heightened, exaggerated, and put on display—­ actively, vividly, and completely—in per­for­mances that do not reduce ­women to a singular prescribed role but rather open up the possibility that self-­expression can come in many forms. Through her excessive per­for­ mance and the use of striptease as transformation, MsTickle “dismantles the character of w ­ oman”: the female body is literally “taken apart” through layers, and it is through (and on) her body that that narrative gets expressed.34 The layers (both literal and figurative) in this per­for­mance expose the fallacy that one can ever transcend what the female body signifies in our patriarchal culture. MsTickle’s bare body serves as a canvas on which she writes a message of both po­liti­cal protest and artistic provocation: “FOR SALE.” The audience is forced to think about MsTickle’s provocative message while consuming her bare body in its power, beauty, and sexual allure. Part of the productive quality in burlesque, according to Willson, comes from the performer who intentionally makes a spectacle of her desirable body: “By looking the spectator in the eye and smiling she is mocking, teasing and challenging the spectator as well as pleas­ur­ably and actively affirming, ‘making a spectacle’ out of her desiring/desirable sexual self.”35 Once liberated from her blow-­up–­doll artifice, MsTickle luxuriates in her bare body and invites

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spectators to do the same. At this moment, her sexually explicit body becomes a sight of agency rather than simplistically a symbol of w ­ omen’s oppression. MsTickle’s thus transforms her body into a kind of palimpsest. The word comes from the Greek palimpestos (meaning “scraped again”) and is defined as a writing surface whose original text has been erased to allow for new writing. Despite the erasure, remnants of the original writing may bleed through and become part of the canvas of the new text. The material real­ity of MsTickle’s message (and the legacy of patriarchy) remain together on the same surface. MsTickle uses her body as a canvas to remind the audience that the body she has put on display in spectacular and pleas­ur­able ways is ultimately a commodity that is for sale. The explicit female body as palimpsest helps contextualize this seeming contradiction. Ultimately, MsTickle’s per­for­mance suggests that the remnants of patriarchy are still legible, even in self-­authored contexts such as this one. By acknowledging that ­those traces of patriarchy are always already just below or on the surface of all public per­ for­mance of gender, both staged and real, the use of the explicit female body as palimpsest offers a counternarrative that flaunts, teases, and throws ­those very assumptions to the wind. This helps us understand the transgressive potential of burlesque that, on the surface, may appear to contradict the tenets of traditional feminism. With this new brand of feminism, static binaries are elided. Carolee Schneeman has famously offered up her body as image and image maker: “The body may remain erotic, sexual, desired, desiring, but it is as well votive: marked, written over in a text of stroke and gesture discovered by my creative female ­w ill.”36 Halberstam similarly argues that Lady Gaga is a “media product and a media manipulator” and that she represents “both an erotics of the surface and an erotics of flaws and flows.”37 Put quite simply, the female artist can be both subject and object, and the creator of the image is both author and product. The explicit female body serves as a palimpsest, and when ­those re­imagined images get “written over in a text of stroke and gesture,” as Schneeman puts it, or rebuilt like a car engine, as Halberstam puts it, remnants of what has been erased still remain.

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It is impossible to remove the explicit female body from what it represents and signifies in our culture. Yet if we think about the explicit female body on stage as a palimpsest, that remainder is a necessary possibility for its being. The question of ­whether burlesque oppresses or liberates becomes obsolete, as a new reading of the productive possibility of popu­lar per­for­ mance comes center stage in all its subversive potential and glamorous excess. This is one of the central tenets of this book, as it suggests that images typically associated with patriarchy—­the pinup, the playboy bunny, and the stripper—­can be appropriated in subversive and parodic ways. I turn to this conundrum in the next chapter as I explore the monsters of burlesque and burlesque as monstrous.

chapter 2

i

Burlesque as Monster/Beauty beautiful monsters and the monstrosity of beauty in dita von teese

In 1868, Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes took the New York theatre world by storm and the modern burlesque movement in the United States was born.1 A boom of leg shows capitalizing on the brevity of ballet dancers’ costumes and spectacular scenery began in the 1830s, and by the 1860s, leg shows had become synonymous in the public imagination with burlesque.2 The British Blondes provided a decidedly dif­fer­ent type of leg show. Unlike feminized spectacles that used classical themes in predictable ways—as one con­temporary in the leg business put it, serving as a “ ‘clothes-­ line on which to hang the expressive costumes, dancers, scenic displays, etc.’  ”—­ t he British Blondes “lampooned classical lit­ er­ a­ ture and con­ temporary culture alike.”3 The troupe performed in a way that often shocked Victorian-­era sensibilities: dialogue was filled with double entendres, and puns and the script could change daily to reflect current events. The Blondes’ burlesque was all about parody. And nothing was safe from the Blondes’ parodic grip. Not only did ­t hese ladies sing bawdy songs and parody highbrow and popu­lar culture alike, but they did so while inverting gender roles. The ­women of the British Blondes played the men’s parts in their burlesque plays, which allowed them to appear on stage—to the satisfaction of some and the dismay of o ­ thers—in abbreviated men’s clothing. One critic, William Dean Howells, famously said of burlesque performers that “though they w ­ ere not like men, [they] w ­ ere in most

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­t hings as unlike ­women, and seemed creatures of a kind of alien sex, parodying both. It was certainly a shocking t­ hing to look at them with their horrible prettiness.” 4 The fear of the brazen ­woman parodying not only highbrow and popu­lar culture but also gender—­a ll the time aware of her own awarishness—­was one of the driving forces b ­ ehind criticisms of burlesque.5 As Richard Grant White put it in 1869, “the peculiar trait of burlesque is its defiance both of the natu­ral and the conventional. Rather, it forces the conventional and the natu­ral together just at the points where they are most remote, and the result is absurdity, monstrosity.” 6 When White reflected on the explosion of burlesque in the prior two theatrical seasons, he felt that what the productions and the performers had in common was this monstrosity, this cele­bration of the “incongruous and unnatural.” “Monstrosity” was for White and is for me one of burlesque’s defining characteristics. The criticisms of burlesque as monstrous, absurd, and defying of the conventional could be read as a symbolic calling card for many con­temporary burlesque performers. Neo-­burlesque emerged in the 1990s as performers and producers in urban locations around the globe began creating burlesque-­ inspired shows and, often unknown to each other, setting the stage for a burlesque revival that has exploded in recent years. Th ­ ere was a collective unconscious of sorts as artists began working within the lexicon of burlesque’s past to create characters that ­were, in the spirit of nineteenth-­century burlesque performers, aware of their own awarishness. Some performers claim that they ­were not consciously creating burlesque and that this nomenclature was applied to their work by the press or spectators. As World Famous *BOB* explains, “My per­for­mance art was already known for partial nudity, and the next ­thing I knew I was d ­ oing burlesque quite by accident. Someone said, ‘I love your burlesque,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that is kind of what I’m ­doing.’ It was a subconscious inspiration.”7 In 2001, the premier neo-­burlesque festival, Tease-­O-­ Rama, allowed burlesque aficionados to meet face to face, often for the first time, as they realized that the performers and under­ground shows that had bubbled up in urban locations w ­ ere not isolated, local events: a neo-­burlesque zeitgeist had begun and would soon lead to an international movement.

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A broad range of performing arts and art practices has directly influenced neo-­burlesque performers and per­for­mance. Influences differ for performers, but they include drag and club culture; pinup iconography and Hollywood glamour; clowning, circus, and sideshow arts; the swing scene and rockabilly; per­for­mance art, theatre, dance, and musical theatre; and striptease, to name a few. Though not all neo-­burlesque performers are striptease artists, most consciously use the signifiers of striptease to dismantle (or, at the very least, to question) the stigma associated with the unveiled female form. Striptease in this context is not solely about taking off but is also about putting on layers of meaning through what I call the five Cs: concept, character, costuming, choreography, and choice of ­music. Neo-­burlesque acts tend to be narrative, and the end of an act can be more about the twist then the reveal—­that subversion of theme or defying of expectations that makes audience members laugh out loud; groan at a bad pun; or, as with all art, think about its meaning. Furthermore, neo-­burlesque is always already monster/beauty. Joanna Frueh offers the concept of monster/beauty to theorize the meanings of the aging female bodybuilder, providing a provocative framework to apply to neo-­burlesque: “Monster/beauty is artifice, plea­sure/discipline, cultural intervention, and it is extravagant and generous. . . . ​Ideal beauty attracts, whereas monster/beauty very likely attracts and repulses si­mul­ta­neously.” 8 It is this simultaneous attraction and repulsion that interests me ­here, what Buszek calls the “ ‘bait-­a nd-­switch’ technique that can suspend viewers’ ‘disgust over the subversive and turn it into desire.’ ”9 By suggesting that burlesque is monster/beauty, I do not mean only the use of the seemingly divergent signifiers of the monster and the beauty, though such stagings offer a rich reading of this concept. Rather, I want to highlight the slash between “monster” and “beauty” that suggests a space of continuity. Put simply, extreme forms of beauty can be monstrous, just as extreme forms of monstrosity can be beautiful. The term “monster/beauty” expresses the possibility that t­hese categories are always co-­constituting—­that is, one does not operate without the other.

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“It’s the Ugly That Is So Beautiful”: Performing Monsters in Neo-­B urlesque The term “monster/beauty” suggests that ­there is something beautiful about monstrosity, something h ­ uman (or hyperhuman) about extreme repre­sen­ ta­tions. The idea that by showing one’s monstrosity, one demonstrates one’s humanity and one’s beauty is seemingly contradictory. Bella Beretta’s creation of the Gun Street Girls highlights this relationship between the ugly and the beautiful. Beretta was inspired by a Tom Waits per­for­mance: “he was taking his very sinister, twisted view of what the world is like, where it’s very ugly, but it’s the ugly that is so beautiful, and that’s what I wanted to create with burlesque.”10 The monster/beauty, then, inhabits both fields si­mul­ta­neously: she is both monster and beauty, ­human and animal, something to be revered and reviled. As Scotty the Blue Bunny has succinctly put it, burlesque performers are “beautiful monsters.”11 From Jo “Boobs” Weldon’s “Godzilla” act to Darlinda Just Darlinda’s donning a bear suit (thereby opening up a space for the obvious pun on “bare”) and ­Little Brooklyn’s half–­King Kong, half–­Fay Wray act (discussed in chapter 4), countless neo-­ burlesque performers use prosthetics, masks, and icons of monsters in their work. Black Cat Burlesque uses the moniker “Monster Burlesque” to describe their work that celebrates ghoulish aesthetics and features monsters such as Frankenstein, Darth Vader, and the Grim Reaper, among o ­ thers. Influenced by horror movies but disenchanted with the portrayal of w ­ omen as “­either the victim or something to be rescued,” the troupe was intrigued with turning the horror movie “genre on its head” by reinventing w ­ omen as power­f ul agents who are active and in control.12 Dev­ilicia, one of the found­ers of the troupe, identifies two major parts that she plays in Monster Burlesque. One is the figure of the beauty, the glamorous counterpart to the monster who uses “my feminine wiles to escape or ‘rescue’ myself . . . ​only to discover the monster is my kind of guy.”13 The second is a monster, when she “pre­sent[s] the ‘monster’ itself as the object of desire” rather than a “beast” who transforms

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Figure 2.1. ​Darlinda Just Darlinda flirts her way through the crowd at the New York Burlesque Festival in 2006. Joy is palpable on the f­ aces of the audience, which is filled with fellow innovators of the neo-­burlesque revival. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

into something “beautiful” or pretty in the end. As Dev­ilicia puts it, “I like to juxtapose the eroticism of striptease with images that most[ly] do not relate with sex or glamour.” In this, she invokes the sentiment of monster/ beauty that Frueh describes: “­Because extremity is immoderation—­deviation from convention in be­hav­ior, appearance, or representation—­and starkly dif­fer­ent from standard cultural expectations for par­tic­u­lar groups of p ­ eople, monster/beauty departs radically from normative, ideal repre­sen­ta­tions of beauty.”14 Bambi the Mermaid is another artist who challenges ideal repre­sen­ta­tions of beauty throughout her work. In her Miss Coney Island pageant (discussed in chapter 5) and her Freak Pin-­Up series, Bambi intentionally uses pinup and beauty pageant iconography to subvert ­t hose forms. The series pre­sents “girls whose physical attributes challenge mainstream ideals of conventional beauty.”15 The images—­a dog-­faced girl, a lobster girl, a showgirl with a parasitic twin protruding from her body—­a ll use the signifiers of sideshow

Figure 2.2. ​­Little Brooklyn’s expressive facial expressions and corporeality help tell the story and engage the audience. H ­ ere Fay Wray’s horror symbo­l ically and literally mirrors that of King Kong, representing monster/beauty as a defining characteristic of neo-­burlesque. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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Figure 2.3. ​Iconic Coney Island imagery provides a backdrop for Bambi the Mermaid’s “extreme” make-up application that borders on grotesque ­exaggeration. Photo by Dan Howell. Printed by permission.

freaks and pinup iconography to call into question the division between “attraction and repulsion.”16 Throughout, Bambi provocatively “celebrates the triumph of flaws and deformities to transform” the concept of “extreme beauty.”17 An image of a pretty girl putting on her makeup becomes a case study in extreme beauty: she goes too far, applying layers of makeup beyond the realm of normal. Juxtaposed with the background of Coney Island excess and carnivalesque colors, her reflection becomes clown-­like, grotesque, and monstrous. Through stagings of monstrosity and extreme beauty, neo-­burlesque performers consciously “make spectacles of themselves for themselves” in public forums, a concept Kathleen Rowe refers to as the “unruly ­woman”: “Associated with both beauty and monstrosity, the unruly w ­ oman dwells close to the grotesque.”18 By making a spectacle of one’s self, literally and figuratively, neo-­burlesque performers consciously embody and perform the figure of the unruly w ­ oman, a concept I return to more fully in l­ater chapters. The unruly ­woman has the possibility of reconfiguring “visibility as power”

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and unsettling social hierarchies, such as the division between monster and beauty.19 From the monsters of burlesque to hyperfemininity as a form of monstrosity, the idea of monster/beauty proliferates throughout neo-­ burlesque with the potential to destabilize gender norms and beauty ideals.

Burlesque Beauty as Performative Monsters in burlesque are instantly recognizable. Understanding how beauty is always already monstrous, however, may not be as transparent as the above examples that illustrate the monster-­beauty continuum. The title of Robert Allen’s pivotal text, Horrible Prettiness, hints at the simultaneous fear and fascination surrounding burlesque beauty that dates back almost 150 years. ­There is something extreme in the pre­sen­ta­tion of even the most picture-­ perfect burlesque performers, an exaggeration that belies the natu­ral. Ultraglamorous showgirls painstakingly construct themselves as classic beauties and serve their looks up for the spectators’ consumption on an elaborate, Swarovski-­crystal–­encrusted platter. Embedded within this extreme beauty is a type of monstrosity. In this section, I argue that beauty in the world of burlesque is performative and that painting on one’s image is a form of drag that has the potential to destabilize beauty ideals and even gender itself. Burlesque has a long history of painted ladies. As Kathy Peiss shows in Hope in a Jar, stage performers influenced Victorian-­era ­women’s relationship to beauty products and the pre­sen­ta­tion of self in the public sphere.20 Peiss writes that the “novel self-­presentation” of burlesque performers inspired “the most daring w ­ omen to emulate them.”21 ­These performers and the w ­ omen who emulated them blurred the categories between public and private: they incorporated the theatrical into everyday life and suggested that everyday life was a type of per­for­mance. Peiss argues that the “heightened importance of image making” offered w ­ omen the possibility of remaking their ­faces, all the while reminding ­women that “being natu­ral was itself a pose.”22 As it became socially acceptable for w ­ omen to wear makeup, beauty products gave them the ability to put on a dif­fer­ent face ­every day. This is not to suggest that using makeup to change one’s appearance should be read

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unequivocally as emancipatory, particularly when we f­actor in the beauty industries’ commodifying (and capitalizing on) beauty ideals. Instead, I would like to suggest that beauty is not an essential designation: ­because it can be constructed, it also has the potential to occupy a contested site of self-­ownership. Burlesque beauty, or at the very least glamour, comes into being through ­ ings with Words, its use and, I want to argue, is performative. In How to Do Th the speech act theorist J. L. Austin introduced the concept of the performative utterance, language that does not “describe” anything and is not “true or false” but rather is “the d ­ oing of an action.”23 Judith Butler has famously used Austin’s performative in her concept of gender performativity, the idea that gender is constituted through its per­for­mance. In Gender Trou­ble, Butler proposes that “acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they other­wise purport to express are fabrications manufactured through corporeal signs and ­ ere Butler suggests that gender has no “ontologiother discursive means.”24 H cal status apart from the vari­ous acts which constitute its real­ity.”25 She uses drag to demonstrate the performativity of gender: “drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself.”26 If gender is constituted through its performance—­through what Butler identifies as a “stylized repetition of acts”—­then the “appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed ­ atter, Butler clarifies that she was not proidentity.”27 But in Bodies That M posing that “gender was like clothes” that we can simply put on and take off, “that one woke up in the morning, perused the closet or some more open space for the gender of choice, donned that gender for the day, and then restored the garment to its place at night.”28 Instead, gender performativity comes into being through an extended and stylized repetition of acts. Defining beauty as performative offers the possibility that beauty is not essential or an absolute designation but can be constructed or, quite literally, painted on. As Dita Von Teese puts it, “we burlesquers tend to be beauties of the created kind.”29 Interestingly, many neo-­burlesque figures celebrated for their beauty and glamour are almost unrecognizable out of makeup or their drag. “Getting into drag” as a meta­phor for transformation speaks to

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the performative—­and political—­efficacy of some neo-­burlesque.30 Drag is about being able to imagine, fabricate, and bring into being self-­authored images that often destabilize expectations related to gender and beauty norms. The fact that beauty and glamour are used to undo ­t hose categories may seem like an unnerving paradox, but drag and neo-­burlesque performers can employ “pretty ­t hings” as a tool or weapon to dismantle the totalizing power of ­t hose norms.31 To some degree, the performativity of burlesque beauty challenges the hegemony of mainstream beauty ideals. On the neo-­burlesque stage, beauty performativity is correlated to burlesque’s noted cele­bration of diverse body types. As the host Miss Astrid coyly puts it: “Does an ea­gle cry b ­ ecause it is not a swan? No. Is a dove sad ­because it’s not a flamingo? No. And so it should be, ladies and gentlemen, with ­women. Dif­fer­ent shapes, dif­fer­ent sizes, tall, short, fat, thin all are beautiful.”32 ­Here Astrid highlights neo-­burlesque’s cele­bration of difference and promotion of self-­acceptance. Some burlesque troupes and performers exploit their physical differences as an asset. Selena Luna, also known as Bobby Pinz, is a 3′ 10″ burlesque performer who capitalizes on her diminutive stature to give an alternative version of glamour and sex appeal.33 The Fat Bottom Review and the Glamazons are two troupes that required members to be plus-­size beauties. As Michelle Baldwin explains, “feeling sexy and power­ful onstage and knowing that you are possibly changing the way the world looks at you and ­others who look like you is an incredibly rewarding by-­product of the burlesque experience.”34 The inclusion of a variety of body types in neo-­burlesque is emancipatory for both performers and audiences and has ultimately reconfigured, albeit in a small way, what constitutes beauty both on-­and offstage—­a theme I return to in chapter 4. That said, beauty performativity does not guarantee equal stage time for all. The neo-­burlesque movement continues to be criticized for being a “white per­for­mance art” and “mostly a cis w ­ oman’s art form.”35 As I discussed more fully in the introduction, early neo-­burlesque’s noninclusionary practices had an impact on per­for­mances and audiences: ­women of color created their own opportunities when they failed to see themselves represented in traditional

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burlesque shows. Though t­ here has been increased awareness of, and some attempts to remedy, the lack of racial diversity in neo-­burlesque, it remains an issue. Lack of diversity impacts what gets staged and what, in turn, comes into being with beauty performativity. Furthermore, some performers and audiences are not necessarily interested in challenges to the status quo, the transformative stagings of monster/beauty, or the per­for­mance art side of burlesque. Some wish, quite simply, to provide or see phantasmagorias of glamour and beauty, which raises the question: what’s remotely monstrous— or even progressive—­about a traditionally pretty girl stripping on stage? I turn next to a case study of Von Teese to address that question.

The Monstrosity of Extreme Beauty: In Defense of Dita Von Teese Claiming to have been an average-­looking child, Von Teese has made an art out of—­and has received mainstream attention for—­constructing and performing a hyperfeminine beauty ideal.36 Influenced by cheesecake pinups, MGM Technicolor movies, and the queens of burlesque (Lili St. Cyr, Sally Rand, and Gypsy Rose Lee), Von Teese’s mantra, “Glamour above all ­t hings,” is the impetus ­behind her creation of dreamworlds of excess and illusion.37 In e­ very sense, she is a glamour queen, a study in pinup perfection. With her perfectly coiffed jet-­black hair, corset-­cinched waist, and pounds of rhinestones and miles of ostrich feathers, Von Teese stages glamour and hyperfemininity in excessive and stylized ways. On the surface, it may seem difficult to locate the monstrosity in the stagings that have catapulted Von Teese into the mainstream spotlight. Yet her hyperfemininity is hardly normal: she fabricates her own beauty and pushes it to a level of spectacular excess. Neo-­burlesque has reconfigured even ­these picture-­perfect repre­sen­ ta­tions as extreme, an exaggeration that invokes the monster/beauty continuum in its spectacular stagings. Von Teese has been critiqued, particularly in academic discourse, for her commercial success and for perpetuating mainstream beauty ideals and

Figure 2.4. ​Dita Von Teese’s extreme styling and extravagant costuming and props have become iconic. Her iconic style and per­for­mances are wholly self-­authored. Photo by Jennifer Mitchell.

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gender roles, thereby possibly undermining burlesque’s radical potential. According to Jacki Willson, Von Teese seems “too close to the pre­sent repre­ sen­ta­tional system” to be subversive.38 Claire Nally finds Von Teese’s “imagery problematic”: “Without being coupled with an ironical, critical or reflective questioning of sexual power, erotic display risks falling immediately back into unchallenging, ste­reo­t ypical, ‘off the shelf ’ readings of female sexuality.”39 Alexis Butler observes that neither Von Teese’s per­for­ mances nor her very public persona “bear any trace of irony,” leading Butler to categorize Von Teese as “emphatically heteronormative.” 40 And Willson asks: “When performers like Von Teese fit so perfectly into sexually ‘submissive’ ste­reo­t ypes of the ‘ideal’ ­woman, how can ­there be room for subversion?” 41 I agree with the scholars who warn about the dangers of normalized beauty ideals and sexual display. But ­t here seems to be a backlash against Von Teese that ignores her significant (and original) contribution to neo-­ burlesque. While I concede that her per­for­mance style and material success mark her as dif­fer­ent from the average burlesque performer and the other performers described in this book, I would like to question the assumptions under­lying ­these critiques. T ­ hese arguments assume that employing “glamorous markers of feminine display” is somehow incompatible with commentary, possibly suggesting that glamorous femininity is inherently apo­liti­cal.42 Neo-­burlesque offers a sparkly rebuttal to this assumption. As Meghann Montgomery notes, burlesque “often caricatures hyper-­femininity, standing outside the subject position to draw attention to its artifice.” 43 I want to ­counter the categorical dismissal of Von Teese by suggesting that her over-­the-­top aesthetic is a type of monstrosity that, in fact, is in line with (rather than in opposition to) neo-­burlesque as monster/beauty. Much of the criticism of Von Teese is centered on her material success. Sherril Dodds comments that “commercially successful and media-­ celebrated performers, such as Dita Von Teese . . . ​perform at high-­profile events and adopt a conservative image of burlesque that utilizes the glamorous markers of feminine display with l­ittle reference to wit, humour and critique.” 44 Erotic display can run the risk of commodification that per-

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petuates ste­reo­t ypical versions of gender and sexuality. But to suggest that success assumes a “conservative image” misses the ways that Von Teese’s aesthetic style and production choices are self-­authored and innovative, characteristics normally celebrated in neo-­burlesque. Th ­ ere is a troubling subtext in academic dismissals of Von Teese that argues commercial success is incompatible with commentary or critique. Furthermore, to assume that success sullies art places artists in an unfair and insurmountable double bind. To be successful as an artist, this line of reasoning suggests, one must remain unsuccessful commercially. A careful consideration of Von Teese’s ­career complicates the assumption that commercial success automatically reinforces the repre­sen­ta­tional system. In par­tic­u­lar, her casting choices offer a subversion of beauty ideals that challenge expectations about the stripping body that have gone unrecognized by critics. In her touring revue, “Burlesque: Strip, Strip, Hooray!” and subsequent full-­length touring shows, Von Teese pre­sents her signature show with elaborate props and Swarovski-­crystaled dreamworlds in large, mainstream venues around the globe, including the Beacon Theatre in New York City, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and the London Palladium.45 Von Teese has surrounded herself with a cast of motley characters whom one might see, with luck, at the “small scale” venues known, according to Dodds, for more “radical” per­for­mances.46 Von Teese’s casting choices—­ which include the drag king Murray Hill, l­ittle person Selena Luna, plus-­ size dancer Dirty Martini (the subject of chapter 3), and Perle Noire, a sensational Black burlesque dancer in a field often noted for its lack of racial diversity—­challenge the assumption that Von Teese’s mainstream success is incompatible with commentary. Von Teese uses large-­scale venues to offer diverse performers a stage on which to pre­sent their unique versions of beauty to a broader audience. Dirty Martini describes Von Teese’s casting as “­counter culture,” including her choice to book Murray Hill as her MC: The fact he is biological[ly] female is something r­ eally subversive that [Von Teese] is introducing to a ­whole crowd of ­people who maybe w ­ ouldn’t be

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Figure 2.5. ​Perle Noire’s unique per­for­mance style combines dynamic athleticism with elegance. A featured performer with Dita Von Teese, Noire is an award-­w inning performer with a strong fan following of her own. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

introduced to that world [other­w ise]. Young ­people, fashion ­people, retro ­people are coming to t­ hese concerts expecting to see the queen of burlesque sit on a pretty prop. And ­t hey’re getting Murray Hill, Dirty Martini, Perle Noire realness, right? That was a big part of the first draft of this show. She even said to me at the release of the movie Burlesque she wanted to show Amer­i­ca what real burlesque was about.47

Von Teese’s version of “real burlesque” includes a commitment to counterculture and staging diverse bodies. With Von Teese’s commercial success comes her ability to book practically any burlesque performer in the world, yet she chooses to surround herself with a cast of performers who pre­sent unique versions of beauty and embodied sexuality. And that same commercial success allows for a larger dissemination of ­t hese subversive bodies and per­for­mances. In this case, the large-­scale venue proves radical.

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Academic critiques of Von Teese are in stark contrast to what her peers say about her contributions to burlesque. Julie Atlas Muz acknowledges the influential role Von Teese has played in the burlesque revival movement: What she’s done to the form, and her ability to stay true to her fetish stripper roots and be uncompromising, is fucking awesome. I love her production value. Her show is ­g reat. It’s fucking beautiful. It’s not what I would make, thank God. But it’s what she would make and she does it with aplomb. . . . ​She was signing autographs before any of us ­were. Girl’s got it down pat. And the fact of her d ­ oing it first defines a lot about how stuff happens. I mean Dita is brilliant. Brilliant. And I have nothing but re­spect for her. I ­really think that she’s phenomenal.48

As Muz suggests, Von Teese’s commercial success is the result of innovation and originality. ­Here Muz touches on some of Von Teese’s contributions, from her high production value to her commitment to a fringe aesthetic and her innovation of commercially successful per­for­mance practices. Von Teese is a style innovator and an influencer, and it is impor­tant to acknowledge that her now iconic look is wholly self-­authored. Dirty Martini c­ ounters the depiction of Von Teese as a commodified product of mainstream culture and instead characterizes her as “a self-­made ­woman”: “It’s very dismissive, in my opinion, to look at what Dita is ­doing and lump her in with Christina Aguilera or Katy Perry who ripped [off] her style for an ­a lbum. . . . ​W hereas Dita has had a twenty-­five-­year ­career . . . ​but the fact that she’s dismissed b ­ ecause she is the image of Vargas pinup is dismissive of her achievements in popu­lar culture and her position as an influencer in fashion.” 49 To reduce the radical potential of burlesque by denying certain bodies their right to self-­expression seems at odds with the art form: it misrepresents burlesque and dismisses certain ­women and the movement as a w ­ hole. Von Teese does not need me to defend her or her aesthetic choices, nor is that exactly what I am ­doing h ­ ere. What I want to do is defend a ­woman’s right to pre­sent her persona and her art the way she chooses. Neo-­burlesque celebrates an anything goes attitude that offers seemingly endless potential

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for creative expression. The backlash against Von Teese becomes a prob­lem when it limits that self-­expression. Furthermore, parody does not always come in the same transparent package. Spectators instantly understand the feminine excess of a performer like Dirty Martini as a commentary on social norms. Von Teese’s excessive spectacles are nonnormative in many ways: she escalates spectacle and exaggerates artifice, creating dreamworlds that ­were previously unimagined. Her artistry is valid and, for many, inspirational. To depict Von Teese as uncritical or not referring to a knowing wit misses the nuances of her per­ for­mances and productions. It also misses how extreme beauty can be monstrous, a belying of the natu­ral that I argue in this chapter is central to burlesque as monster/beauty. And burlesque as monster/beauty has the potential to be radically subversive in all its forms, from the monsters of burlesque to extreme beauty as a form of monstrosity.

“Is That a Dude?”: Queering Neo-­B urlesque In a prototypical neo-­burlesque show in New York City, the picture-­perfect pinups and glamour queens like Von Teese share the stage with the monsters of burlesque and boylesque performers. Performers range from Rose Wood (a gender-­fuck performer whose oeuvre includes acts as a Hooter’s girl, thereby exploiting the ultimate signifiers of masculine desire: beer, chicken wings, and tits) to Tigger! (who pushes the bound­aries of gender and self-­ representation in his hyperacrobatic acts and exaggerated theatrical styling). Many performers explic­itly test preconceived notions of gender binaries in their per­for­mances and the ways they define themselves. Some burlesque performers refer to themselves as female drag queens or as “female female impersonators”—­a term that Rowe also uses to describe Mae West—­a nd describe dressing as getting into drag.” 50 Leroi the Girl Boi is a gender-­blender performer who performs in drag—­both in male and in hyperfeminine showgirl drag.51 ­These examples demonstrate how burlesque can subvert gender expectations in playful ways.

Figure 2.6. ​Rose Wood’s acts experiment with shocking the audience through extreme physicality. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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The appropriation of terms such as “female female impersonator, “drag queen,” or “FTF” by cisgender female performers is conceptually fascinating but potentially problematic. When I mentioned this to Rose Wood, she replied that female drag queens “are excessive but not subversive. That’s the difference to me.” 52 ­There is a material difference between a w ­ oman dressing up as a hyperfeminine ­woman and a man dressing up as a ­woman—­a difference that may very well have punitive effects in par­t ic­u ­lar contexts. Furthermore, as language catches up to the complexity of gender expression, certain terms—­such as “FTM” and “MTF”—­become obsolete, and as we playfully use the stage to question gender norms, it is imperative to use language that re­spects gender expressions. In­ter­est­ing t­ hings happen on-­and offstage when gender expressions collide. By sharing the neo-­burlesque stage, aesthetic performers, femme drag performers, boylesque performers, and the monsters of burlesque perform together to create “dreamworlds of phantasmagoria” where a traditional concept of gender is turned on its head.53 This brings us to one of the most baffling yet conceptually rich by-­products of the neo-­burlesque stage. Sometimes the picture-­perfect female performing ideal beauty gets misrecognized as a man. When Wood first saw Delirium Tremens—­a traditional burlesque performer whose accolades include winner of the Miss Bettie Page contest—­Wood asked, “Who is that fabulous transvestite?” 54 While Wood told this story as a playful introduction to Tremens’s act at a Starshine Burlesque show, patrons often seem genuinely confused by theatrical pre­sen­ta­ tions of gender. Often I heard audience members ask about glamorous female performers: “Is that a dude?” Hyperfemininity in this space of transgression can be and does get misrecognized. Outside the space of neo-­burlesque, it is inconceivable that ­women like Tremens or Muz could be misrecognized as men. But I have heard “Is that a dude?” directed at many cisgender female performers.55 It is as if they are too pretty to be ­women and such perfections of beauty and gender could be created only by an imitator, or as if their per­for­mance of gender is so extreme that it comes off as drag. In their hyperfemininity they become an emblem of the artifice of gender that throws unknowing bystanders’ per-

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ceptions for a loop, a reminder that gender ideals can be copied and that, ultimately, what is feminine is not reducible to essence. This is not new in feminist theory. But how do we account for the punitive damages for even ­those who do their gender right, as ­these cases of misrecognition suggest? As Judith Butler comments, “Performing one’s gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that ­there is an essentialism of gender identity ­after all.” 56 Performing one’s gender well in this instance does not provide reassurance; instead, it suggests that gender per­for­mance on the neo-­burlesque stage is always already suspect, even by ­t hose indebted to maintaining essentialist expressions of gender. Though misrecognizing a hyperfeminine cisgender w ­ oman as a dude may seem inconceivable, I understand the audience’s confusion. Neo-­burlesque offers a heterosexual posturing of sorts, a tease that may allude to a narrative of heterosexual foreplay. As Ann Pelligrini has pointed out in the case of male and female bodybuilding, “what emerges most conspicuously from this heterosexual posturing is precisely its sexual indifference.” 57 By “indifference” Pelligrini means not nonchalance but rather a difficulty in deciphering. Similarly, neo-­burlesque capitalizes on such heterosexual posturing while offering sexual indifference. This world of gender inversion, gender play, hyperstylized repre­sen­ta­tions of gender, and general inversion of social norms creates a transgressive space that makes even straight repre­sen­ta­tions of gender and desire indecipherable. Like Howells’s critique of nineteenth-­ century burlesque performers as “creatures of a kind of alien sex,” the burlesque stage offers a monstrosity of gender confusion, a space where glamour and pinup perfection become alien and other. The neo-­burlesque performer is always already monstrous, and through ­t hese exaggerated and extreme repre­sen­ta­tions she becomes something to be feared. If a monster is a sign of imminent evil, a physically malformed being that belies nature, then the impending evil of this ideal of beauty and object of desire may be that she’s hiding a “­little secret” between her legs.58 Misrecognition in this instance may be read as an attempt by heterosexual cisgender male audience members to avoid homosexual desire. Denying the

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female performer her gender becomes, ironically, a way for some audience members to safeguard their heterosexuality. Yet ­there is a deliciously subversive by-­product of t­ hese attempts to maintain heteronormativity—­namely, that such a response unknowingly contributes to the queering of the neo-­burlesque space. Using the signifiers of glamour, femininity, and sexual and sexualized excess, neo-­burlesque performers are able to dismantle the permanency of t­ hose designations and of gender itself. I would like to suggest that occupying this space of the slash, for lack of a better term, between monster and beauty not only designates a third space but also radically transforms the static nature of the other two. In other words, not only can one si­mul­ta­neously occupy positions that are binary opposites, but both are necessary possibilities for the other to exist. Performers on the neo-­burlesque stage can be both monsters and beauties, h ­ uman and animal, masculine and feminine. And the monster/beauty of neo-­burlesque transforms the monster as beautiful and the beautiful as monstrous. Ultimately and unavoidably, it is difficult to divorce the scantily clad female form onstage from patriarchal practices that created similar images. As Allen aptly warns, we should avoid viewing “resistant forms of cultural production as unproblematically and unambiguously progressive.” 59 Neo-­ burlesque’s use of sexualized signifiers—­the Vargas pinup, the playboy bunny, and the vamp—in such self-­conscious ways challenges t­ hose very images. Boys dressing up as girls, girls dressing up as boys dressing up as girls, and girls simply trying to be pretty being misidentified as boys throws a wrench in the ­simple equation: girl ‒­ clothes = google-­eyed boy. Vivian Patraka describes the explosion of such binaries as “binary terror,” “the terror released at the prospect of undoing the binaries by t­ hose who have the most to gain from their undoing.” 60 Part of this terror, I suggest, is bound up in the central role that monstrosity plays in neo-­burlesque. Neo-­burlesque is a decidedly queer art form that wraps itself up in a genre built on misogyny. It is a post-­postfeminism that has turned around and found delight in showgirl glamour and has appropriated the icon of the pinup as a pos­si­ble sight of transgression. As Buszek provocatively argues, the pinup

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suggests a paradoxical repre­sen­ta­tion of “not just feminist sexuality, but of feminism itself.” 61 Similar in many regards to Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes’ groundbreaking nineteenth-­century burlesque plays, neo-­burlesque is, by definition, about parody, poking fun, and pushing the bound­aries of what are acceptable repre­sen­ta­tions of w ­ omen in the public sphere. Conceding that burlesque is not “unproblematically or unambiguously progressive” does not contradict the idea that neo-­burlesque is monster/beauty.62 In fact, that concession seems to serve as a catalyst for a discussion of burlesque’s radical potential, opening up a space where the scantily clad female onstage can be progressive, invoke discussion, and (as this chapter has demonstrated) be both monster and beauty. As Frueh puts it, the “monster defies expectation,” and it is in that carnivalesque space where anything goes that neo-­burlesque resides in all of its monstrous beauty and beautiful monstrosity.63

chapter 3

i

Burlesque as Unruly dirty martini and the po­liti­cal efficacy of an invisible wink “­Every time I step onstage it is po­liti­cal.” —­Dirty Martini

The inaugural Burlesque Top 50 published in 2009 listed Dirty Martini the number one burlesque performer in the world.1 Number two was Dita Von Teese, who by this time was being regularly featured in the mainstream press and had just published her first book, Burlesque Art of the Teese/Fetish Art of the Teese.2 While Von Teese had received mainstream recognition and commercial success, Martini took the top spot as she is admired as a performer, beloved as an icon, and respected as a role model in the burlesque world. “I, of course, was thrilled,” Martini said about the accolade, “and I love that the most famous burlesque dancer in the ­whole world was number 2.”3 Then she bursts out laughing. Martini laughs loudly—at shows, in interviews, and in her daily life—­and often. Her boisterous laughter rings infectiously through a crowd, creating an environment of fun that supports the performers while contributing to the playful atmosphere found in burlesque culture. Laughter is central to Martini’s joie de vivre. Her ability to laugh often is bound up in her intelligence, wit, and willingness to put herself center stage. Laughter is also central to Kathleen Rowe’s notion of the “unruly w ­ oman” who puts herself on display with plea­sure, delight, and opulence. “Through her body, her speech, and her laughter, especially in the public sphere,” Rowe 94

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explains, the unruly ­woman “creates a disruptive spectacle of herself.” 4 Unruly w ­ omen are recognized, in part, for the ways they stake claim to their voices and bodies through excess: their bodies, personas, and expressions are excessive, thereby representing the prototypical body of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque.5 Unruly w ­ omen like Martini occupy public spaces in ways that reconfigure power relations. I would like to borrow from Rowe’s proj­ect to “consider what we might learn from [genres of laughter] about female resistance—­and pleasure—­and about how they might help lay the groundwork for the production of more emancipatory feminist theories.” 6 As Rowe explains, “The parodic excesses of the unruly w ­ oman and the comedic conventions surrounding her provide a space to ‘act out’ the ‘dilemmas of femininity.’ ”7 Through her laughter, Martini is “courageously confronting the myth of the humorless feminist,” and this laughter can be read in tandem with other “comedic forms of female transgression,” as I discuss more fully in chapter 4.8 Martini possesses an unruly body, one that defies conventions through its verbal and physical excess. Her physical presence and prominence in the burlesque world make it clear that putting one’s self on display in public ways has the potential to disrupt and destabilize social norms and expectations, offering a new version and vision of real­ity to take their place. By redefining scopic plea­sure as self-­authored, “the unruly ­woman points to new ways of thinking about visibility as power.”9 This chapter explores the power of Martini’s unruly body, focusing on the wink—­both physical and metaphorical—to convey meaning in burlesque.

Welcome to the Stage, Miss Dirty Martini Martin’s ­career is significant: She was crowned Miss Exotic World in 2004. As a star of stage and screen, she is also the subject of several documentaries, including Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque, and is featured in Mathieu Amalric’s Tournée (winner of the Best Director and FIPRESCI awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010), which brought Martini and the other burlesque performers in the film years of lucrative touring and

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Figure 3.1. ​Dirty Martini performs at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Photo by Tigz Rice. Printed by permission.

contributed to their international celebrity.10 Martini also starred in Margaret Cho’s off-­Broadway burlesque variety show, The Sensuous W ­ oman, and still tours extensively with Von Teese. Martini contributes to burlesque both on-­and offstage. As she continues to tour the world, headlining festivals and shows, she has emerged as a much-­ revered commentator on burlesque and feminism. She regularly contributes articles to 21st ­Century Burlesque and is often interviewed by the press. Martini is also involved in preserving burlesque history, both as a member of the Board of Directors of the Burlesque Hall of Fame and through her performances—­which pay tribute to classic burlesque while invigorating them with modern sensibilities. In the burlesque world, she is literally the embodiment of neo-­burlesque: glamorous, graceful, and a l­ ittle gritty. Murray Hill—­drag king, master of ceremonies, and burlesque husband to Martini—­refers to her with affection as a “classy broad.” The phrase is fitting. Her signature line on her email touts her as “Chairman of the Broad,” a clever spoof that reconfigures a chairman with womanly proportions. The word “broad” refers to a w ­ oman’s hips, and by the early 1900s, it had become

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a euphemism for “­woman” with negative connotations. Martini intentionally appropriates a derogatory term with a knowing wink, using pun and parody as tools to reclaim and reinvigorate its meaning with positive attributes. She pokes fun at the impenetrable corporate world by placing her unruly body and her joie de vivre spirit center stage. Martini’s “making fun” ­here has a double meaning: she pokes fun at static social roles and conventions while clearly having fun ­doing it. The broad, she implies, is r­ eally in charge. Martini’s “classy broad” persona appears both on-­and offstage. She is incredibly down to earth, a performer with self-­confidence but not an excessive amount of ego. Martini is fun—­f un to watch on stage, fun to be with backstage, fun to be around in general—­and her social media presence demonstrates her joie de vivre. Her Instagram feed features self-­portraits in theatrical hair and makeup as well as t­ hose featuring a down-­to-­earth Martini in her daily adventures in exotic locales. ­W hether dressed in eve­ning or day drag, Martini smiles broadly as friends and fans cluster around in the glamorous world she has created. One can almost hear her infectious laughter that likely punctuated the moment captured. ­These two versions of Martini (the highly glamorous and the down-­to-­earth, both celebrating life fully) are integral to who she is as a performer and a person. To understand this duality and her power as a performer and icon, it’s necessary to decipher her sometimes literal but always meta­phor­ically pre­sent wink. Martini is larger than life and completely possesses her image, per­for­mance, and body. And the body of Dirty Martini, as I show next, is one of a kind.

Dirty Martini: The Body of Neo-­B urlesque Martini is known for her fierce stage presence and dynamic per­for­mances, ultraglamorous costuming, and movements that are suggestive yet wholly classy. A classically trained dancer with a bachelor of fine arts degree in dance from Purchase College, she has a trained body and knows how to use it. When she steps onstage, her decades-­long dance training is evident. It is one of the tools she uses to entertain and paint a provocative image on stage.

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Her fluid movements are combined with elegant costuming and elaborate makeup and hairstyles to create her stately presence. Clinging costumes reveal Martini’s extreme curves. She paints her facial features so they appear larger than they are, using bright colors and exaggerated lines to transform her appearance and even what constitutes glamour. Martini is able to transform gaudy excess into regal realness: chartreuse eye shadow that would seem garish on another face appears elegant on Martini, who is able to transform glitter into gold. She has mastered the art of striptease with a control and presence that are unparalleled, and her influence in the burlesque world is far-­reaching. In short, Martini is the body of new burlesque. Martini also happens to be a size 16. Neo-­burlesque has been noted for its cele­bration of a broader range of body types than is found in most mainstream culture, making burlesque a uniquely feminist art form. As Maggie Werner explains, neo-­burlesque “bodies are made spectacular through spectacle rather than being chosen for per­for­mance ­because they are already spectacular.”11 Performers use the burlesque stage to receive applause, ac­cep­ tance, and recognition for displaying their unique bodies, bodies that resist containment and control, both figuratively and literally. As Joan Acocella puts it, “Again and again, artists and commentators of the new burlesque say that it is a feminist enterprise, allowing ­women to enjoy their sexuality and take pride in their bodies. The artists are often buxom. Muffin tops, backfat, discernable bellies: ­here they are.”12 That presence—­“ ­here they are” and w ­ omen aware of their own awarishness—is an invigorating and noteworthy aspect of neo-­burlesque.13 The body in and of neo-­burlesque signifies a type of presence that is unapologetic, confident, and larger than life, and often that body defies mainstream conventions of beauty or decorum (or both). The first ­t hing you notice about a burlesque performer when she steps onstage is her body, a body costumed and coiffured to excess that shortly ­w ill be revealed. Burlesque performers d ­ on’t—­and c­ an’t—­hide their bodies. The body cannot be ignored in burlesque, and Martini is no exception to this. In fact, she has become an impor­tant symbol of the burlesque movement’s ac­cep­tance of multiple body types and advocacy for ac­cep­tance of the

Figure 3.2. ​Dirty Martini is known for her extravagant costuming and ­ curve-­hugging gowns. Photo by Jeff Gardner. Printed by permission.

