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Vamps & Tramps: New Essays

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 512 ratings · 31 reviews

The bestselling author of Sexual Personae and Sex, Art, and American Culture is back with a fiery new collection of essays on everything from art and celebrity to gay activism, Lorena Bobbitt to Bill and Hillary. These essays have never appeared in book form, and many will be appearing in print for the first time.

Paperback, 532 pages

Published October 11th 1994 by Vintage (first published October 10th 1994)

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Dec 04, 2008 Natalie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: just-bloody-awful, everyones-a-critic, female-pen

Fuck Camille Paglia.

Yeah, I said it.

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Sep 16, 2011 matt rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthologies, literary-crit, ladies-night

Ah, ma bon Camille...I stumbled across this title when I was reading other reviews on this site and I was charmed to find that I could glimpse, grunt a bit, and quietly murmur in that way known to the freakishly bookish "I read that."

It was in undergrad. Such an undergrad type of book. Her style is all meathooks and dynamite. Not to say it wasn't salient- I still shudder and remove myself from engaging with the more dense and sci-fi sterile tomes of Frenchified Filosophy- "gunk" was the fun and...more

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May 21, 2008 Ricky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bought-08, 0n-my-bookshelf, essays

I'd probably have given it five stars if it had been edited down somewhat.
Some of the stuff here is the boring kind of self-indulgent.
Some of it's great though.
The stuff on date rape and sexual harrassment pushes the envelope in the good way.
The stuff on domestic violence does so as well and flirts with crossing the line.
The bits on domestic violence and pedophilia come across ultimately as the kind of cavalier musings that someone who felt their childhood was too happy might entertain. I was, a...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Orna Ross rated it 4 of 5 stars

I WANT to put the bomp back into the bomp-de-bomp’, roars a new book of essays on feminism, sex, popular culture, education and Madonna. Yes, you got it, it’s Camille Paglia time again.

The main thesis of Paglia’s latest rag-bag of ideas is that the missing piece in the feminist jigsaw is woman as vamp or tramp. The prostitute, the stripper, the high-glamour star, the seductress; these are “seasoned symbols of tough cookie feminism, my answer to the smug self-satisfaction and crass materialism of...more I WANT to put the bomp back into the bomp-de-bomp’, roars a new book of essays on feminism, sex, popular culture, education and Madonna. Yes, you got it, it’s Camille Paglia time again.

The main thesis of Paglia’s latest rag-bag of ideas is that the missing piece in the feminist jigsaw is woman as vamp or tramp. The prostitute, the stripper, the high-glamour star, the seductress; these are “seasoned symbols of tough cookie feminism, my answer to the smug self-satisfaction and crass materialism of yuppie feminism.”

She is as scathing as ever about US feminists like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworking, “the Mad Hatter and her dumpy dormouse,” or Naomi Wolf “Little Miss...yuppie...twit.”

Paglia has been much criticised for her vitriolic comments, getting personal where others thought she should have kept it political.. As far as she is concerned, they’re missing the point. She aims to “espouse offensiveness for its own sake, as a tool of attack against received opinion and unexamined assumptions.” And of course gratuitous offensiveness is a good way to keep all that lovely attention coming.

Vamps and Tramps is many things but more than anything it is Camille’s gaze into the mirror of her many media moments - out of 44 items in the book only five were written specially for it; the rest is previously published articles, reviews and transcripts of TV and film projects, not to mention quotes about Paglia, cartoons of Paglia, reprinted interviews with Paglia - everything that’s been thought about Paglia on air or print since her last book promotion.

In her preface, she compares herself to American radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, to businessman-turned-politician Ross Perot, to President Bill Clinton. “We have widely different political views,” she says, “but all four of us, with our raging egomania and volatile comic personae tending toward the loopy, helped restore free speech to America.” Is this woman for real?

The answer, of course, is no. ‘Persona’ is Camille’s favourite word and it is in the invention and promotion of the Paglia persona that she has been most successful. When she met the media it was love at first sight and the infatuation looks like settling into a longterm affair. They love her because, as one journalist put it, “she gives good quote;” she loves them because they spread her ideas around, enabling her to crow: “my terminology and frame of analysis have passed into general usage.” She stays sexy in media terms by vamping it up - “improvising, ornamenting, pumping up the excitement” - and adopting a variety of different poses.

So much for the medium, what about he message? There’s much to disagree with in Paglia’s work, not least her biological determinism. Scholarship is only scratching the surface of the nature versus nurture debate but Paglia breezily dismisses thousands of years of social conditioning and declares that the reason women can’t make art is because they have wombs and oestrogen instead of penises and testosterone. She collapses the cultural into the social. “The woman ‘on the stroll’ (streetwalking) is a prowler and predator, self-directed and no one’s victim.” While this might be true of the whore as a cultural construct - that is, construct of the male artistic sensibility - it hardly describes the real experience of the majority of prostitutes.

