Is burlesque the same thing as stripping?

Since 2002, there's been a resurgence of interest in burlesque, an old-fashioned form of striptease. But is burlesque just another form of stripping? Explore the the fascinating history and practice of burlesque in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house stuff Works dot com. Hey Baron, Welcome
to the podcast. This is Kristen and this is Molly Molly.

(00:21):
Since this episode is about the odd form of burlesque, Yes,
I'm gonna started off with one word. Okay, Dita, you
know what I'm talking about? My idea mainly because people
who date Marilyn Manson always interests me somehow. You always
get such foxy ladies, Dita Vontis. Yes, she actually married

(00:42):
Marilyn Manson. She did briefly, but she didn't marry Dita Vonties.
If you don't know, because I actually didn't know for
a little while. And I kept seeing um these like
red carpet photos when I would take brain breaks on
trashy blogs, and I would see all these photos of
this super super fun lady named Deeta Vontees and she's

(01:04):
got this very retro look jet black hair and bright
red lips and kind of paler skin, and uh, and
I thought to myself, who is this this creature of beauty.
Indeeda Fontis is considered the queen today's queen of burlesque. Yes,
but I think that as soon as I think what
Diavontees has had to say is that I'm I'm not

(01:26):
a stripper. Yeah, I think that that's sort of when
you see Da Montees and you hear about um burlesque
with you know, pasties and and lingerie, it's all of
a sudden must it must be kind of like glorified stripping. Yeah,
I mean she has posed, you know, for certain fetish
magazines and things like that. But we are here today
to uh talk about whether or not burlesque is the

(01:50):
same thing as stripping and kind of how it all
originated because it has pretty fascinating history. And today, Um,
there are a lot of new burlesque troops that are
popping up. I know that when I was in college, Um,
there was a group of girls who formed a burlesque
troop and I went and saw them perform. Here in Atlanta,
where you and I are based, Um, there are there's
at least one burlesque troop that that I know of,

(02:13):
So I kind of got us thinking about what what
is this burlesque? We'll tell people what it was like
to see a burlesque show, because there may be people who,
even though we've mentioned the fabulous DNA bontees and this
idea that it's similar to stripping, may not know what
we're talking about. So just kind of describe a show
to us. Well today, if you go to a burlesque show, well,
I will relate my own experience at um. All we

(02:35):
can ask. All you can ask is for my for
my stories and my stories or what I'll give you. Um.
So uh, it was basically, um, every girl kind of
had her own persona. I think that there was one
one that comes to mind, Um was a girl who
I knew fairly well, who was dressed up like cow girl,
and she came on stage and there was some kind

(02:57):
of you know, hokey country song long um that she
danced too and basically did a kind of strip tease
which I didn't feel. Kind of kind of awkward at times,
like watching watching my friend stripped in front of me,
but she was good. Did she get completely naked? She
did not get completely naked. The most naked that girls
Scott were down to um their underwear or even if

(03:19):
they were very daring, they had some pasties with tessels
tassels tessels on them and could do some fancy, fancy twirling.
But yeah, I mean it was out at a it
was at a bar, and you know, so obviously like
there weren't live, live nude women running around anywhere, and
of course and they stayed on stage. You know, they
would kind of they would tease the audience as they

(03:42):
would you know, hence stripped tease um. But it was
never anything of you know, there weren't any lap dances
or anything like that involved. It was very theatrical, right,
And that's always sort of what I thought about when
I thought about burlesque was sort of a strip tease um.
Crazy costumes, Yeah, like lots of feathers. You always see
um Dita Mantis has these fabulous outfits. She kind of

(04:05):
dances around with a Martini glass. So I thought it
was just that, just the women dancing um. And you know,
I never really thought it was stripping per se, but
I did not realize it had kind of this um
vaudeville history, Like it was almost sort of just like
theater that happened to include weird costumes in the eighteen hundreds.
When burlesque really gets off the ground, it's sort of

(04:27):
a general term that's applied to, you know, just comic
plays and musicals and non musicals and just sort of
kind of hokey theater. Yeah, and if you went to
a show in the eight late eighteen hundreds, you were
probably going to see, um, all these skits that kind
of just poked fun at society. I was reading these
descriptions of burlesque and they said surprisingly to me that

(04:49):
Shrek Too was almost a good example of burlesque because
it was making fun of so many things in our society.
So it was almost like they would take a popular
like show or play at the time then just make
it completely silly. And that was a Burlessia wasn't always
just women kind of dancing about, right, And this really
started in Britain and the Victorian Age, and this idea