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plus-­sized. Martini can be described as Rubenesque: she is solid and curvy with large breasts, wide hips, and a small waist. As a ­woman of size, Martini recognizes that her per­for­mances are always po­liti­cal: “­Every time I step onstage it is po­liti­cal. However, if I stepped onstage and was just a talking person in a suit or had an archetype that p ­ eople ­were comfortable with, it ­wouldn’t be innately po­liti­cal. It’s that I’m taking my clothes off and enjoying what I’m d ­ oing with joie de vivre. And that combination is ­really power­ ful for p ­ eople.”14 The burlesque stage provides a unique venue for plus-­size ­women like Martini to garner recognition and accolades for using and displaying their bodies in unapologetic, sensual, and self-­possessed ways. The politics of Martini’s body are undeniable. “­Women have always come up to me at the end of the show and said they w ­ ere influenced by me,” Martini says. “Or early on in my c­ areer t­ hey’d say, ‘This is amazing what you are d ­ oing.’ ”15 For Martini, stripping is a power­ful tool for creative self-­expression, artistry, and po­liti­cal efficacy. Yet the same body that makes Martini unique and a power­ful symbol of neo-­burlesque has become the center of discussions of her artistry. Recognition of Martini’s mesmerizing stage presence and dance training are usually followed by (or follow) comments about her size. “­Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the press is talking about me,” Martini says, but she acknowledges that conversations about her per­for­mance are always related to her body and size.16 The insistent comments on the size of her body mark it as exceptional, a move that may unintentionally reinscribe body ideals. Martini rejects assumptions about the correlation between body size and health and the rhe­toric ­behind obligatory weight loss: “I want to be healthy. I ­don’t want the conversation to be about how much weight I should lose, like e­ very time I go to the doctor. It’s not innately unhealthy to be a bigger w ­ oman. In fact, it’s healthier, in my opinion, if you are exercising and leading a healthy lifestyle and eating correctly. If you are a bigger w ­ oman, you s­ houldn’t be shamed for that.”17 When plus-­size ­women are presented in the public eye, Martini explains, “it’s usually in the context of losing weight, a ‘before’ with the ‘­after’ that has to come—­where she’s lost all the weight and now she’s acceptable.”18 Martini resists the assumption

Figure 3.3. ​Dirty Marini describes finding a way to put her curves into context through burlesque. ­Here she exhibits the knowing “wink” that is central to burlesque’s efficacy and communication of meaning. Photo by Roxi D’Lite Photography. Printed by permission.

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that plus-­size ­women inhabit an anachronistic space that assumes weight loss is the only (and a necessary) path to full personhood or ac­cep­tance by society. Instead, Martini embodies equal parts self-­confidence and health awareness, all while celebrating that each body is unique. Martini refused to manipulate her body into a mold that did not fit, so she created a context in which her body can be understood and appreciated. Now she finds herself in a catch-22. As her ­career has grown over several de­cades, she has become known for her unique body, yet she is unable to move the conversations beyond her physical body to her body of work: “So the more I worked the less I identified myself as a plus-­sized person. A lot of ­people, their ­whole c­ areer is about being plus-­sized and stripping. For me it ­wasn’t r­ eally about that. I found that striptease was a way for p ­ eople to understand what I was d ­ oing. But it w ­ asn’t a public ser­v ice announcement. It ­wasn’t my end all be all. I just wanted to have a jumping-­off point artistically to be able to do other kinds of work.”19 The “other kinds of work” Martini had hoped to do include receiving mainstream recognition for her unique brand of beauty: “­Because my goal ­doing this burlesque stuff is to be a plus-­sized w ­ oman with no apologies on the cover of Vogue.”20 When she received a phone call that Karl Lagerfeld wanted to photo­graph her at Coco Chanel’s atelier, she believed she was on her way to achieving that personal and professional goal. But she soon discovered that not every­one is always able to put her “curves into context.”21

Karl Lagerfeld Shoots Dirty Martini (and She Lives to Tell about It) In 2010, Martini was invited to star in an editorial photo shoot with the fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld for V magazine. The shoot was to take place in Paris at the Chanel Couture Atelier, and Martini, a ­woman of size who was in her mid-­forties at the time, seemed as far removed as one could get from a traditional Lagerfeld model. Around that time, Lagerfeld had received backlash for comments he had made, denouncing critics of the fashion world’s impossible beauty standards as “fat” w ­ omen who are “jealous” of models.22

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“Nobody wants to see curvy w ­ omen on the runway,” Lagerfeld has been quoted as saying.23 Despite Lagerfeld’s negative comments about curvy ­women, in 2010 he was shooting Martini. At first, Martini was concerned about the shoot: she admits that she was “ ‘afraid of who I would find on the other end of that camera.”24 However, she was “pleasantly surprised to find an amazing person. Very welcoming, complementary and respectful.”25 It appeared that a glass ceiling had been broken and Martini, one of the ­great innovators of neo-­burlesque, had done the shattering. When the magazine hit the stands, however, Martini discovered that the photoshoot had been for V’s “Size” edition. “ ‘I had no idea that V was bringing me to do a “plus-­size” issue ­until it came out months l­ater,’ ” Martini recalls. “ ‘No one told me. I thought I was g­ oing to Paris to shoot in the Chanel atelier b ­ ecause I was fabulous, unusual and a good model to boot.’ ”26 Though shooting with Lagerfeld proved to be a double-­edged sword, Martini still highlights the importance of large-­scale exposure to her unique brand of beauty and glamour: with more “commercial opportunities,” like the Von Teese tours and the Lagerfeld shoot, “we can have access to cultural change makers.”27 Not only have Lagerfeld’s images of Martini had far-­ reaching significance and impact, but they are also staggeringly beautiful. The “Coco a Go-­Go” photo shoot by Karl Lagerfeld features a six-­page spread of Martini looking elegant, boisterous, and full of life. All the images feature her wearing dif­fer­ent black lingerie outfits, perfectly coiffed hair, and flawless makeup. Two of the shots prominently feature the iconic mirrored staircase designed by Chanel herself: one features Martini with both arms lifted in a high V, her mouth expressive and wide open as she leans her body ­toward another model styled as Chanel; the other is a full-­body shot of Martini, who bites her fin­ger coquettishly as she stares back at the camera. In another frame, Martini poses in front of the beveled mirrors with her left leg, clad in a black thigh-­high stocking attached to a garter ­belt, lifted to create a Rockettes-­esque repetition of showgirl perfection in the multiple reflections in the mirror. In five of the six frames, Martini stares directly into the camera in a self-­possessed and fully pre­sent way. Viewers are implicated in that gaze as they become subject to Martini’s power­f ul presence.

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Only one image shows Martini not staring directly at the camera: this image is an extreme close-up of Martini’s face and upper torso. She gazes with intention to the left of the camera, the back of her right hand gracefully framing her face. Her mouth is slightly parted, and she looks flawless, like a Hollywood starlet. Yet Martini’s gaze has no sign of the “to-­be-­looked-­ at-­ness” central to Laura Mulvey’s concept of male scopic plea­sure.28 In “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey borrows Sigmund Freud’s notion of scopophilia (defined as “plea­sure in looking”) to show how ­women are always already constructed as “objects” in cinema, “subjugating them to a controlling and curious gaze.”29 The viewer’s plea­sure is predicated on “using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight.”30 For Mulvey, ­women are always constructed as objects of the male gaze. However, in Martini’s version of scopic plea­sure, the performer as model (or model as performer) is fully in control of her image. By reconfiguring the Hollywood starlet as in control of the visual narrative, Martini controls the mise-­en-­scène. Though ­t here was a ­whole team of stylists and editors ­behind the shoot, it is Martini’s presence that makes the images so power­f ul.31 The viewer becomes implicated in Martini’s self-­possessed gaze as she redefines the par­ameters of what it means to be a desiring and desired object as subject. Martini controls the scene through her gaze, taking the camera hostage and thereby her reception, as well as reconfiguring scopophilia as plea­sure in looking with the subject of the image in control. To accomplish this, Martini uses the archetype of the “atomic bombshell” represented in icons like Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg to express a parodic excess of femininity. Martini describes combining “a genre—­that 1950s, over-­t he-­top bombshell” together with “something I could cultivate as a way that I could put my body in perspective for p ­ eople who are ready to cheer for that.”32 Martini’s goal “when I started was to put my body into context with this generation. . . . ​ So that was the beginning of my c­ areer. And then t­ hings happened. Po­liti­cal ­things, e­ tc., e­ tc. And you move on as an artist.”33 Though Martini has “moved on as an artist,” o ­ thers are unable to look beyond her body.

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Figure 3.4. ​Dirty Martini channels extreme glamour and luxuriousness. The multiple mirrors replicate her image from dif­fer­ent ­angles, offering viewers a full view of the self-­possessed Martini. Photo by Karl ­Giant. Printed by permission.

The double bind ­here is clear: Martini has created a space in which her body can be celebrated, yet she is continuously defined by—­and relegated to—­that same space. The comedian Roseanne Barr articulates similar concerns: “The media only wants to hear about how much I eat ­because it’s threatening to hear about a ­woman who has a vision and a fucking brain. . . . ​ I’d like it to be about my body of work, not just my body.”34 Martini has successfully crafted her image to put her “curves into context” in a way that resonates so strongly with fellow performer and spectators, but she has become confined by her body.35 Framing Martini’s body as the noteworthy ­thing about her in many ways does a disser­vice to her as an artist and undermines her contribution to burlesque. Her body continues to be the focus of discussion, and this chapter is no exception to that. In the spirit of reading Martini’s body of work (rather than just her physical body), I would like to shift the discussion now to the ways Martini conveys meaning and uses the

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burlesque canon to subvert it through a wink—­a self-­k nowing awarishness that marks her per­for­mances and pre­sen­ta­tions of self. The physical wink and invisible wink are central to understanding burlesque sensibility and the way it communicates meaning.

The Wink in Burlesque In burlesque per­for­mance and culture, the wink is used to communicate a knowingness grounded in play, self-­authorship, and camp sensibility. This wink is a conspiratorial message between performer and audience: the wink ensures that the audience gets the point, which can come in the form of a pun or punch line, a seductive move or innuendo, a commentary or po­liti­cal message, or several of t­hese si­mul­ta­neously. Through exaggerated, overstated, and theatrical gestures such as the wink, the burlesque performer is inviting the audience into the scene and demonstrating what some scholars have identified as burlesque performers being “aware of their own awarishness.” The wink in burlesque has become a per­for­mance strategy that is integral to burlesque’s over-­the-­top theatricality and ability to make social commentary Burlesque’s wink has previously been noted by scholars. As Claire Nally explains, gestures like the wink represent burlesque performers’ control of scopic plea­sure.36 Nally reformulates Mulvey’s “to-­be-­looked-­at-­ness” as an “awarishness” central to modern burlesque that can be “traced back to the beginnings of burlesque in the nineteenth ­century, where the performer gave winks and come-­hither glances.”37 It is the performer who “returns the gaze through gesture (winks, glances, expressions directed at par­tic­u­lar audience members), and thus confounds an audience-­driven scopic drive.”38 Gestures such as a wink distinguish burlesque from “other forms of spectacle (such as ballet) ­because of the practitioner’s ‘awarishness.’ ”39 It is this self-­conscious per­for­mance of gender which can offer po­liti­cal commentary. In Dancing on the Canon, Sherril Dodds similarly describes the wink as part of performers’ “choreography of facial commentary”: “they wink suggestively, flick their eyes to heaven, pull coy f­aces, fabricate mock shock, and offer smiles of plea­sure and collusion as a self-­reflexive per­for­mance

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strategy.” 40 ­Later, Dodds expanded this into “choreographic interface” as a way to understand facial choreography as a “mode of critical commentary” and a “site of meaning-­construction.” 41 Dodds employs Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theory of “faciality” as central to her assertion that facial expression constitutes a type of choreographic event “designed and revised according to per­for­mance norms.” 42 The wink as choreographic event suggests the performer’s control of the narrative and the scene. Evident in all of Martini’s per­for­mances, on-­and offstage, is this wink. For Martini, the wink is connected to the knowing exaggeration that underlies much burlesque. “The wink—­our wink—is to . . . ​fool p ­ eople into seeing something that ­they’re not seeing,” Martini explains. “That’s the wink for us—­ the ballyhoo.” 43 The ballyhoo, or exaggeration of real­ity for theatrical effect, is communicated through this wink, which lets the viewer into Martini’s world in playful and conspiratorial ways. Martini flaunts with femininity by using excessive amounts of dramatic makeup; large, styled wigs; and elaborate costumes. Like a female impersonator, she uses this aesthetic not necessarily for realistic effect but rather to construct and pre­sent an exaggerated and almost cartoonish version of femininity. Martini combines the excessively styled body with the act of undressing to create a wholly self-­authored ­woman who is in control of her body, image, and desire—­a point made through a self-­ knowing wink. That wink—­sometimes physically but always meta­phor­ically pre­sent—is central to understanding the power of Martini’s per­for­mance and the ways that burlesque, more broadly, communicates meaning. By uniting the wink of Clifford Geertz’s thick description with the proverbial (and ubiquitous) burlesque wink, I want to move t­ oward a thick description of Martini’s performative efficacy. To understand how underdressing or the explicit female body can represent a feminist agenda requires a reading of that wink as always already pre­sent in neo-­burlesque per­for­mance.

The Wink in Clifford Geertz’s Thick Description The wink that is so central to burlesque per­for­mance and sensibility finds an in­ter­est­ing bedmate in Geertz, a cultural anthropologist. According to

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Geertz, understanding culture requires thick description that unearths and prioritizes context. Geertz shows how meaning changes in dif­fer­ent contexts and that the task—or methodology—of thick description is to frame and describe that context.44 Interestingly, Geertz uses a wink to illustrate why thick description is necessary—­and how to do it. ­Here I rehearse his argument in detail to unearth the wink in his work and to apply it to the literal and meta­phorical wink in neo-­burlesque. In “Thick Description: ­Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” Geertz describes the difference between a wink and a twitch.45 ­Because both gestures are similar—or identical, as Geertz puts it, “from an I-­am-­a-­camera, ‘phenomenalistic’ observation of them alone”—­context is key for understanding the difference between them. From the movement alone, “one could not tell which was twitch and which was wink, or indeed ­whether both or ­either was twitch or wink. Yet the difference, however unphotographable, between a twitch and a wink is vast, as anyone unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows.” 46 Geertz’s humorous (and almost universally applicable) comment about misunderstanding a twitch as a wink suggests that intention is key. The wink is distinct from the twitch in one regard: intention, and that difference is where the genesis of culture lives. Geertz outlines par­tic­u­lar par­ameters that must be in place for a movement to become a gesture. The winker is distinct from the twitcher when he is communicating “(1) deliberately, (2) to someone in par­tic­u ­lar, (3) to impart a par­t ic­u ­lar message, (4) according to a socially established code, and (5) without cognizance of the rest of the com­pany.” 47 According to Geertz, “That’s all ­there is to it: a speck of be­hav­ior, a fleck of culture, and—­ voilà!—­a gesture.”  48 Similarly, the wink in burlesque is ubiquitous both as a gesture and as a way to communicate meaning to the audience. In burlesque, the wink as gesture is tongue-­in-­cheek commentary that becomes a “conspiratorial signal.” This “public code” allows the audience to read the performer’s flirty winks as imparting “a par­tic­u­lar message.” The burlesque performer flirts with flirting, and the wink lets the audience in on the joke,

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on the message of her act, or simply into her world of seduction. The burlesque performer is communicating, and as Geertz puts it, “indeed communicating in a quite precise and special way.” 49 Geertz further complicates his hy­po­thet­i­cal scenario by distinguishing between the winking and the twitching boy. ­Here his work is applicable to the provocative role that the per­for­mance of parody offers to the scene: suppose “­there is a third boy, who, ‘to give malicious amusement to his cronies,’ parodies the first boy’s wink, as amateurish, clumsy, obvious, and so on. He, of course, does this in the same way the second boy winked and the first twitched: by contracting his right eyelids.” 50 Though the three movements share physicality, they are all dif­fer­ent in their intention: the third boy “is neither winking nor twitching, he is parodying someone e­ lse’s, as he takes it, laughable, attempt at winking. H ­ ere, too, a socially established code exists (he w ­ ill ‘wink’ laboriously, overobviously, perhaps adding a grimace—­t he usual artifices of the clown); and so also does a message. Only now it is not conspiracy but ridicule that is in the air.” 51 The neo-­burlesque performer, through her rehearsal of sexuality and the wink, pokes fun using conspiratorial provocation and the “artifices of the clown.” Central to this is performers’ use of exaggerated physicality and “overobvious” versions of allure and explicit sexuality to communicate; tell a story; and poke fun at themselves, the audience, and social norms. Like a buffoon who pokes fun at the audience through cunning and self-­deprecating humor, the burlesque performer ridicules the audience’s expectations of embodied sexuality. Geertz adds one final scenario to his extended discussion of the wink, and this gets to the heart of the role of burlesque in communicating meaning. ­There’s winking, twitching, parodying, and now boys’ “rehearsing” (and burlesquing) the wink: “uncertain of his mimicking abilities, the would-be satirist may practice at home before the mirror, in which case he is not twitching, winking, or parodying, but rehearsing.” 52 By the time we get ­here to this “stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-­winks, parodies, [and] rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted,” Geertz’s thick description of the wink borders on

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the ridicu ­lous.53 This is relevant for our reading of neo-­burlesque, for performers are often playing with pre­sen­ta­tions of sexuality and desire in a rehearsal that is often deeply embedded in parodic display. The wink in burlesque is both literal and meta­phorical. Borrowing Wayne Dyner’s depiction of camp as “always represented with an invisible wink,” I want to suggest that an invisible wink is always already pre­sent in neo-­ burlesque.54 Literal winking, parodying, rehearsing are all pre­sent in burlesque’s production of meaning. W ­ hether or not a burlesque performer physically winks, the wink is always already pre­sent in neo-­burlesque per­ for­mance. The exaggerated wink and the invisible wink operate in tandem to produce meaning, and central to understanding burlesque is unpacking that simultaneity and the fact that even serious sensuality on stage is also a rehearsed version, a perhaps unintentional parody of sexual excess. In this rehearsal of exaggerated sexuality, the burlesque performer expresses “twice-­behaved be­hav­ior,” a concept Richard Schechner uses to describe per­ for­mance: “Per­for­mance means: never for the first time. It means: for the second to the nth time. Per­for­mance is ‘twice-­behaved be­hav ­ior.’  ”  55 This becoming in neo-­burlesque allows performers to invent their own personas (personas that are often in stark contrast to who they are in their everyday lives) and bring ­t hese flamboyant, excessive, bombastic, over-­t he-­ top, loud, brash, provocateurs into being. The wink becomes a way to let the audience in on that becoming, to ensure that what’s about to transpire on stage is in the spirit of fun, of creating and communicating serious ideas in playful ways. The burlesque performer winks to the audience in a conspiratorial way while si­mul­ta­neously parodying that wink—it is “amateurish, clumsy, obvious”—to ridicule, in some ways, the audiences’ expectations of a stripping body. As Jacki Willson puts it, “By way of the smile, the wink or the bitter-­sweet patter, the burlesque performer is also admitting that she is still trapped within existing value systems and erotic forms.” 56 In the case of Martini, that includes her being constantly read according to social expectations of how bodies strip and which bodies do so. Yet Martini is able to both acknowledge t­ hose trappings and pre­sent a counternarrative of how a

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Figure 3.5. ​Dirty Martini takes a coquettish moment to feign innocence and flirt with the audience. Moments like this represent the invisible wink that is evident throughout her per­for­mances and in much neo-­burlesque. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

desiring and desirable body looks and communicates. As an aging dancer who also happens to be plus size, t­ here are expectations of how her body moves and desires. She is able to subvert ­those expectations through her ever-­present wink, which also serves as a parody of a wink. The parody of the wink in burlesque broadly—­and in Martini’s per­for­mances and public displays specifically—is at the heart of what can make burlesque per­for­mance deliciously transgressive. Next I turn to one of Martini’s most iconic acts to provide a thick description of the power—­a nd po­liti­cal efficacy—of her invisible wink.

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Getting Caught in Dirty Martini’s Web Martini’s early exposure to burlesque came from watching Something Weird Videos that she rented from Kim’s Videos, an iconic East Village store that, like many New York City cultural institutions, has since closed its doors. The images and personas Martini found in t­hese burlesque films inspired her per­for­mance style and aesthetic: “And my love of classic, of course, is my original Something Weird Videos, where I first saw my first voluptuous burlesque dancer taking her clothes off with a bored look on her face or with absolute exaltation in her fiftieth show. ­Those ­women to me ­were what I wanted to emulate for this generation.” 57 Martini had an epiphany when watching old burlesque reels: “­These w ­ omen had dif­fer­ent body types and w ­ ere from dif­fer­ent ethnic backgrounds but they w ­ ere all kitschy[,] fun[,] and glamorous. They w ­ ere every­t hing that I ever wanted to be. I needed to show the world what the old burlesque was like. For me it was a form of living dance history.” 58 In ­t hose filmic repre­sen­ta­tions of the glamour and ribald sexuality of classic burlesque, Martini found a dance and aesthetic history that helped her put her own body into context. Martini came across a per­for­mance in one of t­ hese videos that inspired her to create her spider­web act. Naughty New York, directed by Jerald Intrator and released in 1959, starred Zorita, an innovative and eccentric burlesque performer known for sharing the stage with her pet boa constrictors (a  photo­graph from 1937 shows Zorita taking a leashed pet snake for a walk).59 Martini was drawn to the “style references” she saw in Naughty New York and other historic burlesque reels: “I was looking for references to make something from the past since I was already using style references from that time anyway. I wanted to do something more repertory style. It was before anyone was talking about ‘tribute’ acts. That w ­ asn’t r­ eally a conscious concept at the time.” 60 From that video and the style references that inspired her, Martini de­cided to create her own spider­web act that invoked the original source material while using her own unique movement vocabulary and style. The result is a new work of art that is historically grounded but wholly modern.

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Figure 3.6. ​Dirty Martini is known for her dynamic per­for­mances that are punctuated with moments of stillness. H ­ ere she teases the audience as she slowly unzips her gown, tooth by tooth. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

In Martini’s spider­web act, she invokes the figure of a black w ­ idow spider that gets caught in its own web. The act begins with s­ imple, elegant movement performed to a classic jazzy blues horn solo. Martini strolls onstage wearing a form-­fitting hot pink gown that fishtails out at her knees and a matching pair of hot pink sparkly gloves. She opens her arms wide and

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invites the audience in, repeating this inviting gesture (choreographed to the horns’ blare) several times in a controlled, elegant way. Then she poses for a moment midstage, and as a piano solo begins, she slowly and seductively begins to remove her gloves. She bites one of her fin­gers, teasingly mimics stroking piano keys, and seductively glides the satin glove over her lips and down the front of her body. Once Martini’s gotten all she wants from her glove, she tosses it aside. Next Martini begins filling the stage with movement. She struts in a large, deliberate circle, pausing to remove her other glove. She poses with her back to the audience, her face peaking seductively over her shoulder. She holds the tip of glove in her mouth as she allows the audience to drink in the silhouette that she has created with her body. Like the audience member who becomes enraptured with her per­for­mance, Martini delights in her own body. With her hands f­ ree, she plays the surface of her body like an instrument, pausing at the zipper of her dress. She holds the zipper, pinkies lifted, and waits a beat. The audience waits. Tension builds. And then slowly and seductively (fi­nally!) she unzips her dress, tooth by tooth, using stillness to create energy and building suspense through super-­slow stripping. The audience, mesmerized by ­every micro movement, explodes in response. Martini tosses her dress aside with intention and moves to the prop that takes up the background of the stage: a ­giant spider­web constructed out of black velvet and shiny silver sequins. The act takes a narrative turn as Martini becomes caught in the web. Black-­gloved ­human arms serving as surrogate spider legs reach through the prop to capture and ravage Martini’s body. The hands run seductively over her body as she yields to their touch. Martini’s left leg lifts—­her toe is pointed, her back arched—­and the hand runs down the length of her leg and back up again. As she is groped, Martini’s facial expression feigns shock. The hands caress and fondle Martini’s breasts, taking a moment to playfully toy with the clasp of her triangle bra. Once the clasp is opened, Martini’s breasts are revealed, and she breaks ­free from the web and spins to center stage, executing balletic turns as the panels of her skirt swirl up and around her like

Figure 3.7. ​Dirty Martini gets caught in the spider’s web and allows her body to be ravaged by the spider in an act inspired by Zorita. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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liquid, her bare breasts highlighted by a pair of rhinestone-­encrusted pasties. Martini removes her panel skirt and slides it seductively along her body, only to toss it aside and decide, ­after a moment’s deliberation, to return to the spider­web to have her back side ravaged by the spider. In this act, Martini invokes while reconfiguring the figure of the black ­w idow, known for consuming its lover. In a long lineage of femme fatales, the black w ­ idow occupies a space of knowing suspicion of the figure of the erotically active female who uses her sexuality to gain control, meta­phor­ ically and physically, over unsuspecting victims. As Caroline Blyth argues, the femme fatale’s “attributes are identified as all that is considered unsafe and undesirable about ­women: their social and sexual autonomy, their negotiations of power and their encroachment upon traditionally masculine territories of authority, vio­lence and sex.” 61 In Martini’s act, she plays with this figure of the femme fatale: she is in control of her own sexual plea­sure as she delights in her own body before deciding to succumb to the spider. Martini’s surrendering to her plea­sure does not translate into a loss of control or a reinscription of patriarchal dominance. Instead, she is wholly in control of the per­for­mance and her own desire. By highlighting her sexual body and her desire, Martini uses an “invisible wink” to let the audience in on her complicity. As Rowe argues, “the unruly ­woman can be seen as prototype of ­woman as subject—­transgressive above all when she lays claim to her own desire.” 62 Martini seduces (while playing the role of seducer to) an audience that willingly gives in and delights in becoming caught up in her web of seduction. And she does so with a knowing wink that is ever pre­sent, a wink that invites the audience into the world she creates onstage. This duplicity—­marked by a simultaneous being and being as playing a role—is central to understanding the pivotal role that the wink, both physical and invisible, plays in Martini’s per­for­mance and in neo-­burlesque more broadly. As Martini continues to entertain and delight spectators around the globe, she does so by putting her unique body on display, and she has thus reconfigured what beauty, sexual agency, and scopic plea­sure look like. Her visibility and prominence have become a type of power, one that she wields with

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the hand of an accomplished—­a nd deserving—­icon. Through her unruly body, her boisterous and infectious laughter, and her ever-­present invisible wink, Martini has transformed not only burlesque but what feminism (and a feminist) looks like. Her laughter rings through every­thing she does, reminding us that while she takes her art and ­career seriously, her joie de vivre allows her to be serious about the frivolous and frivolous about the serious—­a concept I return to in my discussion of burlesque’s indebtedness to camp sensibility in chapter 6. In the next chapter, I expand on the power of Martini’s infectious laughter by exploring further the central role that comedy, humor, and wit play in neo-­burlesque.

chapter 4

i

Burlesque as Pretty/Funny the comedic stylings of ­little brooklyn’s burlesquing burlesque

Known as the “Lucille Ball of Burlesque,” L ­ ittle Brooklyn is funny and clever, thoughtful and intelligent, referential and irreverent.1 Brooklyn’s many quirky and original acts pay tribute to while also subverting the burlesque canon, including her half–­King Kong, half–­Fay Wray act; a tribute act to Peewee Herman (and another to Richard Simmons); a classic 1950s ­house­wife act where ­things go awry; and an act dedicated to the urban bird that all New Yorkers love to hate, pigeons. Like the work of Lucille Ball herself, whose comedic timing appeared effortless but was in fact the product of perfectionist-­ level rehearsals, Brooklyn’s comedy is indebted to her fastidious planning and thoughtful referentiality. She acknowledges storyboarding as impor­tant to her pro­cess of developing acts, as well as coming up with unexpected twists and the use of props to propel her narrative forward. Brooklyn takes plea­sure in using traditional archetypes and burlesque tropes in unexpected ways, which helps elevate her physical comedy to a level of ce­re­bral stimulation. Scholars have identified the central role that humor and comedy play in the upheaval of social norms and in burlesque per­for­mance and culture.2 Humor in burlesque runs the gamut from slapstick comedy to ce­re­bral wit and clever referential material. Much neo-­burlesque is explic­itly funny, and even that which is not has an irreverent tone that can be characterized as wit. The boylesque performer Tigger! identifies wit as one of the three defining characteristics of burlesque in his “burlesque equation”: “burlesque = sex + wit + self-­expression. If it has ­t hose three ele­ments—­sex + wit + self-­ 118

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expression—­it’s prob­ably burlesque.”3 The dance critic Joan Acocella sums up the new burlesque movement as essentially comedic: “The new burlesque performers are dif­fer­ent [from t­ hose in ­earlier eras of burlesque]. They ­don’t try to lure. . . . ​W hat they do, mainly, is comedy.” 4 Some neo-­burlesque performers, like Brooklyn, do comedy explic­itly and almost exclusively. I want to ­counter Acocella’s claim by arguing that what neo-­burlesque performers “mainly do” can be characterized as wit, clever innuendo, and referential humor. Acocella states that burlesque performers “­don’t lure,” but I claim that that is exactly what they do. Humor is a power­f ul tool to both entertain the audience and lure it into the worlds that performers create onstage—­ worlds that often poke fun at social conventions. The simultaneous use of humor and tease related to a wide range of cultural references contributes to burlesque’s unique ability to make social commentary. As Sherril Dodds puts it, “Humor acts as a means to parody, satirize, or ridicule traditions of female repre­sen­ta­tion, while tease enables a self-­reflexive mode of per­for­mance.” 5 Comedy, humor, and wit have become crucial tools in a burlesque performer’s tool kit: they help engage spectators, communicate meaning, and temper the often shocking and po­liti­cal content that abounds in neo-­burlesque. Burlesque employs irreverent humor chock full of clever references and incongruent juxtapositions, all laced with camp sensibility. ­Whether comedy is explicit or implicit, it is always already pre­sent as an integral component of neo-­burlesque per­for­mance. The centrality of humor in burlesque is not necessarily about laughing out loud (though it can be), as it can also be about performers using their bodies, props, ­music, and other theatrical conventions in unexpected ways to make the audience react and think. This chapter focuses on the comedic stylings of Brooklyn, who uses explicit comedy and implicit wit to tell engaging stories on stage. Brooklyn’s description of her pro­cess and art suggests she strives to create work that is innovative and has an explicit story to tell. Humor, then, is used to drive the story forward rather than being the sole purpose itself. To set the stage to read Brooklyn’s pretty/funny per­for­mances and understand how taking one’s self too seriously belies burlesque’s ethos, I begin with a brief discussion of burlesque’s roots in parody. I then turn to a short overview of theoretical takes on comedy and

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humor, focusing on how the notion of comedy (and what’s considered funny) has been gendered. Burlesque subverts some of t­ hose gendered assumptions by flaunting a version of comedy and humor grounded in Joanne Gilbert’s marginal humor, José Muñoz’s comedic disidentification, and Linda Mizejewski’s transgressive humor.6 What ­these three authors share are the use of humor and comedy as po­liti­cal tools employed by disenfranchised subjects as “an aggressive response to domination.”7 This chapter ends with a close reading of one of Brooklyn’s most iconic acts—­her half–­King Kong and half–­Fay Wray act—to demonstrate her approach to act making. Brooklyn’s brand of comedic burlesque provides self-­possessed narratives that are referential, thoughtful, and funny. She has mastered a thinking w ­ oman’s approach to comedy, and she does so while being pretty funny.

Burlesque as Parody: Comedy, Humor, and (Making) Fun Burlesque’s root is in parody. As we saw in chapter 2, the origins of burlesque are a literary subset of parody that inverts form and content. In Horrible Prettiness, Robert Allen traces the centrality of parody in Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes who lampooned classic plays, poked fun at current events, and upended both high and low culture.8 ­After Thompsonian burlesque introduced the shocking yet enticing (and potentially subversive) combination of feminized spectacle with parody, the “impertinence and inversiveness of the burlesque form” took root and became the foundation of American burlesque.9 Parody, then, has pervaded burlesque since its modern inception, and it spans form, content, and style. Parody, or making fun, is still central to burlesque as a performative tool and a way of being, and it leaks into the performer’s per­for­mance vocabulary as well as her countenance. As Dirty Martini puts it, “Burlesque means to make fun of and it has been po­liti­cal from the start. We aim for sexy with a dose of comedy.”10 Martini’s making fun has a simultaneous double meaning: she pokes fun at static social conventions while clearly having fun ­doing so.11 Bunny Love makes a similar observation about the central role of comedy in burlesque:

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Figure 4.1. ​­Little Brooklyn pre­sents her comedic take on the swimwear portion of the Miss Coney Island pageant by wearing fins that exaggerate her physicality. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

For me, the definition of burlesque includes comedy and satire. . . . ​I think comedy is a big, impor­tant part of it. It’s at the root of burlesque. It comes from the start of it. . . . ​And I have to say, sometimes when I watch other performers, I think to myself, “Oh my gosh, if you d ­ idn’t take yourself so seriously, we’d all be enjoying this so much more. You included.” . . . ​Even if you want to have some strong po­liti­cal statement, or some strong social statement, if you put a ­little twist of comedy in ­t here, it’s a lot easier for ­people to take. And to enjoy. And prob­ably think about longer. It’s burlesque. You ­can’t take yourself too seriously.12

As Love suggests, comedy helps deliver messages that may be controversial or po­liti­cal or that simply push bound­aries of decorum and taste. In a bait-­and-­ switch technique that’s pervasive in burlesque, comedy and humor are used to hook spectators. Comedy helps spectators digest, enjoy, and engage with the per­for­mance, to “think about [it] longer,” as Love puts it. In Brooklyn’s words, “Get them laughing and t­ hey’ll listen to anything. I think maybe my

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style is get them laughing. Or pay attention to you. Hopefully. And then maybe ­they’ll be entertained by accident ­because you got them looking.”13 Comedy and humor are employed by neo-­burlesque performers to hook audience members and give them permission to laugh, involving the spectator in the per­for­mance (and possibly its message) while having fun d ­ oing so. While comedy, humor, and wit are central to burlesque as a performing art and participatory culture, it is impor­tant to note that ­t hese terms mean slightly dif­fer­ent t­ hings. The primary purpose of comedy is to evoke laughter, and though humor may not necessarily invite an explicit audience response, it may do so. Humor is employed to make a point, illustrate a story, or provoke thought, and this is a strategy neo-­burlesque performers often use to engage the audience. Brooklyn offers her take on the distinction between comedy and humor: “Comedy might be more like ‘Ha ha! I’m g­ oing to make you laugh.’ And humor may be a ­little more like ‘I’m humorous ­whether or not y­ ou’re laughing along with me.’ ”14 Though laughter may come from humor, laughter does not mean ­t here is humor, and humor is not a prerequisite for laughter. Humor spans a much broader spectrum of performative affects in burlesque that include wit, clever innuendo, and smart references to popu­lar culture and even the burlesque canon. Some burlesque performers are purely comedic, like clowns who pushes their point u ­ ntil the audience fi­nally laughs. Other burlesque performers are humorous, telling stories and using anecdotes to make a point. A few burlesque performers are both comedic and humorous. Brooklyn is one of them, using both humor and comedy as per­for­mance strategies and po­liti­cal tools to engage the audience and tell engaging stories onstage. Next I expand on her use of self-­ deprecating humor to poke fun and as an act of disidentification.

Self-­D eprecating Humor, Choreographed Failure, and Disidentification Brooklyn’s acts subvert assumptions about ideal femininity. In her h ­ ouse­wife act, she channels 1950s domesticity in exaggerated and clownish ways to call attention to its absurdity. Throughout the act, her attempts at domesticity

Figure 4.2. ​­Little Brooklyn pokes fun at domesticity and traditional w ­ omen’s roles in her h ­ ouse­w ife act, which invokes burlesque archetypes—­t he fan dance and the bathing act—to subvert them. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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fail, and it is through that failure and her use of self-­deprecating humor that Brooklyn strips the ste­reo­t ype of its meaning. Like a Lucille Ball skit gone awry, Brooklyn’s version of domesticity offers hilarity rather than obligatory domestic perfection. Brooklyn’s per­for­mance of an archetypal 1950s ­house­wife allows her to si­mul­ta­neously pay homage to and distance herself from what that means historically, socially, and po­liti­cally. Burlesque performers may appreciate and emulate mid-­twentieth-­century aesthetics and style, including a stylized attention to appearance, the construction of hourglass figures through corsets and dress styles, and the overall cele­bration of midcentury aesthetics. This appreciation is not meant to reinscribe an era in which w ­ omen had fewer choices; instead, neo-­burlesque uses t­ hese archetypes to dismantle them. Brooklyn pre­sents a ste­reo­t ypical image of femininity not to “assimilate it but to smother it,” as Henry Jenkins puts it: “To tell jokes containing the ste­reo­t ype was not invariably to accept it but frequently to laugh at it, to strip it naked, to expose it to scrutiny.”15 Employing socially loaded (and, in other contexts, problematic) archetypes can be read as an act of disidentification. Disidentification, pop­u ­lar­ized by Muñoz in his groundbreaking study Disidentifications, is defined by Gilbert as “identifying and immediately dismissing the identification.”16 Gilbert uses disidentification as a way to understand the “subversive effects” of self-­deprecating humor by female comics.17 She calls this “marginal humor” and suggests that it provides “an aggressive response to domination.”18 She develops this concept further in Performing Marginality, arguing that marginal humor “calls cultural values into question by lampooning them,” a technique that has much in common with the neo-­burlesque per­for­mance practices discussed in this book.19 Gilbert shows how female comics employ self-­deprecating humor—or “using the type to explode the type”—as a kind of marginal humor that “may be considered a subversive act.”20 Through her failure to perform ideal femininity, Brooklyn pokes fun at the 1950s ­house­wife archetype to explode it. Comedy, then, can be used to “strip [ste­reo­types] naked,” as Lawrence Levine puts it, a fitting meta­phor to read neo-­burlesque.21

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Muñoz’s disidentification—­“identifying with and rejecting of a dominant form”—is similar to Gilbert’s, though importantly he adds that disidentification is a strategy for survival used by minoritized subjects to critique culture and power in the ser­v ice of queer world making.22 In Cruising Utopia, Muñoz looks back on the concept he developed in Disidentifications and offers a delightfully beautiful take on the concept that has since gained extensive importance in critical and queer theory. He writes: “The aesthetic practice that I have previously described as disidentification focuses on the way in which dominant signs and symbols, often ones that are toxic to minoritarian subjects, can be re­imagined through an engaged and animated mode of per­ for­mance or spectatorship.”23 For Muñoz, camp and humor are central tools used in ­these per­for­mance practices. He further proposes that “comedic disidentification” accomplishes an “impor­tant cultural critique while at the same time providing cover form, and enabling the avoidance itself, of scenarios of direct confrontation with phobic and reactionary ideologies.”24 As he makes clear, “humor is [a] valuable pedagogical and po­liti­cal tool,” one that, I would suggest, is central to understanding neo-­burlesque’s efficacy.25 Muñoz calls the reimagining of toxic symbols “recycling.”26 ­There is potential power in recycling images and archetypes to recontextualize them and thereby reinvent their meaning. Burlesque’s recycling of archetypes, then, is intended to parody, subvert, and put a twist on ­t hose social expectations. As Mizejewski puts it, “sexualized images of ­women that the Second Wave [of feminism] had decried as degrading them can be recycled as proof of triumphant personal power.”27 Burlesque is able to recycle sexualized images and use that recycling as a power­f ul po­liti­cal tool to poke fun at the images. Using Muñoz’s disidentification, burlesque can be read as a “performative mode” employed “in an effort to resist the oppressive and normalizing discourse of dominant ideology.”28 In the context of Brooklyn’s poking fun at the archetype of the ­house­wife, her identification with and distancing from what that signifies resists “fixing” that figure “within the state power apparatus.”29 Instead, Brooklyn sends up the damaging archetype of obligatory domesticity with hilarious results, and she does so by using parody and poking fun. That poking fun includes a self-­referential stance

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­toward neo-­burlesque (as I discuss below in this chapter) as well as a commitment to laughter, which I explore more fully next.

Laughter and Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque Laughter is central to neo-­burlesque’s jovial atmosphere and its ability to upend social norms. An audience’s laughter demonstrates the power of burlesque to invoke emotion and communicate meaning. As I discussed in chapter 1, laughter is one barometer among many of the participatory nature of neo-­burlesque, including hooting and hollering, call and response, and audience participation. That jovial atmosphere is infectious, and the performer who does not take herself too seriously, as Love advises, has more fun and is more fun to watch. Laughter ­here serves as a kind of “ephemeral freedom,” to borrow a provocative concept from Mikhail Bakhtin, that momentarily liberates neo-­burlesque spectators (and, in Bakhtin’s context, medieval p ­ eople at a feast) from social dictates and norms.30 Though the contexts, of course, are radically dif­fer­ent, the power of laughter in Bakhtin’s carnivalesque extends to the neo-­burlesque stage as well. Bakhtin’s carnivalesque comes from his analy­sis of Rabelais’s descriptions of medieval feasts and festivals rooted in laughter, social inversion, and the “material bodily lower stratum.”31 Bakhtin shows that laughter is a pure act that “unveils truth,” and that seriousness became “elementally distrusted, while trust was placed in festive laughter.”32 He traces the “elimination” of laughter in official doctrines and its subsequent “unofficial” relocation to medieval feasts and festivals.33 This laughter, also evident in burlesque and other forms of folk culture, came from and was for the p ­ eople, allowing for a cunning critique and inversion of social norms.34 The setting aside of hierarchies was met with re­sis­tance, as Rabelais was critiqued during his time for his “sexual and scatological obscenity, his curses and oaths, double entendres and vulgar quips—in other words, the tradition of folk culture in Rabelais’ work, laughter and the material bodily lower stratum.”35 Interestingly, this critique can also be read as defining characteristics of neo-­burlesque, a correlation that points to the discomfort about explicit or obscene sexuality across time.

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In both Bakhtin’s carnivalesque and neo-­burlesque, laughter is central to creating the topsy-­turvy worlds that involve momentary suspensions from social norms and an inversion of low and high culture (and of social structures more broadly). Both carnivalesque and burlesque use the explicit body, grotesquery, sexual imagery, and double entendres to accomplish this upending of social norms. Bakhtin’s theorizing of folk cele­brations in the ­Middle Ages as carnivalesque illuminates many of the unique qualities of neo-­ burlesque that I discuss h ­ ere, including its indebtedness to laughter, as we return to in chapter 5, as well as monstrosity and the grotesque (unpacked fully in chapter 2), and as a precondition for the unruly w ­ oman and body of Dirty Martini (analyzed in chapter 3). Laughter, then, serves several functions in live per­for­mance and provides a rich theoretical framework for thinking through neo-­burlesque’s performative efficacy. A comprehensive overview of the extensive scholarship surrounding laughter, comedy, humor, jokes, and wit is impossible in this short space. Instead, this chapter provides an introductory (but ultimately incomplete) overview of some theories of comedy—­most notably, superiority theory and release theory, which I explore next—to help explain how comedy and humor in burlesque transcend many of the limitations historically placed on funny ­women. Using the work of Linda Mizejewski, Kathleen Rowe, Pamela Robertson, and other con­temporary female scholars, I explore how burlesque can also be read as a form of transgressive comedy, one grounded in the use of the female voice (both audible and embodied) in loud, expressive, and counterhegemonic ways. This overview pays par­tic­u­lar attention to how theories of comedy intersect with gender, as well as how they help illuminate the centrality of humor in burlesque sensibility, per­for­mance, and style.

