Striptease

Author: Jessica Glasscock

Source: A-Z of Fashion
Publicists coined the word striptease in the late 1920s. It is still an evocative
word, bringing to mind the lurid image of a busty, 1950s performer bumping and
grinding in tasseled pasties and a sequined g-string. This icon of overtly
commercial sexuality had its heyday in the 1950s, but the history of the
striptease reaches as far back as the nineteenth century.

Starting in the 1850s, what is often referred to as the "scandal of tights" swept
through America. Flesh-colored stockings were worn on the stage by
comediennes, chorines, and cancan dancers revealing limbs that had been all but
eliminated from the fashionable silhouette. The costume shocked audiences, but
was allowed by censors since it had originated on ostensibly respectable stages
in Europe, such as the Gaiety in London and the Folies Bergre in Paris. These
nineteenth-century performers never actually disrobed, but they were harassed,
fined, and occasionally jailed for pulling up their skirts, flashing their underwear,
and swiveling their hips in a way that evoked the throes of passion. In 1893, the
American purveyors of the tights-clad leg show, found mainly in burlesque and
vaudeville theaters, shed even more clothes in order to adapt the "exotic" dance
of the Chicago World's Fair's Little Egypt (whose performance launched the first
and longest-lived euphemism for the stripteaser: exotic dancer).

The element of bare flesh was introduced around the turn of the century at the
tea parties of socialite ladies. Early modern dancers like Isadora Duncan, Ruth St.
Denis, and Maud Allan scandalized moralists with the degree of physical exposure
in the costumes for their dances that were launched through the patronage of
wealthy women interested in Orientalist art and culture. Duncan performed at
ladies' matinees in bare feet and without tights, dressed only in a classical gown
(made at first of her mother's muslin curtains). St. Denis adopted the exotic
dance of the World's Fairs and dressed in ultra-sheer and bejeweled net
garments. Allan developed a Dance of the Seven Veils based on the biblical story
of Salome that was so popular that prominent women were inspired to hold a
costume party of Salome-style dress. Through the popularity of modern dancers,
a formula was filtered into American popular theater where numerous young
women reduced their stage costumes to gauzy skirts, beaded bras, and bared
midriffs in an effort to interpret foreign cultures, real and imagined, through the
art of dance.

By the 1910s, the first accounts of striptease appeared on the heels of the advent
of modern dance. Vaudeville historian Joe Laurie, Jr. claimed that vaudeville
headliner Eva Tanguay let the veils drop in her version of the Salome dance in
1912. Morton Minsky claimed that burlesque performer Mae Dix invented it when
she removed the detachable collar and cuffs of her costume in full view of the
audience in order to save on her cleaning bill. Former stripteaser Ann Corio
credited Hinda Wassau with inventing the act when forced to shimmy out of a
chorus costume that had caught on the beads of the ensemble worn beneath for
purposes of a quick change. The "Glorified Girls" featured in the mainstream
Broadway revue of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. also made nudity more and more
acceptable on the stage with opulent tableaux such as "Lady Godiva's Ride" in
the Follies of 1919.

The acceptance of nudity necessitated bawdy entertainment to up the ante

further in order to secure their lucratively raunchy reputations. The result was
striptease. The precedent of nudity established by modern dancers implied
artistic motives. The striptease represented a return to the flash-and-tickle
approach of populist vaudeville dancers. That was infinitely more appealing to
male audiences and it was achieved not through nudity, but through an
undressing that mimicked the disrobing which preceded a sexual encounter. The
formula was simple: the slow parade of a beautiful girl in a beautiful gown; the
removal of stockings, gloves, hairpins; the slow shimmy out of the clinging,
formal dress; and the briefest wriggle in only a g-string. Nudity made artistic
became artistry made erotic.

Four burlesque producer brothers named Minsky became inextricably connected

with striptease in the 1920s. Their publicists, George Alabama Florida and Mike
Goldreyer, came up with the name for it and promoted its finest practitioners.
These included Margie Hart, Georgia Southern, Ann Corio, and the incomparable
Gypsy Rose Lee. When the Great Depression came, the Minskys were able to
lease a theater on Broadway. Gypsy Rose Lee thrived in Minsky shows during this
era and set the tone for high-style striptease as an extremely beautiful woman
who was also an engaging comedienne and natural-born celebrity. The Minskys
were so successful that theater producers and real-estate interests (along with
some conservative religious organizations) banded together to get the act of
striptease itself banned in New York City. They succeeded in 1937 when the word
burlesque and the name Minsky were banned in New York City, and all the
theaters that featured striptease were shut down. Similar bans followed in other
cities across the nation.

Throughout the 1940s, a few burlesque houses survived and Minsky strippers
used their fame to headline shows on carnival midways. In the years following
the crackdown on striptease, some concessions were made to avoid trouble with

the law. The use of pasties to cover the aureolas was the most noticeable change,
but the addition of sequins, rhinestones, and tassels changed pasties from a
handicap to an innovation. As nightclubs entered a boom following World War II,
striptease came back in style again. A 1954 Newsweek article reported that the
number of stripteasers had quadrupled since the 1930s and that 50 nightclubs in
New York City featured striptease. The article gleefully recounts the props in the
shows (snakes, monkeys, macaws, doves, parakeets, stuffed horses, swimming
tanks, and bubble baths); the cost of the costumes ($850 to $1,000 for Lili St.
Cyr's Vegas act); and the stage names in use (Carita La Dovethe Cuban
Bombshell, Evelyn Westthe $50,000 Treasure Chest Girl). The star performers of
this era employed all the over-the-top shtick of 50 years of vaudeville in their
acts. Blaze Starr had a red settee, which she had tricked out with a fan, canned
smoke, and a piece of bright silk that would appear to go up in flames. Lili St. Cyr
did interpretive striptease based on Salome, Carmen, The Picture of Dorian Gray,
and Sadie Thompson. Tempest Storm promoted herself relentlessly, dating
celebrities and accepting a mock award from Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis for
having the two biggest props in Hollywood. These acts were so popular that in
1951 Frenchman Alain Bernadin opened the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris to bring
American-style striptease to European cabaret audiences. Another garish heyday
for striptease had arrived. But by the 1960s, that heyday had come and gone.
In the decades that followed, striptease was rejected in favor of the direct appeal
of already bare flesh. The topless trend kicked off in the mid-1960s when a go-go
dancer at a San Francisco strip club performed in Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing
suit without getting arrested. Topless lunches, topless shoeshines, and other
mundane acts improved by toplessness were featured in the clubs that had
showcased striptease. Bottomlessness logically followed. By the 1970s, the
hugely profitable pornography industry almost eclipsed live nude girls altogether.
Crackdowns on the pornography industry in the 1980s encouraged a resurgence
of striptease, but much of the glamour and humorous shtick of 1950s striptease
was excised in favor of the intimacy of the lap dance for an audience of one and
as a result, the theatrically-inclined tassel-twirling stripteaser was replaced by the
more readily accessible silicone-enhanced bottle blond with one leg wrapped
around a metal pole.

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Lyn Seymour rehearses for a production of Oscar Wilde's 1891 play, Salome.
Although tame by modern standards, the "Dance of the Seven Veils" perfomed in
the play helped begin a trend towards the seductive, near-nude dancing known
as striptease.