(05:10):
of women like women weren't immediately stripping at that point,
Like there was no strip tease in old school burlesque,
but women were wearing a lot fewer clothes than a
normal Victorian woman walking on the street would have. And
this idea of seeing a woman in more of her
just bare female form was pretty groundbreaking. Well, it sounds

(05:34):
like it was even just groundbreaking to have the woman
on stage in the first place. So already got kind
of this upended idea of whether women should be on
a stage and if so, what role they should be playing,
because rather than you know, singing an aria in the
great theater halls, they were on stage in the ridiculous
costume like singing hokey parodies of opera and um. And
then going coming over to the US, the first big

(05:58):
um burlesque true that sort of took over the New
York scene was a British burlesque troop run by a
woman named Lydia Thompson. And this idea of not only
you know, these more scantily clad women, um, but then
playing all it was an all female troupe and they
were playing all the roles, including the roles of the
more sexual aggressors and um. You know, these productions were

(06:19):
written and the whole operation was run by women in
the eighteen sixties. So the idea of not only these
kind of scantily clad women who were performing on stage
without men, but they're playing all the parts and everything
is written and produced and run by women is a
pretty pretty progressive thing for its day. Yeah, and so
there they were denounced. They didn't get necessarily good reviews

(06:41):
from the good upstanding citizens, which only made it more
popular as this underground kind of thing. Um. But as
time went on, the fact that they had women who
were willing to not wear as many clothes as those
out on the street with their hoop skirts and all
that we're wearing kind of started to become the signature.
Didn't stop, um, all of skits that even males were
involved in. But you know, at some point the feminine,

(07:04):
wit witty song that they were singing while they're scantily
clad became less important than the fact that they were
scantily clad. Yeah, and in burlesque shows two were taken
over by um men who were running them, and they did,
you know, obviously UM realized that their audience liked to
see ladies in their in their pasts. But I like

(07:25):
how um, they kind of slid into it accidentally. But
I liked reading in this history of burlesque that we
found at Musicals one oh one, how they kind of
it was, you know, it was a slippery slope and
too scandal. One of the biggest burlesque stars of the
early twentieth cent she was a dancer name Millie de Leon.
She was very attractive and she would toss her garters
into the audience um to gair reaction. But occasionally, whoops,

(07:47):
she forget to wear tights, so she would get arrested.
And that's also it helped to give burlesque it's raunchy reputation.
So if you were a proper vaudeville performer traveling the
way that these burlesque shows try from town to town, um,
you know this was lowest common denominator. This was you know,
scamps who wouldn't put their tights on. Yeah, you would

(08:08):
think you would kind of graduate from burlesque up to vaudeville,
and then if you were in Vaudeville and you were
having a really tough time of it, you would um
go under an assumed name and then start performing in
burlesque again. But going back to the evolution of the
strip tease, we really have um a pair of brothers
called the Minsky Brothers to thank for that. And these
were burlesque promoters in New York who really put the

(08:31):
stripped teas on stage instead of something that men would
have to pay extra four to see UM in more
private quarters. And once the Great Depression rolls around, the
Minsky brothers were like, hey, well the men are still
paying to see the women stick around. They don't want
to come in and see some guy ham it up
on stage and in a clown outfit. Um. And so
that's when the idea of stripping really kind of takes off,

(08:54):
because it was just something in the Great Depression to
keep audiences around, which is so depressing. Paul is a
depressing time, Yes, so that does become the focal point.
But then you know, as time goes on, then you
have pornography and you don't necessarily need to go watch
woman strip do a strip tease. You can go somewhere
and watch woman just strip, right, And that's and that's

(09:16):
a separate category. I think the point of this is
that's a separate category from burlesque because at the same
time you still have you know, the fan dancer Sally
Rand and then um Gypsy Lowes rose Lee, who back
in the day was kind of the Ditavantees of her time,
who was one of the most famous burlesque performers. Who
wasn't she wasn't stripping down to everything. Well, it's still

(09:37):
you know, there's still some element of comedy, like do
you really want to watch someone strip kind of while
they're trying to do comedy about society. You know, there's
an article in Esquire in nineteen sixty four that described
how one burlesque performance played her strip for last and
one of her breasts accidentally pops out of the costume,
which you know, they weren't gonna completely naked, they had,
you know, costumes on, and she was like, Oh, tell it,

