SHAKE IT HARD: FEMINIST IDENTITY AND THE BURLY-Q _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by PORTIA JANE KING Dr. Wayne Brekhus, Thesis Supervisor AUGUST 2008 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled SHAKE IT HARD: FEMINIST IDENTITY AND THE BURLY-Q presented by Portia Jane King, a candidate for the degree of master of arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. ___________________________________________ Professor Wayne Brekhus ___________________________________________ Professor John Galliher ___________________________________________ Professor David Crespy I want to thank all of my friends and family who have loved me enough to continue to support me, even when sometimes it was from very far away and with very little communication for extended periods of time. Specifically, I want to thank my parents who have always encouraged me to follow my dreams, my brother and sister-in-law who remind me daily that all can be handled with a little laughter, and my best friend who uprooted his life to hold my hand through this. I dedicate this paper in loving memory of my grandparents who passed away during its conception. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Wayne Brekhus, for all of the help and guidance that he has given me over the last two years. His experience has been invaluable to me during this undertaking. I would also like to thank the members of Little Mama’s Burly-Q Revue. The women and men of Little Mama’s have taught me the importance of believing in yourself and never letting anyone else define who that is. Thank you for opening your family to me. Finally, I would like to thank the Blue Note of Columbia, Mo for allowing me to conduct research in their facility. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 HISTORICAL BURLESQUE ................................................................................ 2 The Rise and Fall of the Burlesque Queen: 20th Century ......................................................... 11 NEO-BURLESQUE ............................................................................................ 13 THE FEMINIST AND THE BURLESQUE QUEEN ............................................. 15 Liberal Feminism: A Position of Support .................................................................................. 15 Shifting Definitons ....................................................................................................................... 16 ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE .......................................................................... 16 WOMEN AND DESIRE ...................................................................................... 17 THE SUBVERSIVE PERFORMANCE AS POLITICAL PROTEST .................... 18 METHODS.......................................................................................................... 21 Setting the Scene ......................................................................................................................... 21 GLITTER OVER FASCISM ................................................................................ 23 Naked Activism ............................................................................................................................ 24 Body Image ................................................................................................................................... 26 Reproductive Health .................................................................................................................... 27 Gender Bending and Boylesque ................................................................................................ 28 Queer Identity ............................................................................................................................... 29 Hot and Sweaty on the Campaign Trail ..................................................................................... 31 ANALYSIS ......................................................................................................... 33 Rethinking Pre-conceived Notions ............................................................................................ 33 Contestation ............................................................................................................................... 34 iii Intentionality ............................................................................................................................... 40 Collective Identity ....................................................................................................................... 44 Over Arching Trends ................................................................................................................... 45 TYING UP LOOSE ENDS .................................................................................. 46 A Mirror or a Distortion: LMBQR vs. Historical Burlesque ...................................................... 46 Speaking to Questions of Bias and Advocacy ......................................................................... 49 Implications for Further Research ............................................................................................. 50 Concluding ................................................................................................................................... 51 APPENDIX A ...................................................................................................... 52 APPENDIX B ...................................................................................................... 53 WORKS REFERENCED .................................................................................... 59 iv Abstract Can a woman remove her clothes knowing about the gaze of the other and still maintain feminist ideals? Can she legitimately use her body to further her feminist and political ideals? I will examine the historical rise, fall, and revival of burlesque in the United States and how burlesque has been both reinvented and reinforced by the neo-burlesque movement. I will also look at public performances by Little Mama’s Burly-Q Revue, a queer/ feminist neo-burlesque troupe residing in Columbia, MO, a Midwestern college town, to show how social activism and feminism can and do line-up with historical burlesque ideals. By applying the social movements model for assessing cultural forms of entertainment of Rupp and Taylor, an argument for Little Mama’s Burly-Q Revue’s engagement in social protest could be outlined in terms of contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. It was found that the local troupe did follow the model and that while having stepped away from the origins of burlesque appears to be a part of the evolution of burlesque v Introduction Women are no longer to be considered little tootsey wootseys who have nothing to do but look pretty. They are determined to take an active part in the community and look pretty too. -Lydia Commander, 1909 Public portrayals of female sexuality have long been and continue to be a heavily debated subject in both the social sciences and popular culture. At the heart of this debate is feminism and how it plays into the exposure of female flesh. Can a woman remove her clothes knowing about the gaze of the other and still maintain feminist ideals? Can she legitimately use her body to further her feminist and political ideals? It is a common position in feminist pornography literature, especially in radical feminist literature, that pornography cannot be separated from the objectification of the male gaze over the female form and the subsequent degradation of the female, though the specifics of the arguments may differ (Bart 1985, Beneke 1990, Clark 1983, MacDonald 1990, MacKinnon 1984). However, while much of the literature is useful for assessing certain displays of the female form, it fails to account for context. In Towards a Feminist Erotica (1987), Kathy Myers argues that all images are engaging in some level of objectification but that there needs to be some way of distinguishing those representations that exist to dehumanize women from those that operate against it. While some level of objectification may be present, the understanding of why the display was constructed and its intended operation as a display of the body is key to the development of full view of how the display is operating. Simply put, it is not as 1 easy as just assigning the objectification label to every display of the sexualized body. There are many differences between the burlesque of the mid to late nineteenth century and the burlesque of the twenty-first; however, the traditional burlesque roots are clearly exhibited. I will examine the historical rise, fall, and revival of burlesque in the United States and how burlesque has been both reinvented and reinforced by the neo-burlesque movement. I will also look at public performances by Little Mama’s Burly-Q Revue, a queer/ feminist neo- burlesque troupe residing in Columbia, MO, a Midwestern college town, to show how social activism and feminism can and do lineup with historical burlesque ideals. Historical