Theories of Comedy: Superiority Theory and Release Theory Superiority theory, first credited to Plato and then to Aristotle, is predicated on the notion that the misfortune of ­others produces laughter. In Philebus, Plato considers laughter as a type of vice: when you laugh at someone, it

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becomes a way of asserting your supposed superiority over that person.36 Though neither Plato nor Aristotle propose a theory of comedy, Aristotle does addresses wit directly in the Nicomachean Ethics. He concedes that amusement is a necessary part of life, as it provides a respite from the serious nature of work and life. Certain types of amusement are acceptable, such as wit (entertainment consumed by “cultured p ­ eople”), while o ­ thers are suspect, such as physical comedy and buffoonery: “But to be serious and to ­labour for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish while to amuse ourselves in order that we may be serious, as Anacharsis says, seems to be right; for amusement is a sort of recreation, and we need recreation ­because we are unable to work continuously.”37 Wit is acceptable, but buffoonery is suspect as “low”: “­Those who carry humour to excess are thought to be vulgar buffoons, striving a­ fter humour at all costs.”38 That vulgarity, which is assumed in ­t hose who carry “humor to excess,” is the proud mark of many neo-­burlesque performers and per­for­mances. Though the superiority theory originated with Plato and Aristotle, its best-­known version comes from Thomas Hobbes. In ­Human Nature, Hobbes outlines his theory of laughter that emanates from recognizing the absurdity of ­others: “Also men laugh at the infirmities of ­others, by comparison wherewith their own abilities are set off and illustrated. Also men laugh at jests, the wit whereof [is] always consistent in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds some absurdity of another: and in this case also the passion of laughter proceedeth from the sudden imagination of our own odds and eminency: for what is e­ lse the recommending of ourselves to our own good opinion, by comparison with another man’s infirmity or absurdity?”39 Hobbes developed this theory further in Leviathan where he argued that laugher is “caused ­either by some sudden act of their own that pleaseth them; or by the apprehension of some deformed t­ hing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves.” 40 According to superiority theory, laughter becomes a way for someone to exert superiority over the subject of laughter. Burlesque complicates some of the assumptions in superiority theory. The burlesque performer constructs the narrative and decides to position her

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body as central to the story, and the laughter comes not necessarily from the audience member’s feeling superior but rather through identifying with the performer who controls the scene. As David Heyd points out, “Hobbes’s superiority theory of laughter completely dissociates laughter from its most apparent source, the comic (‘wit’ and ‘jest’).” 41 In this case, the comic is willingly placing herself in a position to be laughed at, and the comedic performer is in control of the narrative and, to some degree, the audience. As Lily Tomlin puts it, “To make an audience laugh meant you had control of them.” 42 Brooklyn makes a similar point when she says, “Get them laughing and ­they’ll listen to anything.” 43 This control gives power to (and has the potential to empower) the female burlesque performer (and, in turn, audience members), thereby inverting the purported superiority of the laughing audience. Brooklyn’s commitment to burlesque that is witty and funny upends superiority theory in several ways. Brooklyn describes consciously putting her body on display, a body that may not conform to mainstream (and unattainable) beauty ideals, and using comedy as a tool to give the audience “permission” to look. According to Brooklyn, using and showing her body is an intentional and impor­tant component of her work: “The statement I was making was: It’s OK. It’s OK to look like this. To look dif­fer­ent. I was a ­woman who had not a typical s­ haped body. I had a lot of stretch marks. [I was] not that pe­tite. [I was] using the comedy as a way to say, ‘You can look at me. That’s totally cool.’ It’s funny. . . . ​The funniness is an excuse to look. And once ­they’re looking, ­you’ve given them permission.” 44 Brooklyn has the upper hand b ­ ecause she consciously makes a spectacle of her body (as Rowe suggests in her concept of the “unruly ­woman”), using comedy as a tool to poke fun at her source material, the audience’s expectations, and even social conventions. To make an audience laugh at what you want them to laugh at can be a power­ful tool for reconfiguring power relations. In this context, that includes reconfiguring w ­ omen as authors of comedy who use their voices (and, in burlesque, their bodies) to control their message and the audience. Release theory, another well-­k nown theory of humor that relates directly to female comics and neo-­burlesque, is found in the work of Sigmund Freud.

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In Jokes and Their Relations to the Unconscious, Freud offers an extended reading of jokes, humor, and comedy, proposing that laughter is a way to release pent-up sexual energy.45 Freud identifies two types of intentional jokes, the hostile joke and the obscene joke, and argues that the purpose of the obscene joke is to expose sexual desire.46 ­Here’s how smut—­described by Jane Gallop as the “mythical genesis of the sexual joke”—­works for Freud: a lewd comment is directed at a person “by whom one is sexually attracted.” 47 The object of the sexualized comment (gendered female) reacts in one of two ways: e­ ither she reciprocates the sexual attraction, or she becomes embarrassed or ashamed by the comment.48 Next ­things get perverted, even for Freud. With smut, ­there is a third person pre­sent (gendered male) who hears and responds to the sexualized comment. The listener “imagines” the “original situation” referred to in the sexualized comment that, due to “social inhibitions,” has not tran­spired.49 The third person’s laughter brings him into the sexualized exchange, as he “soon acquires the greatest importance in the development of the smut.” 50 Smut, then, begins as an attempt at seduction and, due to its misfiring, becomes escalated to an obscene joke through its reception. In Freud’s perverse love triangle, the speaker is male, the object of the sexualized comment is female, and the listener is male. In fact, according to Freud, the w ­ oman as sexual object does not even need to be pre­sent for the obscene comment to become elevated to the category of smut. As Gallop succinctly puts it, “the sexual joke which originates in a mythical scene between a man and a ­woman, never takes place except between two men.” 51 Dirty jokes, then, become an exchange between two men as the ­woman, the original object of the lewd comment, becomes absent from the scene. ­There are obvious limitations to Freud’s release theory. The two responses Freud proposes—­that the intended recipient of the lewd comment could potentially be turned on by it or that she internalizes it and becomes ashamed and thereby silenced—­are both problematic. Furthermore, ­there surely could be multiple other responses that do not require the ­woman to give up her body (or her voice) to the lewd jokester. Mizejewski elaborates on some of the prob­lems with Freud’s theory: “Freud famously assumes that ­women can be

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only the targets (the pretty body), not the (funny) speakers, of dirty jokes. . . . ​In short, sexual jokes broadcast the desires of the male speaker, and the desired ­woman need not be actually pre­sent for the joke to be funny among men; in fact, owing to social inhibitions, the w ­ oman is likely not t­ here at all. So, Freud’s theory of sexual comedy imagines w ­ omen only through their absence.” 52 This categorical exclusion of w ­ omen implies that they are incapable of participating in the telling of (or laughing at) sexually explicit jokes, but burlesque suggests other­w ise. Burlesque offers a counternarrative to Freud’s story of the genesis of a dirty joke, thereby subverting Freud’s gender (and gendered) assumptions in several ways. Rather than being absent, the burlesque performer is fully pre­sent and in control, as she uses her body and sexual comedy to author counterhegemonic narratives of gender and desire. Particularly in a culture that dictates unattainable beauty standards, neo-­burlesque gives female performers the opportunity to use their bodies as they are to elicit a response. Being able to make an audience laugh—­and at what you want them to laugh at—is a power­ful tonic that invites the audience to cathartically release energy while becoming absorbed in the performers’ message and method of delivery. With burlesque, the peculiar love triangle described by Freud becomes a dialectic exchange between performer and audience. The audience is invited to respond—­w ith laughter, whoops and hollers, and other vocal expressions of exuberance—to the burlesque performer’s joke or sexually explicit innuendo. Similar to stand-up comedy, audience response in burlesque is a barometer of audience plea­sure and further is a dialectic exchange that has the power to escalate the per­for­mance by engaging the audience and encouraging the performer.53 The laughter in burlesque is not derisive but rather supports the performers as authors of innuendo-­rich per­for­mance. In Freud’s story of the genesis of the dirty joke, ­women are rendered ­silent and absent objects. In burlesque, w ­ omen use their bodies to tell sexually explicit jokes, and, as Dodds comments, this opens “a critical space wherein ­women explore an autonomous female eroticism through comedic repre­sen­ ta­tion.” 54 In Brooklyn’s comedic burlesque acts, she actively and consciously

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uses blue humor and sexually explicit comedy to evoke laughter, and she does so by making herself, her body, and her message the butt of the joke (pun intended), thereby challenging the conceptual and practical limitations of both superiority theory and release theory.55 Theories about the role of ­women in comedy (and comedy in ­women) have begun to expand beyond ­t hese male-­centric perspectives, as I discuss next—­focusing on feminist approaches that dismantle the pretty/funny divide. This ­w ill help explain how the humor engaged, explored, and exploited in Brooklyn’s comedy “radically challenges the binary of pretty versus funny.” 56

Pretty/Funny: W ­ omen in Comedy Theories of comedy and humor have categorically dismissed the female voice and devalued comic ­women and ­women in comedy. Dodds shows that humor “operates as a form of prestige or social power and is frequently positioned as a masculine trait.” 57 Historically, ­women have had ­limited participation in comedy for, as Mizejewski argues, funny w ­ omen ­were considered in opposition to “pretty” gender ideals.58 The obligatory “pretty” standard sets up unattainable ideals for the majority of w ­ omen, particularly w ­ omen of color, size, age, or nonheteronormative sexuality. As Mizejewski makes clear, pretty is “a loaded term signifying whiteness as well as heterosexuality,” as the “pretty ­woman” is expected “to be not only slim but young.” 59 Conforming to social ideals of what constitutes pretty, then, is not necessarily an option for a majority of ­women. Recent scholarship has begun to correct the misguided assumption that comedy is innately masculine by placing female comics and comedy at the center of what has historically been male-­centric theorizing about comedy.60 Th ­ ese scholars take up w ­ omen’s comedy (and w ­ omen’s use of comedy) as a “key site for feminist discourse and repre­sen­ta­tions of feminism.” 61 Mizejewski convincingly traces the history of one of American culture’s most enduring and problematic tenets: that “­women are rewarded for what they look like and not for what they say.” 62 Through this enduring “historic binary of ‘pretty’ versus ‘funny,’ ” Mizejewski argues that “­women comics, no ­matter what they look like, have been located in opposition to ‘pretty.’ ” 63

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­Women comics who wrote and performed their own material had to be willing to make themselves “funny looking.” Male comics are often celebrated for their extreme physical presence and “funny-­looking body and face,” though that is “rarely the case for ­women in popu­lar entertainment and more generally in culture.” 64 The new wave of female comics Mizejewski studies defy this pretty/funny binary by putting their bodies and politics on display by exploiting preconceived ideas about “pretty” as the source material for their comedy.65 This type of transgressive comedy is “grounded in the female body” and “its relationships to ideal versions of femininity.” 66 Mizejewski and her coeditor return to ­t hese ideas in their volume Hysterical! ­Women in American Comedy, that references the “medical diagnosis” of hysteria historically used to “silence and discredit” and “control w ­ omen.” 67 Hysterical! aims to “repurpose the term ‘hysterical’ ” and “barge into the critical conversation” about w ­ omen and comedy to “point out how sex and gender make a difference.” 68 ­Here I want to also “barge into” that conversation to better understand how burlesque performers like Brooklyn use comedy to poke fun at social conventions and dismantle the pretty/funny divide. ­Whether or not a burlesque performer is “funny looking,” many performers are not afraid to make themselves look extreme through makeup, dress, and corporeality, playing up the exaggerated physicality and facial contortions of the clown. The neo-­burlesque stage offers a space where w ­ omen can construct narratives that dismantle the obligatory “pretty” of patriarchy. While on the surface burlesque performers appear to perpetuate the legacy that ­women are “rewarded for what they look like and not for what they say,” a deeper reading reveals that neo-­burlesque performers occupy a space of pretty/funny, thereby dismantling some of the socially inscribed assumptions of how w ­ omen are expected to behave and look.69 Even “aesthetic burlesque” performers who seek to pre­sent beauty at its most ideal via costuming, physicality, and choreography pre­sent a unique manifestation of their version of beauty.70 Furthermore, the type of femininity and beauty (re)presented in burlesque is often satirical: burlesque pre­sents ste­reo­t ypes of femininity to lampoon them. This bait-­and-­switch technique is not new in neo-­burlesque but rather is part of “the long tradition of Mae West and burlesque stars who

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have lampooned and satirized femininity and ‘prettiness.’ ”71 This “long tradition” of satirizing femininity has its apex in neo-­burlesque: performers consciously pre­sent extreme exaggerations of femininity as an explicit strategy for subverting it, enabling w ­ omen to be both authors and subjects and to use their bodies both as a vehicle for humor and the subject of the joke. For performers like Brooklyn and many o ­ thers, burlesque has become a tool for creating worlds that use wit and humor to challenge the status quo. As Brooklyn puts it, “Male patriarchy tells us what should be pretty and what ­shouldn’t. And I think that’s why we are prob­ably attracted to burlesque.”72 Many performers use burlesque to poke fun at beauty ideals and to reject the limiting divide between pretty and funny ­women. Furthermore, being pretty may not necessarily be a goal for all neo-­burlesque performers: some aim instead to be fierce or sensual or, in Brooklyn’s case, funny. As Brooklyn explains, “I d ­ on’t care if someone thinks I’m pretty. . . . ​I think p ­ eople who are brave and fight the norms are pretty. I find that attractive. So I definitely think you are prettier if you are funny.”73 Brooklyn’s articulation of the correlation between being funny and pretty—­that funny p ­ eople are “prettier” or more attractive—­represents one of the ways that burlesque is able to dismantle the pretty/funny divide.

Burlesquing Burlesque Brooklyn developed her comedic approach to burlesque by watching and learning from performers who came before her. She describes her early exposure to several live per­for­mances that sparked her interest in burlesque and deeply informed her own approach to act making, including Ducky DooLittle’s “Dirty Bingo,” Lady Ace and MsTickle (and their troupe, the Bombshell Girls), World Famous *BOB*, the Pontani S­isters at Coney Island, and the show that “brought it full circle” for her, the Va Va Voom Room at Fez, where she saw the “holy trinity of burlesque”: Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and Tigger!74 Brooklyn was attracted to performers who used their bodies to tell stories: “[Ducky DooLittle] had go-go dancers. The go-go dancers ­were ­doing t­hese vignettes—­v ignettes are to ­music—­and

Figure 4.3. ​­Little Brooklyn is unafraid to make herself “funny looking” through self-­deprecating humor. As the beer she swigs spills down her front, it introduces another layer of meaning—­a llowing her to poke fun at the proverbial wet T-­shirt contest. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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they w ­ ere telling a story. And sometimes they would strip. And I just remember being ­really attracted to this idea of using ­music and dance to tell a story. And it was funny and their bodies are part of the story.”75 Identifying what is funny is central to Brooklyn’s approach to act making. For her, boobs are funny; boobs as punch lines are funny; referential punch lines are funny; and the unexpected use of props is funny.76 She takes ­t hings she thinks are funny and creates a story around them to hilarious ends. She avoids using obvious songs or references to do the work for her. “If y­ ou’re just playing a song you like and acting it out b ­ ecause you like it. Or dressing up as someone and ­doing what they do verbatim,” that is “not enough” for Brooklyn, who believes in putting her “own spin” on source material: “I try to not use a song that’s funny. I ­don’t want to have a cane. I just like to be my own person and my own performer.”77 For Brooklyn, comedy lies in making choices that have a purpose. This includes not relying on the obvious gag to get a laugh, as well as several interconnected methodological approaches to act making, including storyboarding, choosing props with a purpose, and “burlesqueing burlesque,” which I explore more fully next. Subverting the burlesque canon is a common theme throughout much burlesque per­for­mance, and the innovative take on traditional tropes can help keep the art form fresh and exciting. Brooklyn describes being drawn to burlesque’s sense of humor about itself: What I liked about the performers I was seeing—­and what I wanted to do—­they ­were taking an art form we are all quite familiar with, the striptease. . . . ​And I like [that] burlesque took that and made light of it and just ­didn’t take it that seriously. . . . ​I wanted to even burlesque burlesque. I wanted to be like, “OK. Let’s take the trope of burlesque and how do we even turn that on its head?”78

“Making light” of an art form that itself is predicated on parody (or making fun) is a meta approach that is central to how Brooklyn makes acts. She has several acts that burlesque burlesque’s ubiquitous fan dance, notably her 1950s ­house­wife act and her mechanic act. In both, she uses everyday objects as surrogates for fans to cover and uncover parts of her body in coy, flirty

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ways. Brooklyn notes that “the inspiration b ­ ehind” her h ­ ouse­w ife act was “steeped heavi­ly in making fun of the fan.”79 The plates she washes are transformed into peekaboo props, thereby cheekily referring to the fan dance as well as poking fun at domesticity. Similarly, her mechanic act features the transformation of hub caps into surrogate fans that she uses to cover and reveal parts of her body. Brooklyn uses nontraditional objects as surrogates for fans to pay homage to, while subverting, the traditional fan dance, suggesting that anything can become a fan and that anything can (and should) be funny, including burlesque itself. Such burlesquing burlesque is prevalent in much of Brooklyn’s work, and in neo-­burlesque more broadly. Burlesquing burlesque is popu­lar with performers and audiences alike, suggesting that even the most traditional burlesque tropes are open for reinterpretation and parody. Burlesqueing burlesque runs the gamut from nerdlesque performers who pay tribute to fan culture to classic performers who refer to and sometimes subvert traditional tropes (such as the fan dance, the glove peel, and the stocking peel). For instance, Nasty Canasta—­known as the “girl with the 42DD brain”—­does a traditional fan dance act to the sound of a car alarm. The alarm goes on for a long time, and just when the audience thinks the abrasive sound has ­stopped and ­will be replaced by more traditional ­music, the familiar sound resumes. The incongruity between a jarring car alarm and a classic, elegant fan dance gives both new meaning. Brooklyn consciously uses the form of burlesque (namely, the parodic inversion of high and low) in the content she creates to “put burlesque on its head.” 80 To accomplish that, she makes choices that are si­mul­ta­neously unexpected and referential and that go beyond the literal to challenge the audience’s expectations: So a very traditional burlesque might be taking a stocking down. And a new burlesque would be ­doing it to rock and roll. But then I want to be like taking the stocking down with a fish. How do I take it even more away from the expectation [of the striptease]? Hopefully be witty. Not just use a fish for no reason. But having it be part of a ­whole bigger story line that references itself. It would be amusing even if you ­didn’t happen to end up

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Figure 4.4. ​­Little Brooklyn uses hub caps as surrogate fans in the spirit of “burlesquing burlesque.” Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission. with your boobs out. I think boobs are a funny punch line. I think it’s funny to me. Wrap up the story.81

Brooklyn takes delight in the sublime and unexpected, and her use of props both are referential and drive the story forward. Her choices are “not just unexpected for no reason. ­Because that’s just like ‘what the fuck?’ ­There are

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definitely ‘what the fuck?’ performers. But I like a definite story arc. And I think that’s what makes it funny.” 82 Brooklyn aims to use props that are part of a “bigger story.” Her reveals, then, seek to refer to the subject or narrative and also serve as a punch line. In her three-­cup monte act, the balls that keep disappearing in this classic street hustle appear on her pasties as the final reveal. In her Richard Simmons act, the final reveal is a curly-­ haired crotch that refers to the iconic hairdo that Simmons has worn for de­cades. Many of Brooklyn’s reveals are funny and referential—or perhaps to put it more accurately, they are funny b ­ ecause they are referential. In ­t hese acts and o ­ thers, Brooklyn’s references further pay homage to “­people or ­things that are impor­tant” to her: “My mechanic act was an homage to my grandpa. I used his oil cans u ­ ntil I lost them at the Va Va Voom Room. Richard Simmons. And Paul Rubens. I have a Peewee Herman act. They are just performers I r­ eally admire. I often d ­ on’t try and just emulate someone specifically. They are funny in their own way. . . . ​­You’re just kind of referencing them. But y­ ou’re not specifically d ­ oing them per se.” 83 Brooklyn seeks to refer to, not impersonate, other ­people. Referring to ­people she admires allows her to look critically at the source material and put her own spin on it. And her pro­cess for creating t­ hese sincere tributes, which are full of whimsical and funny references, is pure burlesque. When she was creating her Pee Wee Herman act, for instance, Brooklyn watched his 1981 HBO special with a note­pad and “wrote down ­every ­little ­thing he did so I could reference it.” 84 Next she thought about how to tell a story from the references: “How do I take that list and do ­every ­little ­thing he did and tie it—­you know, pick one from menu A and one from menu B—to some way of stripping and write a story? So ­you’re not just g­ oing through his list and then just stripping. They had to talk to each other.” 85 ­After that Brooklyn de­cided which references to use and how to “put a twist on it”: ­Every l­ittle single ­t hing I did in that act [was] a reference of his but then a reason for why I was disrobing. So if he had an act where he was disrobing and then I acted it out, that’s not necessarily funny, photocopying somebody. But, you know, he may have a rubber chicken, but then the

140 N e o - B u r l e s q u e rubber chicken is in my pants and I’m jerking it like a “chicken”—­t hat’s referencing him very, very specifically but then making it completely mine and owning it. He has this one t­ hing where he’s like, “Agh! G ­ iant underwear!” and he pulls out g­ iant underwear. And I’m wearing the ­giant underwear and I pull them out of my pants.86

While Herman pulls out the g­ iant underpants, makes a face, and quickly tosses them aside, Brooklyn makes it appear like she’s ripping them off her body, alluding to the strip of striptease. She eyes them and decides to discard them, thereby symbolically throwing away the audience’s preconceptions of her and her stripping body.87 Brooklyn’s brand of comedic burlesque involves carefully planning each aspect of her act to tell an engaging story. As noted above, she story­boards her acts, a technique she learned in her professional ­career as a digital content man­ag­er: You have a story­board. You have a clear story. You have a story arc. You have a beginning. You have an end. You have the t­ hings that happen in the ­middle. You have a character. You introduce your character. You have something that goes along with that character. Then you hopefully resolve it for the character at the end. That’s the classic story arc. I hope to bring that into per­for­mance. And I hope that the way I resolve it is unexpected or witty or referential.88

Brooklyn writes her acts “like animation” by identifying “key frames”: “When you animate, you have key frames and you know what’s ­going to happen for the w ­ hole story.” 89 This structure gives her the freedom to improvise: “What happens in between the key frames gets a l­ittle loosey-­goosey. Like, I know I’m ­going to have a bag ­here. And I know at some point I have to pull an ear out of the bag. The way I do it in between, that’s kind of where improv dance happens or d ­ oesn’t happen. Fortunately, being a comedian, it can happen in vari­ous ways, and if it happens less nuanced than you would have liked, it’s okay ­because it’s comedy. If you kinda trip or miss a beat, every­one thinks ­you’re a genius.”90 Brooklyn employs a traditional narra-

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tive arc with innovative uses of props to subvert the audience’s expectations to hilarious ends. Next I turn to a close reading of one of her most iconic acts, in which she plays both King Kong and Fay Wray, to demonstrate that pro­cess and its results.

­L ittle Brooklyn’s Half and Half: King Kong and Fay Wray Brooklyn created her Kong and Wray act with her signature originality and thoughtful planning—­and a ­little bit of serendipity. She brainstormed several takes on the canonical half-­and-­half act: “I originally thought I might do something, a boy and a girl ­doing homework, but I wanted to tie it to something much more abstract than that. ­We’re from New York. I think the story of King Kong is pretty timeless.”91 She also received inspiration from a costume: “I d ­ on’t know why I had a gorilla costume—­and I looked over and the way it was lying” inspired her to transform it into her “dance partner.” In Brooklyn’s imagination, that costume was reconfigured into a puppet. “It’s nice to have a partner when you are a solo performer who can do half the work and take half the credit,” she jokes. In classic Brooklyn fashion, her comment h ­ ere—­and the act she created—is referential, original, and witty. This act pays tribute to, while subverting, the half-­and-­half act—­which was originally introduced to circumvent decency laws that forbade performers to touch their own bodies onstage. The iconic half devil–­half w ­ oman act allowed the devil half of the costume to caress and undress the female half. Some half-­and-­half acts feature a single performer whose costume, makeup, and hair are split down the median of the body to give the illusion of a duet, or two distinct characters. Other half-­and-­half acts, like Brooklyn’s, feature a puppet as a surrogate second body or character. Performers use choreography and changes in physicality to create an interaction between the two characters. Brooklyn uses the half-­and-­half archetype to retell (and lampoon) the classic story of King Kong. While Kong scales the Empire State Building with Fay Wray carefully cupped in his hand, Brooklyn’s act highlights her

Figure 4.5. ​­Little Brooklyn’s half King Kong, half Fay Wray act refers to the canonical half-­and-­half routine in burlesque. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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comedic timing while poking fun at the figure of the pretty damsel in distress who requires saving. At the beginning of her act, Brooklyn, wearing a frothy and diaphanous white negligee, coyly peaks from b ­ ehind the parted curtains. Kong reaches his ape hand into the proscenium frame, introducing the audience to this new character. The curtains part, and Brooklyn twirls around the stage in a duet between Wray and Kong as Andy Williams croons “Love Is a Many Splendored Th ­ ing.” Brooklyn as Wray holds the back of her hand against her forehead, parodying the figure of the damsel in distress with silent-­film virtuosity. She fights off Kong’s advances, coyly batting her eyelashes and using exaggerated facial expressions to feign shock. Though Wray tries to escape Kong by leaning away, Kong slowly and ­gently guides Wray’s face ­towards his. The two make eye contact. Wray opens her eyes and mouth wide with fear, her splayed fin­gers framing her exaggerated facial expressions. Wray flirts a l­ ittle with Kong, touching him on the nose and promising a treat with a fin­ger gesturing him to wait. Wray digs into her costume and introduces a banana into the scene, presumably to entice (or distract) Kong. She seductively unpeels the banana and hands it to Kong, who feeds it back to her. A ­ fter the first bite, Wray mimes for Kong to slow down, but Kong becomes increasingly more aggressive as he force-­feeds her the banana. The ­couple turns to face the audience, embracing one another. Kong’s furry arm covers the unveiled part of Brooklyn’s upper body. Wray reciprocates Kong’s embrace, her face aglow with plea­sure as she runs her hand down the front of her body, pausing to caress her panel skirt. Then she gives several hip thrusts to the audience, miming and si­mul­ta­neously parodying copulation, and rips the panel away. Transforming the removed panel skirt into a napkin, Brooklyn dabs at the corners of her mouth in a genteel way, parodying the mannerisms of a dainty lady, and then discards the skirt. Next, a mobile of homemade airplanes on the end of a fishing pole appears and swirls around the c­ ouple as they slowly melt onto the stage floor, Wray on top of Kong as she again holds the back of her hand to her forehead. Throughout the act, Brooklyn uses while si­mul­ta­neously lampooning traditional burlesque tropes—­t he half-­and-­half act, a panel skirt, and phallic

Figure 4.6. ​­Little Brooklyn pokes fun at the “sexy banana eating” archetype, as Wray attempts to resist Kong’s aggressive feeding. Brooklyn’s acts traverse a range of emotions and expressions to take the spectator on an experiential and narrative journey. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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eating—to comic ends. Each prop helps build her character and contributes to the overall story arc, all the time using wit and comedy to entertain and hook the viewer. Brooklyn thought about how to subvert expectations related to “this very traditional, erotic t­ hing” of eating a banana: “And then eating something sexy on stage. How can you make that completely like unsexy, like almost choke or vomit on the banana?”92 In Brooklyn’s hands, goofy physical comedy is employed to make a commentary. Her use of props subverts the expected, and she plans each moment of her acts carefully to maximize ­t hose incongruous juxtapositions. In this act, the damsel in distress gives in to Kong’s advances, but ultimately, she ends up on top. In Brooklyn’s act, comedy is poetically tied together with beauty. She moves effortlessly between beauty and the beast, demonstrating that effective acts often combine ele­ments of both aesthetic and avant-­garde burlesque per­for­mance styles. Brooklyn describes a moment in neo-­burlesque when the comedic performers and classic performers started to borrow—­a nd learn—­from each other: “Funny girls w ­ ere like, ‘Oh shit. I gotta put a rhinestone on [my costume].’ And glamour girls ­were like ‘Oh [shit]. I have to tell some kind of story.’ ”93 When ­t hose per­for­mance styles began influencing each another, the “lines started to blur,” as Brooklyn puts it. She acknowledges that ­t here are still performers who insist on maintaining their allegiance to one style of per­for­mance or another: ­People are just like “I’m g­ oing to be funny and I ­don’t care what you say.” Some ­people are high glamour: “I’m a chandelier. And I’m ­going to be the most beautiful, sparkly chandelier.” Like all-­eyes-­on-me chandelier. I think that’s beautiful, too. Th ­ ere’s a place for all of it. And I love when ­t hey’re all in one show. Personally, I get bored if a show is all funny. I get bored if a show is all chandeliers. I want to be on a roller coaster. . . . ​Other­ wise you are just on a treadmill. Treadmills are no fun.94

­There is a certain tedium to burlesque that ­mistakes per­for­mance style as content, regardless of the package. The King Kong and Fay Wray act earned Brooklyn the first runner up award at the Burlesque Hall of Fame competition in 2007, and with that a

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funny ­woman of burlesque earned a place in the pageant’s winner’s circle. Though Brooklyn did not technically win the title, a comedic performer’s ­doing so well at this highly competitive competition was a victory. Being first runner up at the Burlesque Hall of Fame suggests that telling stories and subverting the audience’s expectations can be a winning formula. Brooklyn explic­itly uses comedy, humor, and wit to tell engaging stories on stage, and she uses props in referential and witty ways. From her use of nontraditional items as surrogates for fans to her narrative-­driven take on the half-­and-­half burlesque archetype, Brooklyn makes light of burlesque in a way that is referential and entirely entertaining. Storytelling in Brooklyn’s version of burlesque is filled with clever innuendo and referential punch lines—­w it in its purest forms.95 Brooklyn is pretty fun. The comedy so central to Brooklyn’s act making, and burlesque more broadly, has been discussed throughout this book. In the introduction, I discussed burlesque as parody, and how “making fun” has a double meaning: it invokes poking fun and the creation of a celebratory atmosphere. I returned to the double meaning of “making fun” in chapter 2, with a discussion of the central role the audience plays in creating the participatory nature of neo-­ burlesque per­for­mance and culture, and in chapter 3, with an extended discussion of Dirty Martini’s laughter and joie de vivre. As this chapter has shown, comedy and poking fun are central to neo-­burlesque. In the next chapter, I dive deeper into the ways that parody operates in neo-­burlesque to poke fun at beauty pageants and even beauty ideals. Th ­ ere I offer Parodic Pageantry as a subversion of the damaging effects of real pageants in con­ temporary burlesque.

chapter 5

i

Burlesque as Parodic Pageantry the agitprop theatrics of bambi the mermaid’s miss coney island pageant

Backstage at Coney Island USA is humming, the air thick with humidity and good-­natured competitiveness.1 A sideshow mural painted by the artist Marie Roberts—­whose use of bright colors and bold, confident shapes in many ways represents the per­for­mances that ­w ill take place on stage ­later that night—­spans the wall.2 A g­ iant industrial fan pushes stale air around in a futile attempt to cool the performers who are sitting or standing at the long dressing ­table already littered with makeup, costume pieces, bobby pins, the backing to the tape used to affix pasties and merkins curling like ribbon. Some of the performers have arrived in full makeup and styled wigs and hair, while o ­ thers begin their transformation backstage. Performers chat collegially as they layer on thick coats of brightly colored makeup caked with glitter. Borrowing heavi­ly from drag culture, this type of makeup represents the part showgirl, part clown aesthetic that many burlesque performers use to exaggerate their facial expressions and help create per­for­mance personas. It is 2005, and the performers are getting ready to compete in Bambi the Mermaid’s Miss Coney Island pageant. The pageant was first staged in 2003 as a scripted show, and it has become a wildly popu­lar yearly event. It features performers parodically competing in three categories: swimwear, eve­ning wear, and talent. To­night, in the pageant’s second year as a real competition, MsTickle channels beauty pageant realness in the swimwear 147

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category wearing a small bikini. She turns slowly and holds a beat with her back facing the audience, flashing a brilliant smile over her shoulder. In that moment of stillness, the audience has the opportunity to scan MsTickle’s body and discover a ­giant maxi pad protruding out of the sides and back of her bikini thong. Another competitor, Rose Wood, wears a bikini adorned with dozens of hot dogs, paying homage to Nathan’s, the famed Coney Island eatery, while foreshadowing the act she w ­ ill perform during the talent section of the competition to the song “I’m a Man.” Julie Atlas Muz competes with a s­ imple yet contemplative act that culminates in her appearing to drink her own urine. As part of the competition, contestants are asked to write a short introduction that includes what they w ­ ill do for Coney if they win. Muz promises that she ­will orgasm ­every day for the duration of her reign. The 2005 Miss Coney Island, chosen by audience applause, is Muz. (Though she made efforts to keep her pageant promise, she ­later admits “to skipping at least one day.”)3 ­These type of irreverent antics are expected—­and celebrated—at the pageant. That spirit is curated by Bambi, who intended the pageant to be an irreverent cele­bration and parody of traditional beauty pageants and beauty ideals. Particularly in its early years, the pageant promoted and escalated neo-­burlesque sensibilities, including DIY style and execution over perfection, individualism over conformity, exaggeration over subtlety, and incongruous juxtaposition over logical narrative. As Bambi puts it, “This is a weirdo pageant. . . . ​I ­don’t want to see you in your rhinestone perfection. I want to see you in a plastic bag with a seagull poking your eyes out.” 4 The performers who compete in the pageant are chosen from the neo-­burlesque scene by Bambi.5 The competition is “not open to the public. ­There’s no choosing pro­cess. You c­ an’t apply to be in it.” 6 In the early years, Bambi says it was “easy,” as she booked the several handfuls of burlesque performers who ­were performing at the time: “I always thought of it to be—­and still do—as a yearbook. You know, the se­niors and the ju­niors and the freshmen are now ready. And ­t here [are] new kids coming up through ­m iddle school getting ready. So I curated it in burlesque as a yearbook of who’s even available and ready to showcase.”7 As the competition has become more

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Figure 5.1. ​Julie Atlas Muz passes her Miss Coney Island crown to Ekaterina in 2006. Pinkie Special, seen at the left, appears to raise a m ­ iddle fin­ger in a parodic gesture to the winner. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

popu­lar and even prestigious—an irony that belies the pageant’s original intent, Bambi continues to book using this yearbook approach. The approach has its limits. The lack of diversity on neo-­burlesque stages and in beauty pageants has been noted, particularly in recent years, and the Miss Coney Island pageant (and this book’s focus) are not exempt from that criticism. As I discussed more fully in the introduction, neo-­burlesque’s lack of racial diversity continues to plague the scene and is compounded by the collapsing of beauty with whiteness. The whiteness of beauty ideals has been particularly damaging to ­women of color who are bombarded with ­these unattainable ideals while si­mul­ta­neously having to navigate the oversexualization of their bodies—­a real­ity that effects ethnic and racial groups differently. In her yearbook approach to casting, Bambi observes that “I cast [the pageant] based on your accomplishments in burlesque and your love

Figure 5.2. ​Fem Appeal, an enduring (and endearing) performer and long-­ time producer in New York City’s neo-­burlesque movement, competes in the 2006 Miss Coney Island pageant. ­Here she incorporates Coney Island iconography into her swimwear look, including her “Merry Go Round” hat, bikini featuring popcorn boxes over her breasts, and a corndog. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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and enthusiasm for Coney Island and Coney Island USA. . . . ​­Every performer of color that has come up has done it. And ­t here are a few [more] coming up, but they are not quite ready yet.” Desiré D’Amour, who started performing burlesque in San Francisco in the 1990s, adds that despite recent efforts to increase diversity and equity, the percentage of performers of color may in fact have decreased: “Burlesque is definitely more something for white ­people at e­ very slice of it from the audience up to the producers. And that ­hasn’t changed or moved very much since I first started. Even though t­ here are more ­people of color performers, t­ here’s also way more burlesque performers. So that category may be getting smaller than bigger. We see a lot more, but it’s still a smaller percentage.” 8 Bambi acknowledges that “in burlesque ­t here are not as many performers of color in general” and that lack of diversity has effected the makeup of the competition.9 She has strug­gled with the show’s slate of performers: “I want to be fair, and I d ­ on’t want p ­ eople to feel left out or like I cast a white show.”10 The fact remains that beauty competitions are skewed ­toward white bodies from inclusion to crowning, and seeking approval via beauty pageants is vexed. Chicava HoneyChild, the former creative producer of Brown Girls Burlesque, describes her experience with a competition that she thought she should have won. The experience helped her articulate the disconnect between w ­ omen of color representing their community and the effects of seeking valorization in inherently white competitions: ­You’re right. It’s your ribbon. You make the rules. You decide who gets it. I’m honestly so tired of all you Black bitches whining about getting all ­these ribbons snatched from your hand. What the fuck are you d ­ oing asking a white person for a ribbon? Why the fuck a­ ren’t you making a show for Black ­people? You talk all day long about repre­sen­ta­tion and having your expression, then you want to show up at a white show and won­der why they put a crown on a white girl.11

HoneyChild’s fiery pushback may not solve the prob­lem of the whiteness of beauty pageants and beauty ideals, though it does provocatively shift the conversation to why performers are seeking validation in beauty competitions

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in the first place. In a related vein, Bambi laments the shift that the Miss Coney Island pageant has taken due to “Facebook and millennial fragility” that have politicized the competition, though not—as intended—by a radical upending of pageants themselves: “It has r­ eally taken away from the w ­ hole light, airy, poking fun at pageants aspect that the pageant was intended to have.” Bambi has noticed that the pageant is getting more “serious” and morph­ing into a “real competition.” “That’s not what it’s about,” Bambi adds. What it’s about is pageantry, not pageants per se, and poking fun at, not reinscribing, the inherent whiteness of beauty ideals. Burlesque celebrates artifice and pageantry, often in self-­reflective and ironic ways, and the Miss Coney Island pageant celebrates and amplifies ­those sensibilities. The pageantry in neo-­burlesque (and drag) is both practical and meta­phorical. ­Dixie Evans began the Miss Exotic World competition in 1991 to bring attention to her fledgling burlesque museum, Exotic World. Drag culture has a longer legacy of pageants than burlesque does. Particularly with the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race, competitions have moved from the under­ground ball culture depicted in Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning into the mainstream.12 Pageants remain an integral component of some drag per­for­mance, and pageants have increasingly become more impor­tant in neo-­burlesque. Some have criticized the rise of pageant culture as perpetuating hegemonic beauty ideals or, at the very least, being antiparodic.13 ­Later I return to ­these critiques but ­here I would like to foreground and unpack the theatrical side of pageantry (defined h ­ ere as exaggerated pre­sen­ta­tion and cele­bration of artifice) that in some contexts is able to parody and subvert beauty ideals, a concept I refer to as parodic pageantry. This chapter unpacks the seeming paradox that parodic pageantry can be employed to subvert at least some of the negative ideological under­ pinnings of real pageants and competitions. Using Bambi the Mermaid’s Miss Coney Island pageant as a jumping-­off point, this chapter places the pageant in the context of Keith Lovegrove’s “progressive theatre” and the agitprop theatrics used in the second wave of the feminist movement to protest the Miss Amer­i­ca pageant.14 With parodic pageantry, the form is used to poke fun, and rather than a single or codified notion of beauty, a variety

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of pre­sen­ta­tions of self, body types, and approaches to per­for­mance are celebrated. The Miss Coney Island pageant, then, uses parodic pageantry to si­mul­ta­neously celebrate and subvert beauty pageants and pageantry. Success in this context is not about conformity (including conforming to prescribed beauty ideals) but rather individuality, as well as celebrating the spirit of the bizarre and wonderful world of Coney Island.

Burlesque at the Beach and the Miss Coney Island Pageant as Parodic Pageantry Bambi the Mermaid and the G ­ reat Fredini coproduced the Burlesque at the Beach series, a staple of the summer season at Coney Island USA.15 Bambi explains that Burlesque at the Beach “technically” began in “1995-­ish” as “Tirza’s Wine Bath.”16 In ­t hose early years, it was “largely sideshow”: “Painproof Rubber Girl. Fredini d ­ oing magic. I did snake charming. Kiva did grinder girl. To make the snake charming more in­ter­est­ing, I did the strip as a mermaid.”17 As Bambi brought the striptease to the traditional sideshow format, a larger zeitgeist was forming—­what Dick Zigun, founder of Coney Island USA, characterized as a “burlesque revival.”18 By 1997, Bambi explains, “the w ­ hole show had converted to all striptease.”19 Burlesque at the Beach has since become an integral component of the neo-­burlesque revival and is known for its avant-­garde shows and boundary-­pushing per­for­mances. Coney Island is both the locale of and the inspiration for Burlesque at the Beach and the Miss Coney Island pageant. Bambi was inspired by Coney Island ­because of its historic significance, close proximity to New York City, and cele­bration of the wacky and eccentric. Bambi refers to Coney Island as the “Manhattan Riviera” and highlights its “innovation in entertainment, innovation in amusements, innovation of leisure time.”20 She explains that Coney Island is magnetic: “If you are drawn to Coney Island, you are drawn. . . . ​The charisma of Coney Island is what gets me. It’s sort of inexplicable. A lot of years ­t here was not much left out ­there. Th ­ ere w ­ asn’t much to see or do in general. But it was still this super nostalgic, magical place filled with history, entertainment, and oddities and viewing the ‘other.’ ”21

Figure 5.3. ​­People hoping to compete in the Miss Coney Island pageant craft costumes and acts replete with Coney Island iconography and references. ­Here Jezebel Express competes in 2010 wearing a gown made out of wrappers from Nathan’s hot dogs. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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The location and influence of Coney Island has had a huge impact on the content, style, and ethos of the Miss Coney Island pageant. Performers asked to compete at the Miss Coney Island pageant usually craft their outfits and acts around Coney Island themes and iconography. “One of the best ­things I ever saw,” Bambi says, was Jezebel Express, a contestant who “made her entire gown out of Nathan’s hot dog wrappers. It’s about creativity and making your costume out of dollar store items Coney Island style or out of garbage or trash from the beach. That’s the aesthetic I expect in a participant.”22 As the Miss Coney Island pageant has grown in popularity, Bambi seeks contestants who show a genuine interest in Coney Island: I started to focus more on eccentric style and ­people who had an interest in Coney. Basically, it’s a love for Coney, what’s so special and weird about Coney Island. It certainly ­isn’t a beauty pageant or a talent pageant. It’s super weird. And super inclusive. And super outside the box. And super gaudy. And super colorful and vibrant. It’s just an extreme level of joie de vivre and enthusiasm and excitement and passion in general. Quirky. You know—­all the ­things that are super special [about Coney Island].23

Bunny Love concurs with Bambi’s description that the pageant is pro–­Coney Island and inherently antipageant: “It’s wonderful ­because it ­really is the antithesis of a beauty pageant in terms of, you know, like every­one coming out and bring[ing] their crazy, weirdest Coney Island themed” costumes and acts.24 Coney Island, then, provides both the setting and the tone for Burlesque at the Beach and the Miss Coney Island pageant. Bambi began the pageant in 2003 to celebrate and subvert the “­really long tradition of boardwalk beauty pageants.”25 That first show was created as a “­sister event” to the Tattoo Motorcycle Convention, a popu­lar “end-­of-­ summer ­giant Coney” event that Bambi’s ­future husband, Indian Larry, produced. The Tattoo Motorcycle Convention featured “Miss Biker Slut,” a competition “very loosely” based on a wet T-­shirt contest. Bambi began bringing in “burlesque girls” with “real acts” to “beef up that show b ­ ecause it was chaotic mayhem.” In the first “beefed-up” version, Love was crowned

Figure 5.4. ​Bunny Love, a staple in the early downtown burlesque ­per­for­mance art scene, combines classic beauty with comedy and the unexpected to elicit audience response. ­Here she performs at Burlesque at the Beach at Coney Island USA, poking fun at “bathing” acts as she gets inside a tiny tub with her tiny rubber duckie. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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Figure 5.5. ​The first Miss Coney Island pageant was a scripted show that paid tribute to, while parodying, beauty pageants. Once Bambi, the predesignated winner was crowned, a cat fight ensued. (Note Bunny Love, stage right, stamping her foot in parodic protest.) Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

Miss Biker Slut and received a “big b ­ elt and trophy that the bikers had made.” From ­t here, Bambi “got the idea that we should do a real Coney Island Pageant,” and the Miss Coney Island pageant was born. The first Miss Coney Island pageant in 2003 was not a real competition but rather a scripted show. Bambi explains that the inaugural show was “strictly meant to be a one-­off, like a parody of pageants. Every­body was cast. It was scripted. . . . ​Larry MCed and, you know, I would win. He would crown me. And all the girls would fight in a ‘real’ brawl—­a real parody of the tears—­all the anger and emotions of real pageantry. It was meant to be a one-­time salute. But ­people ­really embraced it. ­People ­were like, ‘Who’s ­going to be in the pageant next year?’ P ­ eople are r­ eally rabid for pageants.”26 Due to its popularity, Bambi brought the pageant back in 2004 as a real competition, but the parody of the original scripted show has remained the pageant’s driving force. Bambi is attracted to the beauty pageant format for several reasons. She loves pageants—­“Miss Amer­i­ca, Miss Universe, all [of] them”—­and is

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interested in the history of “pageants at Coney Island in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.”27 At their core, pageants celebrate a type of posturing that becomes even more exaggerated when placed in the context of a competition. Bambi describes the competition of real pageants as “kind of rotten, but it’s also r­ eally compelling. Oh God, t­ hese girls w ­ ill do anything to win. The strutting and peacocking and the costuming and the hair and the makeup. And all the t­ hings that make it competitive and that make it exciting.” The spectator becomes implicated in the “rotten” side of pageants. “It’s sort of a mean sport,” Bambi acknowledges: “You kinda got to be a rotten person to r­ eally love pageants. So that appeals to me.” Though “rotten,” Bambi describes her earnest attraction to the dark side of competitions, such as moments of defeat: I always loved that part when they announce the winner and ­you’re not ­really watching the winner, you are sort of watching the second person and the third person as their face cracks and crumbles and their lip quivers and they want to break into tears, but t­ hey’re smiling huge smiles. They all go in for the big hug and ­they’re like, “I’m so glad you won.” And ­they’re not. It’s kind of fucked up. Anything that’s kind of demented and fucked up works in Coney Island.

The demented indeed works at Coney, as does the Miss Coney Island pageant—­which sells out e­ very year and has become Coney Island USA’s most successful show. In addition to its material success, the pageant aims to represent the spirit of Coney Island and other forms of “progressive theatre,” which I discuss more fully next.