Similarly, when she writes of striptease as “the ritual unveiling of a body that will always remain mysterious because of the inner darkness of the womb,” and speaks of the admiration and awe of men beholding a nude dancer, she is telling only half the story, overlooking the low social status of sex-workers - and the more patriarchal the society, the lower their status goes.

Contrary to Paglia’s thesis, woman as sex symbol is not missing from our culture; she is everywhere. If feminism has stayed aloof it is because feminism is about arming women with more weapons that the double-edged sword of sexual allure.

But even if you don’t agree with Paglia you do enjoy the romp through western culture with her provocative critical intelligence. She writes about art and popular culture with passion and knowledge. She crams more no-holds barred ideas into a chapter than many of her critics do into a lifetime and presents them with oodles more wit and style.

Read her and rage.(less)

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Jul 24, 2009 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminist, essays, literature-criticism

I went to a college that believed, strongly believed, in a well rounded education. We had to take many courses that were outside of our major. A really good idea considering the state of education today. One of the courses I took for my distribution requirements was a sociology class that dealt with race and ethnicity. We had to buy and supposedly read three books for the class. I say supposedly because even though we were told to read This Bridge Called My Back Writings by Radical Women of Colo ...more I went to a college that believed, strongly believed, in a well rounded education. We had to take many courses that were outside of our major. A really good idea considering the state of education today. One of the courses I took for my distribution requirements was a sociology class that dealt with race and ethnicity. We had to buy and supposedly read three books for the class. I say supposedly because even though we were told to read This Bridge Called My Back Writings by Radical Women of Color, we never ever discussed it in class. I hated that book for three reasons. One, we paid for it but the teachers never used it. Two, we were told to read it, but the teachers never used it. Three, there was an essay in the collection that said you couldn't be a feminist if you were a white woman or a heterosexual. The class was taught by two women, one of whom made fun of a female student who said she would change her last name upon getting married. I got a good grade because I barely said anything. I hardly said anything because I felt like my views were wrong or strange or too different (as well as low self esteem), and I saw what happened in that class if you disagreed with the status quo. You have no idea how much guts it takes me to post reviews on this website I wish that I had read Vamps and Tramps or anything by Camille Paglia at that time. I think it would have saved me years of feeling too different and strange. I think students should be challenged by ideas that are different, radical, or upsetting, but students should have the right to challenge those beliefs too.

Today, Paglia's book is somewhat dated. It is most likely not as shocking as it once was. Some of what she tackles, however, is still current today. There is a backlash against different views on college campuses which I believe hinders learning. There is a tendency of young women to see feminism as something evil. Today, too often people only read opinions that they 100% agree with, and there is a tendency to put everything and everyone into a nice, neatly labeled box. How boring! I may disagree with Paglia on some things, but she is never boring. I think we need more writers like her. That is, writers who are not afraid to say what they think and to challenge mouthpieces.

In this collection, the best and most thought provoking essay is "No Law in the Arena". In this essay, Paglia tackles views on the gender wars as well as rape and pedophile. What Paglia does in her writing is truly examine something. I may not agree with all her conclusions, but at least she makes me think. At least, she doesn't make me feel stupid if I disagree with her. This last bit is interesting because Paglia is cutting in some of the transcripts, but when she is talking to the reader, she is never condensending, challenging but not insulting. It really is a dialogue. Even though the essay appeared 15 years ago, it still is current because we are still wrestling with the same issues.

Other essays in the book are slightly dated. One wonders, for instance, how different "Diana Regina" would be today after Princess Diana's death, something that in retrospect, Paglia's seems to foreshadow. Additionally, the book is getting four stars because it is very heavy on the ego. This is very true of the last 60 pages.

What I found most interesting, however, were her comments about teaching and about students which are still current today. I would take her attack on Political Correctness further. I would say in addition to hindering debate and learning, PC hinders the student from learning to read actively. So many students have been turned off of reading for a host of reasons. They are told they are not reading literature, that they are stupid if they like that book, that they shouldn't read that because it is X (X is always something bad). Reading is a skill that needs to be developed. Only reading political correct works hinders that.(less)

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Nov 29, 2012 Patrick Dugan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'd only a passing familiarity with Camille Paglia until a few weeks ago when I picked Vamps & Tramps up from a library book sale. Yeah, she's pretty outrageous.

