Striptease: From Gaslight to Spotlight

One might expect an illustrated history of stripping to be superficial and salacious--or else politicized and academic. Glasscock aims, successfully, for middle ground in this breezy but detailed consideration of the art of""revealing, arousing, and amusing, and doing all of these on a stage (although not necessarily in that order)."" Most theater historians identify the origins of striptease in 19th-century burlesque; while Glasscock doesn't dispute the connection, she finds influences in a host of other American theatrical forms, including vaudeville, Broadway and modern dance. Connecting Isadora Duncan with New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr--however circuitously--may seem like sacrilege to some, but Glasscock respectfully, and persuasively, argues that the public's reception of the nude female body has a lot to do with whether or not that body is positioned as art or entertainment. Duncan was able to get away with dancing in a state of undress, Glasscock says, because she applied""a veneer of intellectualism to her performance."" Glasscock spends a long time establishing her history of striptease, and while her diligence is laudable, the result is that comparatively short shrift is given to striptease icons of the 1950s such as Tempest Storm, Blaze Star and Lili St. Cyr. That said, this is a compelling history, one that the author feels is still being written. Referring to a new breed of burlesque revivalists, Glasscock writes,""the increasing success of the New Burlesque suggests the possibility that the live sex acts of the 1970s and the lap dances of the 1980s and 1990s may only be remembered as a prelude to another era of classic striptease."" 70 b&w and 74 color illustrations.