Progressive Theatre and Grotesque Bodies A beauty pageant may appear to be a peculiar way for performers to exhibit their more radical or wacky sides. But pageants like the Miss Coney Island pageant, World Famous *BOB*’s Coney Island Queen of Drag, and Bambi’s Toddlers in Tiaras celebrate while poking fun at the absurdity and grotesquery of pageants. Lovegrove characterizes beauty pageant spoofs as a type

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of “progressive theatre.” From the World’s First Lesbian Beauty Contest and the Alternative Miss World pageant to the Miss Coney Island pageant, many artists and “progressive cultural activists” have co-­opted the beauty pageant format or “beauty parade” to subvert it.28 What ­t hese progressive theatrics have in common is that they “mock the normative by emphasizing and exaggerating the beauty-­contest ste­reo­t ype.”29 Amy Lame created “The World’s First Lesbian Beauty Contest” in 1997 as a “burlesque ­union of lesbianism and the beauty contest” that “foregrounds a tension between the feminist thinking and the objectification of ­women’s bodies.”30 Lame “wanted to take the good points of beauty contests, their cele­bration of glamour and womanliness, and inject it [sic] with some fun.”31 Similarly, Bambi’s genuine appreciation of beauty pageants led her to use that format while infusing it with wackiness and parody. The Miss Coney Island pageant joins this long line of progressive theatrics that also includes Taylor Mac’s Red Tide Blooming and the Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant protests of 1968.32 All of ­these events mock beauty ideals, using exaggeration, parody, and carnivalesque antics. Central to the po­liti­cal efficacy of progressive theatre is the staging of the “grotesque body” that defies normative conventions.33 In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin studies medieval festivals that featured an inversion of social norms and hierarchies, as well as uproarious laughter. The rituals and ceremonies “took on a comic” quality, as “clowns and fools” “mimicked serious rituals.”34 The grotesque body of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque is excessive, exaggerated, and uncontainable, and the material body emphasizes the lower stratum and orifices as the body consumes, excretes, and leaks. This grotesque body is in opposition to the beauty-­pageant body, which seeks perfection via the contained body. As Linda Mizejewski notes, the carnivalesque “provides the example of the comic body that celebrates messiness, as opposed to the classic, ideal body that maintains itself in the neat, rigid bound­a ries and symmetrical forms of the beauty.”35 The performers crowned Miss Coney Island aim for the Bakhtinian grotesque body more so than the ideal pageant body. The connection with Bakhtin’s carnivalesque runs throughout parodic pageantry and extends into mainstream spoofs of beauty pageants as well. Mizejewski reads an uproarious episode of the Sarah

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Silverman Program (titled “Not without My D ­ aughter”) that lampoons beauty pageants: Silverman’s own pageant failure leads her to coach a young pageant hopeful on how to be “pretty.”36 The episode highlights the “outrageous boundary violations” “between childhood and adulthood and between ambitious ­mothers and l­ ittle girls who masquerade as sexy adults.”37 Mizejewski shows how Silverman’s parody of child pageants “develops the comedy of grotesquery by revealing the beauty pageant itself as grotesque.”38 Bambi explic­itly took up this taboo theme of the grotesquery of child beauty pageants with Toddlers in Tiaras, another parodic pageant she staged at Coney Island USA in 2011. In this faux beauty pageant, grown men and w ­ omen competed in a parody of the popu­lar and disturbing real­ ity tele­v i­sion show, Toddlers & Tiaras, that followed hopeful child beauty pageant contestants and their families as they competed in the pageant cir­cuit.39 Pageant parents ­were the primary characters in the tele­v i­sion show that highlighted their eccentric antics; similarly, each of the contestants in Bambi’s Toddlers in Tiaras had a pageant parent or two. Bambi explic­itly lampooned this feature as the “parents” took the stage, shouted encouragement, or coached from the audience. The incongruous juxtaposition of grown w ­ omen (and some men) miming the cutesy choreography of child pageants in wildly exaggerated ways is both entertaining and disturbing. Bambi was further inspired by other aspects of real child beauty pageants, such as the practice of extreme enhancing and manipulating of photo­graphs. Bambi located a graphic designer who specialized in touching up head shots for child beauty pageants, and performers w ­ ere invited to have their images photoshopped into the style of a pageant beauty shot. The results ­were creepy, as skin was airbrushed, teeth whitened beyond normal possibility, and more hair and makeup w ­ ere photoshopped onto the already drag-­heavy looks of the burlesque performers. Bambi invoked and poked fun at specific conventions of child beauty pageants, elevating Toddlers in Tiaras to a parodic per­for­mance that would have been a sickly twisted fiction if it had not been based on a real cultural phenomenon.

Figure 5.6. ​Dr. Lucky’s beauty shot for Bambi the Mermaid’s Toddlers in Tiaras, a parodic show staged at Coney Island USA that poked fun at child beauty pageants. Bambi encouraged participants to have their head shots airbrushed by a graphic artist who specialized in extreme photoshopping for young pageant hopefuls. Photo by ChrisKPhotography. Printed by permission.

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The winner of the Toddlers in Tiaras beauty pageant parody was Dr. Lucky who, during the talent portion, performed “Eatin’ Wood,” an act that referred to and spoofed the child beauty pageant star Eden Wood.40 The act’s title also phonetically served as a euphemism for oral sex, sometimes called “eating wood.” The act began with Dr. Lucky posed in child-­pageant realness: cupcake arms, a painted-on mechanical smile that never breaks, and intentionally awkward and forced physicality. A recording of Eden Wood’s pop song “Cutie Patootie” led into the 69 Boyz’s “Tootsie Roll,” as the repeated recognizable child pageant movements became increasingly sexualized and grotesque. The act’s inclusion of stripping, twerking, and inappropriate gestures was intended to refer to the much-­noted sexualization of ­children in beauty pageants. Bambi’s Toddlers in Tiaras, like its namesake, was cringe-­worthy. This was intentional, as Bambi stages outlandish exaggerations of real cultural phenomena both as a tribute and to poke fun at them. Through this parodic lens, t­ here is an upending of serious issues: both serious and nonserious, and both highbrow and lowbrow, are subjected to the same critical gaze. By addressing serious issues in a light-­hearted way, burlesque is able to draw attention to real issues in entertaining—­a nd thought-­provoking—­ways. Parodic pageantry contributes to the “comedy of grotesquery” as it exposes the grotesquery of beauty pageants through parody, exaggeration, and inappropriate juxtapositions.41

“Nothing Feminist about a Beauty Pageant”: The Agitprop Theatrics of the Miss Amer­i­c a Protest of 1968 The success of the Miss Coney Island pageant, as well as the growth in popularity of burlesque more broadly, has brought about changes in how performers approach the competition. Bambi describes a shift when performers began approaching the parodic pageant as a real competition: “I noticed several years ago it [was] r­ eally getting more serious. P ­ eople ­really treating it like BHOF [Burlesque Hall of Fame]. ­People starting to wear gowns and ­doing more classic [burlesque acts], and I ­really had to

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step in and steer p ­ eople away from that.” 42 Love similarly describes the pageant as moving away from a “fun ­t hing” intended to run maybe “for a ­couple of years” to becoming this “­really big deal”: But when I saw the pictures from this last pageant [in 2017], and how incredibly over the top ­people w ­ ere, and how much they invested in their costume and their numbers and their every­t hing—­it’s shocking. I mean, it’s g­ reat b ­ ecause it takes the w ­ hole production level to such a higher extreme. Bambi and I just laugh about it, ­because it was never what she ­imagined, that it would become all of this. And that it would have all of this importance and that ­people would be so competitive. I think that ­people in general are more competitive than they like to admit.43

Taking the Miss Coney Island pageant too seriously and treating it like a true competition undermines its purpose. As a result, the pageant has begun to resemble what it is meant to parody. In recent years, pageants, competitions, and titles have become increasingly popu­lar in neo-­burlesque and significant in legitimizing performers’ ­careers. Bambi blames the overly serious approach to the Miss Coney Island pageant partly on this shift: I think it’s directly related to Burlesque Hall of Fame and other competitions. Having a title is somehow r­ eally impor­tant and helpful to your burlesque “­career.” I feel always a ­little proud, but then when I hear someone being announced “Miss Coney Island 2008,” it’s like, “Is that ­really something ­you’re ­going to carry around and use for the rest of your life?” And now it’s getting po­liti­cal, ­because of the state of Facebook and millennial fragility. . . . ​It has ­really taken away from the ­whole light, airy, poking-­ fun-­at-­pageants aspect that the pageant was intended to have.44

Bambi suggests that the serious approach to burlesque pageants emerged around the time that the Burlesque Hall of Fame moved from Helendale, California, to Las Vegas: “­Those girls that all have that massive dance training that are so attracted to burlesque—­t hey are more the chandeliers to me. They are never g­ oing to be a Blue Angel. Th ­ ey’re never ­going to do a pussy

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trick.” 45 Though “pussy tricks” may not be an aspiration for many neo-­ burlesque performers, ­here that phrase is used by Bambi as a shorthand for the type of burlesque she celebrates and prefers—­burlesque that is irreverent, avant-­garde, and often explicit, both physically and po­liti­cally. Bambi’s ambivalence about the increased importance of competitions in neo-­burlesque and its effects on the Miss Coney Island pageant are shared by other performers and critics alike. In her study of the Burlesque Hall of Fame competition, Kaitlyn Regehr argues that judging categories focus more on appearance and mid-­twentieth-­century burlesque sensibilities than they do on the dynamic stage per­for­mance or the types of po­liti­cal messaging that is central to much neo-­burlesque.46 Kate Valentine critiques beauty pageants as antithetical to burlesque sensibility and a feminist agenda: “Neo-­burlesque is for strong feminist ­women. ­Women who support and celebrate other ­women. A true pageant, an old remnant from a pre-­feminist era, has no business being at the heart of our community. It is wildly self-­destructive and the antithesis of every­thing the burlesque community stands for.” 47 Valentine elaborates on some of the negative aspects of pageants: “The competition between w ­ omen, the focus on physical beauty, it c­ auses fights with each other. It is negative. Th ­ ere is nothing feminist about a beauty pageant. Nothing.” 48 Regehr concurs with Valentine that the “competition” side of pageantry has come to represent a “dichotomy in the neo-­burlesque movement” that ultimately “contradicts the spirit of burlesque.” 49 Regehr explains that the competition becomes “a metric of value” that pits “members of this community (often ­women) against each other, perpetuating the socially constructed rhe­toric of female rivalry, which the neo-­burlesque movement often seeks to reject.” 50 Love agrees with Valentine and Regehr and admits that she d ­ oesn’t “­really love the idea of pageantry,” as it d ­ oesn’t “feel that’s what’s at the heart of burlesque.” 51 As Regehr notes, “the pro­cess of competition and judging not only ranks, normalizes, and regulates the practice, but it is incongruous with the philosophical under­pinnings of the neo-­burlesque community.” 52 Feminist criticism of beauty pageants goes back to the New York Radical ­Women’s (NYRW) protest of the Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant in 1968. The NYRW

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staged a theatrical protest that has arguably become the enduring symbol of the ­women’s liberation movement. The protest, staged on the boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City Convention Center where the Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant took place, used agitprop theatrics, radical language, and creative displays to criticize what organizers believed ­were anachronistic repre­sen­ta­tions of w ­ omen, as well as other interconnected systems of oppression. Yet a surface reading of feminist critiques of beauty pageants misses the ways that humor and parody serve as primary tools for po­liti­cal dissent. Furthermore, it misses why the NYRW consciously choose to highlight and employ so-­ called trivial ­matters in their serious po­liti­cal protest and as central to their feminist agenda. The press release by the NYRW provides a wonderful snapshot of the antics employed at and the politics of the protest. It included a list of “10 Points We Protest” that offered an intersectional approach to feminism.53 ­Here the organizers critique “The Degrading Mindless-­Boob-­Girlie Symbol” by comparing the scrutiny of ­women’s appearance in pageants to that of ­cattle in county fairs: “The Pageant contestants epitomize the roles we are all forced to play as ­women. The parade down the runway blares the meta­phor of the 4-­H Club county fair, where the ner­vous animals are judged for teeth, fleece, ­etc., and where the best ‘Specimen’ gets the blue ribbon. So are ­women in our society forced daily to compete for male approval, enslaved by ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously.” The “10 Points” further highlighted overarching and interconnected oppressive systems, including racism, colonization, and capitalism. The NYRW critiqued the lack of repre­sen­ta­tion of ­women of color in the pageant and, especially, the winner’s circle. They critiqued the Vietnam War, defining pageant winners as “Mascots for Murder” when they are expected to entertain the troops. They critiqued capitalism and its overemphasis on competition, “the win-­ or-­you’re-­worthless competitive disease” that has become an “American myth that oppresses men as well as ­women.” The group used agitprop theatrics to critique multiple systems of oppression. The organizers outlined the actions of the “day-­long boardwalk-­theater event,” including “Picket Lines; Guerrilla Theater; Leafleting; Lobbying

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Visits to the contestants urging our ­sisters to reject the Pageant Farce and join us; a huge Freedom Trash Can (into which we w ­ ill throw bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and representative issues of Cosmopolitan, Ladies’ Home Journal, ­Family Circle, etc.—­bring any such woman-­garbage you have around the ­house).” 54 Other protest actions ­were equally theatrical and parodic: a sheep was crowned Miss Amer­i­ca, and a puppet fashioned as a “bathing beauty” was symbolically wrapped in chains. During the crowning, protestors flooded the auditorium chanting phrases such as “No more Miss Amer­i­ca” and “Freedom for W ­ omen.” 55 In short, the organizers of the Miss Amer­i­ca protest consciously employed multiple approaches, many of them light-­hearted and playful, in their highly serious po­liti­cal protest and saw them as integral to their feminist agenda. Despite popu­lar lore, the “Freedom Trash Can” was never set on fire, and bras w ­ ere never burned. It is in­ter­est­ing, then, that the symbol (the burning bra) of the protest and, for many, second-­wave feminism, is a historical fiction. As Bonnie Dow comments, bra burning became decontextualized from similarly po­liti­c ally deviant acts, such as burning draft cards to protest the Vietnam War: “This is a crucial difference: it is the difference between a  critique of an established system that oppresses ­women—­much as the burning of draft cards was a critique of the military industrial complex—­ and a trivial gesture that dominant media used as evidence that feminists had so l­ittle of substance to complain about that they ­were concerned with undergarments.” 56 With the depoliticization and detaching of the protestors’ agitprop theatrics, the protest lost some of its deviant thrust. Focusing on the bra burning had the effect of trivializing the movement and further implied that ­women involved in the protest ­were somehow unfeminine. The ste­reo­type of the angry, humorless feminist has its roots in this same myth, though in practice feminist protests w ­ ere filled with parody and humor as they poked fun at the absurdity of pageants and gender roles. The agitprop theatrics of the NYRW used lighthearted humor as a serious po­liti­cal tool to draw attention to the movement and feminist demands for equality. Similarly, neo-­burlesque addresses serious issues in playful and lighthearted ways. Reclaiming what ­others may deem trivial could be read as a

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Figure 5.7. ​Bambi the Mermaid “competes” in the first Miss Coney Island pageant during the “talent” portion of the competition with her chicken act, which culminates in her laying an egg onstage and eating it. This act earned her second runner up at the Miss Exotic World competition in 2003. The spirit of parodic pageantry permeates Bambi’s per­for­mances and productions. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

po­liti­cal tactic that flies below the radar of serious feminism. ­Today, burlesque performers intentionally adorn their bodies with what the Miss Amer­i­ca pageant protest organizers described as “woman-­garbage”—­false eyelashes, corsets, and wigs. This reclaiming and repurposing of ­those signifiers—­what José Muñoz describes as “recycling”—is not ­counter to, but rather a continuation of, the activism of second-­wave feminism and radical theatrics.57 Shows like Bambi’s Miss Coney Island pageant continues the legacy of the feisty and bold agit-­prop antics of the Miss Amer­i­ca protest. The parodic pageantry of some neo-­burlesque and drag per­for­mances can dismantle the limiting effects of real pageants and their overemphasis on physical appearance and competition. Though critical of most pageants as

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antifeminist, Valentine acknowledges the productive qualities of pageantry: “Pageantry is a positive ­t hing. You know if it is a ritual in which someone’s greatest, most beautiful self is revealed. . . . ​I love pageantry. The version of pageantry like Paris Is Burning? Fuck yes—­g ive me that. . . . ​But real pageants? Where girls are crying? No no no no no.” 58 Valentine goes on to describe the irony that is an integral component of pageantry: “The pageant at Helendale was ironic. . . . ​I d ­ on’t know if that was ­Dixie’s intention, but all ­t hose burlesque Betty Page girls driving in from LA, that was ironic. Bambi’s Miss Coney Island pageant is deeply rooted in celebrating queerness, in celebrating weirdos. It inverts the paradigm.” 59 The inversion of the paradigm means that performers ­don’t have to conform to expectations related to competition and appearance. Instead, they are able to create a pastiche and reveal a self-­authored version of their “greatest, most beautiful self,” as Valentine puts it. Irony or parody—or at the very least a self-­referential tongue-­in-­cheek stance—is central to the success of that inversion, allowing parodic pageantry to poke fun at the grotesque and often dehumanizing aspects of real beauty pageants. The parodic pageantry of neo-­burlesque explodes binaries: performers can be funny and pretty, as well as beauty queens and comedy queens, and they can use the inherent spectacle and camp of pageantry to make fun. I want to suggest that parodic pageantry is always already pre­sent in progressive neo-­burlesque. Burlesque pageantry gives the audience something to look at—­exaggerated eye candy in Technicolor, replete with ridicu­lous stage antics and peacocking—­that hooks the viewer and defies hegemonic scopic plea­sure. Rather than being antithetical to feminism, parodic pageantry offers per­for­mance and po­liti­cal strategies that lampoon beauty ideals. Though contestants may have begun to take Bambi’s Miss Coney Island pageant too seriously, it remains a strong tribute to and parody of pageants and pageantry. Far from being antifeminist, the pageant is a continuation of the agitprop theatrics embedded in second-­wave feminism’s protests of the Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant. Though I w ­ ill not go so far as to argue that the ­f uture of feminism resides in pageants, the parodic pageantry described in this chapter shifts the focus away from hegemonic and white beauty ideals and

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­toward a cele­bration of the ostentatious, exaggerated, peacocking that is so central to burlesque—­and, as I explore more fully in the next chapter, drag or, as Meredith Heller defines it, “theatrical gender-­bending.” 60 As I argue throughout this book, neo-­burlesque represents a new sexual revolution that uses historically regressive tropes and iconography to dismantle them, such as taking delight in the pinup, as I argued in chapter 2, and in striptease, as I explored in the introduction and conclusion. This new brand of feminism celebrates the unruly body, a concept invoked throughout this book and examined closely in chapter 3, and the explicit female body as palimpsest, as introduced in chapter 1 and returned to in chapter 7. This cele­bration of the female form in all its sparkly exuberance and excess uses signifiers of patriarchy to poke fun at institutions and power alike. This poking fun is central to understanding neo-­burlesque: burlesque uses comedy, wit, and humor as artistic and po­liti­cal tools, as I argue in chapter 4, and, as I argued in this chapter, parodic pageantry employs this poking fun to parody beauty pageants and subvert the hegemony and whiteness of beauty ideals. In the next chapter, I continue to unpack the use of artifice and camp as power­f ul tools wielded to create queer spaces as I turn to World Famous *BOB*’s per­for­mance of gender becoming.

chapter 6

i

Burlesque as Camp gender becoming in world Famous *BOB*’s “one man show”

World Famous *BOB*’s many skills include making a cocktail with her bosom. In her “Martini Time” act, she saunters across the stage wearing a sparkly red gown that hugs her curves and fishtails out around her knees. She pre­sents a martini glass to the crowd and smiles—­genuinely, warmly—­ and the audience responds with hoots and hollers. She peels off her opera-­ length gloves and unzips and removes her red gown to reveal a matching red sequined and fringed bikini. ­After presenting a cocktail shaker to the audience with the gestural precision of Vanna White, she lodges it in between her ample breasts, punctuating the action with a parodic ta-da gesture. The audience applauds wildly; she smiles broadly. *BOB* begins making the cocktail. She picks up a ­bottle of alcohol and pours it into the shaker, pivoting slowly as she waves like a beauty queen, with fin­gers pressed together and cupped hand pivoting at the wrist. She gestures to the cocktail shaker lodged between her breasts and then turns her back to the audience, shimmying wildly to shake, not stir, the cocktail. The audience erupts wildly in response. Turning to face the audience again, she retrieves a cocktail strainer; places it between her teeth; and, with a gymnast-­ like flair, lifts her arms up and around, placing her hands b ­ ehind her back. Saying “Look Mom, no hands,” she lowers the strainer to the top of the cocktail shaker and begins to tip her upper body down. The audience goes wild with applause. She stands up straight again, acknowledging their response as she teasingly delays pouring the cocktail. She grins in a conspiratorial way. 170

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As the applause dies down, *BOB* returns to making her cocktail. She bends forward, and the alcohol slowly trickles through the strainer into a martini glass that rests on a high stool placed center stage. With the martini poured, she straightens up again, removes the strainer from her mouth and the shaker from her bosom, extends her arm to the sky, and curtsies. She pivots around again and, with her back to the audience, removes her bra, one strap at a time. She spins to face the audience, her g­ iant breasts dazzling in red pasties. As her left arm supports her breasts, she digs into her sparkly bikini bottom with her right hand, bumps her pelvis forward several times, and pulls out a handful of olives. She pre­sents the martini to the audience and with a splash, throws one, two, three olives into the martini. She pops the last olive into her mouth, saunters to the front of the stage, and passes the martini to a very enthusiastic audience member who willingly drinks the cocktail *BOB* has made with her boobs. “Martini Time” is a ­simple yet ingenious act that highlights *BOB*’s assets, including her 44J bra size and her signature heightened glamour, grounded in drag and camp sensibility. In her public per­for­mances of her persona, *BOB* is delightfully engaged in the ­things that bring her joy: poodles (and baby animals more broadly), pink (and bright colors in general), and chosen ­family members. She is the “­Mother of the House of Famous” whose motto is “Nice is the New Fierce!”1 She wears big, blonde wigs, invoking the over-­t he-­top aesthetics of drag queens and Hollywood bombshells that serve as her inspiration. *BOB* calls friends “poodle,” a term of affection that in part refers to her love of animals and her toy poodle, Movie Star (2004–2017)—­a constant companion in her photo shoots and featured in her Instagram account that she occasionally wrote from the dog’s perspective. ­There Movie Star would refer to *BOB* as “The Blonde Lady,” a title both entirely fitting yet intentionally ironic. *BOB* has the campy swagger and witty repartee of a drag queen, the cherubic face of a Hollywood starlet, and the heart of a humanitarian. Each characteristic is impor­tant for understanding her power and intrigue as a performer, public figure, and activist. She had her name legally changed to World Famous *BOB* in her early thirties; she makes up clever phrases for each of

Figure 6.1. ​World Famous *BOB* digs around for a few olives to garnish the martini she has just made with her breasts before passing it to an ­eager spectator. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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her birthdays, such as “forty-­one-­derful”; and her witty banter appears si­mul­ ta­neously natu­ral and well-­rehearsed.2 Her commitment to storytelling and camp are central to understanding this seeming paradox. *BOB*’s unique persona and style combine verbal and visual storytelling, the latter of which includes an aesthetic dedicated to a hybrid version of her favorite blonde bombshells. *BOB*’s blonde bombshell mash-up celebrates icons of the past while reinventing the signifying practices of ­those icons with parody. The result is glamorous yet campy, as she exploits feminine iconography not to reinscribe but to challenge a two-­gender model of identity and self-­expression. Using queer theory, gender studies, and per­for­mance studies, this chapter offers close readings of *BOB*’s per­for­mances on-­and offstage to unpack how storytelling, gender becoming, and camp sensibility are all integral to understanding how *BOB*’s unique brand of over-­the-­top blonde bombshell glamour can be read as a type of queer parody. Robert Mack defines “camp” as a type of “queer parody” and “queer” as “the deliberate siting—­a nd citing—of one’s own identity against, rather than with, social norms.”3 He suggests that queer parody can be used by “queered-­but-­not-­queer” bodies while recognizing the value of camp “for its perceived subversiveness.” 4 Though on the surface *BOB* may be read as a cisgender ­woman who appears to reinforce gender norms, her identification as queer and gender nonconforming has the potential to circumvent normativity, as she resists a singular perception of how she pre­sents or, in the spirit of drag culture, how she “reads.” This chapter unpacks how *BOB*’s gender becoming provides counterhegemonic versions of gender norms and identity, offering a version of what Meredith Heller refers to as “theatrical gender-­bending.” 5 In this, *BOB* and neo-­burlesque provide a provocative space (and place) to stage fantastic pre­sen­ta­tions of gender using an over-­t he-­top aesthetic, parody, and camp sensibility to subvert gender norms.

World Famous *BOB*’s Gaieté de Coeur Camp Burlesque is indebted to camp sensibility. As Claire Nally puts it “burlesque per­for­mance must be aligned with camp.” 6 Elsewhere I have argued that

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camp is a defining characteristic of neo-­burlesque, and that camp is a key per­for­mance strategy employed to destabilize social norms.7 In “Performing the Burlesque Body,” I show the connection between what Susan Sontag refers to as “camp’s comic vision of the world” and burlesque’s use of humor and wit to deploy meaning.8 I put off a thorough “discussion of burlesque’s indebtedness to camp” as a “task for another inquiry.” In chapter 3 I argued that camp’s meaning is conveyed through an “invisible wink” that is always already pre­sent in neo-­burlesque per­for­mance.9 In this chapter, I add that camp is a performative strategy employed by marginalized p ­ eople and groups as a survival mechanism to oppose the totalizing forces of dominant culture. *BOB*’s version of camp is perhaps best described by a term Andrew Ross uses: “the gaieté de coeur,” a lighthearted playfulness that comes from the heart.10 *BOB* covets cute ­t hings—­u nicorns, poodles, baby animals, the color pink—­that adorn her social media feeds as well as her personal world in candy-­coated ways. To refer to *BOB*’s public per­for­mances as “campy” may, on the surface, seem to deny her sincerity or undermine the legitimacy of her serious politics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her high-­ femme glamour and devotion to all t­ hings cute and furry is a balancing act she plays to c­ ounter some of the more serious issues she cares about—­most notably, gay rights, elder care, and equity—­and to help counter-­balance her abusive childhood and volatile teenage years. Th ­ ese benign images of baby animals meld with her over-­t he-­top aesthetic to create a cartoon-­character persona that has po­liti­cal bite. *BOB*’s aesthetic is best described by the performer herself as “blonde bombshell”: it is “a visual hybrid of all my favorite blonde bombshells combined,” including Jayne Mansfield, Mae West, Gina Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Dolly Parton, and Divine, to name a few, which she “mashes” up to create her signature look:11 “And I have photos from my per­for­mance history and my personal history where, yeah, I’m in a fountain and I’m Anita Ekberg. . . . ​Or h ­ ere I’m Jayne Mansfield. Or ­here I’m Dolly Parton. Not impersonating, though. Just mashing up all t­ hose, ‘I love Charo’s hair!’ ‘Gosh, I love Dolly’s jumpsuits.’ You know, just mashing up all my favorite t­ hings

Figure 6.2. ​World Famous *BOB* performers her signature “Martini Time” act, in which she mixes a cocktail on stage with her boobs. Her over-­t he-­top blonde bombshell hybrid is earnestly rooted in camp sensibility. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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into that blonde lady that used to come and get me.”12 Her heightened aesthetic and larger-­than-­life stylizing are decidedly glamorous, but ­there is also a tongue-­in-­cheek awareness in her exaggerated blonde bombshell aesthetic that hints at a camp sensibility. As Christopher Isherwood has famously said, “You ­can’t camp about something you ­don’t take seriously. ­You’re not making fun of it; y­ ou’re making fun out of it. Y ­ ou’re expressing what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance.”13 *BOB* takes her aesthetic and her creation of a persona seriously, but she makes fun of them, and it is that fun-­loving spirit that marks her camp as gaieté de coeur. *BOB*’s campy persona allows her to create a space where she can be, as Sontag puts it, “serious about the frivolous, and frivolous about the serious.”14 In her oft-­quoted “Notes on Camp” (originally published in 1964), Sontag offers a numbered list to categorize, show examples of, and quantify camp sensibility and style. She is painfully aware that “to talk about camp is to therefore betray it,” yet something about camp’s hypnotic qualities lures her to “talk” about it despite her fear that “one runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp” by writing about it.15 Over fifty years ­later, Sontag’s piece continues to elicit critical response and critique, much of which suggests that she did exactly what she feared. Mark Booth c­ ounters Sontag’s assertion that camp is a “sensibility” and argues that “camp is primarily a ­matter of self-­presentation.”16 Booth’s definition of camp foregrounds its allegiance to counterhegemonic norms: “To be camp is to pre­sent oneself as being committed to the marginal with a commitment greater than the marginal merits.”17 Other scholars have noted that Sontag is guilty of editing the “gay sensibility” out of camp, thereby ignoring how camp is intimately connected with gay male culture.18 Despite ­t hese and other valid critiques, “Notes on Camp” remains a useful—­a lbeit flawed—­starting point for thinking about camp as a performative act. ­Here I want to rehearse Sontag’s musings on camp to help frame *BOB*’s campy self-­presentation and burlesque’s indebtedness to camp. Sontag suggests that “the essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”19 Camp is expressed through extravagance and passion; it is playful, a “good taste of bad taste.”20 With camp, “style is every­thing.”21 “Suc-

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cess” in camp is mea­sured not in traditional terms but by “passionate failures.”22 In many of Sontag’s examples—­such as Bellini’s operas, Art Nouveau, and “­women’s clothes of the 1920s”—to be camp requires space and time: a distance from the original work and recontextualizing it to qualify as camp.23 It is that distance and reuse—or “recycling,” as José Muñoz puts it—­ t hat makes something camp.24 Terms that usually have negative connotations—­such as “failure” and “frivolous artifice”—­are positive attributes for camp sensibility and for burlesque. ­There are numerous points in Sontag that are particularly useful for understanding the centrality of camp as a key per­for­mance strategy in burlesque. Camp pre­sents itself in over-­t he-­top, exaggerated, and playful ways. Burlesque’s invocation of sexuality, though not always explic­itly campy, retains that spirit of exaggeration and love of artifice. Seduction plays a pivotal role in burlesque and is central to Sontag’s camp: “To camp is a mode of seduction—­one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity.”25 Camp celebrates “Being-­ as-­Playing-­a-­Role,” and so does the burlesque performer who flirts with exaggerated tropes of sexuality as she plays the role of the temptress, seductress, or vamp.26 In both neo-­burlesque and camp, this exaggerated sexuality exploits a “corny flamboyant femaleness.”27 In short, the characteristics of camp that Sontag outlines—­seduction, flamboyance, double meaning, and wit—­are defining characteristics of neo-­burlesque per­for­mance as well. *BOB* d ­ idn’t always identify herself as campy. In fact, her early per­for­ mances fit best into Sontag’s category of “unintentional” camp.28 *BOB* describes being put off by being called “campy” during her early club-­k id days: I used to think I was r­ eally glamorous, and now as I get older, I realize I’m ­really campy. I was ­really campy when I was a club kid. And I was like, “I’m not campy. I’m glamorous.” With a tutu and a ballerina backpack and a huge bow and six-­inch black platforms that laced up [and w ­ ere] spray-­painted pink. I ­don’t think camp is always aware of itself. You know, I think I was high camp and ­didn’t know it. My friend O’Shay turned to

178 N e o - B u r l e s q u e me one day and was like, “You are so camp.” And I got r­ eally angry. . . . ​ I just felt like I had a narrow definition of camp.29

To invoke Sontag’s distinction between intentional and unintentional camp, *BOB* was pure camp. *BOB* describes needing distance to recognize the camp in her per­for­mance: “Yes, I was camp. I see it now. And now I’m fi­nally glamorous. And yeah, I would say I definitely am. But now that drag has changed so much, I am camp.”30 Ironically, the moment that seriousness fails is where camp resides, assuming the “proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”31 While *BOB* has sought to be “glamourous,” she finds herself “sliding back” into camp, which suggests that camp is performative to some degree. *BOB*’s misreading of her over-­the-­top fashion choices as glamorous gets to the heart of camp’s elusive quality. “Pure camp is always naïve,” Sontag notes, adding that “the pure examples of camp are unintentional; they are dead serious.”32 *BOB*’s earnest approach to her look—­“a tutu and a ballerina backpack and . . . ​platforms . . . ​spray-­painted pink”—­becomes camp at the moment it fails to be glamorous. As Sontag explains, it’s not just the passage of time that makes ­t hings camp. Rather, they become camp when we get over our frustration at the failure of the original: “Thus, ­things are campy, not when they become old—­but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by the failure of the attempt.”33 *BOB* confirms this when she recognizes that “I used to think I was r­ eally glamorous, and now, as I get older, I realize I’m ­really campy.” Like *BOB*’s earnest attempt at glamour, camp “proposes itself seriously,” Sontag continues, “but cannot be taken altogether seriously ­because it is ‘too much.’ ”34 As Sontag puts it, “Camp sees every­thing in quotation marks.”35 This citationality allows *BOB* and neo-­burlesque performers more broadly to pre­sent exaggerated versions of hyperfemininity that refer to while challenging ste­reo­typical iconography and social expectations of sexuality and bodily display. Using “quotation marks” around t­ hese exaggerated gender ste­reo­types highlights burlesque’s central motif of poking fun, and ­doing so in a lighthearted way. *BOB*’s citation of the over-­the-­top blonde bomb-

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Figure 6.3. ​World Famous *BOB* identifies as gender nonconforming and queer. Her signature style, a mash-up of her favorite blonde bombshells, puts quotation marks around her identity and challenges assumptions about how she “reads.” Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

shell and her fabrication of a campy aesthetic is an extended exercise in putting quotation marks around her own identity. Yet *BOB*’s campy aesthetic should not be misinterpreted as apo­liti­cal. Sontag’s suggestion that camp “cannot be taken altogether seriously” can undermine the transgressive and po­liti­cal potential of camp. Sontag assumes that camp is “disengaged, depoliticized—or at least apo­liti­cal,” and even goes so far as to preface that categorical dismissal with the qualifier “it goes without saying.”36 Michael Moon describes being struck by the “extreme degree to which” perspectives like that found in Sontag “depoliticize the sexual and artistic practices that are their subjects.”37 Moon dedicates his article to Jack Smith, the avant-­garde filmmaker whose film Flaming Creatures also inspired the beginning of Muñoz’s Disidentification. Muñoz uses Flaming Creatures

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to introduce his version of disidentification, showing that the “hackneyed orientalism” employed by Smith in his early films “surpassed ­simple fetishization.”38 Muñoz shows that “Smith’s camp was not good-­humoured goofing” but rather served as and “insisted on social critique.”39 This idea that camp goes beyond “good-­humoured goofing” into “social critique” is impor­tant for reading the po­liti­cal efficacy of *BOB*’s lighthearted camp. In “The Trou­ble with ‘Queerness,’ ” Katie Horo­w itz offers “drag as the connective tissue between the po­liti­cal and the performative.” 40 Horo­witz demonstrates that “staged per­for­mances, like drag shows, produce effects just as real (and as ­really po­liti­c al) as apparently unstaged performances—­political rallies, ­legal interventions, and or­ga­nized protests, to name a few.” 41 As drag and burlesque show, a staged per­for­mance is not solely a “meta­phor for real-­life phenomena” but instead can be read as “a real-­ life phenomenon in its own right” and thus can have a po­liti­cal effect.42 In fact, Horo­w itz demonstrates that many drag performers consider their per­ for­mances as “activist work.” 43 From Flaming Creatures to drag kings and queens and *BOB*’s campy excess, t­ hese fun per­for­mances should not be reduced simply to “good-­humoured goofing,” as they engage audiences and politics and can serve as a form of social critique. On the surface, *BOB*’s campy humor and playful cele­bration of all t­ hings cute may not seem to demonstrate the rage and po­liti­cal thrust that Muñoz and Moon so persuasively show is central to camp. Reading *BOB*’s gender identity as she pre­sents is short-­sighted, and so is reading the cute ­things that she surrounds herself with as benign. In *BOB*’s arsenal, cute transcends “good-­humoured goofing” and becomes a po­liti­cal tool that offers social critique, a tool that she brandishes with camp sensibility and style. *BOB*’s gaieté ­ nder the surface is a radical de coeur camp is lighthearted and playful, but u revision of identity-­denying protocols that place *BOB* in the queer canon.

*BOB*’s Gender Becoming, One Stage (and Story) at a Time *BOB* is a storyteller. She tells stories all the time, and that storytelling is central to her creative process—­from her solo acts to hosting burlesque shows

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Figure 6.4. ​World Famous *BOB poses with Movie Star, her toy poodle, in her former home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This photo is part of a series by Amy Touchette published as Shoot the Arrow: A Portrait of The World Famous *BOB*. Photo by Amy Touchette. Printed by permission.

and her full-­length, one-­person shows. *BOB* also tells stories in interviews when she describes her life; she tells stories in her social media posts; she tells stories during casual conversations. Even the interview conducted for this book about the decade-­long evolution of her one-­woman show was an extended exercise in storytelling. Put simply, storytelling is *BOB*’s preferred mode of communication, and it is central to her creative pro­cess and product. *BOB* learned storytelling in part from other storytellers—­notably, drag queens and nightlife impresarios. She describes being “influenced” by the “mid-90s crowd” she “came up with” in New York City’s drag scene, including performers and characters like her drag m ­ other, Jackie Beat; Mx Justin Vivian Bond; Lady Bunny; Sherry Vine; and Mistress Formica.44 What t­ hese performers have in common, according to *BOB*, is that they are all “amazing nightclub queens, but t­hey’re also all incredible storytellers. W ­ hether they do it through song or parody or dialogue or every­t hing—[it’s] usually

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a mixture of ­t hose ­t hings in a show.” 45 *BOB* has been influenced by and continues this legacy of nightlife storytelling by incorporating both verbal and visual storytelling into her per­for­mances in provocative and power­f ul ways. Storytelling, as *BOB* defines and uses it, encompasses a range of per­ for­mance mediums and has broad performative effects. Next I summarize the evolution of *BOB*’s solo shows, retaining much of her own language to preserve the storytelling that is so central to her per­for­mances and identity. *BOB*’s first extended solo per­for­mance, cheekily titled “Tic Tacs and Dicks,” was a thirty-­minute piece performed at the Ice Palace in Fire Island that “combined storytelling with a handful of my numbers and created the story visually as well as vocally.” 46 In true camp fashion, the hilarious and irreverent title referred to the “celebrity diet” *BOB “was pitching at the time.” Initially, *BOB* was “freaking out” about ­doing a full thirty minutes of her own material, but she wanted to challenge herself as an artist and performer. She also received encouragement from the producer Kate Valentine, who l­ ater would direct *BOB*’s “One Man Show.” “Tic Tacs and Dick” ran successfully for three consecutive summers in Fire Island, and when *BOB* “fi­nally got a standing ovation,” she knew it was time to take her show to Manhattan. With the move from Fire Island to New York City came a name change: from “Tic Tacs and Dicks” to “F to F.” *BOB* premiered “F to F”—­her first version of her full-­length solo show—­ during a weekend run at Mo Pitkin’s right before her thirty-­third birthday.47 The early versions of her one-­woman show ­were ­free form and somewhat experimental. *BOB* describes “F to F” as an “autobiographical sermon in a way where I would allow myself to be a vessel”: I was r­ eally experimenting on stage with life. Just making a mess and cleaning it up. . . . ​I just wanted to be ­free ­every time I walked on stage. Just to see what happened. Which is amazing when it works but makes it ­really hard to deal with when you suck. . . . ​But I want to keep making a mess b ­ ecause I ­don’t feel like I have enough stuff. I want to keep in ­t hese messes I’m making. And if something went over r­ eally well, I would jot that down. I’d be like, “Oh, that story went over ­really well.” But it’s not

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just a ­matter of telling one story ­a fter another. It’s creating an arc, and a beginning and an ending that’s dynamic enough for somebody to qualify using their theatre time and money on it.

During this experimental phase, *BOB* “just kept ­doing it, ‘F to F.’ ” Through that repetition, she honed her show and her stories about her own gender identity, one not reducible to a static binary. Her narration of her own gender becoming uses storytelling and camp sensibility to pre­sent a dynamic, fluid version of gender. The title of the second incarnation of *BOB*’s one-­person show stands for “Female to Female,” a reference to trans ­people’s shorthand description of their gender transitions. *BOB* describes first using the phrase “F to F” in response to a reporter inquiring about her style: Dirty Martini and I w ­ ere at a [New York] Fashion Week fashion show—­​ I think it was Heatherette—­and we walked in, and ­t here was this wall of photog­raphers at ­t hose events. And we both had on fake fur coats and we wore matching fringed bikinis, and I brought a box of r­ eally elegant, over-­ the-­top pastries to eat in our bikinis in the front row before the show started. Manners are very impor­tant. And we took off our coats—we just both dropped them at the same time. And the photog­raphers went crazy. And a reporter came up to me and said, “What’s your style?” And I said, “Oh, it’s F to F, girl.” And me and Dirty just started laughing. And I was like, that is so funny—it is such a complex answer. “What’s your gender? What’s your style?” That’s such a  complex answer. I was r­ eally excited [that] I nutshelled it in such a humorous way. And so they ­were like, “What’s that?” And I said, “Female to Female,” and I walked away. It just felt like such a good mic drop moment. And so that was the name of my first show in the city.48

*BOB*’s “complex answer” encapsulates a number of themes that are impor­ tant for understanding what I describe as her gender becoming. The phrase “F to F” intentionally invokes the language used at this time to indicate “FTM” (“female to male”) or “MTF” (“male to female”) trans

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identities. Some activists would argue that an AFAB (assigned female at birth) person does not have to transition (as the “to” in the phrase implies), and that co-­opting trans language is a form of appropriation. Furthermore, ­today terms such as MTF and FTM are largely considered outmoded ways to describe trans identities. As Kyle Scanlon, a queer activist who has expressed concern about trans identity being appropriated as a “hip, new fashion label,” puts it, “they can call themselves anything they like as long as they are actually willing to act as a true trans ally”—­explaining that a “trans ally is someone willing to stand up and fight for the basic ­human rights and dignity of all trans p ­ eople.” 49 *BOB* is a queer-­identified, gay-­rights activist, and her recycling of language was intended to celebrate and pay homage to the material history and strug­gles of trans-­and gay-­identified p ­ eople at the time. ­Today, she is aware of and constantly adapts her practices and language to reflect changes in the LGBTQIAP community. *BOB*’s answer to “What’s your gender? What’s your style?” “nutshells” how she defies static gender roles based on her appearance. I want to tease out some of the assumptions made about gender identity and expression, even by t­ hose who appear to “do their gender right.” According to Judith Butler, “­t hose who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished”—­ which implies that ­those who appear to do their “gender right” are rewarded.50 *BOB* resists a literal interpretation of gender punishments and rewards, suggesting that gender performativity is ongoing and contingent. For to “read” *BOB* only as she pre­sents (“high femme”) is shortsighted and misses some of the nuances of her gender expression. Hers is a unique story of what I am referring to as gender becoming, a concept indebted to Butler’s notion of gender performativity (discussed more fully in chapter 2) and Heller’s concept of “female-­femmeing.” On the surface *BOB* may appear to conform to traditional gender and sexual roles, but I want to argue that her intentional per­for­mance of ­gender can be read as queer. I borrow Heller’s provocative concept of “female-­femmeing’ to unpack gender(ed) per­for­mances that challenge traditional ideas of gender even as they appear to subscribe to them. Heller persuasively defines “any con­temporary theatrical act wherein a female-­

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identified performer consciously constructs and deploys femininity as ‘female-­ femmeing.’ ” 51 Heller examines the per­for­mances of “female-­identified performers” in drag shows, noting that traditionally such per­for­mances have been considered mere “window-­dressing” for the explicit inversion of gender in drag shows (and the politics that comes with that).52 She challenges this assumption by categorizing female performers who explic­itly perform femininity as performing a type of drag—or “theatrical gender-­bending,” as she suggests in Queering Gender. ­These per­for­mances and performers “align with the intents, methods, and goals of the progressive con­temporary drag practice,” which often employs gender-­bending, queering, and other disidentificatory practices.53 Heller dismantles the assumption that pre­sen­ta­tions of femininity, both on-­and offstage, are neither transgressive nor queer. Instead, her concept of female-­femmeing helps decipher neo-­burlesque’s creation, per­for­mance, and exaggeration of hyperfemininity as a bending of gender norms. Similarly, *BOB’*s identity should not automatically be read as cisgender ­because she was AFAB. *BOB* is “not quite straight,” as she bends gender expectations away from “limiting identity par­a meters.” 54 *BOB*’s stories about her own gender identity and gender becoming challenge the traditional two-­gender model. She tells stories about working in gay nightclubs, of wanting to have a gender confirmation surgery in her teens so that she could become a drag queen, and passing for years as a cisgender male in female drag. *BOB* describes inhabiting multiple identities as a teenager: I identified as death rock, identified as bisexual, slept with multiple genders, and wanted to be a drag queen. So I was very ­limited by the simplicity of the structures that I lived in even though they felt safe. Th ­ ere w ­ ere parts of me where ­t here was no place for them to live, you know. And I felt like a boy. From the time I was fifteen I was like, “I’m supposed to be a boy.” Like this i­ sn’t right. I d ­ on’t want to be a w ­ oman. This is definitely something went wrong.55

As *BOB*’s body was “hyperfeminizing itself naturally through hormones and shape and ge­ne­tics,” she strug­gled with her gender identity. She has come to accept her body’s perceived identity, though she does not feel that she fits

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into a traditional model of gender: “I ­don’t feel like a boy, and I ­don’t feel like a girl. So I feel like I’m in the ­middle. Something that’s unexplained but not unexpressed.” That phrase—­“unexplained but not unexpressed”—­ encapsulates the complexity of *BOB*’s gender expression. ­Today *BOB* identifies as queer and as a “gender nonconforming person that pre­sents high femme,” though this was not always the case.56 When she was first introduced to queer identity in her early thirties, she resisted the language. She read queer as an “insult” b ­ ecause she d ­ idn’t understand what it meant: “I remember calling up Murray [Hill] and being like, ‘What’s this queer bullshit?’ And he was like, ‘I d ­ on’t know. The kids are calling it queer. I ­don’t know what’s g­oing on. Th ­ ere’s more letters than alphabet soup!’ ” 57 *BOB* narrates her coming to consciousness about queer identity thanks to a younger generation that showed her the meaning of queer: We went on tour, and all of t­ hese young p ­ eople came into the spaces where we performed, and they identified as queer. And t­ here ­wasn’t one box that they fit into. It was the wiggle room that I needed when I was younger and ­didn’t have. And [Mave, *BOB*’s drag ­daughter] explained it to me. She explained it as “space where you can exist without living in the narrow margins of the already existing spaces.” 58

That “wiggle room” allowed *BOB* to consciously inhabit her gender identity in nonbinary ways. As Mack puts it, “Queerness requires a deliberate intervention, a conscious and active negation of straight.” 59 *BOB*’s per­for­ mances on-­and offstage embody Mack’s “conscious . . . ​negation of straight,” as she narrates her strug­gles with gender identity and lack of positive female role models. The language that *BOB* initially resisted began to resonate with her: “Once I saw what queer was, I realized I was queer.” 60 And from then on, *BOB* chose to use the stage to tell her story of gender becoming.