I'm not going to read all the essays in this book because much of it is pop culture analysis from '90-'93 (Amy Fisher, Sandra Bernhard, Diana, &c.), which I really am not interested in. The collection's original essay, "No Law in the Arena" (a reference to some obscure dialogue in Ben Hur) is ... well, a purposefully offensive in...more I'd only a passing familiarity with Camille Paglia until a few weeks ago when I picked Vamps & Tramps up from a library book sale. Yeah, she's pretty outrageous.

I'm not going to read all the essays in this book because much of it is pop culture analysis from '90-'93 (Amy Fisher, Sandra Bernhard, Diana, &c.), which I really am not interested in. The collection's original essay, "No Law in the Arena" (a reference to some obscure dialogue in Ben Hur) is ... well, a purposefully offensive introduction to her libertarian dissident feminist attitude. Highly entertaining, yes, but Paglia -- and this permeates the book -- suffers from a small-mindedness that is typical of isolated art school scholars. Her whole worldview is Apollonian v. Dionysian, Christian v. pagan, and she uses this dichotomy as the basis to critique everything, particularly "sexual personae," or whatever. She's pro-abortion (not -choice), anti-hate crime legislation, believes victims of rape need to embrace the act as the epitome of female domination of the male ("cock teasing is a universal reality"), borderline pro-pedophilia, pro-prostitution, &c. Also, she's a complete queen bee ("the intellectual of the twenty-first century [...] will think like a gay man").

From there, it moves to "The Culture Wars," featuring a number of her previously published works. Anti-feminist/gay establishment, anti-censorship, yeah. Basically she's really upset about being labeled a neocon (while I submit nothing could be farther from the truth, she doesn't exactly do her right-wing image any damage). Then to "Pop Theatre," featuring a precious (man, would Paglia hate that!) little essay about Woody Allen and his adopted daughter-wife and Mia Farrow as mainstream feminist waif, exploring Freudian sexual roles. But, then, it happens: an absolutely stunning essay on Babs Streisand that pretty much says everything about The Nose that I could never articulate accurately.

The collection then moves to "Masters & Mistresses," most essays of which are about her initial celebration of the Clintons as power couple ("I like Hillary because she's kind of a bitch"), but then her wariness shows in an interview transcription from a year after they took office. I've no idea why she allowed it in the collection because she comes across as an idiot.

The memoirs essays and film transcripts are nice except "My Brothers In Crime" which was the only essay that I just couldn't finish. Her "adventures" with her friend in "Dr. Paglia [...] Female Misbehavior" is hilarious.

I should also mention there are two Channel 4 "World Without Walls" scripts included, "The Penis Unsheathed" and "Lolita Unclothed." The former was directed by one Peter Murphy (!), who I'm hoping is the Peter Murphy, of Bauhaus fame, one of my aesthetic idols; despite my best efforts, though, I can find no information about it.

In the "On Literature & Art" section there is a wonderfully succinct summary of the major themes and players in love poetry from antiquity through the Sixties. I will forever be indebted to Paglia for steering me towards William Carlos Williams, who "is rare among poets in extolling love and kitchen-centered domestic bliss" (!) (although from what I've so far read I can't say that I wholeheartedly agree with the assessment). I only read two of the book reviews, both re: Madge; her own book Sex (which I can't wait to read given the scathing review) and a biography. Her advice column for Spy had me in stitches on the bus.

I'm giving this book four stars. Look, I don't agree with a lot of Paglia's claims, but I probably agree with more than most people. But that's not the point. I think dissent in academia is far too rare, and voices like Paglia's are needed. But that's not the point either. The point is that she's an incredibly energetic read, and I think we could hang out.(less)

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Apr 01, 2012 Cecilia W Yu rated it 4 of 5 stars

It was all a blur. I can't remember ....oh hang on, Yes, I got the book because some book club I belonged to sent it to me and I did not have time to run to the post to return it so they billed me for it so I thought I better read it now that it was around. Read it and then my friend who ended up as a teacher at SOAS asked me if I thought Camille Paglia "overstates" her case...and my response was,"Probably a little bit to make her point...but then the opposite side the stalinist-feminists are wo...more

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Apr 08, 2007 Helena rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essentials, books-with-which-i-am-in-a-fight

Q: What does 400 pound [metaphorically] contraversial gender theory intellectual write about?
A: Whatever She Wants.

[start with "sexual personae," to really get an idea of the substantive genius of Lady C. This is pure indulgent joy, with a lot of really sharp and eye opening cultural criticism lying around in the set dressing.]

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Mar 28, 2010 Brandy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This lady means business. Serious, lady business. Her opinions are pretty out there and often made me feel uncomfortable but always in a thought-provoking way. She's smart, she's tough, she's radical, she's ~~quite~~ a little crazy (and she's not comitting genocide), so kudos to Camille!

