Strip Show: Performances of Gender and Desire

by Katherine Liepe-Levinson

This book offers an account of an unprecedented North American study of contemporary female and male strip shows. It particularly focuses on the contradictory sex roles, cultural positions, and performance practices of 'straight' strip shows during their second heyday in the early 1990s.
Katherine Liepe-Levinson's research took her to over seventy different strip bars, clubs, theatres and sex emporiums ranging from elaborate lap-dancing and couch-dancing 'gentlemen's' clubs in New York, Houston, and San Francisco; to Peoria's onetime duplex cabaret where women strip for men downstairs, and men for women upstairs; to the nightclubs of Montreal where female and male performers displayed the 'Full Monty'.
Liepe-Levinson's intriguing, comprehensive study concentrates on the cultural and theatrical elements of the strip shows themselves including the geographic locations and interior designs of the clubs, the choreography and costumes of the dancers and the all-important participation of the audience. She draws upon a variety of methodologies as well as interviews with performers to explore how the strip show's cultural and theatrical aspects simultaneously uphold and break traditional sex roles. Her findings readily complicate several of the most prominent and prevalent theories about sexual representation, gender and desire.

268 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

Reviews

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually started reading this book in January 2006 and couldn't get through it. Elisabeth Eaves' "Bare" was a much more intimate read; this is an in-depth look, very scholarly and researched, but I found it too dry to read for enjoyment.

[C.B. Daring · Rating 2 out of 5]

Still reading, but looks at stripping from the performance studies perspective.

[Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Culled from 1990's data the author shares information about the goings on in a number of clubs in the United States and Canada with occasional insight into what it all means in fantasy and reality. B/W images.

[Emily Hacker · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was not my most thoroughly read book so will likely review again after a re-read. I love an ethnography! I wish it took less of a heteronormative stance and was a bit more exploratory in its conceptualisation of gender and desire. but i loved the bit in the beginning when it talked about want to interrogate the "strangeness" of heterosexuality

[Martin Levinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, scholarly book for mature raders. Dense at times but worth the effort because of the unique insights into popular culture and gender roles and sexual representation.