World Famous *BOB*’s “One Man Show” *BOB* de­cided it was time to bring in a director to help her craft the narrative arc of her solo show. She staged one more version of her show at Fire

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Island, this time calling it (per Valentine’s suggestion) “One Man Show.” Valentine attended the show, took notes, and soon ­a fter began formally directing *BOB*.61 Like “F to F’ and “Tic Tacs and Dicks,” the show played with assumptions about gender identity and gender becoming. Ostensibly, “One Man Show” was a continuation of the solo shows *BOB* had been ­doing, only with “fancier gowns and less numbers and more stories. And this new title so that ­people thought they ­were coming to something new, which they ­were. But maybe not,” *BOB* jokes.62 Though *BOB*’s one-­person shows have common themes and stories, the evolution to “One Man Show” was the product of continual staging, improvisation, and rehearsal, as well as collaborations with other artists, designers, and Valentine. In Valentine, *BOB* had found the perfect collaborator—­a skilled director and dramaturge and a friend who knew *BOB* personally and well. Valentine helped *BOB* develop material and craft the narrative arc of the show. Bits that w ­ ere extremely effective when *BOB* hosted a burlesque show did not always translate into a full-­length theatrical solo show. More telling w ­ ere temporal gaps in *BOB*’s narration of her life story, perhaps a mechanism she used to avoid painful and traumatizing childhood and adolescent memories. Valentine made suggestions about expanding or contracting certain stories. *BOB* comments: And I ­really did need that outside eye to see just how magical the fragments w ­ ere when they ­were placed properly. And I created that show—​ ­I felt a r­ eally strong need to tell my story ­because I ­don’t think it’s as unique as I thought. I think as a performer I felt like every­thing was unique, oh, this only happens to me; they are isolated incidents. And the more I was in the per­for­mance world the more I realized . . . ​this is a lot of ­people’s stories. The details are just dif­fer­ent. And I just need to tell my version of it.63

As *BOB* discovered, crafting the arc of her show as a narrative with a beginning, m ­ iddle, and end needed an “outside eye.” She describes the rehearsal pro­cess, which included using New York City public spaces: “We would rehearse a lot in Union Square Park. We would sit down and Kate [Valentine] would say, ‘Do the ­whole show for me right now. ­Don’t stop.’ It’s

Figure 6.5. ​The promotional image for World Famous *BOB*’s “One Man Show” illustrates *BOB*’s transformation into her onstage persona. It also wittily refers to half-­and-­half images employed by drag performers to demonstrate transformation through makeup. Photo and makeup by Karl ­Giant. Printed by permission.

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seventy minutes. And it felt so weird to rehearse sitting down on grass with no audience and no schtick and no wig. It felt so raw and vulnerable. But she wanted to know I had it memorized. And so I would just do it. I trusted her.” 64 It was at one of ­t hese rehearsals that Valentine pointed out the connection between two significant stories that *BOB* often tells, stories that ­later became the beginning and ending of *BOB*’s “One Man Show.” ­These two stories are significant. One story is a recurring fantasy *BOB* had as a child about being rescued by a surrogate ­mother figure, glamorous and blonde—­reminiscent of the stars that *BOB* reveres and emulates. The figure shows up at her elementary school in a limousine and tells her: “ ‘I’m your real m ­ other. And I’ve come to take you away.’ ” 65 *BOB recalls with startling clarity that this fantasy of her escape began “in the third grade” and that she would “daydream this e­ very day.” The other story *BOB* often tells is about first meeting ­Dixie Evans at the Exotic World Museum in Helendale, California. That first meeting set the stage for a close relationship between *BOB* and Evans, and it became an anchoring point in *BOB*’s one-­person show. Valentine pointed out to *BOB* the connection between ­these two stories: “I was describing ­Dixie next to the Exotic World limo, and Kate just looked at me, and she was like, ‘The story where you fantasize [about] the school bus and you d ­ on’t take it and it pulls off and reveals a stretch limo and a blonde w ­ oman with a chauffeur walks across the street. . . . ​ Do you see this? That’s your beginning and your end for the show.’ ” ­Those stories indeed became the beginning and end of *BOB’s “One Man Show.” And with Valentine’s invaluable contributions in helping craft the show’s narrative arc, *BOB*’s show moved again—­t his time to Joe’s Pub. The premiere of “One Man Show” at Joe’s Pub is a significant milestone in *BOB*’s ­career.66 Joe’s Pub had hosted its fair share of nightlife impresarios, including Mx Justin Vivian Bond, Bridgett Everett, Kiki and Herb, Taylor Mac, Murray Hill, and many ­others. That lineage of performers is noteworthy. “I felt r­ eally like I was playing dress up in my she-­roe’s shoes,” *BOB* explains, “stepping into pumps that ­were a ­little big for me. But it felt ­really good. And that’s what I wanted—­I wanted that challenge. I remember ­going to lighting rehearsal and tech rehearsal and all ­these ­things I had

Figure 6.6. ​World Famous *BOB* has cited several performers who have inspired her love of and dedication to the power of storytelling, including ­Dixie Evans. Evans told stories on stage as the Marilyn Monroe of burlesque and at her museum, Exotic World, where she led patrons through her exhibits by telling stories about burlesque history. ­Here *BOB* enjoys one of Evans’s stories onstage at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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experienced through other ­great artists’ invitations to join them, and now it was me d ­ oing it.” 67 With Valentine directing, Jen Gapay producing, David Quinn designing costumes, and the professional technical designers at Joe’s Pub, *BOB*’s show had become a professional theatrical production, with sold-­out per­for­mances and standing ovations. Though the many versions of *BOB*’s solo shows are unique and it took many years of experimenting to get to her “One Man Show,” each incarnation uses similar verbal and visual storytelling to tell her life story. *BOB*’s solo shows are largely crafted around her stories about her gender becoming, her transition from a homeless teenager to a professional club kid (who sought gender confirmation surgery so that she could become a drag queen), and her finding a type of ac­cep­tance of her AFAB body when she became a burlesque star. *BOB*’s “One Man Show” traces her journey of gender becoming from her early, formative years, when she felt that she was in the wrong body, to a place of ac­cep­tance. “I became at peace with my body,” *BOB* explains, “through the inspiration of other p ­ eople who w ­ ere born in the same body as me.” 68 Hers is an engaging and honest story, told through power­ful imagery and meta­phors that she brandishes like an accomplished poet. Undeniably, *BOB* is the star of her own show. She is committed to telling engaging stories on stage. and narrates her life challenges (and successes) with candor and humor, all with a strong dose of camp. *BOB*’s stories tug at one’s heartstrings while invoking laughter. Her “two favorite notes” are “heartbreaking and hilarious.” 69 As she explains, “I think if you can take something heartbreaking and make it funny, then p ­ eople are more comfortable having that shared with them. It’s also a coping mechanism that I have for softening the edges. The sharp edges in life I always soften with humor.”70 *BOB* uses stories as a way to describe her unique life experiences and as a coping mechanism to turn the wrongs of her formative years into a positive vehicle that is entertaining and poignant, and to connect p ­ eople’s experiences to her own. Storytelling, then, marks *BOB*’s creative pro­cess as well as being the primary per­for­mance medium she uses, both on-­and offstage, to communicate with and engage her audience. Hers is a story of perseverance

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that uses camp, humor, and glamour to weave an engaging and illuminating narrative about her life and her own gender becoming. The wonderfully campy yet sincere stories that *BOB* tells onstage challenge a singular notion of gender identity and expression. Her “heartbreaking and hilarious” stories give voice to queer identities that do not fit into normative models of gender expression. And she does this by employing an over-­the-­top blonde bombshell aesthetic that in another context could be read as heteronormative. Neo-­burlesque is able to take signifiers of gender oppression, slap some glitter on them, and escalate them to parodic excess. As I showed in chapter 2, neo-­burlesque takes delight in showgirl glamour and has appropriated icons such as *BOB*’s blonde bombshell mash-up as a site of transgression and insubordination, and it does so with a literal and meta­phorical wink, as I discussed in chapter 3. Central to this wink in neo-­burlesque is the use of comedy, wit, and humor (the subject of chapter  4) and parodic pageantry (the subject of chapter  5)—­tools that *BOB* also employs to deliver her complex po­liti­cal messages of identity and ac­cep­tance. The next chapter focuses on Julie Atlas Muz ­who, like *BOB* and the other performers described in this book, takes a lighthearted approach to her art making as she takes risks on-­and offstage. The forgiving nature of nightlife per­for­mance has allowed neo-­burlesque performers to experiment and improvise, using the possibility of failure as a positive force and a po­liti­ cal refusal to conform. Muz uses her explicit body as a per­for­mance strategy, which I place within a lineage that includes female per­for­mance artists of the 1960s–1970s, second-­wave feminists, and avant-­garde theatrical traditions. ­These ­people and movements share with neo-­burlesque a refusal to conform and be contained, as they expressively and unapologetically reject the assumption that the explicit female body is antithetical to a feminist agenda. Muz lives up to the New York Times’s description of her as a “feminist stripper,” a seeming paradox that the next chapter—­a nd this book overall—­seeks to unpack.71 Muz is on the forefront of burlesque as a new sexual revolution as she pushes bound­a ries in her c­ areer and with her explicit body.

chapter 7

i

Burlesque as Revolution the ridicu­lous theatre of julie atlas muz

The year is 2004. A beautiful blonde w ­ oman steps out of a limousine for the Whitney Biennial opening wearing Lucite-­heeled platforms—­fondly referred to as “stripper pumps”—­t hat lift her calves and backside to attention. The beautiful blond ­woman is Julie Atlas Muz, and she is flanked on one side by Murray Hill, the drag king and master of ceremonies, and on the other side by the burlesque celebrity and her good friend and ally, Dirty Martini. A warm Cheshire-­cat grin spreads across Muz’s face, radiating energy and a mesmerizing presence. It is this direct, engaged, and engaging gaze that can convince an audience member that she’s looking directly at you even when she’s not. She looks ravishing and completely confident and comfortable, despite the formal affair. Her hair and makeup are in red-­carpet perfection. The other guests and artists are dressed in their art-­world reception best: black ties, eve­ning gowns, and designer labels. Muz has de­cided to forgo all that fuss and attend the opening sans clothing. Julie Atlas Muz’s choice to attend the Whitney Biennial opening nude is wholly irreverent yet appropriate, given that she is known for her “po­liti­cally pointed nudity.”1 Muz was making a bold, tongue-­in-­cheek statement about the art world’s historic exploitation of the unveiled female form, as well as brandishing her signature employment of nudity in tongue-­in-­cheek ways to provoke a response from her audience. She also was celebrating the “ever-­ political lineage of naked ladies in public spaces as set in motion by Lady Godiva,” as she does throughout much of her work.2 In the Whitney Biennial 193

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Figure 7.1. ​Julie Atlas Muz choose to attend the Whitney Biennial opening nude to make a bold statement about the art world’s exploitation of the nude female body and underrepre­sen­ta­tion of female artists. Photo by Laure A. Leber. Printed by permission.

stunt, and in her work more broadly, Muz uses her explicit body to communicate meaning in a way that goes beyond a reductive reading of nudity as exhibitionism. As the Brooklyn Rail puts it, “Muz manages to make her exhibitionism gesture t­ owards the vulnerable strength of the body in a funny yet po­liti­cal combination of visual and per­for­mance art.”3 Muz uses exhibitionism to shock her audience into thought and into action, a kind of Brechtian Epic Theatre for the twenty-­first ­century. To understand the rationale ­behind Muz’s choices—­and her ability to glide in and out of the legitimate and under­ground art worlds with ease—­requires a careful uncovering of what fuels and underlies the variety of work she creates. All of Muz’s work is infused with her signature style of irreverence and commitment to the bizarre and beautiful. Her résumé is filled with in­ter­ est­ing juxtapositions, from her numerous (and critically acclaimed) full-­ length shows at Dance Theatre Workshop, Per­for­mance Space 122, and Abrons Art Center, to name a few, to a section titled “Mermaid” that lists her per­for­mances swimming in a ­giant fish tank—­which garnered her an accolade from the Village Voice in 2004 as Best Mermaid since Darryl Hannah.4 In the same year, she was designated the Worst Humiliation for the Downtown Dance World by Time Out New York in its “Best and Worst of 2004” list. On her résumé, the Worst Humiliation citation is proudly sandwiched

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between her First Light Commission from Dance Theater Workshop and her Whitney Biennial award (both also in 2004).5 Rather than bury what could be interpreted as unflattering press, in true burlesque fashion, Muz touts the accolade prominently.6 Though she has since received numerous glowing reviews from far more prestigious publications, she keeps the Worst Humiliation citation with the New York Times New Yorkers of the Year award, given to Muz and her husband, Mat Fraser, in 2017.7 In her prominent pairing of criticism with accolades, Muz paints a provocative version of her c­ areer that pokes fun at the art world. She employs burlesque sensibilities, inverting the value of high culture and low culture and ­doing so through parody; a knowing wit; and, in her signature style, a wink and smile. Muz takes her c­ areer seriously, yet she remains playful and provocative in her approach to art and art making. That spirit permeates all she does, from her per­for­mances to her résumé—­which is filled with clever innuendo and incongruous juxtapositions, Muz is an accomplished artist who continues to use her burlesque per­ for­mance to both inspire and at times fund her other art proj­ects. She explains that she is still “pooping on cupcakes at 3 o ­ ’clock in the morning and singing with my vagina so I can survive to put on my c­ hildren’s theatre,” referring to Jack and the Beanstock, Fraser’s and Muz’s pantomime show staged at Abrons Art Center in 2017 and 2018.8 “But twenty years ago I was hanging lights to poop on cupcakes,” she notes, suggesting a kind of pro­ gress.9 Yet to characterize some of Muz’s work as sustaining and the rest of it as artistic is reminiscent of a division between high and low art that Muz rejects: “Right now I just think about it more as long form or short form. . . . ​ I ­don’t differentiate between high and low in the same [way] that I understand other ­people do.”10 She describes what all of her per­for­mances have in common: “My per­for­mances range from short solos to full-­length, large-­ scale extravaganzas but the three t­ hings I strive for in ­every show are: developed content, an evident love of the audience and a strong physical and visual presence. I employ showmanship, original costumes, and ­every conceivable type of stagecraft to immerse the spectators in a thought-­provoking, interactive and entertaining experience.”11 For Muz, “­every conceivable type

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of stagecraft” includes dance, theatre, puppetry, storytelling, physical comedy, avant-­garde choreography, stage lighting, sets, and costumes which she employs to create stunning visuals and provocative content. Muz’s travel between the legitimate and late-­night art worlds is porous and fluid. By characterizing her work as short-­or long-­format, she resists the value judgment embedded within the division between high and low art. To suggest that her art-­world success is somehow more legitimate than her other artistic practices misrepresents the continuity across her work, all of which uses “humor, positive sexuality, and glamour to address serious topics in a playful manner.”12 Her art-­world success has not led her to abandon burlesque. Instead, burlesque sensibility permeates all of her work. In this chapter I explore the content of Muz’s short-­and long-­format theatrical offerings as part of the work of a rich lineage of per­for­mance and theatrical artists, from the female per­for­mance artists of the 1960s to Ridicu­lous Theatre, art cabaret of the 1980s to nightclubs, and beyond. In par­tic­u­lar, I explore how experimentation and imperfection operate as productive qualities, and how failure has, as José Muñoz puts it, a “kernel of potentiality” and is, according to Jack Halberstam, counterhegemonic.13 Muz uses her explicit body to invoke yet disrupt ­these radical art traditions, infiltrating and infusing the legitimate art world with a burlesque wink and smile. This chapter seeks to unpack the ways that Muz employs burlesque as a verb and a noun throughout her work, as her burlesque shatters conventions and creates dreamworlds in which sexuality, politics, and theatrics reign (and are mutually constituting). As Michel Foucault observes in the History of Sexuality, the repression of sexuality that began in the Victorian era “prevents most of us from putting side by side: revolution and happiness; or revolution and a dif­fer­ent body. . . . ​Or indeed, revolution and plea­sure.”14 ­There is no place for repression in Muz’s work: her art is a full-­out expression of her id, pairing “side by side” t­ hose seeming disassociated qualities that Foucault views as emblematic of sexual repression. Muz’s work resonates with “revolution and plea­sure,” as she creates art that is engaging, thought provoking, and provocative. Her work champions neo-­burlesque as a new sexual revolution in which dangerous ­women take the stage with aplomb.

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Julie Atlas Muz, “The Bemused Blonde of Downtown Per­f or­m ance Art” Muz is a burlesque dancer and theatre maker who has become an impor­ tant presence in the downtown New York City per­for­mance art scene over her several-­decades-­long c­ areer. Her work is diverse, as she pushes the bound­a ries of disciplinary silos in provocative and innovative ways. She holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in dance from Oberlin College and has identified herself as a dancer for most of her ­career. Her unique brand of art uses sexuality and po­liti­cally driven content to “sucker punch” “the bound­ aries between per­for­mance art, dance and burlesque with dark, twisted, come-­hither per­for­mances that have secured her place in the underworld of nightlife as well as the bastion of the art world.”15 While maintaining a ­career in and commitment to burlesque per­for­mance, she has appealed to the legitimate art world, although she resists classifying her work in that way. Muz has received numerous prestigious awards and residencies, and her work has received glowing press and critical acclaim around the globe. The New York Times christened her “the royalty of burlesque” and “the Bemused Blonde of downtown per­for­mance art,” and has since reviewed all of her major longer-­format works.16 She has received artist-­in-­residencies at Movement Research (1998–1999), Dixon Place (2000), Joyce Soho (2001), Chashama (2002), and Flying Circus (2007). Her many prestigious awards and grants include Whitney Biennial Artist (2004), Valencia Biennale Artist (2005), Lambert Fellow (2005–2008), and Franklin Furnace grant (2013– 2014), as well as an Arts Council E ­ ngland (2013–2014) award with Mat Fraser that came with a research and development grant.17 Her art work has been included in the Armory Show (2007) and several Deitch Proj­ect exhibitions—­ including Womanizer (2007), which she cocurated with Kembra Pfahler.18 Muz is also an actress who has starred in traditional theatre and films, including Tournée, a feature film that earned Mathieu Amalric the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.19 Muz’s rise to inclusion in the art world was partly the product of The ­Thing, a dance show she created in 2002 for Chashama—an innovative arts

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program that uses unoccupied New York City real estate as galleries and per­ for­mance spaces. For The Th ­ ing, Muz lined the space with thousands of pennies, filled it with ­water, and distributed rain ponchos to the audience during a messy, beautiful dance piece characterized as a “gogo-­butoh odyssey which transforms the 129 space into a water-­themed theater.”20 The ­Thing put Muz’s work on the radar of the legitimate art world, and in 2004, as noted above, she was named a Whitney Biennial Artist. For the Whitney Biennial, she created two significant pieces of work, The Rite of Spring and Trea­sure Box. The latter was a burlesque show staged at the Coral Room, a now defunct New York City nightclub where Muz often swam, mermaid-­style, in a ­giant aquar­ium filled with fish. Her mermaid-­esque per­for­mance art caught the attention of the Italian art world and in 2005 she was invited to open the Valencia Biennale “by swimming as a mermaid” in “Eu­rope’s largest saltwater tank, boasting 400 fish, 2 sharks and 1 nasty eel.”21 The mid-2000s w ­ ere busy years for Muz. In addition to the Whitney Biennial, in 2004 she created another original, full-­length theatrical dance per­for­mance staged at PS122, I Am the Man and You Are the Moon on Me.22 With the “logic of a supermarket romance novel,” Muz performed as “the moon in love with 6 male dancers who ­were in a race to colonize her.”23 The dance opens with Muz inside a ­g iant balloon, invoking the central motif of the moon in this “magical sci-fi tragedy” that featured a “combination of dance and visual spectacle.”24 This opening tableau became the foundation for her balloon act that would win her the Miss Exotic World title in 2006, suggesting the intimate ways that all of her art products are intertwined with and inform one another. In the final moments of I am the Man and You Are the Moon on Me, Muz stands on her head, naked, as an American flag is planted in her anus—­symbolizing how, according to Muz, “the female body is conquered territory.”25 In her promotional material, Muz gives the same weight to her shows and accolades in burlesque and ­those in the legitimate art world. She was crowned Miss Exotic World in 2006 and Miss Coney Island in 2005 (as discussed in chapter 5). In 2006, Muz also received the second Ethyl Eichelberger Award from PS122, an award that had gone in its inaugural year to fellow nightlife

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Figure 7.2. ​Julie Atlas Muz on stage with her large balloon prop before she gets her body into the balloon. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

per­for­mance artist, Taylor Mac (whose A 24-­Decade History of Popu­lar M ­ usic would become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). For her Eichelberger award, Muz created a full-­length solo dance titled Divine Comedy of an Exquisite Corpse. The show begins with Muz emerging from a ­giant duffel bag that had been sitting on the stage since the patrons entered the theatre, invoking

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post-9/11 heightened security. “I would like to change the title [of Divine Comedy of an Exquisite Corpse] to Unintended Baggage or Unattended Baggage,” Muz declared in our interview. “It’s a better title . . . ​for that piece.”26 That show opened the same weekend that Womanizer, her show in which fine art meets mayhem, closed. The amount of original and significant work that Muz created in the mid2000s is staggering. Yet simply rehearsing the chronology of her numerous burlesque and art world successes cannot portray the scope and significance of her work. Instead, I next describe and contextualize some of her most provocative short-­and long-­format work. The goal is to put her artistic endeavors in a larger context, including 1960s–1970s female per­for­mance artists, second-­wave feminism, and avant-­garde theatrical traditions such as Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Charles Ludlam’s Ridicu­lous Theatre.

Subverting the Dance Canon with the Rite of Spring Muz grounds her work in dance and choreography, though she si­mul­ta­ neously challenges expectations about ­t hose art forms’ traditions. “Through the power of dance I tell stories that are beautiful, po­liti­cal, and emotional, with a bold and theatrical irreverence,” Muz explains, adding that “I use humor, positive sexuality, and glamour to address serious topics in a playful manner.”27 Muz celebrates the dance canon while subverting it: she employs multiple per­for­mance mediums to create her short-­and long-­format work and takes a playful approach to serious topics in provocative and engaging ways. Her exploitation of artifice, exaggeration, and hyperbole is in stark contrast to the minimalism and cele­bration of everyday movement highlighted in much 1960s dance and per­for­mance art. Yvonne Rainer’s quotidian choreography and the experimental, interdisciplinary work she staged at Judson Church rejected spectacle, as she describes in her “No Manifesto”: No to spectacle. No to virtuosity.

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No to transformations and magic and make-­believe. No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image. No to the heroic. No to the anti-­heroic. No to trash imagery. No to involvement of performer or spectator. No to style. No to camp. No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer. No to eccentricity. No to moving or being moved.28 What Rainer says “no” to can be read as benchmarks of Muz’s work, and burlesque more broadly. Muz says yes to camp, yes to spectacle, yes to magic, yes to style, yes to glamour, yes to trash imagery, and yes to eccentricity. While Rainer says “no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer,” Muz is well known for ­doing exactly that.29 Muz’s simultaneous cele­bration and subversion of con­temporary dance is evident in her unique rendition of the Rite of Spring, choreographed and staged at DTW (Dance Theatre Workshop) as part of the Whitney Biennial in 2004. The original Rite of Spring, with ­music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, caused quite a stir when it premiered in Paris in 1913. Though considered extremely avant-­garde for its time, t­ oday the Rite of Spring is generally recognized as a canonical work in the classical dance and ­music worlds. When Muz discovered that she was a Whitney Biennial artist, she de­cided to return to this “birth of modernism.”30 “DTW is a proper theater so I wanted to do a proper milestone,” Muz explained, and she took the classic piece and put her unique twist on it, making innovative and at times startling production choices.31 Staying true to the virgin sacrifice theme in the original Rite of Spring, Muz built her version around the figure of the murdered child beauty pageant contestant JonBenét Ramsey. Muz describes Ramsey as “the virgin sacrifice of my generation,” adding that it “made sense to honor her by making her the central figure of the dance.”32

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The performers all appeared mimetically dressed as Ramsey in blonde wigs and exaggerated makeup, as Kate Valentine, wearing a matronly pastel dress, performed the role of Ramsey’s m ­ other. Muz hired a hodge-­podge of performers, from formally trained dancers to nightlife characters, to perform as the Ramseys. Her use of untrained dancers and her practice of developing movement vocabulary in rehearsal and through improvisation is in line with the work of the innovative postmodern dancer and choreographer Ann Halprin, who collaborated with “architects, paint­ers, sculptors and untrained p ­ eople in any of ­these fields, encouraging them to explore unusual choreographic ideas.”33 Muz uses improvisation as Halprin does: “to find out what our bodies could do, not learning somebody ­else’s pattern or technique.”34 Similarly, Muz creates movement vocabulary organically through improvisational rehearsals with performers, some who have no dance training. In this way, Muz subverts the dance canon by emphasizing storytelling and exaggerated aesthetics over disciplinary training. Muz’s choices are grounded in yet challenge classic source material. Though her Rite of Spring would not necessarily be categorized as burlesque (as a noun), it has a decidedly burlesque (as a verb) quality about it. Rather than using a traditional score, Muz de­cided to use a live rendition of Stravinsky’s m ­ usic—­scored and performed by the Butchershop Quartet, a Chicago-­ based rock band—­t hat added a modern layer onto the classic material. Her movement vocabulary included traditional, lyrical phrases as well as unexpected juxtapositions of ballet and the bizarre: dancers simulate masturbation with invisible unicorn horns while gliding across the stage in relevé. In one extremely bizarre sequence, the performers hop up and down several times, their arms rounded in first position, fingertips touching. The hopping move ­ripples up to their mouths, their lips lifted wide and high in an exaggerated exposure of their teeth, and the dancers chatter their jaws open and closed several times and move their arms up a few inches. The phrase repeats as the Ramseys hop closer to the ­mother figure ­until they surround her. This sequence in par­tic­u­lar, and the dance overall, borrows from while subverting traditional dance in unexpected and startling ways.

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Muz’s bizarre and beautiful (and at times explic­itly shocking) Rite of Spring was positively received by most audiences and critics and had an extended run at DTW. ­Others ­weren’t as enamored with the production and Muz’s choices. Muz describes an audience member who complained to the venue’s staff about the show: “She kept saying, ‘I r­ eally wanted to walk out, but I ­couldn’t. I was so offended I ­couldn’t walk.’ ”35 Muz considers such responses to her work as positive indicators of its effectiveness, insisting that “it’s a good show if somebody gets offended.”36 To be offended to the point of paralysis is telling and speaks volumes about the impact of Muz’s work. It also invokes Brecht’s intention with his Epic Theatre. Brecht believed that theatre should compel the audience to action. In his view, audiences should not get caught up emotionally by identifying with the performers and instead should be compelled to right the injustices presented on stage. Brecht describes the difference between audience responses to traditional dramatic theatre and Epic Theatre: The dramatic theater’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too—­Just like me—­It’s only natu­ral—­It’ll never change—­The sufferings of this man appalls [sic] me, ­because they are inescapable—­That’s ­great art; it all seems the most obvious t­ hing in the world—­I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh. The epic theater’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it—­That’s not the way—­That’s extraordinary, hardly believable—­It’s got to stop—­The sufferings of this man appall me, b ­ ecause they are unnecessary—­That’s ­great art: nothing obvious in it—­I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.37

In Brecht’s definition of “­great art,” t­ here is “nothing obvious in it.” As in the case of the spectator who was moved to paralysis by Muz’s Rite of Spring, theatre and dance have the power to invoke strong responses. “It’s got to stop,” Brecht proposes in Epic Theatre, a sentiment likely echoed by Muz’s para­lyzed spectator. Though ­there are differences, Epic Theatre and Muz’s Rite of Spring have some t­hings in common—­most notably, the use of theatrical tools to

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evoke audience response. Brecht believed that theatre could serve as a valuable po­liti­cal tool that gets the audience to think critically, and Muz’s work suggests that she shares this view. Her use of shocking imagery would reach a critical apex with Womanizer, her cocurated fine art show that featured exploded designer dresses; freak pinups; and Muz’s alter ego, Mr. Pussy, among other provocative art works.

Womanizer Womanizer was a “group exhibition of dangerous females” that opened at the Deitch Proj­ects in New York City in 2007. Womanizer featured visual, installation, and per­for­mance art from Muz, Kembra Pfahler, E. V. Day, Breyer P-­Orridge, Vaginal Creme Davis, and Bambi the Mermaid.38 The show’s title and imagery ­were meant to parody and thereby dismantle the very concept of a womanizer, using “horror, hedonism, pandrogyny, and pus­sies,” all of which “figured prominently” in the exhibit of installations, sculptures, photography, and live per­for­mances.39 The exhibit used the word “womanizer” “not in the sense of a womanizing male subject but rather to ‘ize’ with or to saturate with femaleness.” 40 The result was a startling exhibition that “illustrated the unique vocabulary of ­these funny, transgressive, beautiful heroines.” 41 Muz gave the show both her unique curatorial skills and her original art. One of the most transgressive displays at the show came from Muz. When ­people entered the Deitch Proj­ect gallery space, they ­were greeted by images and a video of Mr. Pussy—­who specializes in lip-­synching live and recorded “songs of freedom”—­saying hello in several languages.42 Muz had been performing Mr. Pussy for a short time in burlesque and downtown per­for­mance art venues before featuring him in the Womanizer exhibit and cata­logue. When guest lecturing in my History of American Burlesque course in the Drama Department at New York University in 2006, Muz introduced students to Mr. Pussy (then a new character for her) by lifting her dress over her head, thrusting her hips forward, and using her fin­gers to manipulate

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the labia of her vagina to lip-­synch. A coat was quickly thrown over the door. The students (and professor) sat stunned but mesmerized. Mr. Pussy was on prominent display at the Womanizer exhibition. In addition to the video greeting, Mr. Pussy was featured in six large-­format Polaroid photo­g raphs that displayed extreme close-­ups of Muz’s genitals dressed in the costumes of stock characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Santa Claus. In all the images, Mr. Pussy wears a hat (top hat, turban, fedora, or Santa Claus hat), and in several he wears glasses, googly eyes, or a monocle. Some photos feature Mr. Pussy smoking a cigarette, pipe, or cigar. All the images feature Muz’s inner labia as the mouth of Mr.  Pussy.43 Muz explains that Mr. Pussy began as a po­liti­cal statement against the administration of President George W. Bush: “When Bush got reelected, that was the last time I shaved the majority of my pubic hair for ‘No More Bush.’ ” 44 Muz’s tongue-­in-­cheek life as art proj­ect became a regular character in her per­for­mance arsenal, and “since then,” she explains, “Mr. Pussy has been singing songs of freedom.” 45 Mr. Pussy is pure Muz theatrics: irreverent, explicit, and hilarious. That spirit permeates her work from her fine art to her full-­length theatrical productions that employ burlesque, acting, producing, and beyond. Muz has mastered the art of burlesque (both as a noun and as a verb) as she pokes fun, using humor, parody, and sexuality throughout her art making. Muz’s irreverent and shocking spirit permeated the Womanizer exhibition and cata­logue. The cata­logue’s cover features an image of the bottom half of a ­woman’s body protruding out of a meat grinder, her bare legs all that’s left ­after the rest of her body has been ground into a pile of meat.46 The curators w ­ ere intentionally invoking the cover of a (now infamous) 1978 issue of Hustler that featured a similar image—­which brought about feminist outrage over the explicit depiction of w ­ omen as meat. W ­ omen against Vio­lence in Pornography and Media protested the “all meat” Hustler issue through grassroots activism, launching a series of demonstrations, a petition signing campaign, picketing, and raising awareness of pornography as an assault against w ­ omen.47 The publishers of Hustler defended the infamous

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image, claiming that it was “intended to poke fun” at Larry Flynt’s recent religious conversion and attempts to transform the magazine’s raunchy ­ ill no longer hang w ­ omen up like pieces of meat,” Flynt promimage.48 “We w ised in bold print on the cover of the issue, right next to the volatile image. According to Carolyn Bronstein, the publisher “acknowledged [that] the intended humor was not widely appreciated.” 49 Intended parody can get lost in translation, and this remains one of the challenges in understanding neo-­burlesque and sexually explicit images employed as po­liti­cal commentary. The images on the cover of Hustler and the WOMANIZER cata­logue are still shocking. Scott Ewalt, a New York City nightlife legend and accomplished visual artist, designed the cover of the WOMANIZER cata­logue.50 He recalls first seeing the Hustler cover in the kitchen of Susan Tyrell, a Broadway actress who ­later in her ­career starred in sexploitation films, and he ­later saw it displayed by “a very militant, determined” feminist who “stood in Astor place for 20 years with a blowup of it.” 51 Ewalt de­cided to use the provocative image on a flier to promote a party he was throwing, and when Pfahler saw the flier in Ewalt’s home, she asked him to re-­create it with her as the model. She and Ewalt “chose it [for the cata­logue cover] as a tribute to the punk side of early feminism and empowered it with Kembra [Pfahler]’s choice to be portrayed that way.” 52 The curators consciously co-­opted and appropriated the still shocking image to introduce the dangerous w ­ oman artists featured in WOMANIZER. The cata­logue offers a manifesto-­like reclaiming of the word “womanizer” as an active, engaged, and innately female power. Through several layers of tributes and parodies, the images in the cata­logue and the exhibition w ­ ere meant to be read in tandem with the manifesto-­like language of the text: WOMANIZER! Is a power­f ul display of motivation and hope for change and evolution of all ­things female. A spectacle of radiant CELE­BRATION of e­ very girl’s potential power WOMANIZER is NOT ­going to cook for you, clean your h ­ ouse, or wait for you to come home from work.

Figure 7.3. ​In an intentional parody of the infamous Hustler cover from 1978, Kembra Pfahler’s body is turned into meat on the cover of the WOMANIZER cata­logue. Photo and layout by Scott Ewalt. Printed by permission.

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­Here female power is recognized and celebrated: language with derogatory or negative connotations is coupled with words imbued with feminine characteristics (“fertile, pregnant” and “nurse you on the milk”) to reconfigure both. Expectations of ­women’s roles and be­hav­iors are exploded, eradicating any monolithic conception of ­woman and instead encouraging individuals to “feel safe enough to love the w ­ oman in you.” The manifesto-­like description is mirrored in the explicit and controversial exhibition, which featured the explicit body—­invoking not only neo-­burlesque but the long history of female per­for­mance artists who used their bodies as central figures in their art. Next I explore explicit body per­for­mance artists of the 1960s–1970s to contextualize how the use of the body as canvas haunts the stages that Muz and other neo-­burlesque performers now inhabit, both fully engaged and disrobed.

Female Per­f or­m ance Artists and the Body as Canvas In all of Muz’s short-­and long-­format work, we see the residual remembering of female per­for­mance artists who r­ ose to prominence in the 1960s–1970s. Female per­for­mance artists during this era collectively rejected somatic phobia—­a fear of the body that results in its repression—in exchange for fore­ ese artists flaunted rather than suppressed grounding the explicit body.54 Th their bodies, using the body as canvas and tool for the expression of ideas and politics. As Rebecca Schneider shows in The Explicit Body in Per­for­mance, “artists make their own bodies explicit as the stage, canvas, or screen across

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which social agendas of privilege and disprivilege have been manipulated.” 55 Female per­for­mance artists from the 1960s–1970s to the neo-­burlesque movement “use the explicit body as strategy” and as a stage that allows “social theatrics” to bloom.56 That strategy should be read as intentional, full of commentary, and “riddled with irony,” as Schneider puts it, creating a “troubled space between send-up humor and searing critique.” 57 A combination of “send-up humor and searing critique” is evident throughout Muz’s work, as well as that of the neo-­burlesque performers discussed throughout this book. The conceptual per­for­mance artists who emerged in the 1960s w ­ ere more interested in pro­cess and ideas than the art object itself. ­These artists collaborated across disciplines, working on dance, musical, theatrical, and experimental per­for­mances that ­were staged in vari­ous venues throughout New York City—­including the first Avant-­Garde Festival at Car­ne­gie Hall; Meredith Monk’s per­for­mance of Juice at the Guggenheim Museum; and Judson Church on Washington Square, which “had recently opened its doors to artists’ per­for­mances..58 Co-­opted art venues and nontraditional spaces expanded opportunities for experimental per­for­mance. This was a fertile, exciting time of cross-­pollination and experimentation that helped usher in a new era for per­for­mance art. This new wave of experimental artists stripped away layers of artifice and expectations related to the body and disciplinary expectations in the performing arts. Many of the innovators of this explosion of conceptual per­ for­mance art ­were ­women who w ­ ere railing against artistic conventions and how the body—­and especially w ­ omen’s bodies—­were treated in art circles and society more broadly. Female artists of the 1960s began using their naked bodies literally as art objects, putting themselves in the frame as both the “artist and the nude,” as Muz did by attending the Whitney Biennial sans clothing.59 According to Kristine Stiles, feminist per­for­mance artists “have made their greatest contributions to the histories of art in the area of w ­ omen’s art actions,” and “art actions” and “per­for­mance art” have “been defined primarily by w ­ omen.” 60 The explicit body on display helped lay the foundation for feminist per­for­mance art that would “flourish in the 1970s.” 61 Muz’s work is si­mul­ta­neously a continuation and a reinvention of this lineage.

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The continuities between female per­for­mance artists from the 1960s–1970s and neo-­burlesque performers ­today are significant: they inhabit their bodies—in fact, they demand the “agency of the body”—in self-­authored ways.62 Schneider contextualizes the emergence of female per­for­mance artists like Carolee Schneeman, who “made her body the literal site of much of her art” while underscoring “her sexuality as a creative force in her work.” 63 Schneeman, a trained artist with a master of fine arts degree in painting, became involved in the Fluxus Movements, Kaprow’s Happenings, and Judson Church per­for­mances ­after moving to New York City in 1961.64 In 1962, she began developing a solo work, Eye Body, that made her body the literal site of the artwork.65 For Eye Body, she opened up her studio, inviting spectators to experience the environment as the work of art and, importantly, her naked body as an integral component of the mise-­en-­scène. According to Schneider, Eye Body was “among the very first American installations to incorporate the artist’s own body as primary visual and visceral terrain.” 66 Schneeman used her own body “as primary visual and visceral terrain” throughout much of her work. During “Interior Scroll,” first performed in 1975, Schneeman “outlines her body parts in paint” and then pulls a scroll from her vagina as she reads its text—­which criticized “men’s unwillingness to re­spect work made by ­women.” 67 About a de­cade ­earlier, Schneeman had used her body in her artwork with Meat Joy (1964), a piece that featured animal carcasses and blood as a surrogate for paint. Meat Joy appeared to refer to and parody Yves Klein’s experimental use of the ­human body as paintbrush. In his work of that period, Klein “emptied his studio of painting” and directed nude models to roll around in the “perfect blue paint” and “press” their bodies onto the canvas.68 Klein exclusively used nude female models, allowing him to reimagine the female body as an instrument or tool for him to manipulate while he “stayed clean, no longer dirtied with colour.” 69 An image from this work features a nude model dragging another model across a large canvas spread on the floor. The ­women, who are covered in paint, appear in opposition to Klein—­who “fittingly” could be dressed in “eve­ning wear” as ­women’s bodies and ­labor ­were burdened with creating the messy art.70 The credit for the artwork went to Klein, not to the now anonymous

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female “models” who technically painted the canvas. With Meat Joy, Schneeman subverts Klein’s desire to remain “clean” by covering her own body with blood and other “messy” materials, thereby referring to menstruation and si­mul­ta­neously parodying Klein. Like Muz ­today, female per­for­mance artists in the 1960s–1970s used the body as the site of—­and sexuality as integral to—­the art they created, much of which was experiential, per­for­mance based, and rendered shocking. Dance critic Joan Acocella argues that neo-­burlesque is a “late outgrowth of postmodern art. Like the work of some postmodernists (Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman), it is ironic, reflexive, exaggerated, historical, po­liti­cal, cheerfully sleezy.”71 Muz’s Whitney Biennial opening appearance seems plucked right out of the 1960s per­for­mance artists’ groundbreaking explicit pre­sen­ ta­tion of the body and sexuality. The combination of a ­woman putting her explicit body on display and invoking her sexuality as a creative force challenges the art establishment’s status quo. Female artists’ exploitation of their explicit bodies in their art making has been met with opposition. In a classic catch-22, female artists use their bodies to make a commentary about the art world’s systematic devaluation of ­women artists, and their work in turn often gets devalued b ­ ecause it uses the body as a primary tool in that critique. Schneeman was categorically dismissed as “self-­indulgent and narcissistic.”72 As noted above, Muz’s provocative work for the Whitney Biennial resulted in her receiving the Worst Humiliation for the Downtown Dance World award.73 Schneider suggests that under­lying such critiques is a fear of the power of the female body made explicit: “Nudity was not the prob­lem. Sexual display was not the prob­lem. The agency of the body displayed, the author-­ity of the agent—­t hat was the prob­lem with ­women’s work.”74 Muz’s work explic­itly, vibrantly, and unapologetically demonstrates the “author-­ity” of the body as agent and the agency of the body. Muz puts her explicit body on display with “author-­ity,” using the burlesque stage to pre­sent beautiful and poignant messages with radical and po­liti­cal bite. Though Acocella claims that burlesque is an outgrowth of postmodern art and not a revolutionary development, I argue that neo-­burlesque

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is indeed a revolutionary development of postmodern art that looks forward with a new version of feminism that flaunts the body politic.75 Burlesque is all about making fun—­poking fun and creating an atmosphere of enjoyable, lighthearted entertainment. Even in her long-­format work with more somber themes and aesthetics, at its core, Muz’s work burlesques the art canon. And this making fun—in stark contrast to the often austere tone of much traditional dance and per­for­mance art—­makes neo-­burlesque dif­ fer­ent from the postmodern per­for­mance art that preceded it. Muz’s approach to art making is improvisational and experimental, and such a lighthearted take on the pro­cess is central to neo-­burlesque’s ethos and its spawning of a new sexual revolution. Next I turn to a close reading of one of Muz’s most poignant short-­format acts that offers a provocative feminist narrative of escaping the bonds that bind. I contextualize Muz’s per­ for­mances in nightlife entertainment, connecting them to art cabaret and Ridicu­lous Theatre. This direct link between early neo-­burlesque and per­ for­mance art offers a radical retelling of neo-­burlesque’s history by rooting neo-­burlesque in the avant-­garde.