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Dec 20, 2010 Nora toomey rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think about the essay "sontag bloody sontag" probably once a day. The writing is frantic, obsessive, awesome, smart, crazy. I love this book so much. It makes me uncomfortable how much I love it.

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Nov 18, 2012 Krista R rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read this a zillion years ago. Don't remember much about it other than 1) I seem to recall having enjoyed it and 2) Paglia doesn't really think it's proper for lesbians to use strap-ons.

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Jun 06, 2011 PM rated it 3 of 5 stars

Paglia is an acquired taste. She's fun and likes to push people's buttons. Whether or not you agree with her, she's a true original thinker (who is pretty full of herself).

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Aug 12, 2011 Grant Weir rated it 5 of 5 stars

Love her or hate her, Ms. Paglia always has a lot to say, and she says it well. She devours pop culture and spits it back out with insight and wit, with a decidedly individual 'feminist' agenda.

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Mar 06, 2009 G. Branden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Camille Paglia's writing is nothing if not fiery, but I fear the metaphor may wear a bit too well, as it seems she has hardly published in the past ten years.

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Apr 26, 2013 Doublezerodomino rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not my kind of woman. She is full of more opinion than fact, and I tend to be on the other side of her arguments. Meh. Paglia.

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Apr 04, 2009 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is well-written& I enjoy Paglia's personality, but I don't think her points are argued in a way that makes them entirely relevant-- I am wary of intellectuals who choose to ignore whole movements.

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Apr 21, 2013 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hooray for the other side. I love a good iconoclastic argument.

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Apr 05, 2013 Deborah Brown rated it 5 of 5 stars

Interesting views of our culture.Controversial and original.

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Nov 07, 2010 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: criticism, essays, hommes-de-lettres, dandies

Love her memoir of the influential gay men in her life.

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Oct 12, 2009 Sabrina Chapadjiev rated it 3 of 5 stars

great bathroom reading.

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Dec 08, 2010 Kate O'Hanlon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, essays

I always feel slightly schizophrenic reading Paglia, I firmly agree with roughtly half of what she says and virulently oppose the other half. The only trouble is that I'm never sure which half is which. Fearlessly principled and consistently engaging it's hard not to admire Paglia, even when she's coming off as a bit unhinged (hint, being raised Catholic and Italian does not give you superior powers of insight).

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Jul 24, 2007 Swati rated it 4 of 5 stars

better to just read sexual personae, it'll let you look at the world through some camille-keyhole, and you can predict much of what's new here if you look through it right. but, sexual personae is very very fat. whereas this can be read in little bits before bed over a long time (though you may not be able to sleep afterwards).

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Nov 24, 2007 Anya rated it 3 of 5 stars

My Western Lit professor was slightly obsessed with Paglia and so we got to read and discuss many of her essays. She used to reference passages from this book and Sexual Personae on a regular basis. God I loved that class.

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Jul 09, 2008 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a combination of stellar, witty, brazen commentary and self-gratuitous reflections... Has outstanding moments and definitely shows a more liberal "feminism" than traditional/mainstream feminist thought.

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Jun 14, 2012 Evie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adolescence, since-i-went-to-uni

This book here is the main guilty one I ended up where I am, academically - for better or for worse.

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Sep 05, 2009 Sherry marked it as to-read

Read the introduction and realized I should probably start with Sexual Personae before delving into this one.

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Sep 01, 2007 keatssycamore rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Porn loving chicks

Shelves: essays

I just read it to see what all the fuss was about.

At this point, I'd imagine it reads a little dated.

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Jan 28, 2008 Bryn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-gay-gay

I remember this being my favorite book by Camille Paglia, but I can't really say why.

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Aug 13, 2012 Malcolm Schwantler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book. I absolutely love her metaphor and finely crafted insults. Laugh out loud.

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Feb 11, 2008 Lorrie Denesik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Need to re-read, this woman is amazing. Her mythology is everywhere in our culture

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About Camille Paglia

Camille Anna Paglia is an American social critic, author and teacher. Her book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, published in 1990, became a bestseller. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist fe...more

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Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars

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“Moralism and ignorance are responsible for the constant stereotyping of prostitutes by their lowest common denominator -- the sick, strung-out addicts, couched on city stoops, who turn tricks for drug money. . . . The most successful prostitutes in history have been invisible. That invisibility was produced by their high intelligence, which gives them the power to perceive, and move freely but undetected in the social frame. The prostitute is a superb analyst, not only in evading the law but in initiating the unique constellation of convention and fantasy that produces a stranger’s orgasm. She lives by her wits as much as her body. She is a psychologist, actor, and dancer, a performance artist of hyper-developed sexual imagination.” — 4 people liked it

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