Exvies Try Stuff: Stripping Off Purity Culture in Burlesque Class
by Katharine Strange @realstrangekaty
Growing up Evangelical we had a lot of rules. There were shows and movies we couldn’t watch, music we couldn’t listen to, toys we couldn’t play with, and people we couldn’t hang out with. Now that I’m no longer an Evangelical, I decided it’s time to try new things and break the rules.
Welcome to Exvies Try Stuff.
This month I learned to strip in a burlesque class.
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“We are all strippers,” Amara Strut, my burlesque teacher, declared. I giggled nervously and squeezed my arms across my chest. Moments before, she’d said there wouldn’t be any nudity in this class, but even her calling me a stripper felt uncomfortable. I was at Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque, taking an intro class called “The Art of the Tease.” According to my teacher, we’d focus our time on opera gloves but these techniques could be applied to any article of clothing. We were learning to be strippers, if artful ones.
As someone raised in the throes of Purity Culture, where “modest is hottest,” this was never a place I thought I’d be. Ever since puberty, I regularly received leers from men both inside the church and outside it as well as passive-aggressive comments about my choices of clothing from “concerned” church aunties.
After I married, these comments changed from “you shouldn’t wear that” to “you should only wear that in private, for your husband.” The controversial clothing could be anything from an exposed bra strap to shorts or dresses deemed too far above the knee, to tank tops. It always drove me crazy that girls’ clothing was so regulated while boys on church trips could literally walk around in their underwear without reproach.
In Purity Culture, women’s value is tightly linked to their virginity and modesty. Even as I have tried to overcome this thinking, I still find myself stuck in it. When I interviewed Fosse Jack last month, what struck me was how he and the other burlesque performers talked about how burlesque was more about the performer than the audience. They spoke about empowerment and owning their sexuality. As someone who’s never felt completely comfortable with her body and her sexuality, I knew that burlesque was something I needed to try.
My friend, Naomi, and I walked down an industrial-looking alleyway and into the tiny studio of Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque. It was rigged out like a typical dance studio, albeit with some more colorful touches: a set of matched pink vintage arm chairs, pink feather boas and showgirl headdresses, and a small burlesque library.
A circle of folding chairs was set up on the studio floor, a pair of opera gloves underneath each. Naomi and I joined a group of nine other women who were each nervously clutching a one-page handout on the history of burlesque.
My heart was racing. I read the page quickly, trying to stifle my urge to giggle. Our teacher, Amara Strutt, and her Teacher in Training, Muscato, (“He’s a TIT,” Amara teased — the first of many such jokes) welcomed us and began to tell us about the history of burlesque. It was then she declared, “stripping and burlesque are sisters. One is not better than the other. We are all strippers.”
It was a strange title to accept for someone who’d spent her entire life looking down on women who monetized their sexuality. But here I was, paying to take a stripping class.
Amara went on to demonstrate to us how delaying giving someone the thing they want (whether it’s a pen or to see your — GASP — naked hand!) makes them want it more. It makes the object being teased seem more valuable, more desirable.
(This is not entirely unlike the Evangelical approach to abstinence before marriage, where sex becomes the pinnacle of a relationship.)
As we practiced the various techniques for teasing and stripping off our opera gloves, I was surprised by how empowered I felt. In the past when I’ve tried to do something “sexy” I’ve felt awkward and vulnerable. It felt strange and inauthentic to perform sexiness, and was only comfortable if I could make it goofy and ironic, “OMG yeah I’m stripping like I think I’m hot stuff, isn’t that hilarious?” But in burlesque class, that feeling was gone. I was in a group of women who were all rediscovering their power. We made each other laugh, we made each other whoop and holler as we took off our gloves one by one. I felt like I deserved my time on stage to do something as silly as taking off a glove.
More than anything, I liked the feeling of being in control. Perhaps this is unsurprising. When others have trampled on your sexual boundaries, taking control of them feels good. I left the class thinking “I really need to buy some opera gloves.”
When Naomi and I were discussing this whole project, she pointed out to me that the Pauline theology at the heart of Christianity is this idea of our “sin nature” and that we’re in a constant battle between “flesh and spirit.”
“It’s like we were taught not to trust ourselves,” Naomi said.
It seems to me that a good sex life is all about the flesh. Enjoying sex is about being present in your body, not about judging every move as “right” or “wrong.” But if you were taught to view all choices through the “spirit/flesh” dichotomy theorized by that famously celibate apostle, it’s easy to see how you would likely have a messed-up view of sex.
This is the homework assignment for recovering from Purity Culture: explore what you like. Touch your body. Touch the body of another consenting adult. Wear clothes you like. When you see an immodestly dressed woman and feel the urge to judge her, interrogate that urge. Listen to Marvin Gaye. Know that you can explore your own boundaries without demolishing them.