Escape: Improvisation and the Productive Possibility of Failure Muz’s rope escape routine is a s­ imple but incredibly power­f ul act with biting social commentary and stunning visual effect. As the act begins, Muz is onstage with a rope wound around her body, securing her hands, and her wrists are tied together. She wears a blindfold, the rope, and nothing e­ lse. Her motionless body is bathed in a spotlight. The ­music begins. Muz stands still. The lyr­ics to “You ­Don’t Own Me” blare out: “You d ­ on’t own me / I’m not just one of your many toys.”76 Muz sways to the lyr­ics: “You ­don’t own me / D ­ on’t say I ­can’t go with other boys.” Muz rhythmically swings her arms to the left and right, fighting against the tightly bound ropes and punctuating key lyr­ics. As the ­music swells, she falls to the ground: “And d ­ on’t tell me what to do/Don’t tell me what to say.”77 She writhes on the ground, rises to her knees, and fights the ropes. The lyr­

Figure 7.4. ​Julie Atlas Muz’s rope escape act staged to Leslie Gore’s “You ­Don’t Own Me” provides a s­ imple yet stunning visual image and provocative message. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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ics help tell the story: “And please, when I go out with you/Don’t put me on display.” The chorus returns and Muz stands still—an alert stillness filled with tension. Her mouth clenches the end of the rope. She holds a beat as the chorus returns (“You d ­ on’t own me/Don’t try to change me in any way”) to remind viewers of the act’s message: “You d ­ on’t own me/don’t tie me down ’cause I’d never stay.” Muz then continues to strug­g le against the ropes, throwing her limbs around as she tries to escape. Fi­nally, she f­ rees her upper body from the ropes and rips her blindfold off. She punishes the rope, flinging it to the ground. The lyr­ics help tell the story: “I’m young and I love to be young/I’m ­free and I love to be ­free.” And she responds to the words “To live my life the way I want/To say and do what­ever I please.” Muz stops struggling. She reaches her arms overhead, her hands still bound by the ropes, her breath coming fast and hard. That stillness is visually striking and perfectly choreographed, giving the audience and Muz a break from her frenetic strug­gle. Muz holds the stillness, the audience holds its breath, and then magic happens: the ropes around Muz’s waist and hips magically (and poetically and beautifully) begin to unwind. Though at that moment the m ­ usic is solely instrumental, one can almost hear the refrain “You ­don’t own me” as the ropes slowly release Muz from her bonds. The image of Muz tied in ropes juxtaposed with the song’s lyr­ics creates a strong visual and narrative message. Muz describes her intention ­behind the act: “I suppose what I want [is for] them to have the empathic feeling at the end that they can break out of their bindings. That’s it. It’s a pretty straightforward statement. You know if you can see what’s wrapping you. If you can see what’s constraining you, then you can get rid of it.”78 Though the message of the act is “straightforward,” Muz explains that the ropes in the act can be interpreted in at least two dif­fer­ent ways: the message “can be what­ever you want. The m ­ usic is Leslie Gore’s ‘You D ­ on’t Own Me,’ and that can be a gender t­ hing. But it can also be that the ropes d ­ on’t own me. That your confines, what restrains you ­don’t [sic] define you. And what defines you is your strug­g le against them. Your ability to shed them. Th ­ ere’s two parts: ­t here’s the strug­gle against them and your ability to shed them. And that part came with maturity. The ability to shed them came with maturity

Figure 7.5. ​Julie Atlas Muz strug­gles against the physical and meta­phorical ropes that bind her. She performed this act as her step down routine from Reigning Queen of Burlesque at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in 2007. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

Figure 7.6. ​­After first experimenting with this act through improvisation, Julie Atlas Muz has learned to control the ropes—­including at this moment, when they appear to magically unwind from her body. Photo © Ed Barnas. Printed by permission.

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of the act, maturity of me.” 79 ­Here Muz speaks meta­phor­ically about the meaning of the act as well as the technical aspects of performing it. This act, as well as Muz’s work more broadly, demonstrates a burlesque approach to per­for­mance: she takes a topic or idea, turns it on its head, and uses her explicit body to communicate her message. This demonstrates Muz’s improvisational approach to choreography and act making. The first time she performed the act, it was improvised. “I performed it the day I bought the rope,” Muz explains. “I was listening to the m ­ usic. I was like, ‘Oh! I know what I can do to this song. It’s obvious.’ And then I bought the rope, and I went on the Red Vixen stage, and I performed it.” 80 ­Here the incubation period from concept to stage was incredibly short and relatively seamless. Muz describes creating her balloon act in a similarly improvisational way: I never practiced it b ­ ecause it was super expensive. It was 25 bucks a pop. So I never practiced it. I brought two or three balloons to Las Vegas [for the Miss Exotic World competition]. At my tech, which was my time [when] I was g­ oing to practice it, the balloon popped right before I could get in. I was like, “Fuck.” I was waiting backstage before g­ oing on to perform at the Miss Exotic World, holding a balloon prob­ably forty-­five [minutes], an hour and fifteen, praying to the balloon, praying to the balloon, praying to the balloon. And I just got out [onstage] and did it. It was dance improvisation at that time. It was not choreographed. It was not set. It was in the moment. It was improvisation.81

Muz first performed her rope escape act and balloon act as improvisations onstage. Using the stage as a rehearsal studio was an attractive feature of early neo-­burlesque, as it gave performers the space to experiment with new props and acts. Muz advises performers to experiment onstage: “for nightclub stuff, d ­ on’t rehearse too much. It’s nice when it feels live. The audience knows.” 82 Muz’s refusal to take herself—­a nd even high-­stake performances—­too seriously is refreshing. Many of her iconic acts have been rehearsed on stages that other performers would likely have used to perform more polished acts.

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In 2012 at the Burlesque Hall of Fame, Muz did a trick that, she had told me ­earlier that day, she had not yet mastered.83 The trick involved stepping onto the seat of a chair with one foot, the back of the chair with the other, and balancing ­until the back of the chair glided to the ground. During the per­for­ mance, Muz attempted the trick twice. She ran ­toward the chair with a focus that was spellbinding, but the chair refused to behave as Muz intended. The second attempt was equally unsuccessful. But the failure of the trick did not ­matter: it contributed to the act’s tension and feeling of aliveness. This act also contained the single most memorable stocking trick I have yet to see. ­After peeling off her thigh-­high stocking—an often-­used trope in burlesque—­ she placed the stocking over her head and pulled out a gun. The visual was unexpected and stunning, and it served as an overt commentary on gun vio­ lence in Amer­i­ca. With this ­simple move, Muz transformed a predicable stocking peel into an innovative and signifying practice of re­sis­tance. The stocking further transformed Muz physically, while alluding to the dangerous, and possibly criminal, nature of w ­ omen who take t­ hese kinds of risks. As this example shows, Muz’s use of live per­for­mance opportunities to experiment and improvise have not always gone as planned. With her rope escape act she had to learn how to control the ropes. She describes a high-­ stake per­for­mance where she failed to escape: One of the first times I performed that act, I d ­ idn’t know how to tie the ropes for show yet. And my friend Anita tied me up. This was at Martha at M ­ other. Merce Cunningham shared the stage with me that night. [Mikhail] Baryshnikov was in the audience. Debbie Harry was in the audience. My friend Anita tied me so tight I d ­ idn’t escape at all. Not a bit. I was stuck. I was stuck. I was covered in bruises from trying to escape. I was exhausted. And I failed. I failed. I ­couldn’t get out at all.84

Though Muz describes being stuck as a “failure,” that can be read as a productive quality. Baryshnikov approached Muz ­after the failed per­for­mance and proclaimed, simply but emphatically, “that was intense.” 85 And with that, Muz’s act was rendered noteworthy by a world-­renowned performer and choreographer.

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Muz’s fearlessness on stage and willingness to take risks is partly a product of her unabashed refusal to be contained by the hegemony of mastery or perfection. In The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam theorizes that the productive qualities of failure are counterhegemonic. He connects the fear of failure to a cap­i­tal­ist system that rewards mastery, and one of the by-­products of this is an overemphasis on being serious. As Halberstam explains, “Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant.” 86 Muz’s experimentations onstage and in her c­ areer defy disciplinary expectations. Ironically, her refusal to conform and be contained has made her a darling of the legitimate art world. Halberstam points out that terms like “serious” and “rigorous” in academic contexts serve as “code words” for “disciplinary correctness,” and that this applies to other contexts as well—­including, I would like to add, neo-­burlesque per­for­mance.87 As he explains, ­these words “signal a form of training and learning that confirms what is already known according to approved methods of knowing, but they do not allow for visionary insights or flights of fancy.” 88 Muz’s work defies codification, as she allows her “flights of fancy” to guide her art-­making pro­cess rather than relying on prescribed notions of what her work should look like. Mac similarly approaches failure as a productive force: “Uptown, failure is unacceptable, but suddenly downtown I found this access to a world that was just embracing of per­for­mance and of difference, and of being in the moment, and kookiness, and failure. [Downtown] t­ hey’ll clap more for you if you fail.” 89 As Muñoz puts it, “within failure we can locate a kernel of potentiality,” and it is that kernel from which Muz’s and Mac’s innovative and groundbreaking work grows.90 The type of failure Muñoz theorizes “is not an aesthetic failure but, instead, a po­liti­cal refusal.”91 That po­liti­cal refusal to conform can be found throughout the per­for­mances and among the performers described in this book. Importantly, nightlife per­for­mance gives performers like Muz and Mac almost constant stage time. “When I moved to NYC I came to be involved in experimental dance and theater,” Muz commented, “but the total amount of rehearsals vs. stage time did not satisfy my desire to be onstage,” so she “quickly fell into nightclub performing.”92 With the incubation time between

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concept and per­for­mance contracted in nightlife and burlesque settings, performers are able to experiment or incorporate current events directly into their acts. This can happen on the day of a gig. While packing for a show, Muz might decide to allude to a current event or the po­liti­cal climate or to experiment with a striking image. Using established costume pieces or ­music she has performed to before, she can craft a new act from established pieces. In traditional theatre or dance, this almost instantaneous execution of an idea is an anomaly, but it is one of the key features of neo-­burlesque. Muz describes this as “throwing something on stage,” and though it has been integral to nightlife and burlesque per­for­mance, she laments that it has declined: [Burlesque is] an achievable format that I’m fortunate to have access to on many stages in New York . . . ​so I can throw something onstage. Although throwing something onstage, you c­ an’t r­ eally do that anymore. ’Cause the quality of every­t hing has gotten higher and higher. So that’s a drag. In the past week or so I’ve refound my true love of go-go dancing. ­Because that allows me to perform without the pressure of being good. And now [in] burlesque, you have to be good. Your costume has to be hemmed. You have to know where you are ­going in the number. That ­wasn’t always the case.93

The luxury of performing “without the pressure of being good” was one of the key features of the early neo-­burlesque revival. ­Here, experimentation, improvisation, and the liveness of pos­si­ble mis­haps and ­mistakes was central to neo-­burlesque’s ethos. Being unafraid of failure is also a benchmark of neo-­burlesque as a new sexual revolution, one that has its roots in previous avant-­garde per­for­mances and performers, as I discuss more fully next.

Nightlife, Art Cabaret, and Ridicu­l ous Theatre Neo-­burlesque is largely nightlife entertainment, and framing it as such helps unpack its potential and limitations as a performing art. ­Here I return to historicizing to understand the relationship between neo-­burlesque and

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other types of avant-­garde per­for­mance such as art cabaret and Ridicu­lous Theatre. The direct link between early neo-­burlesque and avant-­garde per­ for­mance provides an alternative to burlesque’s historical rec­ord, one that makes a significant contribution to understanding neo-­burlesque’s roots in the avant-­garde. Art cabaret designates a move of the avant-­garde per­for­mance art of the 1960s and 1970s to nightclubs in the 1980s. The new avant-­garde art cabaret was influenced by punk rock and the nightclubs where it was performed. RoseLee Goldberg describes the postmodern pastiche of art cabaret: “They created their own version of art cabaret with some old-­fashioned pizazz from favourite TV and vaudev­ille shows, touched h ­ ere and ­there with a l­ittle seediness that sufficed as parody.”94 Early art cabaret became the breeding ground that produced experimental per­for­mance artists such as Ethyl Eichelberger, Karen Finley, Penny Arcade, and Kiki and Herb, to name just a few.95 The postmodern pastiche Goldberg describes not only sounds like burlesque, it is burlesque (and burlesque is art cabaret). Art cabaret of the 1980s is the petri dish from which the neo-­burlesque movement emerged in the 1990s. Goldberg locates art cabaret in downtown New York City clubs such as the Pyramid, a venue that also hosted performers like Eichelberger and, ­later, the early influential neo-­burlesque producer and performer Lady Ace with her punk rock style of burlesque.96 Nightlife per­for­mance breaks traditional theatrical conventions, including the subversion of dramatic text as doctrine (and instead prioritizing the body in and of per­for­mance), favoring improvisation and experimentation over rehearsed perfection, and the eradication of the fourth wall. It is precisely in this environment that the neo-­burlesque movement in New York City was born. In fact, many of the original neo-­burlesque vanguard performers discussed in this book got their start in nightclubs in New York City, often performing with the revolutionary per­for­mance artists of art cabaret. Nightlife performers developed unique strategies for dealing with the material challenges of performing in nightclubs. As Goldberg notes, the “particularities of club per­for­mances provided useful limits: the result was work that was unusually sharp in its focus and lucid in its execution.”97 ­These

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artists created work despite the odds: nightclubs did not necessarily provide an environment for a captive audience, as they ­were primarily focused on making a profit.98 Performers began creating “rough, quickly sketched works” that w ­ ere visually engaging and theatrically extreme to help solve some of the prob­lems of loud audiences, darkened spaces, and intoxicated clubgoers.99 The scholar and archivist Joe E. Jeffreys explains that nightclubs have served as a kind of “boot camp” for performers who have had to earn—­and fight for—­the audience’s attention. He describes how Eichelberger used rhymes as they “stood out over the bar chatter.”100 As Jeffreys puts it, nightclub performers have had to learn how to “take the audience hostage,” a descriptor that invokes Muñoz’s notion of “terrorist drag.”101 Once taken hostage, the audience becomes an integral part of the show: using call and response engages the audience, and theatre games are often employed, both of which get the audience “off their feet and keep them active,” as Jeffreys explains, and “awake”—as in the context of Taylor Mac’s epic shows, including his twenty-­ four-­hour mega spectacle, A 24-­Decade History of Popu­lar M ­ usic.102 ­There is a direct link between nightlife luminaries and the Ridicu­lous Theatre of Charles Ludlam. The Ridicu­lous Theatre emerged in the mid1960s in New York City as an avant-­garde theatrical form that pushed against the tenets of theatrical realism. Pop­u­lar­ized by the playwright and performer Charles Ludlam, this theatrical form was based on exaggeration, camp, and postmodern pastiche. Ridicu­lous Theatre began as an under­ ground ensemble com­pany that achieved “mainstream ac­cep­tance by influencing the way theatre is perceived and expanding its expressive means.”103 Like burlesque, Ludlam’s plays served as social commentary by parodying what was happening in popu­lar culture. Naturalism was replaced with exaggeration. Humor was key. Acting was more pre­sen­ta­tional than repre­ sen­ta­tional, in the spirit of Brechtian Epic Theatre.104 Ludlam often cast nonprofessional actors in nontraditional ways, much as Muz has cast nondancers in her dance pieces. Cross-­gender casting was common. Improvisation was central to the productions. Ridicu­lous Theatre was campy and excessive, and it sought to entertain. Ludlam categorized it as “queer theatre” and explained: “This theatre is weird, it is odd, it’s peculiar, it’s eccentric, it’s

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dif­fer­ent. That is implied, you see, aside from the slightly smarmy l­ ittle sexual reference in it.”105 The Ridicu­lous Theatre of nightclub-­based performers is predicated on this commitment to the bizarre, using the stage to make satire and social commentary in experimental and improvisational ways. Nightlife per­ for­ mance from impresarios like Eichelberger, Kiki and Herb, Mac, and Muz has its roots in Ridicu­lous Theatre.106 Sean Edgecomb describes how Ridicu­lous Theatre “juxtaposed the modernist tradition of the avant-­garde with camp, clowning, and drag . . . ​it mixed high literary culture with low pop culture, generating a pastiche that reflected and satirized con­ temporary society.”107 He traces the spirit of Ridicu­lous Theatre in the work of Mac, a trained actor who started performing in gay clubs in New York City and Provincetown, NY, and developed his signature style of poignant storytelling through extravagant visuals, live ­music, and biting social commentary. Mac’s drag is not based on realism or an attempt to replicate and escalate feminine aesthetics; instead, he uses his face as a canvas to layer on paint, glitter, and other objects such as tacks, sequins, and eyelashes placed in unexpected places. This layering is si­mul­ta­neously visually striking and symbolic: “By layering Ludlam’s clown (an entertainer combining traditional comic skills with camp) with the alternative persona of the fool (a figure whose comic identity is a reflection of his status as a born outsider), Mac provocatively adopts and extends Ludlam’s Ridicu­lous, employing it as a tool for po­liti­cal satire and radical social commentary.”108 Performers like Mac and Muz incorporate and layer aspects of nightlife, theatre, dance, ­music, and drag to create a unique tapestry of per­for­ mance that is grounded in per­for­mances of the past, including ­those of the 1960s–1970 female per­for­mance artists, Ridicu­lous Theatre, and art cabaret, but infuses it with modern themes and politics. This new theatrical form was born in nightclubs but con­temporary nightlife performers like Muz and Mac have escalated t­hese traditions with over-­the-­top aesthetics and large-­scale spectacles. Importantly, Mac and Muz both developed their unique per­for­ mance styles in the “unconventional laissez-­faire climate of downtown Manhattan, where the theatre scene provided room for experimentation and failure that enabled [Mac] to thrive.”109

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Muz has forged a provocative and varied ­career using a host of techniques borrowed from nightlife and traditional dance and theatre to create short-­and long-­format works that push bound­a ries and expand what both burlesque and theatre can look like. Throughout, a burlesque sensibility permeates her work. In the introduction to this book, I defined burlesque as an amateur art form predicated on a participatory culture that defies mainstream commodification. One could hardly call Julie Atlas Muz, Taylor Mac, or any of the artists discussed in this book amateurs or even professional amateurs. They are consummate professionals who use their craft to entertain and to critique a host of social inequalities, including heteronormativity, patriarchy, ableism, and other identity-­denying systems. Yet throughout their work is a playfulness, a lighthearted approach to even the most serious of inequities. This is serious art and messaging wrapped up in fun packaging, an elixir that makes even the most biting social commentary sweet to consume. Muz’s mission is s­ imple: “I generally want to say something. I d ­ on’t want it to be about nothing. I want the audience to leave more inspired than when they walked in.”110 Her unique approach to art making ensures that regardless of the form being used, she creates “dream spaces” that are “ideally layer[ed]” with meaning.111 Her “dream spaces” are a type of utopia, a beautiful ­imagined world where mermaids get to swim center stage, and po­liti­ cal, avant-­garde strippers can become New Yorkers of the Year. Burlesque is the place where Muz was able to imagine and create her utopic dreamworlds, and they are radical, irreverent, and wholly feminist. Neo-­burlesque, thanks to Muz and artists like her, celebrates and boasts a new type of feminism, one that flaunts the body and the body politic. This new feminism is nothing short of a new sexual revolution. The purpose of this book has been to describe a moment in time as early neo-­burlesque innovators in New York City in­ven­ted new ways to express themselves on the stage. I have discussed that moment via critical theory, original interviews, and intersecting historical contexts. My goal through all the chapters has been to shine light on the radical performers and per­for­ mances that began as a revolutionary art form that railed against the status quo. As Bunny Love describes it, “[We] r­ eally felt like we w ­ ere having a

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revolution. That we ­were pushing the envelope. That we ­were on the edge. That we had something impor­tant to say. And our art was ­really impor­tant. And it was shocking and educating and moving ­people in a real way. I think we all r­ eally r­ eally felt that. Like it was something new and it was something power­ful.”112 That feeling of revolution can be found across the performers and per­for­mances described in this book. This book documents a tiny moment of that revolution in the hope that it may inspire more discourse and more art making. I hope that new narratives get continuously told on neo-­burlesque stages, and that critical eyes are ­t here to document and analyze them. Neo-­burlesque is so much more than just tawdry, late-­night fun. Rather, it is a space where radical reconfigurations of gender, identity, and being can be imaged and staged in glorious, spectacular, exuberant, shiny, and excessive ways, inviting us all to put glitter on our scars and join the revolution.

Conclusion nasty ­women and female chauvinist pigs

We still need feminism. It is impor­tant to acknowledge that burlesque is not unequivocally progressive or necessarily always feminist. It is also impor­ tant to remember that burlesque represents the larger social order in which it exists: it can offer counterhegemonic narratives, but it also can reinscribe norms, a paradox always already evident in neo-­burlesque. The ghosts of patriarchy still haunt burlesque stages. Some critics of burlesque argue that it is antithetical to feminism. Critiques include that the harm comes from ­women exploiting their bodies in ways that appear to resemble and perpetuate patriarchy, thereby undoing the advancements that have come from the ­women’s liberation movement. For Laura Mulvey, sexual imbalance in society has created the display of the ­woman as a “sexual object as the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin-­ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, and plays to and signifies male desire.”1 As I discussed in chapter 3, Mulvey examines the framing of w ­ oman as object in the cinema’s golden age, when ­woman’s “to-­be-­looked-­at-­ness” rendered her powerless as an erotic object.2 And as Ariel Levy asks in Female Chauvinist Pig, “How is imitating a stripper or a porn star—­a ­woman whose job it is to imitate arousal in the first place—­going to render us sexually liberated?”3 Though I suspect that Levy’s question is largely rhetorical—­and for the moment I w ­ ill ignore her collapsing strippers and porn stars and her assumption that both occupations

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are incompatible with sexual liberation—­I think it gets to the heart of what makes burlesque suspect to some. The prob­lem with the female chauvinist pig, according to Levy, is that she replicates society’s sexualization of w ­ omen. The examples Levy provides are largely about w ­ omen perpetuating the mainstream commodification of sexualization: professional w ­ omen whose success is dependent on “acting like a man,” including be­hav­ior that ultimately subjugates them and w ­ omen more broadly; and young ­women who exploit their bodies for material gain, social ac­cep­tance, or celebrity, as the case of Paris Hilton and her rise to fame thanks to a “leaked” sex tape indicates.4 Yet Levy uses t­ hese mainstream examples as evidence of a larger shift in culture that carries over into more under­ground activities like neo-­burlesque or pole dancing—­both of which she dismisses as just as damaging as the Girls Gone Wild video series that exploits teenage girls and young w ­ omen desperate to fit in. Levy is suspicious of ­women who advocate for explicit content. She introduces Sheila Nevins, then president of HBO’s documentary programming and executive producer of G-­Strings Divas, suggesting that Nevins’s work as a tele­v i­sion executive is partly an attempt to avoid being the “frump at the back of the room.” 5 Levy expresses frustration that Nevins cannot seem to recognize the disconnect between a successful, middle-­aged ­woman and the content she creates. Nevins dismisses the critique by defending w ­ omen’s right to choose what they do with their bodies: “Their bodies are their instruments, and if I had that body I’d play it like a Stradivarius.” 6 Levy then accuses Nevins of taking “a guy’s-­eye view of pop culture in general and live, nude girls in par­tic­ul­ ar”: If you are too busy or too old or too short to make a Stradivarius of yourself, then the least you can do is appreciate the achievement in ­others, or so we are told. If you still suffer from the (hopelessly passé) conviction that valuing a w ­ oman on the sole basis of her hotness is, if not disgusting and degrading, then at least dehumanizing, if you still cling to the (pathetically deluded) hope that a more abundant enjoyment of the “sex stuff”

228 N e o - B u r l e s q u e could come from a reexamination of old assumptions, then you are clearly stuck in the past (and you’d better get a clue, but quick).7

The female chauvinist pig is stuck in an endless loop of self-­degradation. This category of anachronistic ­women is brimming with strippers, executives, porn stars, teenage girls, and sexual deviants who are all ignorant, delusional, and destructive. According to Levy, if you want to explore your sexuality or use your body expressively in public ways, you belong in this category. Y ­ ou’ve internalized your oppression. You are a female chauvinist pig. And “you’d better get a clue.” Context ­here is key. Levy focuses primarily on the mainstream commodification of ­women’s bodies. Though a reveal of pasties in burlesque may technically be the same physical gesture as that of a girl exposing her breasts in a Girls Gone Wild video, understanding context—as my discussion of thick description in chapter 3 makes clear—­makes the two entirely dif­fer­ent acts with dif­fer­ent signifying effects. As Sherril Dodds explains, burlesque performers “boldly expose their sexuality in a manner that is knowing, provocative and playful.” 8 Central to understanding the difference between Levy’s flash of a girl on spring break and a burlesque performer’s choreographed reveal is this knowingness—­women aware of their own awarishness—as well as where the per­for­mance happened, what tran­spired onstage, and for whom the per­for­mance was staged. Levy describes the female chauvinist pig as “post feminist. She is funny. She gets it. She d ­ oesn’t mind cartoonish ste­reo­ types of female sexuality.”9 But Levy d ­ oesn’t allow for the possibility that ­these “cartoonish ste­reo­types of female sexuality” are actually used by burlesque performers to poke fun at and even dismantle the patriarchy that Levy warns is irrevocably perpetuated.10 Rather than being the tragically duped victims that Levy describes, college-­educated, progressive, sex-­positive w ­ omen choose to become burlesque artists—­which aligns them with w ­ omen from all walks of life who question the repression of sexuality as a necessary prerequisite for par­tic­u­ lar versions of feminism. Burlesque offers a counternarrative to Levy’s depiction of a world in which w ­ omen may be considered “too old or too short”

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(or a myriad of other unmentioned but implied excesses, such as too fat) to use their bodies to express their sexuality in public ways. Not so coincidentally, t­hese bodies may refuse to conform to mainstream beauty ideals. Burlesque offers a space where ­women who are “too much” can express ­ omen themselves unapologetically and publicly.11 ­Others may categorize w who put their own bodies on display as antifeminist, enacting a type of female chauvinist piggery. I prefer to call that a new sexual revolution. ­Women who are too much defy social conventions. P ­ eople who are uncomfortable with or challenged by that verbal and physical excess attempt to silence and police such ­women—­among other t­ hings, using language intended to wound or dismiss them, such as “stripper” or “nasty.” Calling a ­woman “nasty” implies that she is morally loose, unpleasant, or, perhaps more damagingly, both. Donald Trump now infamously interrupted his opponent, Hillary Clinton, during a 2016 presidential debate by muttering “Such a nasty ­woman,” punctuating his comment with a smirk, waggle of his index fin­ger, and roll of his eyes.12 He called another female politician, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, of San Juan, Puerto Rico, “nasty” in a Tweet in 2017, as he “seems to reserve the word ‘nasty’ for a specific kind of antagonist—­always a ­woman.”13 Still, the intended pejorative term did not have its intended effect. Clinton did not let the comment, or the interruption, derail her response during the debate. And Cruz responded a few days ­after the Tweet by wearing a black T-­shirt emblazoned with “NASTY” in white capital letters.14 Activists began claiming the word, and #nastywoman went viral. The word’s impact helped create a new social movement that fueled the W ­ omen’s March on Washington in January 2016 and reverberated around the globe. This refusal to conform—or, to put it colloquially, to sit down and shut up—­marks the nasty ­women’s movement and the kind of feminism and feminist discussed in this book. This brand of feminism has been percolating for some time. It is a feminism that does not accept sitting down and shutting up as an option. It is loud, sometimes brash, and completely unapologetic. Its members revel in dressing up and flaunting their bodies in ways that do not necessarily conform to second-­wave feminism. And its members admit their sexual agency without shame. As Rachel Dodes puts it in an

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article about the “horny” revolution, “to be horny in 2020 is to be on the front lines of a rebellion.”15 Dodes argues that just as the word “nasty” has been reclaimed, “the best way to win a debate is to acknowledge and embrace the worst ­thing that could be said about you. That’s exactly why ­these horny-­and-­ proud proclamations are impor­tant; t­ hey’re a rallying cry to defang a culture of rampant misogyny.”16 Horny ­women and nasty w ­ omen are claiming their right to bodily expression. The fact that a new feminist movement has claimed the signifier “nasty” and the phrase “nasty w ­ oman” has in­ter­est­ing ramifications for this proj­ect, and for a larger feminist agenda. Neo-­burlesque performers are nasty ­women, and they like it that way. Historically, ­women have been discouraged from speaking up about sex or expressing their sexuality in public ways. Th ­ ose who nonetheless do so often become the victims of slut shaming that has the effect of silencing them. Much second-­wave feminism has now been critiqued for its categorical dismissal of sex-­positivity and for its assumption that all w ­ omen have the same needs, desires, and issues. Jo Weldon describes her experience with the movement’s rhe­toric: The sentence that fi­nally broke me from [second-­wave feminists] was a piece by Andrea Dworkin where she says, to paraphrase, a w ­ oman who has been used in prostitution, she ­can’t get w ­ hole again a­ fter. I ­don’t think it’s healthy for me to think of myself as broken, and I think that’s a terrible and disempowering idea to promote about what it’s like to manage trauma, especially along with the assumption that sex work is traumatic. I ­don’t think that idea fosters justice for p ­ eople who’ve been harmed. I think it frames them as ­people who are too damaged to think for themselves or function in society. I’m g­ oing to put glitter on my scars and go.

Rather than depicting w ­ omen who put their bodies on display as damaged, neo-­burlesque offers spaces in which to highlight imperfections and place them center stage—to “put glitter on my scars,” as Weldon puts it, and place them u ­ nder the bright lights for all to see. I am not proposing that we ­don’t need feminism any more. The United States elected a president who readily admits to aggressively treating w ­ omen

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as sexual objects (“grab ’em by the pussy”) and confirmed a Supreme Court justice who had been accused by multiple w ­ omen of sexual abuse, in both ­causes lauding the sexual abusers as victims of ­women’s duplicitous schemes to ruin their ­careers. The confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh eerily replicated parts of the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearing of 1991, indicating that ­after twenty-­seven years, we had made ­little pro­gress in terms of how w ­ omen who receive unwanted sexual attention are treated. The #metoo movement has attempted to redirect that wrong, but w ­ omen are still far from reaching equality. In fact, it may appear that we have regressed, as polarizing positions depict “locker room antics” as a biologically determined right of men, using a “boys ­will be boys” defense that both protects p ­ eople guilty of inappropriate treatment and vilifies w ­ omen who stand up against in­equality. We still need feminism. Feminism, like the wide range of ­women it is meant to represent, responds to, changes with, and transforms the culture in which it exists. It has never been a monolith. And t­ oday intended pejorative terms such as “nasty w ­ oman,” “stripper,” and simply “nasty”—an adjective that functions almost like a noun—­historically used to wound or silence w ­ omen are being appropriated as emblems of a new feminist movement. This feminism rejects identity-­denying language and practices that attempt to silence the “maverick sense of bodily identity.”17 Rooted in places like the neo-­burlesque stage, this feminism is being in­ven­ted, staged, and performed—­daily, wildly, and unapologetically—­ throughout our culture ­today. Instead of denying that we still need feminism, this book documents and promotes a feminism that celebrates ­women’s self-­expression rather than limiting it. The feminists described ­here take delight in pinups and use striptease to tell stories that transform performers and audiences alike. ­These feminists claim t­ hose words wielded in an attempt to wound—­“nasty” and “stripper”—­ and d ­ on’t apologize. This may make us female chauvinist pigs, but I prefer that to censorship or, even worse, relegating ­women to an anachronistic space where sexual liberation, agency, and expression are categorically denied them.

Acknowl­edgments

Though writing is a solitary act, no book is the product of just one person’s ­labor. I have a lot of folks to thank. A special thanks to the performers discussed in this book who inspired this proj­ect. They generously agreed to give interviews and share images, and many of them read drafts and provided feedback or encouragement. I built the chapters on what the performers had to say, both in interviews and onstage. In this sense, the subjects of this book should actually be credited as its cocreators. I thank you for what you do and what you inspire. I also want to thank ­those who document burlesque, especially the photog­raphers who generously provided permission for the images published ­here: Amy Touchette, ChrisKPhotography, Dan Howell, Ed Barnas, Jeff Gardner, Jennifer Mitchell, Karl ­Giant, Laure A. Leber, Roxi D’Lite, Scott Ewalt, Steven Menendez, and Tigz Rice. I want to extend special thanks to Ed Barnas, who shared his extensive and well-­catalogued collection of photo­ graphs that have both inspired and illustrated the text h ­ ere. This book was a long time in the making, and as a result, I need to dig deep into the crates. I would like to thank the faculty and students in the PhD program in per­for­mance studies at New York University who helped shape how I think, research, and analyze per­for­mance. Looking back, I realize how lucky I was to work with so many exceptional scholars—­Barbara Kirshenblatt-­Gimblett (BKG), Peggy Phelan, José Muñoz, Fred Moten, Barbara Browning, Diana Taylor, and Richard Schechner—­and classmates. In 233

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par­tic­u­lar, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, BKG, who instilled in me a love of archival research, world’s fairs, and the obscure. With g­ reat fondness I remember José Muñoz taking a handful of us gradu­ate students, sometimes weekly, to see Kiki and Herb (Mx. Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman) at Flamingo East, a club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan so tiny that Kiki would use our cabaret ­tables as a stage. We got used to snatching up our martinis right before Kiki crawled by. Introducing this vital art form to o ­ thers is always revelatory. I want to extend a special thanks to the students at New York University who have enrolled in my History of American Burlesque class since 2004. Your thoughtful engagement with a live, ever-­changing per­for­mance art—­a nd each other—is a joy to witness, and seeing what you engage with and respond to has helped me see burlesque through new eyes. I have learned a lot from you. Thank you. I would like to extend a very deep thanks to the colleagues who provided incredibly astute and helpful feedback during the peer review pro­ cess. This proj­ect is much stronger thanks to the anonymous reviewers, and though I ­can’t identify you by name ­here, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your astute feedback. Thanks to Allie Carr who generously read the entire manuscript and offered helpful suggestions for revision as well as encouragement. Lacey Torge has supported this proj­ect, and her friendship and critical mind are both beacons of light to me. A very special thanks to Daniel Katz for his continued friendship and professional guidance. Thanks to Ruth Lugo, who gave me my first faculty appointment when I was fresh out of gradu­ate school. I developed the scope of this proj­ ect while working in an administrative role for Yohuru Williams, who encouraged me to continue with my scholarship. Thank you all for your support. I am grateful for all of ­t hose who expressed interest in publishing this proj­ect. A special thanks to Rutgers University Press—­especially my acquisition editor, Kimberly Guinta, for being a strong advocate and providing guidance throughout the pro­cess.

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Admittedly, ­there are many folks who are not discussed in this book but whose art and ­labor have been integral to the cultural scene I have described. I would like to thank all ­t hose who have been involved in the neo-­burlesque resurgence—­performers, producers, venue o ­ wners, costumers, designers, production staff members, photog­raphers, musicians, archivers, fans, and audiences. Thank you for inspiring this movement and this research. I am confident that t­ here is much more to come.

Notes

preface 1. ​Quoted in Aphrodite Rose, “Fired for Tarnishing the Com­pany Image with my Body,” Medium, May  2, 2016, https://­medium​.­com​/­@aphroditesrose​/­fi red​-­for​ -­tarnishing​-­t he​-­company​-­image​-­w ith​-­my​-­body​-­ee2c7ed2f9e9. 2. ​Rose, “Fired for Tarnishing the Com­pany Image with my Body.” 3. ​Rose, “Fired for Tarnishing the Com­pany Image with my Body.” 4. ​Quoted in Dan Berrett, “The Professor’s Night Job.” Inside Higher Ed, March 14, 2011, https://­w ww​.i­ nsidehighered​.c­ om​/n ­ ews​/­2011​/­03​/­14​/­professors​-­night​-­job. 5. ​Werner, Stripped, 74. 6. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, 108. This proj­ect is indebted to Muñoz’s careful and complex layering of per­for­mance description with theoretical frameworks. Throughout the book I return to his concept of disidentification, particularly in a discussion of the art and life of World Famous *BOB* in chapter 6. 7. ​From 2007 ­until her death in 2013, I collected Evans’s stories about her life and ­career. 8. ​Werner, Stripped, 47–74. 9. ​Werner discusses this same punch line, commenting that it “is instructive yet partial. It tells us a difference. It ­doesn’t tell us about difference, about the construction of difference” (Stripped, 70–71). I agree with Werner’s observations ­here, and overall her proj­ect offers many useful critical approaches and frameworks for analyzing the modes and per­for­mances of erotic bodies as producers of rhe­toric. 10. ​Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 166. 11. ​Lorde, ­Sister Outsider, 41. 12. ​Lorde, 44. 13. ​Quoted in Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 10.

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introduction 1. ​For a description of the burlesque revival, see Mansbridge, “In Search of a Dif­ fer­ent History.” Joanna Mansbridge describes how “over the past two de­cades, a generation of young urbanites has found in burlesque an archive of images and postures that revive a memory of ‘a dif­fer­ent world,’ one steeped in glamour, glitter, and nostalgia” (7). 2. ​For a broad overview of the bump ’n’ grind era of burlesque, see Shteir, Striptease; Sobel, Burlesque. For a discussion of the modern themes of new burlesque, see Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-­n-­Grind. 3. ​Nally, “Grrrly Hurly Burly,” 635. 4. ​Roach, Stripping, Sex, and Popu­lar Culture, 87. 5. ​Awarishness has been central to modern American burlesque from its emergence to the neo-­burlesque movement t­ oday. In Horrible Prettiness, Allen describes how a nineteenth-­century burlesque performer would “address the audience directly, aware, as one of Thompson’s characters put it, of her own ‘awarishness’ ” (129). Nally uses Allen to offer the idea of the “practitioner’s ‘awarishness’ ”(“Grrly Hurly Burly,” 132) as a reformulation of Laura Mulvey’s concept of scopic plea­sure. My discussion of awarishness is further indebted to Maria Elena Buszek’s impor­tant work, most notably “Representing ‘Awarishness’,” and Meghann Montgomery’s discussion of awarishness in her dissertation, “A Burlesque,” 31–37. 6. ​Throughout this proj­ect I use gendered words such as “she” and “her” when referring to neo-­burlesque performers. I do this not to exclude the male-­bodied burlesque performer or to promote an outmoded, binary model of gender. Instead, using words such as “she” highlights and celebrates the pre­sen­ta­tion of womanly bodies onstage and the historic depiction of burlesque as a w ­ oman’s art form. I acknowledge the collapse of gender and sex ­here. And while I do not care to replicate the real and residual damage of this collapse or to suggest that “­women” is a monolithic category that is even knowable, I want to tease out what makes neo-­ burlesque distinct. The fact that ­people who identify as ­women largely run neo-­ burlesque scenes and perform largely for audiences of w ­ omen is significant. 7. ​The term “faggot” comes directly from Scotty the Blue Bunny, who describes himself using this term. (Scotty the Blue Bunny, guest lecturer, “History of American Burlesque,” New York University, 2006.) A nightlife host and circus performer, Bunny was an integral contributor to the emergence of neo-­burlesque in New York City. He now lives in Berlin and performs internationally. 8. ​Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful,’ ” 7. 9.  Sally, “Performing the Burlesque Body,” 165. 10. ​My intention h ­ ere is not to codify burlesque but instead to identify the continuities among per­for­mance practices that have emerged as part of the neo-­burlesque

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continuum, including offshoots, subsets, and new forms of burlesque such as nerdlesque and boylesque. I acknowledge that nerdlesque, for instance, has defining characteristics that make it distinct from burlesque. However, I want to think about continuities across ­t hese performing art practices, for I believe that ultimately they have more in common than not. My goal is to offer some preliminary ideas and definitions that can help set the stage for the work of other scholars, cultural critiques, and performers who can adapt, add to, change, or other­w ise modify them. And as the art form changes, grows, and morphs, so ­w ill the ways it is practiced and, in turn, interpreted and analyzed. I offer t­ hese thoughts to spur conversation, not to be definitive. 11. ​Halberstam, Gaga Feminism, xii. 12. ​See, for instance, Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful’ ”; Nally, “Grrrly Hurly Burly”; M. C. Roach, Stripping; Buszek, Pin-­Up Grrrls; B. Ross, Burlesque West; Willson, The Happy Stripper; Liepe-­Levinson, Strip Show. 13. ​M. C. Roach, Stripping. The concept of “raunch culture” is explored in Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pig: ­Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, as discussed more fully in the conclusion. In Striptease Culture, Brian McNair argues that the sexualization of culture is a sign of democracy. His study is less about the striptease of burlesque and more about the explicit sexuality of pornography that permeates modern media, art, and culture. 14. ​ Burla comes from the Latin burra, meaning nonsense or trickery—­a term that also serves as the root of “burlesque.” José Muñoz reads Carmelita Tropicana’s use of burla, a Cuban style of per­for­mance that he defines as “joking or exaggerated comedic per­for­mance,” as comedic disidentification (Disidentifications, 119). That exaggerated comedic per­for­mance is central to burlesque, as I discuss more fully in chapter 4, and is also a key feature of camp, as discussed more fully in chapter 6. 15. ​M. C. Roach, Stripping, 112. 16. ​Brecht, Brecht on Theatre. Bertolt Brecht differentiates between pre­sen­ta­tional and repre­sen­ta­tional modes of acting as found in the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and other traditional modes of theatre. In a pre­sen­ta­t ional mode, the actor acknowledges the audience, as well as the character being played as distinct from the actor, in an attempt to highlight the circumstances that underlie the issues displayed onstage—­most notably, the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. This produces “alienation” that is central to Brecht’s Epic Theatre, discussed more fully in chapter 7. 17. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 124. 18. ​Dodds, 113. 19. ​For a traditional notion of scopic plea­sure and the male gaze, see the influential and much-­cited Mulvey, “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema.” I return to Mulvey elsewhere in this book—­including in chapter 3, where I discuss how Dirty

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Martini subverts Mulvey’s concept of scopic plea­sure through her employment of an invisible wink. 20. ​In chapter 4 I return to this concept of the permission to look as a strategy used by burlesque performers to engage the audience. Th ­ ere I discuss how comedic performers like ­Little Brooklyn employ this technique to hook spectators, getting them to watch and think about the per­for­mance beyond the physical reveal. 21. ​Valentine, “State of the Union Address.” Valentine’s published address combined two speeches she gave at BurlyCon in 2011. Kate Valentine performs as Miss Astrid, a well-­respected host, producer, and progenitor of the neo-­burlesque movement who created the Va Va Voom Room, a show in that was an impor­tant part of the genesis of con­temporary neo-­burlesque in New York City. 22. ​Pasties can also serve as a punch line to an act, a play on a theme, an incongruous juxtaposition that adds tension, or a narrative conclusion to an act. A Star Trek–­t hemed act, for instance, may fabricate pasties in the shape of iconic Starship Enterprise logo featured on uniforms. L ­ ittle Brooklyn has a magician act that features a disappearing red ball that magically appears on her pasties at the end of her act. The pastie-­as–­punch line is a delight for the audience members who get the reference and are si­mul­ta­neously treated to the reveal of the point (and the performer’s body). 23. ​My claim ­here complicates Roland Barthes’s depiction of the reveal. In his compact yet provocative article “Striptease,” Barthes argues that Pa­ri­sian striptease “is based on a contradiction: ­Woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked” (Mythologies, 84). Though Barthes acknowledges that he is referring to Pa­ri­sian striptease and his comment might not apply to American striptease, his depiction of the paradox of the striptease is intriguing yet problematic. In par­tic­u­lar, the notion that a w ­ oman becomes an “absolute object” (85) at the moment of a reveal is reductive. Barthes seems to lament this remote distance, implying that an unveiled body should provide a direct passage to authenticity, a lament that belies Joan Riviere’s notion of “womanliness as masquerade” (“Womanliness as Masquerade”). The fact that the final reveal, according to Barthes, “serves no purpose” (Mythologies, 85) does not take into consideration burlesque’s reveal-­as–­punch line or, more broadly, striptease’s use as a per­for­mance tool to surprise, entice, and convey a message. 24. ​Impor­tant exceptions to the exclusion of burlesque in dance and theatre scholarship are Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, “Embodied Transformation in Neo-­ Burlesque Striptease,” and “The Choreographic Interface.” Maggie Werner’s recent Stripped offers impor­tant readings of neo-­burlesque and other erotic art forms using rhetorical theory. Historical accounts of early burlesque include Allen’s Horrible Prettiness, which remains the most significant book written on burlesque, and this book is indebted

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to Allen’s study for both its historic research and theoretical scope. Maria Elena Buszek’s exceptionally well researched and thorough Pin-up Grrrls includes a persuasive depiction of nineteenth-­century burlesque performers’ carte de visite as early pinups, providing an overview and reframing of feminist theory that finds plea­sure in the figure of the pinup. Becki Ross’s well-­researched Burlesque West focuses on burlesque performers in Toronto, as does her article with Kim Greenwell, “Spectacular Striptease.” ­There is a larger body of work dedicated to the performers of the golden era of burlesque, much of which comes from in­de­pen­dent scholars and journalists (see DiNardo, Gilded Lili). Several books have been written about Gypsy Rose Lee, the most notable of which is Frankel, Stripping Gypsy. See also Abbott, American Rose; Shteir, Gypsy. In the last de­cade or so, scholarship that focuses specifically on neo-­burlesque has begun to emerge. In 2009, I published one of the first peer-­reviewed journal articles about neo-­burlesque (Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful’ ”), and Nally published “Grrrly Hurly Burly.” Another significant early publication (from 2008) addressing neo-­burlesque is Ferreday, “Showing the Girl.” That same year Willson published The Happy Stripper—­which, along with her subsequent Being Gorgeous, provides fresh and useful readings of gender and neo-­burlesque. In addition, “Burlesque,” a special issue of the Canadian Theatre Review that was edited by Shelley Scott and Reid Gilbert, was published in 2014. In 2017, I published a chapter on neo-­burlesque, “Performing the Burlesque Body.” Several doctoral students have completed dissertations on neo-­burlesque, including Meghann Montgomery, Alison J. Carr, and Chris Davey. Julie Vogt and Kaitlin Regehr have also published dissertations on burlesque, and both of them have been involved in documenting the neo-­burlesque scene. Vogt’s exceptional dissertation about Ann Corio was titled “­Woman to ­Woman.” Before Vogt’s untimely death in 2011, she also helped facilitate the oral history proj­ect that I began at the Burlesque Hall of Fame to collect the stories of burlesque legends past and pre­sent. Vogt’s burlesque research was donated to and is available at the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University. Carr published a revised version of her dissertation (Viewing Plea­sure and Being a Showgirl). Regehr’s dissertation was on the League of Exotic Dancers, and she published part of her research in a book with photo­graphs by Matilda Temperley (The League of Exotic Dancers). Several doctoral students are researching, writing, and defending dissertations on neo-­burlesque, boylesque, nerdlesque, and other burlesque derivatives. The students include Jessica Thorp and Julia Matias (both at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Per­for­mance Studies, University of Toronto), Claudia Jazz Haley (Sheffield Hallam University), and Chelsea Haith (Wolfson College, University of Oxford). New

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doctoral students frequently emerge. ­These new scholars and the increased academic focus on neo-­burlesque specifically—­and expressive sexuality and gender expression more broadly—­a re ushering in an exciting new era of scholarship that I suspect ­w ill have a profound impact on how burlesque per­for­mance and culture are studied and understood, both in academe and in the larger culture. 25. ​Desmond, “Making the Invisible,” 5. 26. ​Desmond, 6. 27. ​B. Ross, Burlesque West, xv and xvi. 28. ​B. Ross, xviii. 29. ​See, for instance, Dodds, Dancing on the Canon; Mansbridge, “In Search of a Dif­fer­ent History.” Mansbridge comments that performers are drawn to neo-­ burlesque’s inclusion of “a wide range of body types” (10). See also Haith’s description of “alternative bodies” as a “kind of embodied activism” (“Femininities and Feminisms”). 30. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 180. 31. ​Phelan, Unmarked, 146. 32. ​Phelan. 33. ​Phelan. 34. ​Like other qualitative methodologies, per­for­mance studies makes meaning by working through the material. What makes per­for­mance studies dif­fer­ent from other qualitative methodologies is the primacy of live per­for­mance as a mode of study and as the object of study. Live per­for­mance also happens to be ephemeral, complicating how it is documented, preserved, and analyzed. 35. ​Geertz, “Thick Description,” 15. 36. ​Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 6. 37. ​Behar, 51. 38. ​Behar; Goodall, Writing the New Ethnography, 9. 39. ​Johnson, Sweet Tea, 8. 40. ​Goodall, Writing the New Ethnography, 23. 41. ​Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 175. 42. ​Johnson, Sweet Tea, 9. 43. ​Johnson, 8. 44. ​Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 175. 45. ​Haith, “Femininities and Feminisms.” 46. ​Allen, Horrible Prettiness. 47. ​Haith refers to classic burlesque as “vintage burlesque” (“Femininities and Feminisms”), while Montgomery refers to it as “aesthetic burlesque” (“A Burlesque.” 25–27). Mansbridge characterizes the “two sides of neo burlesque” as “nostalgic retro-­sexuality and queer counterculture” (“In Search of a Dif­fer­ent History,” 10). Alexis Butler makes a very productive distinction between “burlesque” as a noun

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(with performers “stylistically riffing on an historical genre”) and “burlesque” as a verb (the deployment of “irony as a form of theatrical commentary”) (“Re-­Vamping History,” 44). Performers who employ burlesque as ironic commentary, according to Butler, engage in the “act of burlesquing” (44), a concept that I w ­ ill return to in my discussion of burlesquing burlesque in chapter 4. 48. ​Haith, “Femininities and Feminisms.” Haith deepens and clarifies some preliminary comments I made about neo-­burlesque being a “queer art form wrapping itself up in a genre built on misogyny; it is post-­post feminism that has turned around and found delight in showgirl glamour and has appropriated the icon of the pin-up as a pos­si­ble sight of transgression” (Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful,’ ” 22). This article appears in an updated format as chapter 1 of this book. 49. ​Bunny Love, interview with author, January 29, 2018. 50. ​Montgomery wrote an impor­tant dissertation on neo-­burlesque (“A Burlesque”) and continues to be an integral practitioner and scholar in the field. 51. ​Montgomery, 24. 52. ​Montgomery. 53. ​Montgomery, 24–26. 54. ​Montgomery, 27. 55. ​Haith, “Femininities and Feminisms.” 56. ​For critics of expressive sexuality as feminist, see, for instance, Siebler, “What’s So Feminist about Garters and Bustiers?”; Levy, Female Chauvinist Pig; and Laurie Penny, Meat Market. Kay Siebler argues t­here’s nothing feminist about neo-­ burlesque, as it reinscribes the male gaze—­a concept I ­w ill return to in chapter 3. Levy argues that expressive public displays of sexuality have turned w ­ omen into “female chauvinist pigs” who perpetuate the mainstream commodification of ­women, a critique that I ­w ill discuss more fully in the conclusion. Penny builds on Levy’s “female chauvinist pigs,” arguing that the burlesque revival movement is “a tastefully bourgeois package of sexual objectification, wrapped in feather-­fans and expensive cor­setry” (Meat Market, 13). 57. ​In “Signature Event Context,” Derrida takes on J. L. Austin’s notion of the failed performative as parasitic, proposing that the risk of failure is the performative’s “internal and positive condition of possibility” (­Limited Inc, 103). 58. ​Derrida. 59. ​Jo Weldon, interview by author, February 11, 2018. 60. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 38. 61. ​Weldon, interview. 62. ​For popu­lar press descriptions of the amateur aspects of the new burlesque, see, for instance, Joan Acocella, “Take It Off”; Ben Walters, “Burlesque: The Daily Grind.” For scholars who have referred to burlesque as an amateur art form, see Sally, “Performing the Burlesque Body”; Willson, Being Gorgeous.

