Things just go from bad to worse, starts like a kiss it ends like a curse

by anna at 07:03 PM on December 01, 2003

I found this development rather arresting. Turns out that stripping is now a mainstream pursuit. Pam Anderson voices a crime-fighting cartoon stripper. Characterizing the act of parading about in thigh-high boots and skimpy thongs as a liberating, neo-feminist activity, former strippers charge ordinary women $400 for stripping lessons. Housewives and even grandmothers are having stripping poles installed in their bedrooms and basements. It’s the new chic household accessory. I raise no objection to this per se, however, at least not on any stodgy moral grounds.

But you’ve got to think that a stripper pole is one of those gifts that must be cleared by the recipient beforehand:
He: Merry Christmas, honey.
She: Oh look, it’s a L’il Minx stripper pole---installed right here in our bedroom. How thoughtful of you! Now pack your bags, you pervert.

My other problem is that it marginalizes real strippers. Stripping is one of the few professions that has retained some trace of that wild, outlaw mystique. Even prostitutes now call themselves “sex workers,” as if they stand on an assembly lining and produce Cleveland Steamers. As Girls Gone Wild did to flashing cleavage on spring break, stripping gone mainstream is just another example of how businessmen can suck the life and vitality out of just about anything we once held dear. Now it’s merely another commodity to be sold, and that is sad indeed. What were once Saucy Bad Girls From the Other Side of the Tracks is just naughty-but-nice Fun for Everyone. The words “stripper” and “aesthetic” should never appear in the same sentence.

In Flashdance, Jennifer Beal played a dancer who wanted to dazzle audiences with her sensual artistry. Guys just clamored for her to take it all off and shake her ass a little. That illustrates the difficulty in removing the tacky element from stripping. Likewise, Demi Moore sought to humanize strippers when she played a struggling single mom in Striptease. It proved to be a commercial and artistic catastrophe. Same goes for Elizabeth Berkley in the awful Showgirls.

Seems a similar misfortune has befallen bikers, another renegade group that used to pride itself on living on the fringes of society. It was Hell’s Angels who stabbed that defenseless kid at Altamont. Charlie Manson’s family befriended biker gangs. Bikers sold crystal meth long before it became a fashionable party drug. Free spirits all, they’d tool along with their long hair flowing in the breeze. Helmets were verboten.

Playing a helmetless outlaw biker in The Wild Ones, Marlon Brando tossed off two of the most classic lines ever uttered in a movie. His gang rode into a small town and set about terrorizing the residents. Naturally the young girls were quite enamored of these rough-hewn strangers on their loud machines. One of whom asks Brando’s character what they are rebelling against. He mulls her question momentarily and then replies, “I dunno. What you got?” At another point he sums up the old biker ethos thusly: “We don’t go anyplace. Going someplace is for squares. We just go.”

Bikers only rode Harleys. They held Yamahas and Hondas in utter disdain, dismissing the Japanese makes as rice-burners. My dad owned two Harleys, a fully restored 1929 pan-head painted candy apple red and a 1200 cc 1953 trike of the sort that policemen used to ride. It has a trunk large enough to hold two cases of beer. I used to ride the scoots in parades. When he died my mom sold them for a pittance, to free up space in the garage. While she had every right to do so, I still haven’t forgiven her.

It’s probably just as well though. What were once the exclusive property of grungy outlaw biker gangs is now mass produced by AMF Corporation, which also makes bicycles. Like stripper poles, Harleys are the latest status symbol coveted by yuppies. You have to get on a waiting list just to buy a new one.

Bikers must resume terrorizing small towns, selling drugs to minors and befriending serial killers. They need to trade their rice-burners in for old-style Harleys. They need to forget about safety, charity and community service. Sensitivity doesn’t become them.

Just as bored suburban housewives need to leave the stripping to professionals. And prostitutes need to start calling themselves what they are, prostitutes---not escorts or sex workers. There’s no shame in selling a dirty Sanchez, after all.