I’m
just rounding out my first week as a student in Florence, Italy. I’ve taken in
a lot: new people, new food, new customs, a new routine, and new personal and
academic agendas. I actually could not believe the beauty of what I was seeing
at times: popular, olive, and fig trees spanning acres; centuries-old relics to
a time when the city was, like much of Italy, under papal control; sun-soaked
gardens hosting a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables; and old, narrow
streets that have supported the likes of Dante, Michelangelo, and Boccaccio.That’s not
even mentioning the people, a surprisingly diverse blend of old-rooted Italians
and emigrants from the Indians subcontinent, the Middle East, and parts of
Africa, to name a few, all bustling about the city by day and talking in the
animated tones which characterize the Italian language.
I will
admit that in all of this novelty and beauty, I feel some nostalgia for home,
for the city I have singularly dubbed as the greatest in the world. I miss the
have-it-your-way approach to life in New York, where just about anything is
available at any time, any day of the week. I miss the people I’ve come to know
and love. And of course, I miss burlesque, which is sadly lacking in Florence.
It took
a bit of a comical, “a-ha” moment for me to realize just how true the latter
is. I was watching a ceremonial Italian flag show put on by my school, and
amongst all the polite clapping and occasional over-zealous cheers, I was
suddenly struck by the thought, “This would be a lot more interesting if he
[particularly good-looking guy who had taken center stage with his
flag-twirling routine] took his clothes off.” I started laughing right in the middle
of the ceremony.
Not
that ALL entertainment has to have stripping involved… okay, come on, it DOES
make things a lot more interesting. That’s not just a testament to the fact
that I’ve probably seen near a thousand burlesque acts, right? I’d like to think
it’s just a basic truth that nudity is always more interesting, but maybe my
opinion is a teensy bit skewed.
Lili St. Cyr's famous bathtub routine
- photo from papierdoll.net
Along
the same vein, I keep managing to sneak away from the onslaught of academic
readings I have on my plate to the saucier, sexier realm of burlesque, at least
on paper. Currently indulging my new obsession with burlesque memoirs and
auto/biographies is Kelly DiNardo’s Gilded
Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique. Today I read a wonderful
passage that I thought should be shared, about the still-contentious pull
between feminists (and many other, for that matter) looking to classify
striptease as either degrading or empowering for women:
When
burlesque first began, female performers used their bodies and their voices to
poke fun at the upper class. By the turn of the century women were silenced.
“The power of burlesque language to call attention to society’s categories and
hierarchies based on the fact that it came out of the mouths of women,” wrote
Robert C. Allen in Horrible Prettiness.
“As the burlesque performer’s mouth became the only part of her body that did
not move in the cooch dance, the shimmy, the striptease, she literally and
figuratively lost her voice… Without a voice it was all the more difficult for
that body to reclaim its subjectivity.”
Certainly.
as Allen pointed out, a woman’s voice onstage commanded attention and held
power. But a voiceless woman was not a powerless woman. “A woman taking off her
clothes is a magic act. It really does activate some primal, elemental,
universal principle,” feminist commentator Camille Paglia told A&E for the
cable channel’s documentary It’s
Burlesque. “We look. We don’t really listen. We listen to the music, but
that puts us in a trance state. I really do think there’s a mystique of women
taking off their clothes that feminist discourse has never really caught up to.
It isn’t about women degrading herself, exposing herself, becoming a piece of
meat. It’s something quite different. It’s woman actually being elevated to
goddess, which is why she must stop talking. It’s beyond words. It’s beyond the
reach of language or logic.”
I find
it incredibly alleviating that the current wave of feminism is willing to
embrace the work of the stripper now as that of a lowly and degrading last resort,
but as a profession that has the potential to uplift and empower a woman while
she demands, and is granted, respect and appreciation. Previously this was not
the case: ideas of femininity during the suffragette movement, for example,
were largely centered around the chaste, heavily garbed, loyal wife, who may be
involved in timely affairs outside the home but whose place was ultimately
alongside her bread-winning husband. A woman who took off her clothes was even
conceived as being injurious to the women’s suffrage movement; apparently a
reduction in the clothing was tantamount to a reduction in credibility. This,
ironically, represents a kind of misogyny all its own. Would a woman need to
feel ashamed of showing her body in order to stake out a respectable place in
the world?
Feminists
like Paglia are increasingly answering with a proud and confident “No!” They
are not alone – as the burlesque movement continues to grow in New York,
showgoers will follow. It helps that burlesque is, as I often hear it, “cool.”
Happily, there are a considerable amount of dedicated, more – shall we say,
enlightened – members of burlesque audiences; people who know what it’s about,
and go there for the right reasons. They – both men and women – are of course
there to have a good time. They’re there to oogle at the beautiful performers,
be inspired, surprised, and turned on by them, but they know what would
constitute crossing a line. That’s all
good news to me, and evidence that striptease is increasingly shedding its
stigma while still keeping it sexy.
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