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63. ​Walters. 64. ​Acocella, “Take It Off.” 65. ​Montgomery, “A Burlesque.” 66. ​I started producing burlesque student showcases in the Drama Department at New York University in 2005. Since then, I have taught hundreds of burlesque classes and act development workshops both at traditional colleges and universities and at burlesque festivals and schools around the globe. All of t­ hese student showcases have informed my discussion ­here. 67. ​Weldon, interview. 68. ​“BurlyCon’s Mission Statement,” https://­burlycon​.o ­ rg​/­. 69. ​Banes, Greenwich Village 1963, 83. 70. ​Banes. 71. ​Jenkins, Textual Poachers. 72. ​Toffler, The Third Wave, 286. 73. ​Toffler, 287. 74. ​Valentine, “State of the Union Address.” 75. ​Valentine. 76. ​Valentine. 77. ​Valentine. 78. ​Leadbeater, The Pro-­Am Revolution. 79. ​Leadbeater, 20. 80. ​Leadbeater. 81. ​Burlesque uses the wink—­both physical and metaphorical—to convey meaning. The meaning of that wink becomes further obscured when getting the joke depends on the tongue-­in-­cheek innuendo and double entendre that are central to burlesque. Understanding that meaning requires “thick description,” to borrow Geertz’s concept of how ethnographers make sense of cultural phenomenon. Geertz uses the wink to show how thick description works. He demonstrates that the same gesture—­a wink and an eye contracting (or a rehearsal of the wink and a parody of it)—­c an have wildly dif­fer­ent meanings (“Thick Description”), a concept that I return to (and unpack) in the discussion of the proverbial wink of burlesque via the body of Dirty Martini in chapter 3. 82. ​McNair, Striptease Culture; Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs. 83. ​Levy, 5. 84. ​McNair, Striptease Culture, 88. For a discussion of talk shows, see Tolson, Tele­ vi­sion Talk Shows. 85. ​Antin, Burlesque. 86. ​Quoted in Shteir, Striptease, 97. Rachel Shteir also credits Finnell as being the first “teaser”: Finnell created an act in which she removed one strap a week from a

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costume she had designed, and according to Finnell’s recollection, the act lasted ten weeks (83). 87. ​Shteir, 242. 88. ​AFP, “Nipple Pasties Hit the Mainstream in 2016 Lingerie Trend.” 89. ​Cher is well known for her provocative and revealing costumes that continue to push the fashion envelope, such as her showgirl-­inspired beaded costumes created by the renowned designer Bob Mackey. Mackey’s experience designing for Las Vegas revues is evident in his now iconic designs for Cher and other celebrities. Though Mackey did not design the costume Cher wore during her per­for­mance at the 2017 Billboard M ­ usic Awards, the influence of showgirl costuming is instantly recognizable. 90. ​Givhan, “Nipples on the Runway at Saint Laurent?” 91. ​Halpern, “How Strip Culture Went Mainstream.” 92. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 111. 93. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman. 94. ​Paglia, Vamps and Tramps, 138. 95. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 114. 96. ​Julie Atlas Muz, interview by author, July 21, 2018. In the interview, Muz lamented that the insistence on “safe spaces” is incompatible with burlesque: “But how can it be a night out with dangerous ­women when every­one is demanding a safe space? It’s not what burlesque is. Burlesque is not a fucking safe space. Go fuck yourself. That’s like a coffee shop. That’s a dif­fer­ent space.” 97. ​Desiré D’Amour, interview by author, November 29, 2020. 98. ​Werner, Stripped, 44. 99. ​Miss AuroraBoobRealis, interview with author, November 19, 2020. !BadAss! Burlesque was created and produced by Velocity Chyaldd, who began performing her unique brand of alternative burlesque in 1995 at the Blue Angel and M ­ other, an under­ground Weimar-­inspired nightclub (1996–2000) curated by nightlife impresarios Chi Chi Valenti and Johnny Dynell. 100. ​AuroraBoobRealis. 101. ​Chicava HoneyChild, interview by author, November 8, 2020. 102. ​D’Amour, interview. 103. ​D’Amour; Maya D. Haynes, interview by author, November 17, 2020. 104. ​AuroraBoobRealis, interview. 105. ​D’Amour, interview. 106. ​Haynes, interview. 107. ​AuroraBoobRealis, interview. 108. ​AuroraBoobRealis. 109. ​AuroraBoobRealis.

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110. ​Other New York City performers of color at the time included Fem Appeal, who also produced shows, and Maine Attraction, who started as a go-go dancer and has become an impor­tant figure in the neo-­burlesque scene. Beyond the confines of New York City, Simone de Ghetto founded Harlem Shake, an all-­black burlesque troupe in Oakland, California, that won the best troupe award at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in 2004. Erochica Bamboo, a Japa­nese ­woman, was crowned Miss Exotic World in 2003. Yet pointing out exceptions to the almost exclusively white neo-­ burlesque movement does l­ ittle to describe the environment that performers found themselves in, nor does it explain why the movement was—­and continues to be— so disproportionately white. 111. ​D’Amour, interview. 112. ​Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess, 22. 113. ​Haynes, interview. 114. ​Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” 67. 115. ​Spillers. 116. ​D’Amour, interview. 117. ​Rodríguez, Sexual ­Futures, 126. 118. ​Said, Orientalism. 119. ​Musser, Sensual Excess, 90. 120. ​Rodríguez, Sexual ­Futures, 2. 121. ​Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess; Musser, Sensual Excess. 122. ​Desiré D’Amour, interview with author, November 29, 2020. 123. ​D’Amour. 124. ​D’Amour. 125. ​Lee, “Notes on the Exotic.” 126. ​Lee. 127. ​Lee. 128. ​Rodríguez, Sexual F ­ utures, 183. 129. ​Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs. 130. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon. 131. ​Chapter 1 is a revised version of Sally, “Performing the Burlesque Body.” 132. ​Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 25. 133. ​Chapter 2 is an updated version of Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful.’ ” It includes a new section called “The Monstrosity of Extreme Beauty: In Defense of Dita Von Teese” that ­counters scholars’ critiques of the performer that have emerged since the article was published. 134. ​Geertz, “Thich Description.” 135. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman. 136. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny. Freud, Jokes and Their Relations to the Unconscious.

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137. ​World Famous *BOB*, interview by author, February 2, 2018. 138. ​Mack, “Heteroqueer Ladies,” 23. 139. ​Heller, “Female-­Femmeing,” 2. 140. ​For “avant-­garde cabaret,” see Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 194.

chapter 1 ​—­ ​burlesque as popu­lar per­for­mance 1. ​Minsky and Machlin, Minsky’s Burlesque, 32–33. 2. ​In addition to Sir Richard C ­ astle, Scobie—­a talented actor, writer, and sketch comic—­plays other characters, including Dr. Donut, a mutant supervillain who espouses the virtues of preservatives while donning a very large, removable éclair as a surrogate penis; and “Moisty the Snowman, a whiny, sexually ambivalent snowman fabricated from garbage-­fi lled snow off New York City streets. C ­ astle is a slightly delusional, dandy-­esque British bloke played, like all of Scobie’s characters, with cartoon-­like exaggeration. 3. ​The dialogue in this paragraph comes from a prototypical Scobie set. I had the plea­sure of working with Scobie and watching him host the Wiggle Room and countless other shows in New York City for over a de­cade. 4. ​Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed. 5. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 47 and 64. 6. ​Dodds, 4. 7. ​Dodds, 63. 8. ​Dodds, 119. 9. ​Dodds, 5. 10. ​Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 41. 11. ​Allen. 12. ​Lucky, “Super Star.” 13. ​Lucky. 14. ​Lucky. 15. ​MsTickle, interview by the author, September 22, 2013. 16. ​MsTickle, interview. 17. ​MsTickle, interview. 18. ​MsTickle, interview. 19. ​MsTickle, “BHOF11—­M iss Exotic World8—­MsTickle.mp4.”I was pre­sent at this per­for­mance and also have witnessed this act dozens of times live in large and small venues alike. 20. ​MsTickle, interview. 21. ​Regehr, “Miss Exotic World,” 361. 22. ​In addition to receiving the Best Newbie award, MsTickle also received the award for Most Dazzling in the entire competition in 2010. 23. ​Quoted in Regehr, “Miss Exotic World,” 361.

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24. ​Regehr, 356. 25. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 113. 26. ​Dodds. 27. ​Halberstam, Gaga Feminism. 28. ​Halberstam, xii. 29. ​Halberstam, xiii. 30. ​Halberstam, Gaga Feminism. 31. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 179. 32. ​Halberstam, Gaga Feminism, xii. 33. ​Halberstam, xi. 34. ​Halberstam, xiii. 35. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 37. 36. ​Schneeman, More Than Meat Joy, 52. 37. ​Halberstam, Gaga Feminism, xii.

chapter 2 ​—­ ​burlesque as monster/beauty 1. ​For a discussion of the emergence of modern burlesque, see Allen, Horrible Prettiness; Buszek, Pin-­Up Grrrls; Shteir, Striptease; Sobel, Burlesque. Allen’s quin­tes­ sen­tial Horrible Prettiness remains the most significant text written on burlesque. He places Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes’ introduction to American audiences in 1868 in the context of antebellum American theatrical tradition and popu­ lar mores and culture. While burlesque existed in Amer­i­ca before the Blondes’ arrival, the melding of burlesque as a literary trope that inverts form and content with leg shows created a new performing art that has influenced American popu­lar entertainment and traditional performing arts alike. 2. ​See Buszek, Pin-­Up Grrrls, 35; Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 108. 3. ​Quoted in Allen, 110; Buszek, 42. 4. ​Quoted in Allen, 25. 5. ​Buszek, Pin-­Up Grrrls, 43; Allen, 129. 6. ​Quoted in Allen, 25. 7. ​Quoted in Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-­n-­Grind, 28. 8. ​Frueh, Monster/Beauty, 11 and 2–3. 9. ​Frueh, 104. 10. ​Quoted in Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-­n-­Grind, 90. 11. ​Scotty the Blue Bunny, guest lecturer, History of American Burlesque, New York University, August 1, 2006. 12. ​Carrie D’Amour (aka Dev­ilicia), email to author, February 13, 2007. 13. ​D’Amour, e-­mail. 14. ​Frueh, Monster/Beauty, 11. 15. ​Muz, Pfahler, and Deitch Proj­ects, WOMANIZER, n.p.

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16. ​Muz et al. 17. ​Muz et al. 18. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman, 11. 19. ​Rowe, 11; and see also 19. 20. ​Peiss, Hope in a Jar. 21. ​Peiss, 48. 22. ​Peiss, 49. 23. ​Austin, How to Do Th ­ ings with Words, 5. 24. ​J. Butler, Gender Trou­ble, 136. 25. ​Butler. 26. ​Butler, 137. 27. ​Butler, 140 and 141. 28. ​Butler, Bodies That M ­ atter, 231 and x. 29. ​Von Teese, Burlesque Art of the Teese, 15. 30. ​Drag has had both practical and conceptual influences on the neo-­burlesque movement. Some performers began performing in gay clubs, and other performers have articulated an indebtedness to drag for its over-­t he-­top theatricality. Generally, the influence of drag on the aesthetic sensibilities of neo-­burlesque is instantly recognizable, as I ­w ill discuss more fully in chapter 6. 31. ​The reference is to Goldwyn, Pretty ­Things. 32. ​Quoted in Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-­n-­Grind, 55. 33. ​Baldwin, 57. 34. ​Baldwin, 59. 35. ​Werner, Stripped, 4. 36. ​Von Teese, Burlesque Art of the Teese, 14. 37. ​Von Teese, xi. 38. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 179. 39. ​Nally, “Grrrly Hurly Burly,” 632. 40. ​A. Butler, “Re-­Vamping History,” 46 and 47. 41. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 179. 42. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 113. 43. ​Montgomery, “A Burlesque,” 24. 44. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 113. 45. ​Von Teese’s touring show has sold out five-­night runs at the London Palladium (which has an occupancy of 2,300) on two separate occasions (Dita Von Teese, email to author, January 12, 2021). 46. ​See Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 113. 47. ​Dirty Martini, interview by author, October 11, 2017. 48. ​Julie Atlas Muz, interview by author, July 21, 2018. 49. ​Martini, interview.

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50. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman, 30 and 132. 51. ​ Mignon Moore makes a distinction between the androgynous and the “gender-­blender”: “Rather than a de-­emphasis on femininity or masculinity, gender-­ blenders combine specific aspects of both to create a unique look” (“Lipstick or Timberlands?,” 125). 52. ​Rose Wood, discussion with author at the Diva Ball, New York University, October 24, 2007. 53. ​Williams, Dream Worlds. 54. ​Rose Wood, Starshine Burlesque, Raffifi, New York, March 8, 2007. The original language Wood used is retained ­here, though the term “transvestite” is considered outdated ­today. 55. ​I have been misrecognized as a cisgender male and have been asked countless times if I am a drag queen. 56. ​Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 528. 57. ​Pelligrini, Per­for­mance Anx­i­eties, 160. 58. ​The quote refers to a comment made by Venus Xtravaganza in Livingston, Paris Is Burning. 59. ​Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 32. 60. ​Patraka, “Binary Terror and Feminist Per­for­mance,” 176. 61. ​Buszek, Pin-­Up Grrrls, 20. 62. ​Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 32. 63. ​Frueh, Monster/Beauty, 26.

chapter 3 ​—­ ​burlesque as unruly The quote in the epigraph is from Dirty Martini, interview by author, October 11, 2017. 1. ​The list is published by 21st ­Century Burlesque, founded by and edited by Holli-­ Mae Johnson. 2. ​Von Teese, Burlesque Art of the Teese. 3. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 4. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman, 31. 5. ​Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. I return to Bakhtin and carnivalesque’s upending of social norms in chapter 4. 6. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman, 19. 7. ​Rowe, 11. 8. ​Rowe, 6 and 10. 9. ​Rowe, 11. 10. ​Beeber, Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque; Amalric, Tournée. 11. ​Werner, Stripped, 44. Werner also notes that neo-­burlesque offers a more “diverse se­lection of body types than other genres of exotic dance.”

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12. ​Acocella, “Take It Off.” 13. ​Acocella. In the Introduction, I discuss how awarishness has been central to modern American burlesque from its emergence to the neo-­burlesque movement ­today. See Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 129; Buszek, Pin-­Up Grrrls, 43; Montgomery, “A Burlesque,” 31–37; Nally, “Grrly Hurly Burly,” 132; Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful,’ ” 6. 14. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 15. ​Martini. 16. ​Dirty Martini, interview by author, September 8, 2015. 17. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 18. ​Martini. 19. ​Martini. 20. ​Martini. 21. ​Martini. 22. ​Quoted in Paterson, “Lagerfeld Slams ‘Fat, Jealous Mummies.’ ” 23. ​Kirkova, Deni. “Karl Lagerfeld to be Sued.” 24. ​Quoted in Paulo, “Why Do The Real ­Women of Plus Size Fashion Prove Karl Lagerfeld Wrong?” 25. ​Quoted in Paulo. 26. ​Paulo. 27. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 28. ​Mulvey, “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema,” 19. 29. ​Mulvey, 16. 30. ​Mulvey, 18. 31. ​Lam, “Magazine Issue #63.” The photo shoot credits are: “Photo: Karl Lagerfeld; Styling: Jacob K; Makeup: Peter Philips for Chanel; Hair: Kamo for mod’s hair; Talent: Miss Dirty Martini and Jane Schmitt as ‘Coco’; Manicure: Naomi Yasuda (Creative Management NYC); Stylist assistants: Siobhan Lyons and Clemence Lombert.” 32. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 33. ​Martini. 34. ​Quoted in Gilbert, Performing Marginality, 143. 35. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 36. ​Nally, “Grrrly Hurly Burly.” 37. ​Nally, 639. 38. ​Nally. 39. ​Nally. 40. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 124. 41. ​Dodds, “The Choreographic Interface,” 39. 42. ​Dodds, 38.

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43. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 44. ​Geertz, “Thick Description.” 45. ​Geertz, 6–7. 46. ​Geertz, 6. 47. ​Geertz. 48. ​Geertz. 49. ​Geertz. 50. ​Geertz. 51. ​Geertz. 52. ​Geertz, 7. 53. ​Geertz. 54. ​Quoted in Muñoz, Disidentifications, 130. 55. ​Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology, 36. 56. ​Willson, The Happy Stripper, 187. 57. ​Martini, interview, 2017. 58. ​“Dirty Martini Interview.” 59. ​Intrator, Naughty New York. Zorita began her per­for­mance ­career as a teenager at Zoro Garden, a walk-­t hrough exhibit at the California Pacific International Exposition of 1935–1936 in San Diego, billed as a “nudist colony.” While working ­t here, she was given a pet snake that ­later made its way into her act. 60. ​Dirty Martini, email to author, April 24, 2018. 61. ​Blyth, Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale, 3. 62. ​Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman, 31.

chapter 4 ​—­ ​burlesque as pretty/funny 1. ​Describing Brooklyn as “the Lucille Ball of Burlesque” is precise though, according to her, slightly unwarranted. When she first heard someone describe her in that way, she thought it was fitting. “I like that. I’m g­ oing to use that,” she recalls thinking, and she began using it as her tag­line. “And then years l­ater I was like Lucille Ball is the Lucille Ball of burlesque” (­Little Brooklyn, interview by author, October 16, 2017). This type of thoughtful self-­reflection permeates her descriptions of her relationship to burlesque as well as her approach to creating acts. 2. ​For the role of comedy and laughter in social upheaval, see Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman; Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny; and Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. For the role of comedy in burlesque, see Allen, Horrible Prettiness; Dodds, “Embodied Transformation in Neo-­Burlesque Striptease”; Davis, Baggy Pants Comedy. 3. ​Tigger!, guest lecturer, History of American Burlesque, New York University, August 5, 2015. 4. ​Acocella, “Take It Off.” 5. ​Dodds, “Embodied Transformation in Neo-­Burlesque Striptease,” 80.

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6. ​See, for instance, Gilbert, Performing Marginality and “Performing Marginality”; Muñoz, Disidentifications. 7. ​Gilbert, “Performing Marginality,” 326. 8. ​Allen, Horrible Prettiness. 9. ​Allen, 137. 10. ​“Dirty Martini Interview.” 11. ​Martini’s use of an invisible wink to communicate meaning is predicated on her fun demeanor and funny use of puns, as discussed more fully in chapter 3. 12. ​Bunny Love, interview by author, January 29, 2018. Love is one of the innovators of the early neo-­burlesque revival in New York City and a frequent collaborator with Bambi the Mermaid. 13. ​Brooklyn, interview. 14. ​Brooklyn. 15. ​Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts?, 396. 16. ​Gilbert, “Performing Marginality,” 323. 17. ​Gilbert, 326. 18. ​Gilbert, 325. 19. ​Gilbert, Performing Marginality, 141. 20. ​Gilbert, “Performing Marginality,” 323. 21. ​Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 336. 22. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, 108. 23. ​Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 169. 24. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, 119. 25. ​Muñoz, xi. 26. ​Muñoz, 31 and 4. 27. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 9. 28. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, 97. 29. ​Muñoz. 30. ​Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 89. 31. ​Bakhtin, 82. 32. ​Bakhtin, 94 and 95. 33. ​Bakhtin, 82. 34. ​The idea of laughter coming from the ­people invokes Sally Banes’s discussion of the avant-­garde as folk art (Greenwich Village 1963), as explained more fully in the introduction. Th ­ ere I discussed some of the radical potential of art made by and for a community. 35. ​Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 109. 36. ​Plato, Philebus. 37. ​Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 431. 38. ​Aristotle, 374.

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39. ​Hobbes, The En­glish Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, 45. 40. ​Hobbes, Leviathan, 63. 41. ​Heyd, “The Place of Laughter in Hobbes’s Theory of Emotions,” 287. 42. ​Quoted in Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 15. 43. ​Brooklyn, interview. 44. ​Brooklyn, interview. 45. ​Freud’s discussion and analy­sis of humor and laughter is extensive. H ­ ere I focus on his discussion of obscene jokes, as this provides an in­ter­est­ing lens through which to read humor in Brooklyn’s work and in burlesque in general. 46. ​Freud, Jokes and Their Relations to the Unconscious, 97. 47. ​Gallop, “Why Does Freud Giggle When the W ­ omen Leave the Room?,” 49; Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 97. 48. ​Freud. 49. ​Freud. 50. ​Freud, 99. 51. ​Gallop, “Why Does Freud Giggle When the ­Women Leave the Room?,” 49. 52. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 17. 53. ​This exchange between audiences and performers is integral to burlesque as an art form (as I discussed in the introduction) and as a form of verbal commentary (discussed in chapter 1). 54. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 126. 55. ​My argument ­here becomes complicated when I consider the structure of most burlesque shows that feature a host or MC who introduces performers, who then take the stage for their acts. On average, each act lasts the length of a song or two. The performer who speaks the most in the show tends to be the host. Many MCs in burlesque are cismen. Hosts make references to the performers and per­for­mances, and though misogynistic or body-­shaming comments are derided in burlesque, they still occur. The sexual innuendo and blue humor of burlesque continues with the host, and ­t here is a fine line between a cisgender man poking fun at a ­woman’s body and a w ­ oman poking fun at her own body or using her body to poke fun. 56. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 122. 57. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 126. 58. ​“Pretty” has become an ideological designation bound up in several interconnected ideals of appropriate gender be­hav­ior and appearance. Though neo-­ burlesque has been noted for its cele­bration of multiple repre­sen­ta­tions of beauty, as I discussed more fully in chapter 3, t­ here remains a material real­ity that the bodies valorized in burlesque (and society more broadly) lean t­ oward mainstream ideals of beauty. 59. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 23 and 18.

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60. ​For scholarship on w ­ omen and comedy, see Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny; Krefting, All Joking Aside; Mizejewski and Sturtevant, eds. Hysterical!; Rowe, The Unruly ­Woman; Robertson, Guilty Pleasures. 61. ​Mizekewski and Sturtevant, “Introduction,” 19. 62. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 1. 63. ​Mizejewski, 5. 64. ​Mizejewski, 21. 65. ​Mizejewski, 13. 66. ​Mizejewski, 5. 67. ​Mizekewski and Sturtevant, “Introduction,” 1. 68. ​Mizekewski and Sturtevant, 2 and 6. 69. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 1. 70. ​Montgomery, “A Burlesque,” 24. I discuss Montgomery’s depiction of “aesthetic burlesque” more fully in the introduction. 71. ​Mizejewski and Sturtevant, “Introduction,” 19. 72. ​Brooklyn, interview. 73. ​Brooklyn. 74. ​Brooklyn. 75. ​Brooklyn. 76. ​Brooklyn. 77. ​Brooklyn. 78. ​Brooklyn. 79. ​Brooklyn. 80. ​Brooklyn. 81. ​Brooklyn. 82. ​Brooklyn. 83. ​Brooklyn. 84. ​Brooklyn. 85. ​Brooklyn. 86. ​Brooklyn. 87. ​Brooklyn specifically positions her body with its imperfections as central to the story being told. As discussed above in this chapter, Brooklyn gives the audience “permission” to look by putting her body on display. Tossing the underwear aside can be read as a rejection of social expectations about size and her refusal to conform to unattainable beauty ideals. Brooklyn’s use of props with a purpose both drive the narrative forward and make impor­tant comments about social norms and how to potentially defy them. 88. ​Brooklyn, interview. 89. ​Brooklyn.

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90. ​Brooklyn. 91. ​Brooklyn. 92. ​Brooklyn. 93. ​Brooklyn. 94. ​Brooklyn. 95. ​I discuss the central role that storytelling plays in the per­for­mance and persona of World Famous *BOB* in chapter 6.

chapter 5 ​—­ ​burlesque as parodic pageantry 1. ​Coney Island USA is a not-­for-­profit multiarts center that features programming, such as sideshow and burlesque, and ­houses a museum, gift shop, and bar. It was founded in 1980 and continues to be a vibrant anchor of the Coney Island community. 2. ​Marie Roberts is an artist in residence at Coney Island USA who is well known for her sideshow murals. 3. ​Julie Atlas Muz, email to author, March 7, 2019. 4. ​Bambi the Mermaid, interview by author, July 17, 2017. 5. ​The casts of the first several pageants include the performers discussed in this book and other innovators of the early neo-­burlesque scene, including Bambi the Mermaid (in the 2003 pageant), Bonnie Dunn (2007), Bunny Love (2003), Delirium Tremens (2006), Dirty Martini (2003), Dr. Lucky (2005), Fem Appeal (2006), Jo “Boobs” Weldon (2003), Julie Atlas Muz (2005), Lady Ace (2003), L ­ ittle Brooklyn (2003), Miss Astrid (2005), Miss Saturn (2005), MsTickle (2005), Rose Wood (2005), Taylor Mac (2008), Tigger! (2006), and World Famous *BOB* (2004), among many o ­ thers. 6. ​Bambi the Mermaid, interview by author, September 29, 2018. 7. ​Bambi, interview, 2018. 8. ​Desiré D’Amour, interview by author, November 29, 2020. 9. ​Bambi, interview, 2018. 10. ​Bambi. 11. ​Chicava HoneyChild, interview by author, November 8, 2020. An exception to this includes Perle Noire, who created the first burlesque pageant that exclusively featured performers of color: the Noire Pageant, which premiered in New York City in March 2020. 12. ​Livingston, Paris Is Burning. 13. ​See, for instance, Regehr, “Miss Exotic World.” 14. ​Lovegrove, Pageant, 44–58. 15. ​The ­Great Fredini, email to author, February 28, 2019. Fredini is the former host of This or That (2001–2010), a burlesque game show that had a cult-­like following. The show also featured Muz as cohost and Bambi and Bunny Love in each epi-

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sode, in addition to special guests. According to Fredini, the first episode took place “just a few days before 9/11,” and the last show was in September 2010. 16. ​Bambi, interview, 2018. 17. ​Bambi. 18. ​Quoted in Bambi. Dick Zigun is the executive director of Coney Island USA and creator of the Mermaid Parade, an annual participatory art spectacle in Coney Island. 19. ​Bambi. 20. ​Bambi. 21. ​Bambi. 22. ​Bambi. 23. ​Bambi. 24. ​Bunny Love, interview by author, January 29, 2018. 25. ​Bambi, interview, 2018. 26. ​Bambi. 27. ​Bambi. 28. ​Lovegrove, Pageant, 44 and 58. 29. ​Lovegrove, 44. 30. ​Lovegrove 57. 31. ​Quoted in Lovegrove, 57. 32. ​As the recipient of Per­for­mance Space 122’s inaugural Ethyl Eichelberger award in 2005, Taylor Mac wrote and staged his original full-­length play Red Tide Blooming, described by the scholar Sean Edgecomb in “The Ridicu­lous Per­for­mance of Taylor Mac” as a “meta­phorical pageant” and the setting at the Mermaid Parade as a “con­temporary Feast of Fools” (557). Red Tide Blooming stars Mac as Olokum, a hermaphrodite sea creature that seeks to locate the freaks who are becoming eradicated as a result of Coney Island’s revitalization. By invoking Mikhail Bakhtin’s study of medieval cele­brations that upended social norms through grotesquery and exaggeration (Rabelais and His World), progressive theatre makers like Taylor Mac and Bambi create an inversion of social norms that is intended to highlight the grotesquery of pageants. I return to Taylor Mac in chapter 7, during a discussion of art cabaret, and to performers like Mac and Muz who have used nightlife stages to improvise and develop their longer-­format work. 33. ​Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 34. ​Bakhtin, 5. 35. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 218. 36. ​Mizejewski, 104. 37. ​Mizejewski. 38. ​Mizejewski.

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39. ​The show ran from 2009 to 2013 and returned in 2016 as Another Toddlers & Tiaras. 40. ​As I explained more fully in the preface and the introduction, Dr. Lucky is my per­for­mance alter ego. In this book I refer to the per­for­mances of Dr. Lucky without using the first person. This is not intended to hide my dual role but rather to focus on the content of the per­for­mance. B ­ ecause Dr.  Lucky is an impor­tant figure in the emergence of neo-­burlesque in New York City and beyond, I want to foreground that rather than the novelty of a scholar who may have dabbled in burlesque. 41. ​Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny, 104. 42. ​Bambi, interview, 2018. 43. ​Love, interview. 44. ​Bambi, interview, 2018. 45. ​Bambi. 46. ​Regehr, “Miss Exotic World.” 47. ​Kate Valentine, “State of the Union Address.” 48. ​Kate Valentine, interview by author, May 2, 2018. 49. ​Regehr, “Miss Exotic World,” 355. 50. ​Regehr, 355–356. 51. ​Love, interview. 52. ​Regehr, “Miss Exotic World,” 364. 53. ​Robin Morgan, “No More Miss Amer­i­ca.” 54. ​Morgan. 55. ​Dow, “Feminism, Miss American, and Media My­t hol­ogy,” 133. 56. ​Dow, 131. 57. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, 31 and 4. 58. ​Valentine, interview. 59. ​Valentine. 60. ​Heller, Queering Drag, 1.

chapter 6 ​—­ ​burlesque as camp 1. ​World Famous *BOB*, text message to author, November 12, 2018. 2. ​*BOB*, text message. 3. ​Mack, “Heteroqueer Ladies,” 23 and 22. 4. ​Mack, 23, note 2. 5. ​Heller, Queering Drag, 1. 6. ​Nally, “Cross-­Dressing and Grrrly Shows,” 117. 7. ​Sally, “ ‘It Is the Ugly That Is So Beautiful’ ” and “Performing the Burlesque Body.” 8. ​Quoted in Sally, “Performing the Burlesque Body,” 166. 9. ​Sally.

N o t e s t o pa g e s 174 –1 8 2

259

10. ​Ross, “Uses of Camp,” 327. 11. ​World Famous *BOB*, interview by author, February 2, 2018. 12. ​*BOB*. Below in this chapter I return to the “blonde lady” referred to ­here who used to rescue *BOB* in her fantasies as a child. 13. ​Isherwood, “From The World in the Eve­ning,” 51. 14. ​Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 62. 15. ​Sontag, 53 and 54. 16. ​Booth, “Camp-­Toi!,” 69. 17. ​Booth. 18. ​Babuscio, “The Cinema of Camp (aka Camp and the Gay Sensibility),” 118. 19. ​Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 52. 20. ​Sontag, 65; see also 59 and 60. 21. ​Sontag, 60. 22. ​Sontag, 65. 23. ​Sontag, 55. 24. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, 31 and 4. 25. ​Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 57. 26. ​Sontag, 56. 27. ​Sontag. 28. ​Sontag, 58. 29. ​*BOB*, interview. 30. ​*BOB*. 31. ​Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 59. 32. ​Sontag, 58. 33. ​Sontag, 60. 34. ​Sontag, 59. 35. ​Sontag, 56. 36. ​Sontag, 54. 37. ​Moon, “Flaming Closets,” 35. 38. ​Muñoz, Disidentifications, x. 39. ​Muñoz, xi. 40. ​Horo­w itz, “The Trou­ble with ‘Queerness,’ ” 305. 41. ​Horo­w itz. 42. ​Horo­w itz, 310 and 305. 43. ​Horo­w itz, 305. 44. ​*BOB*, interview. 45. ​*BOB*. 46. ​*BOB*. 47. ​*BOB*. Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction (2005–2007) was a per­for­mance space, restaurant, and bar located at 34 Ave­nue A in the East Village of Manhattan.

260

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It had a brief but significant presence in the New York City nightlife and performing arts scene as it hosted many neo-­burlesque shows and performers, as well as comedians, per­for­mance artists, and bands. 48. ​*BOB*. 49. ​Scanlon, “Where’s the Beef?,” 87 and 88. 50. ​Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 522. 51. ​Heller, “Female-­Femmeing,” 2. 52. ​Heller. 53. ​Heller. 54. ​Heller, 19. 55. ​*BOB*, interview. 56. ​*BOB*. 57. ​*BOB*. 58. ​*BOB*. 59. ​Mack, “Heteroqueer Ladies,” 24. 60. ​*BOB*, interview. 61. ​*BOB*. 62. ​*BOB*. 63. ​*BOB*. 64. ​*BOB*. 65. ​*BOB*. 66. ​Joe’s Pub is a performing arts space that is part of Joseph Papp’s venerable Public Theatre, a New York theatrical institution known for its commitment to avant-­ garde, experimental, and high-­caliber performing arts. 67. ​*BOB*, interview. 68. ​*BOB*. 69. ​*BOB*. 70. ​*BOB*. 71. ​Brantley, “A Beauty and a Beast.”

chapter 7 ​—­ ​burlesque as revolution 1. ​Julie Atlas Muz, email to author, July 17, 2018. 2. ​Muz, Pfahler, and Deitch Proj­ects, WOMANIZER, n.p. 3. ​Stillman and Heuer, “2004 Whitney Biennial.” 4. ​Muz, email. 5. ​Muz. 6. ​Muz. 7. ​Levine, “New York T ­ oday.” 8. ​Julie Atlas Muz, interview by author, July 21, 2018. 9. ​Muz.

N o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 5 – 2 0 4

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10. ​Muz. 11. ​“Artist Statement,” Julie Atlas Muz website, last accessed January 11, 2021, http://­w ww​.j­ ulieatlasmuz​.­com​/b ­ io​/­shtml (site updated). 12. ​“Artist Statement.” 13. ​Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 173; Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 17. 14. ​Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1:7. 15. ​“Bio,” Julie Atlas Muz website, last accessed January  11, 2021, http://­w ww​ .­julieatlasmuz​.­com​/ b ­ io​/s­ html (site updated). 16. ​Sulcas, “A Fairy Tale Stripped to the Bones of Beastliness.” Dunning, “Store Win­dow Duets to Delight the Jaded.” 17. ​Muz, email and interview. 18. ​Muz, email. 19. ​Amalric, Tournée. 20. ​“The ­Thing,” “Events,” Chashama, accessed January 11, 2011, https://­chashama​ .­org​/­event​/­t he​-­t hing​/­. 21. ​Muz, email. 22. ​Muz. 23. ​Muz. 24. ​Muz. 25. ​Muz. 26. ​Muz, interview. 27. ​Muz, “Artist Statement.” 28. ​Quoted in Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 141. The original formatting of Rainer’s manifesto is retained ­here, though not in Goldberg’s text. 29. ​Goldberg. 30. ​Quoted in Phillips, “Inside Downtown ‘It Girl’ Julie Atlas Muz.” 31. ​Quoted in Phillips. 32. ​Quoted in Femme Viva LaRouge “Julie Atlas Muz.” 33. ​Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 139. 34. ​Quoted in Goldberg, 140. 35. ​Quoted in Phillips, “Inside Downtown ‘It Girl’ Julie Atlas Muz.” 36. ​Muz, interview. 37. ​Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 71. 38. ​The Womanizer exhibit was accompanied by an exhibition cata­logue. Muz, Pfahler, & Deitch Proj­ects, eds. WOMANIZER. 39. ​“Womanizer,” Archive, Deitch Proj­ects, last accessed March 25, 2021, https:​ //­deitch​.c­ om​/­archive​/­deitch​-­projects​/­exhibitions​/w ­ omanizer. 40. ​“Womanizer.” 41. ​“Womanizer.” 42. ​Muz, interview.

262

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43. ​Muz et al., WOMANIZER, n.p. 44. ​Muz, interview. 45. ​Muz. 46. ​“Womanizer.” 47. ​Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 154. 48. ​Bronstein, 157. 49. ​Bronstein. 50. ​Scott Ewalt, email to author, January 15, 2019. 51. ​Ewalt. 52. ​Ewalt. 53. ​Muz et al., WOMANIZER, n.p. 54. ​Schneider, The Explicit Body, 20. 55. ​Schneider, 20. 56. ​Schneider, 7 and 20. 57. ​Schneider, 17. 58. ​Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 131; see also 143. 59. ​Schneider, The Explicit Body, 29. 60. ​Stiles, “Uncorrupted Joy,” 248. Not coincidentally, Styles also notes that artists “associated with the body” are often excluded from major art history overviews and scholarship. 61. ​Schneider, The Explicit Body, 31. 62. ​Schneider, 35. 63. ​Schneider, 31. 64. ​Schneider, 32–33. 65. ​Schneider refers to this per­for­mance as “Eye/Body,” though Schneeman refers to it as “Eye Body.” I use the artist’s preferred name. 66. ​Schneider, The Explicit Body, 33. 67. ​Schneider, 132. 68. ​Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 145. 69. ​Quoted in Goldberg. 70. ​Goldberg. 71. ​Acocella, “Take It Off.” 72. ​Schneider, The Explicit Body, 31. 73. ​Muz, email. 74. ​Schneider, The Explicit Body, 35. 75. ​Acocella, “Take It Off.” 76. ​Gore, “You D ­ on’t Own Me.” 77. ​Gore. 78. ​Muz, interview.

N o t e s t o pa g e s 2 17 – 2 2 3

263

79. ​Muz. 80. ​Muz. 81. ​Muz. 82. ​Femme Viva LaRouge, “Julie Atlas Muz.” 83. ​Julie Atlas Muz, text message to author, March 21, 2020. 84. ​Muz, interview. 85. ​Quoted in Muz. 86. ​Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 6. 87. ​Halberstam. 88. ​Halberstam. 89. ​Quoted in Edgecomb, “The Ridicu­lous Per­for­mance of Taylor Mac,” 554. 90. ​Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 173. 91. ​Muñoz, 177. 92. ​Femme Viva LaRouge, “Julie Atlas Muz.” 93. ​Muz, interview. 94. ​Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 194. 95. ​Edgecomb, “The Ridicu­lous Per­for­mance of Taylor Mac,” 553. 96. ​Lady Ace was an innovator in the early neo-­burlesque scene in New York City. She was one of the first female burlesque producers and performers. She also performed and collaborated with MsTickle, the subject of chapter 1, as the “Bombshell Girls.” 97. ​Goldberg, Per­for­mance Art, 194. 98. ​Goldberg. 99. ​Goldberg. 100. ​Joe E. Jeffreys, interview by author, April 12, 2018. 101. ​Jeffreys; Muñoz, Disidentifications, 108. 102. ​Jeffreys. 103. ​Ludlam, Ridicu­lous Theatre, 142. 104. ​Brecht, Brecht on Theatre. 105. ​Ludlam, Ridicu­lous Theatre, 230. 106. ​Kiki and Herb, fronted by Mx Justin Vivian Bond and accompanied by Kenny Melman, was one of the early innovators of nightlife cabaret in New York City. Kiki and Herb’s popu­lar cabaret act moved from Flamingo East to Joe’s Pub and, fi­nally, Car­ne­gie Hall where they performed their “farewell” show called Kiki and Herb W ­ ill Die for You. For a discussion of Kiki and Herb, see, for instance, Muñoz, Disidentifications and Cruising Utopia; Vogel, “Where Are We Now?” 107. ​Edgecomb, “The Ridicu­lous Per­for­mance of Taylor Mac,” 549. 108. ​Edgecomb, 550. 109. ​Edgecomb, 554.

264

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110. ​Muz, interview. 111. ​Muz. 112. ​Bunny Love, interview by author, January 29, 2018.

conclusion 1. ​Mulvey, “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema,” 19. 2. ​Mulvey. 3. ​Levy, Female Chauvinist Pig, 4. 4. ​Levy. 5. ​Levy, 92. 6. ​Quoted in Levy. 7. ​Levy. 8. ​Dodds, Dancing on the Canon, 123. 9. ​Levy, Female Chauvinist Pig, 93. 10. ​Levy. 11. ​Peterson, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, xii. 12. ​“Trump: ‘Hillary Is a Nasty ­Woman’: 3rd Presidential Debate Highlights,” ABC News, YouTube Video, 0:52, October 19, 2016, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​ =­AJIuiL25Eow. 13. ​Weaver, “The Mayor of San Juan Embraces Her ‘Nasty W ­ oman’ Status.” 14. ​Weaver. 15. ​Dodes, “Hot, but Not Both­ered,” 43. 16. ​Dodes. 17. ​Halberstam, Gaga Feminism, xii.

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Index

Page locators in italics refer to figures. Abrons Art Center, 195 absurdity, 67, 73, 122–23, 128, 158, 166 academe, ix–xi, 219, 240–42n24 Acocella, Joan, 26, 98, 119, 211 act making, 120, 134, 136, 146, 217 Addison, Sheila, x adult entertainment, burlesque as, 33–38 aesthetic burlesque, 17–18, 20, 26, 133, 242n47 Aesthetics of Excess (Hernandez), 44 AFAB (assigned female at birth), 184, 191 agency, 6, 9, 25, 116–17; of body, 210–11; explicit body as site of, 4, 69–70; sexual, 9, 37–38, 116, 229–31; and ­women’s power, 6, 25 agitprop theatrics, 4, 52, 152, 166–68, 182, 200 Aguilera, Christina, 35 Allen, Robert, 15, 58, 79, 92, 120, 238n5, 240–41n24, 248n1 Alternative Miss World pageant, 159 Amalric, Mathieu, 95, 197 amateur art form, burlesque as, 4, 24–33; professional amateur (Pro-­Am), 26, 31–33 animal costumes, 20, 75, 76, 92. See also half-­a nd-­half acts; King Kong/Fay Wray act (­Little Brooklyn) appropriation: cultural, 46–48; of trans terminology, 90, 183–84

Aristotle, 127–28 art cabaret, 53, 212, 221–23, 257n32 Asian w ­ omen, 45–46 audience: Brecht’s intention for, 202; call and response with, 57, 126, 222; empowered by striptease, 6, 27; heterosexual cisgender male, avoidance of homosexual desire, 91–92; laughter of, 55, 122, 126, 129, 131, 254n53; ­mistakes, acknowledgement and support for, 27, 55–57; and Muz’s work, 203–4; and participatory culture, 4, 15, 24, 28–33, 38, 48, 50, 54–58; permission to look, 6, 129, 240n20, 255n87; and race, 41–44; social norms transgressed by, 55–56 AuroraBoobRealis, Miss, 41–43, 245n99 Austin, J. L., 23, 80 “author-­ity,” 211 avant-­garde burlesque, 24, 66–67, 220–25 awarishness, xiii–­x iv, 3, 73, 98, 106, 228, 238n5 !BadAss! Burlesque, 41, 245n99 bait-­a nd-­switch, 74, 133–34 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 95, 126–27, 159 Baldwin, Michelle, 81 Ball, Lucille, 118, 124, 252n1 ball culture, under­ground, 152 balloon act (Muz), 21, 198, 199, 217

277

278 I n d e x Bambi the Mermaid, 10–11, 52, 78; appreciation of beauty pageants, 158–59; chicken act, 167; Freak Pin-­Up series, 51, 76–78; on shifts in Miss Coney Island pageant, 162–63; Toddlers in Tiaras, 160–62, 161; in Womanizer, 204. See also Miss Coney Island pageant banana-­eating acts, 143–45, 144 Banes, Sally, 28–29, 253n34 Barr, Roseanne, 105 Barthes, Roland, 240n23 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 218 bathing acts, 156 bear suits, 75, 76 beauty: burlesque, as performative, 79–82; construction of, 80; extreme, as form of drag, 79, 90–92; extreme, as monstrous, 78, 79, 82–88; normalized ideals, 84; Victorian-­era ­women’s relation to products, 79–80; white ideals of, 43–44, 132, 151–52. See also monster/beauty; pretty beauty pageants, 43–44, 52, 146; boardwalk, 155; child pageants and the grotesque, 160–62, 161; format and history of, 157–58; as non-­feminine, 164; parody of, 146, 148, 152, 157, 157–59, 160–63; “rotten” side of, 158. See also Miss Coney Island Pageant; parodic pageantry becoming, 8; explicit female body as palimpsest, 68–71; layers of, 59–69. See also gender becoming Behar, Ruth, xiii, 13, 14 Beretta, Bella, 75 binaries, undoing of, 70, 88–92, 132–33, 168, 183, 186, 238n6 binary terror, 92 Black Cat Burlesque, 75 blonde bombshell, 104; mashup, 52, 173–76, 175, 179, 192 “Blow-­Up Doll” act (MsTickle), 59, 62–68, 64, 65 blue humor, 3, 33, 132, 254n55 Blyth, Caroline, 116 Boal, Augusto, 56 *BOB,* World Famous, xiii, 40, 134, 190, 237n6; blonde bombshell mashup, 52, 173–76, 175, 179, 192; Coney Island Queen of Drag, 158; cute as po­liti­cal tool, 180; friendship with Dirty

Martini, 183; “F to F”, 182–84, 187; gaieté de coeur camp of, 173–80; gender becoming of, 52, 169, 173, 180–86; “heartbreaking and hilarious” approach, 191–92; at Joe’s Pub, 189–90; “Martini Time” act, 170–71, 172, 175; Movie Star (poodle), 171, 181; “One Man Show,” 182, 186–92, 188; “Tic Tacs and Dicks,” 182, 187; and Valentine, 182, 187–91; views on burlesque label, 73 Bodies That M ­ atter (Butler), 80 body: agency of, 210–11; grotesque, 158–62; types and sizes/open-­stage policy, 9–10, 27–28, 38, 66, 81, 98–102, 242n29, 250n11; unruly, 38, 51, 91, 95, 97, 117, 169. See also explicit body bodybuilding, 74, 91 body politic, 8, 10, 212, 224 Bombshell Girls, 59, 60, 134 Booth, Mark, 176 booty capitalism, 44–45 bra burning, as historical fiction, 166 Brecht, Bertolt, 53, 200, 203–4, 239n14 British Blondes, 10, 51, 72, 93, 120, 248n1 “broad,” as term, 96–97 Bronstein, Carolyn, 206 Brooklyn, ­Little (“Lucille Ball of Burlesque”), 129, 240n20; burlesquing burlesque, 15–16, 51, 134–41; Coney Island pageant, parody of, 121; ­house­w ife act, 122–24, 123, 136–37; King Kong/Fay Wray act, 21, 75, 77, 118, 120, 141–46, 142, 144; laughter evoked by, 131–32; magician act, 240n22; mechanic act, 136–37, 138; Peewee Herman act, 118, 139–40; on poking fun at beauty ideals, 134; Richard Simmons act, 118, 139; on two types of performer, 145 Brooklyn Rail, 194 Brown, Ruth Nicole, 44 Brown Girls Burlesque (BGB), 41–43, 151 buffoonery, 128 burla, 5, 239n14 burlesque: 1860s, 10, 51, 72–73, 93, 120, 248n1; as adult entertainment, 33–38; aesthetic, 17–18, 20, 26, 133, 242n47; as amateur art form, 4, 24–33; as approach, 57–58; backlash against, xi, 9–10, 84, 88; burlesquing, 15–16, 51, 134–41; camp aligned with, 173–80;

Index classes and schools for, x, 25, 27–28, 244n66; comedic, 23, 120, 131–32, 140; and commodification, 4, 33–35, 38, 64–65, 67, 83–85, 224; con­temporary, as neo-­burlesque, 15–24; as demo­cratic art form, 27, 40, 239n13; as disturbing, 37, 67; DIY aesthetic, 24, 25, 29, 148; empowerment through, 5–6, 25, 27, 49, 129; as employment opportunity, xii, 11; as folk art, 28–29; golden age or bump ‘n’ grind era, 2, 15–16, 19, 104, 238n1; intellectual excitement of, 33–34; as labor-­intensive, 29–31; paradoxes of, 5, 8, 13, 23, 37, 81, 92–93, 152, 173, 226, 240; parody, roots in, 15, 72–73, 93, 119–22; as participatory culture, 4, 15, 24–33, 28–33, 38, 48, 50, 55–58; as popu­lar per­for­mance, 56–59; Pro-­Ams, 26, 31–33; productive qualities of, 57–58, 68–71, 168, 196, 212–20; revival period, 1990s, 16, 24, 73, 76, 87, 153, 220, 238n1; studying, 8–10; variety format, 10–11, 15–16; versions of, 16–18, 242–43n47; as women-­centered art form, 37, 49. See also classic burlesque; neo-­burlesque; po­liti­cal burlesque Burlesque (film), 35, 86 Burlesque Art of the Teese/Fetish Art of the Teese (Teese), 94 Burlesque at the Beach series, 153–56, 156 Burlesque Hall of Fame (BHOF), 40, 61, 66–67, 96, 162, 190; Board of Directors, 96; classical burlesque as focus of judges, 164; King Kong and Fay Wray act at (­Little Brooklyn), 145–46; Muz at, 215, 218; Reigning Queens, 17, 61, 66–67, 215; Titans of Tease Showcase, 67 Burlesque Top 50, 94 Burlesque West (Ross), 9 BurlyCon (Seattle), 28 Bush, George W., 205 Buszek, Maria Elena, 74, 92–93 Butchershop Quartet, 202 Butler, Alexis, 84, 91 Butler, Judith, 80, 184 cabaret. See art cabaret camp, 52, 109, 117, 119, 125, 171; as aesthetic force and po­liti­cal tool, 2–3; “Bering-­as-­Playing-­a-­Role,” 177; burlesque aligned with, 173–80; as

279 performative, 176–78; po­liti­cal potential of, 175, 179–80; “unintentional,” 177 capitalism, 38, 44–45, 165, 219, 239n16 car engine analogy, 68, 70 Car­ne­gie Hall Avant-­Garde Festival, 209 carnivalesque, 78, 93, 95, 126–27, 159–60 case histories, 58 celebrity culture, 34–36, 62–66 Chanel, Coco, 103 Chashama, 197–98 Cher, 35, 36, 245n89 child beauty pageants, 160–62, 161 Cho, Margaret, 96 choreographic interface, 107 choreography of facial commentary, 106–7 citationality, 21, 23 classes and schools for burlesque, x, 25, 27–28, 244n66 classic burlesque, 10, 164; as aesthetic burlesque, 17–18, 20, 26, 133, 242n47; classic-­neo divide, as false division, 23–24; Dirty Martini’s approach to, 18, 19; past, cele­bration of, 21–22; tribute acts, 21, 112; as vintage burlesque, 18, 242n34 Clinton, Hillary, 229 clown, artifices of, 109, 147 “Coco a Go-­Go” photo shoot (Dirty Martini), 102–4, 105 colonial discourse, 45–46 comedic burlesque, 23, 120, 131–32, 140 comedy, 23, 118–46, 119, 122; of grotesquery, 162; pretty/funny binary and ­women in, 51–52, 119, 132–34; release theory, 127, 129–32; stand-up, 131; superiority theory, 127–29. See also humor; laughter comics, 124, 129, 132–33 commodification: of Black w ­ omen’s bodies, 45; burlesque defies mainstream, 4, 33–35, 38, 64–65, 224; commercial burlesque, 67, 83–85; and hyperfemininity, 84–85; perpetuation of, 227–28, 243n56; risk of, 84–85; ­women’s perpetuation of, 227 Coney Island Queen of Drag, 158 Coney Island USA, 147, 256n1. See also Miss Coney Island pageant confessional mode, 35 consumers, as prosumers, 29–31

280 I n d e x control by performer: of gaze, 6, 104; of image, 1–2, 6, 24, 39, 49, 116; through laughter, 129, 131 co-­performance, 13, 14 Coral Room (nightclub), 198 critical per­for­mance, 13 Cruising Utopia (Muñoz), 125 Cruz, Carmen Yulín, 229 Cs, five (concept, character, costuming, choreography, and choice of m ­ usic), 74 cultural anthropology, 107–8 cute, as po­liti­cal tool, 180 D’Amour, Desiré, 40, 44–45, 46–48, 151 dance: canon, subversion of, 200–204; “exotic,” 47–48; fan dances, 3, 123, 136–37; plea­sure of performing body, 8–9; popu­lar, 50, 57–58 Dance Theater Workshop (DTW), 194, 195, 201–4 Dancing on the Canon (Dodds), 106–7 Darlinda Just Darlinda, 20, 75, 76 Davis, Vaginal Creme, 204 Day, E. V., 204 Deitch Proj­ects, 197, 204 Deleuze, Gilles, 107 Derrida, Jacques, 21, 23 desire, 8, 10, 70, 74–75, 88, 226; counterhegemonic narratives of, 5–6; homosexual, and misrecognition, 91–92; and jokes, 131; racialized, 44, 48; and wink, 107, 110–11, 116 Desmond, Jane, 8–9 Dev­i licia, 75–76 *dialogic exchange, 14 directors, 186–87 Dirty Martini. See Martini, Dirty Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque (documentary), 95 disidentification, xi–­x ii, xiv; comedic, 120, 125, 239n14; and self-­deprecating humor, 122–26 Disidentifications (Muñoz), 124–25, 179–80 Divine Comedy of an Exquisite Corpse (Muz), 199–200 DIY aesthetic, 24, 25, 29, 148 Dodds, Sherril, 6, 37–38, 50, 57, 67, 131, 228; on “choreography of facial commentary,” 106–7; on commercial performers, 84; on humor, 119, 132 Dodes, Rachel, 229–30

dominant forms, countering of, xi–­x ii, 3, 5, 53, 58–59, 116, 125, 166, 174. See also patriarchy DooLittle, Ducky, 134 double entendres, 33, 72, 126–27, 244n81 Dow, Bonnie, 166 drag, 249n30; as connective tissue between the po­liti­cal and the performative, 180; culture, 152, 168; extreme beauty as form of, 79, 90–92; female drag queens, 52, 88, 90, 185, 191; as meta­phor for transformation, 80–81 drag kings, 85–86 dream spaces/worlds, 29, 39, 48; of Muz, 196, 224; of Von Teese, 82, 85, 88, 90 Dr. Lucky, ix-­x, 1–2, 161, 162, 258n40 Dworkin, Andrea, 230 Dyner, Wayne, 110 Edgecomb, Sean, 223, 257n32 Eichelberger, Ethyl, 221, 222 Ekaterina, 149 Ekberg, Anita, 174 empowerment through burlesque, 5–6, 25, 27, 49, 129 Epic Theatre, 53, 194, 200, 203–4, 222, 239n16 ethnography, new, 10–15; insider knowledge, 11–12 Evans, ­Dixie, xii, 152, 168, 189, 190 everyday life, as per­for­mance, 79 Ewalt, Scott, 206 excess, 2–4, 6; aesthetics of, 46; and comedy, 133; explicit body and, 69, 71; Gaga feminism, 4–5, 68–70; and monstrous, 78, 82, 88, 90, 92; and pageantry, 152; and race, 44–46; and unruly body, 38, 95 exhibitionism, 193–94 exotic, trope of, 43, 45–48 Exotic World, 47; Miss Exotic World competition, xii, 67, 152; Museum, xii, 152, 189, 190 exotikos, 48 explicit body, 37, 39, 53, 192; agency of, 69–70; and carnivalesque, 127; “exquisitely fake” persona, 68; as palimpsest, 68–71, 169; in per­for­mance art of 1960s–1970s, 208–12. See also MsTickle Explicit Body in Per­for­mance, The (Schneider), 208–9

Index extremity, as immoderation, 76 Eye Body (Schneeman), 210 fabrications, 80 facial expression, 106–7 failure: and camp, 177; improvisation, 212–20; as po­liti­cal refusal to conform, 53, 192, 219, 229, 255n87; productive possibility of, 196, 212–20; and self-­deprecating humor, 122–24 fan dances, 3, 123, 136–37 fashion industry, 36–37 Fat Bottom Review, 81 “female chauvinist pigs,” 50, 53, 226–29 Female Chauvinist Pigs (Levy), 34–35, 50, 226–29, 243n56 female female impersonators, 88, 90 female-­femmeing, 52, 184–85 female rivalry, perpetuated by competition, 164 Fem Appeal, 150 femininity, 18; female-­bodied read as queer, 52; and Gaga feminism, 4–5, 68–70; hyperfemininity, 79, 82–88, 83, 90–91, 104, 178–79, 179, 185–86; parody of, 3, 104, 107, 122–24; satirizing of, 133–34. See also gender feminism: angry ste­reo­t ype, 166; countercultural 1960s–1970s per­for­mance art practices, 4, 53; nasty ­women’s movement, 229–30; as necessary, 226, 230–31; new, burlesque as emblematic of, 4, 53, 68; post-­post feminism, 92, 243n48; punk side of, 206; second wave, 4, 52, 125, 166–68, 182, 200, 229–30; sex-­positive, 5, 230 femmes fatales, 116 Finnell, Carrie, 35–36, 244–45n86 Flaming Creatures (Smith), 179–80 Flynt, Larry, 206 folk art, burlesque as, 28–29 Foucault, Michel, 196 Fraser, Mat, 195, 197 Freak Pin-­Up series (Bambi the Mermaid), 51, 76–78 Fredini, The ­Great, 153, 256–57n15 “Freedom Trash Can” lore, 166 Freud, Sigmund, 51–52, 104, 129–31, 254n45 Frueh, Joanna, 51, 74, 76, 93

281 “FTF,” 90 “F to F” (World Famous *BOB*), 182–84, 187 Gaga feminism, 4–5, 68–70 Gaga Feminism (Halberstam), 68 gaieté de coeur, 174, 180 Gallop, Jane, 130 Gapay, Jen, 191 gaze, 243n56; academic, ix, xi; controlled by burlesque performer, 3, 6, 104; to-­be-­looked-­at-­ness, 104, 106, 226 Geertz, Clifford, 12–13, 51, 107–11, 244n81 gender, 3, 238n6; appropriation of gender nonconforming terms, 90, 183–84; essentialism of identity, 91; imitative structure of, 80; punishment for “not ­doing right,” 44, 91, 184; queering of neo-­burlesque, 88–92; two-­gender model, 52, 173. See also femininity gender becoming, 52, 169, 173, 180–86. See also becoming gender-­bending, theatrical, 169, 173, 185 gender-­blenders, 88, 250n51 gender-­f uck, 88, 89 gender nonconformity, 40, 52, 88, 173, 179, 186 gender performativity, 80, 91, 184 Gender Trou­ble (Butler), 80 Gilbert, Joanne, 120, 124 Girls Gone Wild video series, 35, 227, 228 Givhan, Robin, 36 Glamazons, 81 glamour, 80, 82 Godiva, Lady, 193 go-go dancing, 54, 134–35, 220 Goldberg, RoseLee, 221 Goodall, H. L., Jr., 13–14 Gore, Leslie (“You D ­ on’t Own Me”), 53, 212–14, 213 grotesque, 78, 127; and child beauty pageants, 160–62, 161; and progressive theatre, 158–62, 257n32 G-­Strings Divas, 227 Guattari, Felix, 107 Haith, Chelsea, 14, 18, 243n48 Halberstam, Jack, 4, 53, 68–70, 219; car engine analogy, 68, 70 half-­a nd-­half acts, 19, 21, 146, 188. See also King Kong/Fay Wray act (­Little Brooklyn)

282 I n d e x Halprin, Ann, 202 Happy Stripper, The (Wilson), 9–10, 24, 68 Haynes, Ma­ya D., 41, 42, 45 Heller, Meredith, 52, 169, 173, 184–85 Herman, Peewee, 118, 139–40 Hernandez, Jillian, 44 Heyd, David, 129 high femme, 52, 184, 186 Hill, Anita, 231 Hill, Murray, 85–86, 96, 186, 193 Hilton, Paris, 227 History of American Burlesque (New York University), 1–2, 204–5 History of Sexuality (Foucault), 195 Hobbes, Thomas, 128–29 Hollywood starlet, reconfiguring of, 59, 62, 64, 69, 104, 171 HoneyChild, Chicava, 41, 151 Hope in a Jar (Peiss), 79 “horny” revolution, 230 Horo­w itz, Katie, 180 “horrible prettiness,” 73 Horrible Prettiness (Allen), 15, 58, 79, 92, 120, 238n5, 240–41n24, 248n1 horror movie genre, 75 hosts/MCs, 254n55 house­w ife act (­Little Brooklyn), 122–24, 123 Howells, William Dean, 51, 72–73, 91 How to Do Th ­ ings with Words (Austin), 23, 80 ­Human Nature (Hobbes), 128 humor, xiii, 51–52; blue, 3, 33, 132, 254n55; jokes, 130–31, 254n45; marginal, 120, 124; as po­liti­cal tool, 119, 120, 125; “recycling” of symbols, 125, 167, 177, 184; referential, 118, 119, 139–41, 146; self-­deprecating, 122–26, 135; subversive effects of, 124; types of, 118–21; ­women as absent from, 130–31. See also comedy; laughter Hurston, Zora Neale, 12 Hustler issue (1978), 205–6 hyperfemininity, 83, 104, 178–79, 179, 185–86; and commodification, 84–85; misrecognition of, 90–91; as monstrosity, 79, 82–88, 90–91. See also femininity hysteria, 133 Hysterical! ­Women in American Comedy (Mizejewski and Sturtevant, eds.), 133

I Am the Man and You Are the Moon on Me (Muz), 198, 199 improvisation, 202, 212–20, 216 Indian Larry, 155, 157 indifference, sexual, 91 innuendo, 119 intention, 108 “Interior Scroll” (Schneeman), 210 irony, x, 168, 209, 242–43n47 Isherwood, Christopher, 176 Jack and the Beanstock (Fraser and Muz), 195 Jamison, Kay Redfield, xiii Jeffreys, Joe E., 222 Jenkins, Henry, 29, 124 Jenner, Kendall, 36 Jezebel Express, 154, 155 Joe’s Pub, 189, 191, 260n66 Johnson, E. Patrick, 13 jokes, 130–31, 254n45 Jokes and Their Relations to the Unconscious (Freud), 130–31 Judson Church, 200, 209, 210 Juice (Monk’s per­for­mance), 209 Kavanaugh, Brett, 231 Kiki and Herb, 263n106 King Kong/Fay Wray act (­Little Brooklyn), 21, 75, 77, 118, 120, 141–46, 142, 144 Klein, Yves, 210–11 Lady Ace, 59, 60, 134, 221, 263n96 Lady Gaga, 68–70 Lagerfeld, Karl, 102–4 Lame, Amy, 159 language: citationality, 21, 23; gender nonconforming, 90, 183–84, 186; performative utterance, 80; reclaiming of, xiii, 53, 208, 231; used to wound and police ­women, xii, xiv, 229 Latin@ w ­ omen, 46 laughter: of audience, 55, 122, 126, 129, 131, 254n53; and carnivalesque, 126–27, 159; control through, 129, 131; and identification, 129; official elimination of, 126; release theory, 127, 129–31; superiority theory, 127–29; and unruly ­woman, 94–95, 97, 117. See also comedy; humor layers, 202, 206, 209, 223; of becoming, 59–69; of meaning, 20, 74, 135, 153

Index Leadbeater, Charles, 32 “Leda and the Swan” act (Dirty Martini), 19 Lee, Andrea, 48 leg shows, 72, 248n1 Leroi the Girl Boi, 88 Leviathan (Hobbes), 128 Levine, Lawrence, 124 Levy, Ariel, 34–35, 50, 53, 226–29, 243n56 lewd comments, 130 Lil’ Kim, 36 ­Little Brooklyn. See Brooklyn, ­Little (“Lucille Ball of Burlesque”) liveness, 34, 50, 56–58, 220, 242n34 Livingston, Jennie, 152, 168 Lorde, Audre, xiii Love, Bunny, 120–21, 155–57, 156, 157, 163, 224–25, 253n12 Lovegrove, Keith, 152, 158–59 Ludlam, Charles, 200, 222–23 Luna, Selena (Bobby Pinz), 81, 85 Mac, Taylor, 53, 159, 199, 219, 223, 257n32; A 24-­Decade History of Popu­lar M ­ usic, 222 Mack, Robert, 173, 186 makeup, 78, 78–80, 97–98; drag culture, 147; “making fun,” 97, 120, 136–37, 146, 176, 212; Victorian w ­ omen’s use of, 79–80 Mansbridge, Joanna, 238n1, 242n29 Mansfield, Jayne, 174 Martini, Dirty, 18, 96, 134; as the body of neo-­burlesque, 97–102; ­career of, 95–97; as classically trained dancer, 97–98; “classy broad” persona, 96–97; “Coco a Go-­Go” photo shoot, 102–4, 105; costumes, 98, 99; friendship with *BOB*, 183; joie de vivre of, 95, 97, 100, 117, 146; laughter of, 94–95, 97, 117, 127; “Leda and the Swan” act, 19; “making fun,” 97, 120; and Muz, 193; power of, 116–17; spider­web act, 21, 112–16, 113, 115; two versions of, 97; “unruly body” of, 51, 97–102; on Von Teese, 85–86, 87; wink, use of, 107, 110–11, 111, 253n11 “Martini Time” act (World Famous *BOB*), 170–71, 172, 175 Mave (*BOB*’s drag ­daughter), 186 McNair, Brian, 34, 239n13 Meat Joy (Schneeman), 210–11

283 medieval feasts and festivals, 126–27, 159, 257n32 #metoo movement, 231 Midnite Martini, 17, 21, 22 Minsky ­Brothers, 54 misrecognition, 51, 90–92, 250n55; of hyperfemininity, 90–91 Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant, 52; protests of 1968, 159, 164–66 Miss Astrid. See Valentine, Kate (Miss Astrid) Miss Bettie Page contest, 90 “Miss Biker Slut,” 155–57, 156 Miss Coney Island pageant, 52, 76, 256n5; Coney Island themes and iconography, 150, 154, 155; first show, 155–57, 157; shift ­toward seriousness, 152, 162–63, 168; as weirdo pageant, 148, 155, 158, 168; as yearbook of burlesque, 148–49 Miss Exotic World competition, xii, 67, 152, 167, 198 Mizejewski, Linda, 51, 120, 125, 127, 130–31; on carnivalesque, 159–60; on pretty/funny binary, 132–33 Monk, Meredith, 209 monster/beauty, 51, 72–93; burlesque beauty as performative, 79–82; as co-­constituting categories, 74; horror movies as inspiration, 75; hyperfemininity as monstrosity, 79, 82–88, 90–91; monstrosity of extreme beauty, 82–88; performing monsters in neo-­ burlesque, 75–79; queering neo-­ burlesque, 88–93; slash, space of, 92. See also beauty “Monster Burlesque,” 75 Montgomery, Meghann, 17–18, 26, 84 Moon, Michael, 179, 180 Moore, Mignon, 250n51 Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, 182, 259–60n47 movement vocabulary, 21, 112, 202 MsTickle, 50, 56, 58–59, 63, 134; “Blow­Up Doll” act, 59, 62–68, 64, 65; and Bombshell Girls, 59, 60; at Burlesque Hall of Fame, 61; layers of becoming, 59–69; at Miss Coney Island pageant, 147–48. See also explicit body Mulvey, Laura, 6, 226, 238n5, 239–40n19; to-­be-­looked-­at-­ness, 104, 106, 226; “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema,” 104

284 I n d e x Muñoz, José, xi, 120, 124–25, 237n6, 239n14; “recycling” concept, 125, 167, 177, 184; “terrorist drag” concept, 222 Musser, Amber Jumilla, 46 Muz, Julie Atlas, 39, 52–53, 60, 134, 192, 193, 245n96; awards and grants, 194–95, 197–99, 211; balloon act, 21, 198, 199, 217; at Burlesque Hall of Fame, 215, 218; Divine Comedy of an Exquisite Corpse, 199–200; I Am the Man and You Are the Moon on Me, 198, 199; and Miss Coney Island pageant, 148, 149, 198; Mr. Pussy, 204–5; multiple per­for­ mance media used by, 200; multiple styles, 195–96; Rite of Spring, 198, 200–204; rope escape act, 53, 212–17, 213, 215, 216; The ­Thing, 197–98; Trea­sure Box, 198; on Von Teese, 87; at Whitney Biennial opening, 193–94, 194, 195, 211; Womanizer, 197, 200, 204–8, 207; as Worst Humiliation for the Downtown Dance World, 194, 211 Nally, Claire, 3, 84, 106, 173, 238n5 narrative/storytelling, 2–4, 15–16, 26, 52; narrative arc, 8, 140–41, 182–83, 186–87, 189; nightlife storytelling, 181–82; props as part of bigger story, 138–39, 143–45, 255n87; referential, 139–41, 146; storyboarding, 118, 140; vignette-­style narrative acts, 2, 4, 134–36; of World Famous *BOB*, 180–92 Nasty Canasta, 137 nasty ­women’s movement, 53, 229–30 Native American ­women, 46 Naughty New York (film), 112 neo-­burlesque: avant-­garde, 24, 66–67, 220–25; body types and sizes/ open-­stage policy, 9–10, 27–28, 38, 66, 81, 98–102, 242n29, 250n11; con­ temporary burlesque as, 15–24; as continuum, 38, 88, 90, 118–19, 238–39n10, 240–41n24; femininity satirized in, 133–34; forgiving nature of, 5–6, 25, 26–27, 53, 192; “making fun,” 97, 120, 136, 146, 176, 212; meta approaches, 136–37; multiple roles of performers, 24–25, 57; as nightlife entertainment, 220–25; offstage reverberations of, 4, 49–50, 56; pageants, competitions, and titles, increase in, 163–64; patriarchy

parodied in, 3, 5, 58–59, 169; performing monsters in, 75–79; queering, 88–92; race in, 39–48, 81–82, 149–51, 150, 246n110; as revolution, 211–12, 221, 224–25; as self-­reflective, 23, 52, 152, 252n1; as white per­for­mance art, 40–44, 48, 81–82. See also burlesque; po­liti­cal burlesque Nevins, Sheila, 227 New York Burlesque Festival, 76 New York Radical ­Women (NYRW), 164–66 New York University, History of American Burlesque class, 1–2, 204–5, 244n66 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 128 nightlife per­for­mance, 52, 56, 192, 197–99, 212, 219–25 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 201 Noire, Perle, 7, 85, 86, 256n11 “No Manifesto” (Rainer), 200–201 noninclusionary practices, 41 “Notes on Camp” (Sontag), 176–79 nouveau Re­nais­sance W ­ oman, 24, 49 “One Man Show” (World Famous *BOB*), 182, 186–92, 188 ontology, 10–11 oppression, and striptease, 5–6, 50, 69–70, 228 otherness, qualities of, 48 pageants. See beauty pageants; Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant; Miss Coney Island pageant; parodic pageantry Paglia, Camille, 37 palimpestos, 70 palimpsest, explicit body as, 68–71 Paris Is Burning (Livingston), 152, 168 parodic pageantry, 43–44, 52, 146, 192; as progressive theatre, 158–62; used to poke fun, 152–53. See also beauty pageants parody, 3–5, 15, 26, 39, 143, 146; burlesque’s roots in, 15, 72–73, 93, 119–22; burlesquing burlesque, 15–16, 51, 134–41; citationality, 21, 23; and cultural appropriation, 46–47; of femininity, 3, 104, 107, 122–24; feminist, 165–68; inversion of high and low, 120, 127, 137, 195, 223; misunderstandings of, 165–66, 206; and po­liti­cal

Index commentary, 18, 67–68, 88, 165–69; queer, 52, 173; of sexuality, 5, 33, 110; of wink, 109–11, 244n81 participating observer, 12 participatory culture, burlesque as, 4, 15, 24, 28–33, 38, 48, 50, 54–58 Parton, Dolly, 174 pasties, 35–37, 240n22 Patraka, Vivian, 92 patriarchy: countered by explicit body as palimpsest, 50, 69–71, 169; and “female chauvinist pig” concept, 224, 226–29; feminist stripping used to dismantle, 53, 66, 116; parodied in neo-­burlesque, 3, 5, 10, 58–59, 169; “prettiness” as obligatory, 133–34. See also dominant forms, countering of peels: glove peel, 20, 137; stocking peel, 16, 17, 21, 22, 103, 137, 218 Peiss, Kathy, 79 Pelligrini, Ann, 91 per­for­mance: burlesque beauty as performative, 79–82; disappearance of through recording, 10–11; everyday life as, 79; gendered, 52; gender performativity, 80, 91, 184; as real-­life phenomenon, 180; as “twice-­behaved be­hav­ ior,” 110; unstaged, 180 per­for­mance art of 1960s–1970s, explicit body in, 208–12 Per­for­mance Space 122 (PS122), 198, 257n32 per­for­mance studies, 10–15, 242n34 performers: as both subjects and objects, 70; control of image, 1–2, 6, 24, 39, 49, 116; hobbyists (“Stitch n’ Bitch”), 31; newbies, 32, 66; professional, 31; “Stitch n’ Bitch,” 31, 32; two main camps, 31–33, 145; Victorian w ­ omen’s emulation of, 79–80 Performing Marginality (Gilbert), 124 “Performing the Burlesque Body” (Sally), 174 Perle Noire. See Noire, Perle Pfahler, Kembra, 204, 206 Phelan, Peggy, 10–11 Philebus (Plato), 127–28 pinup iconography, 78, 92–93 Plato, 127–28 plus-­sized w ­ omen, discourse focused on weight loss, 100–102

285 po­liti­cal burlesque, 17–18, 169; by Black and Brown bodies, 42–43; “Blow-­Up Doll” act, 59, 62–68, 64, 65; and body type, 100; and humor, 119, 120 Pontani, Angie, ix Pontani S­ isters, ix, 134 popu­lar culture, public displays of nudity in, 34–35 popu­lar dance, 50, 57–58 popu­lar per­for­mance, 56–59 “porno-­chic,” 35 pornography, 33; Hustler issue (1978), 205–6 pornotroping, 45 P-­Orridge, Breyer, 204 postmodern art, 202, 211–12, 221–22; pastiche, 168, 221–23 pretty: dismantling ideal of, 51–52, 78, 81–82; as term, 132, 254n58. See also beauty pretty/funny binary, 51–52, 119–20, 132–34 productive qualities of burlesque, 57–58, 168, 196; and explicit body as palimpsest, 68–71; and failure, 212–20 professional amateur (Pro-­Am), 26, 31–33 professional opportunities, 25–26 professional standards, 31–32, 224 progressive theatre, 152, 158–62, 257n32 props, as part of bigger story, 138–39, 143–45, 255n87 prosumer, 29–31 public code, 108 punk rock, 221 “pussy tricks,” 163–64 Pyramid (club), 221 Queer Art of Failure, The (Halberstam), 53, 219 Queering Gender (Heller), 185 queering of identities, 3, 51; gender nonconformity, 40, 52, 173, 179, 186 queering of neo-­burlesque, 88–92 queer parody, 52, 173 queer sociality, 48 queer theory, 125; disidentification, xi–­x ii, xiv, 120, 125, 239n14 Quinn, David, 191 Rabelais, François, 126, 159 Rabelais and His World (Bakhtin), 159

286 I n d e x race in neo-­burlesque, 39–48, 81–82, 246n110; appropriation, cultural, 46–48; and excess, 44–46; and “lazy ste­reo­t ypes,” 47; Miss Coney Island pageant, 149–51, 150 Rainer, Yvonne, 200–201 Ramsey, JonBenét, 201–2 Rand, Sally, 21 raunch culture, 5, 34–35, 239n13 “recycling” of symbols, 125, 167, 177, 184 Red Tide Blooming (Taylor Mac), 159, 257n32 Regehr, Kaitlyn, 66–67, 164 release theory, 127, 129–32 repetition and revision, 23, 58, 80, 123, 180, 183 reveals, xiv, 5, 8, 59, 74, 139, 228, 240nn22–23 reverse striptease, 2 revolution, 196; neo-­burlesque as, 211–12, 221, 224–25. See also sexual revolution, new Ridicu­lous Theatre, 53, 200, 212, 221–23 Rite of Spring (Muz), 198, 200–204 Riviere, Joan, 240n23 Roach, Catherine, 3, 5 Roberts, Marie, 147, 256n2 Robertson, Pamela, 127 Rodríguez, Juana María, 45–46 rope escape act (Muz), 53, 212–17, 213, 215, 216 Rose, Aphrodite, x Ross, Andrew, 174 Ross, Becki, 9 Rowe, Kathleen, 51, 78`, 88, 94–95, 127, 129 runways, 54 RuPaul’s Drag Race, 152 Saint Laurent pastie, 36 Salon International de la Lingerie (Paris), 36 Sarah Silverman Program, 159–60 Scanlon, Kyle, 184 Schechner, Richard, 109 Schneeman, Carolee, 70, 210–11 Schneider, Rebecca, 208–9 Scobie, Bradford (Sir Richard ­Castle), 54–55, 55, 247n2 scopic plea­sure, 6, 95, 104, 106, 116–17, 168, 238n5, 239–40n19 scopophilia, 104

Scotty the Blue Bunny, 75, 238n7 second-­wave feminism, 125; agitprop theatrics, 4, 52, 152, 166–68, 182, 200; continuation of tactics of, 167–68; dismissal of sex-­positivity, 229–30 self-­authorship, 2, 4, 6, 39, 81, 85, 87, 107, 168, 210; as attractive to performers, 25; and destabilization of norms, 81; female-­centered, 37; of hyperfemininity, 83; and remnants of patriarchy, 70; of scopic plea­sure, 95 self-­referential stance, 125–26, 168 self-­reflection, 23, 52, 152, 252n1 Sensuous W ­ oman, The (Cho), 96 seriousness, cap­i­tal­ist overemphasis on, 219 sexploitation films, 206 sex-­positive feminism, 5, 228–30 Sexual F ­ utures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (Rodríguez), 48 sexuality, 4–6; and agency, 9, 37–38, 116, 229–31; in camp and neo-­burlesque, 177; and dance scholarship, 8–9; indifference, 91; and intellectual stimulation, 33–34; oversexualization of ­women of color, 43–46; parody of, 5, 33, 110 sexual persona, 37 sexual revolution, new, xiv, 5, 50, 53, 169, 196, 211–12, 220–21; failure as productive, 220; and “nasty” ­women, 229 sex work, 230 Shoot the Arrow: A Portrait of The World Famous *BOB* (Touchette), 181 sideshow freaks, 76–78, 77 “Signature Event Context” (Derrida), 23 Silverman, Sarah, 159–60 Simmons, Richard, 118, 139 ­Sister Outside (Lorde), xiii slavery, and sexualization of Black ­women, 45 Slipper Room, 41, 42, 54 slut shaming, xii, 230 Smith, Jack, 179–80 smut, as love triangle, 130–31 social norms: audience complicit in transgressing, 55–56; destabilization of, 4, 9–10, 24, 88, 91, 95, 109, 118, 126–27, 174; explicit body’s potential to transgress, 58–59; feminine excess as commentary on, 88; inversion of, 91, 126–27, 137, 159, 257n32

Index somatic phobia, 208 “something e­ lse” designation, 23 Something Weird Video, 21, 112 Sontag, Susan, 174, 176–79 Special, Pinkie, 149 spectacle, 24, 38; and burlesque as revolution, 200–201, 206, 222–23, 226; and humor, 120, 129; and ­labor of performer, 29–31; and monstrous beauty, 78–79, 88, 95, 98; rejection of, 200–201; and unruly ­woman, 94–95 spider­web act (Dirty Martini), 21, 112–16, 113, 115 Spillers, Hortense, 45 Starshine Burlesque show, 90 Stiles, Kristine, 209, 262n60 “Stitch n’ Bitch burlesque performers,” 31, 32 storytelling. See narrative/storytelling Stravinsky, Igor, 201 Stripped (Werner), xii–­x iii, 98, 237n9, 240n24, 250n11 stripper, as performative word, xii stripping: commercial culture, xii–­x iii, 5, 34; elevation of burlesque over, xi–­x ii; feminist, 53, 192; of ste­reo­t ypes, 124; taboos surrounding, 9 striptease: culture, 5, 35; and oppression, 5–6, 50, 69–70, 228; as per­for­mance strategy and po­liti­cal tool, 5–8; putting on meaning, 8, 74; as social commentary, 58 “Striptease” (Barthes), 240n23 Striptease Culture (McNair), 34 student showcases, 27 superiority theory, 127–29 taboos, xi, 9, 34, 37, 160 Tattoo Motorcycle Convention, 155–57, 156 Tease-­O-­Rama festival (2001), 73 tele­v i­sion talk show format, 35 “10 Points” (“The Degrading Mindless-­ Boob-­Girlie Symbol” (NYRW), 165 theatrical gender-­bending, 169, 173, 185 theatrical models, 56–57 thick description, 51, 53, 107–11, 228, 244n81 “Thick Description: ­Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” (Geertz), 108–11 ­Thing, The, 197–98 Third Wave, The (Toffler), 29, 30

287 Thomas, Clarence, 231 Thompson, Lydia, 10, 51, 72, 93, 120, 248n1 Tigger!, 88, 134; “burlesque equation,” 118–19 Time Out New York, 194–95 Titans of Tease Showcase (BHOF), 67 to-­be-­looked-­at-­ness, 104, 106, 226 Toddlers in Tiaras, 160–62, 161 Toddlers & Tiaras (real­ity show), 160, 258n39 Toffler, Alvin, 29, 30 Tomlin, Lily, 129 Touchette, Amy, 181 Tournée (film, Amalric), 95, 197 transformation, 2, 49 transgression, xi, 1, 6, 90–91, 111, 116, 192, 204, 243n48; and camp, 179, 185; and explicit body as palimpsest, 70; and humor, 95, 120, 127, 133; potential for, 49, 58–59, 70 trans identities, 183–84 Trea­sure Box (Muz), 198 Tremens, Delirium, 90 tribute acts, 21, 112 “The Trou­ble with ‘Queerness’ ” (Horo­w itz), 180 Trump, Donald, 229 21st ­Century Burlesque, 96 24-­Decade History of Popu­lar ­Music, A (Mac), 222 Tyrell, Susan, 206 unexpected, the, 20, 26–27, 31, 38, 50, 119, 156; in Brooklyn’s work, 136–40; and liveness, 56–58; monstrosity of, 73; in Muz’s work, 202, 218 unruly body, 38, 51, 91, 95, 97, 117, 169 unruly ­woman, 37–38, 51, 116, 127, 129; Dirty Martini as the body of neo-­ burlesque, 97–102; and laughter, 94–95, 97, 117; visibility as power, 78–79; wink, use of, 95, 97 utterance, performative, 80 Valentine, Kate (Miss Astrid), 8, 30, 81; on beauty pageants, 164, 167–68; in Rite of Spring, 202; “State of the Union” address, 31, 240n21; on two types of performers, 31–33; and World Famous *BOB*, 182, 187–91 Vancouver, British Columbia, 9

288 I n d e x variety format, 10–11, 15–16 Va Va Voom Room, 30, 134, 139, 240n21 venues, 16, 25, 34–35; adult, 34–35; competitions, 61, 66–67; under­ground, 25, 59, 67 vignette-­style narrative acts, 2, 4, 134–36 vintage burlesque, 18, 242n34 virgin-­whore dichotomy, xii “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey), 104 V magazine, 102 voice, female, 127, 129, 132 Von Teese, Dita, 37, 51, 80, 82–88, 249n45; academic criticism of, 83–85; backlash against, 83–88; Burlesque Art of the Teese/Fetish Art of the Teese, 94; “Burlesque: Strip, Strip, Hooray!,” 85; counterculture in casting, 85–86; diversity of casting, 85–86, 86 vulgarity, 128 Waits, Tom, 75 Walters, Ben, 26 Weldon, Jo “Boobs,” xiii, 25, 27, 230; Godzilla act, 75 Werner, Maggie, xi, xii–­x iii, 40, 98, 237n9, 240n24, 250n11 West, Mae, 88, 133 wet T-­shirt contest, 135, 155–56 White, Richard Grant, 73 whiteness, and beauty ideals, 43–44, 132, 151–52

white per­for­mance art, neo-­burlesque as, 40–44, 48, 81–82 Whitney Biennial, 193–94, 194, 195, 198, 211; Rite of Spring, 200–204 Wiggle Room, 54 Willson, Jacki, 9–10, 24, 68, 69, 84, 110 wink, 51, 95, 97, 106–11, 111, 244n81; in burlesque, 106–7; and camp, 174, 192; in Geertz’s thick description, 107–11; and parody, 109–11, 244n81; vs. twitch, 108 wit, 118–19, 128–29 Womanizer (Muz), 197, 200, 204; WOMANIZER cata­logue, 205–8, 207 ­Women against Vio­lence in Pornography and Media, 205 ­women of color, 81–82, 246n110; and booty capitalism, 44–45; Brown Girls Burlesque (BGB), 41–43, 151; Brown jouissance, 46; oversexualization of, 43–46; and white beauty ideals, 43–44 ­Women’s March on Washington (January, 2106), 229 Wood, Eden, 162 Wood, Rose, 88, 89, 90, 148, 250n54 World’s First Lesbian Beauty Contest, 159 “You ­Don’t Own Me” rope escape act (Muz), 53, 212–17, 213, 215, 216 Zigun, Dick, 153, 257n18 Zorita, 21, 112, 252n59

About the Author

Lynn Sally is a writer, scholar, and practicing artist. She received her PhD in per­for­mance studies from New York University where she has taught burlesque since 2004. She is also the author of Fighting the Flames: The Spectacular Per­for­mance of Fire at Coney Island. www​.­lynnsally​.c­ om