(10:01):
you like it, it'll make it grow. And you know,
I don't know much about why men like stripping, but
I would think that you wouldn't want tons and jokes
mere stripping. I would say that men probably don't go
to strip clubs for laughs. Um. But then, you know,
and then around the turn of the century, we have
more of these vice laws coming out, and the Mayor

(10:22):
of New York, you know, tries to shut down all
of these, um, any burlesque clubs and of course any
sex clubs as well. And it kind of dies down
in the fifties and the sixties, and now we're in
what they call the neo burlesque revival because now that
we do have things like pornography and strip clubs, permeating

(10:42):
our culture. It's almost like a novelty to have a
performance where a person doesn't get completely naked and makes
it sort of a show. And that's where against the
argument is a female sort of reclaiming her body on
stage or she's still just doing glorified stripping. Yeah, and
this all kind happens. It starts off in the mid

(11:02):
but it really doesn't take off until I think around
two thousand two. And now you have um Club Noir
in Glasgow, which is the world's biggest burlesque club, and
it attracts up to two thousand people per night, so
it's become it's become very popular. But like you said,
there is this argument of whether or not women are
simply debasing themselves by putting on these glitzia outfits and

(11:25):
then slowly taking them off. And it's also important to
remember people, I was reading in the New York Times
how people go to burlesque shows expecting to see sort
of this strip tease the woman dancing around and get
really surprised when it's sort of the old style burlesque show.
Or you might first have a skip by men on
roller skates making fun of society and you know, people
are like where are the the artful strippers? And you know,

(11:47):
if if you are going to burlesque, seow it, it
might be that sort of old style. And another interesting
thing about burlesque today is if you you know, if
you walk into like a big strip club, uh, you're
probably gonna be mn minority if you are a woman.
But if you go to a burlesque club, a majority
of the audience or women who go to see these

(12:07):
really awesome vintage costumes they have, they like the comedy
and all of that, and it's more of a like
it'd be something fun to go see, you know, with
a date. Then you know, going to see like women
just stripping like in the Graduate and Dustin Hoffman takes
Yea the daughter to that to that club. Um, so
that's sort of on the plus side of whether this

(12:29):
is good for females or not good for females. If
a female can watch it, the argument goes, then that
has to be empowering. If the person on the stage
has you know, a different body type, let's say, then
what's commonly accepted as the stripper body type, then isn't
that good for women? So that's those are a few
of the arguments people will throw out as to why
this is empowering because you're not completely stripping. You can

(12:50):
make it artsy, women like to watch it, and there's
no you know, set body types of this appeals to right.
But at the same time, the other side of that
argument you have people who are saying, wait, this is stripping.
Women are getting down to you know, next to nothing,
and um some uh, some towns in England are trying
to pass laws to make um any clubs that have

(13:14):
burlesque shows have to have the same licenses as a
strip club would have to write because you know, on
the other side of the the coin, you still are it's
still an objectification of a woman's body. How different at
the end of the day can that be than stripping?
If you're still saying, here's my body, look at it,
love it, pay me money? Well, what about this though,
Molly um. A lot of times burlesque um is usually

(13:36):
considered more of a hobby than a profession because these
costumes that women buy uh to perform in are not cheap.
Oh no, I wouldn't think such beautiful things can be cheap. No,
such feather fans and fancy fancy jewels. No, it's not
it's not very cheap and um, and women also think that,
you know, as opposed to stripping where you walk in

(13:58):
and you know it's you. It is a lot of
just women kind of all in g strings. You have.
Burlesque performers create these entire characters around who they are,
like the you know, one of the keys of being
good at burlesque because you have to create your own,
um kind of persona burlesque persona to stand out. And
it's not just a female hobby. While you know, we

(14:19):
tend to think about people like ditavantees and we're talking
about all these jewels and other dresses, etcetera. I mean,
there are male burlesque troops. What what are their troops names?
I don't have the paper. There's one, Um, I think
this is quarantine. Yes, the BBC. Um, there's a popular
act called bar Lesque and the dream Bears. That's a
male male burlesque troop. So I like that. So that's

(14:43):
the thing is we have this argument going on right now. Um.
Is it a saucy, fun entertainment where everyone just kind
of gets to be themselves in a non threatening manner
or as we'll see whatever shakes out of Britain in
the next few months. Is it is it stripping and
they're getting away with something? Yeah, but I think it is.
It is important to realize that, um, you know, there

(15:03):
is I think there is at the end of the day,
a very big difference between um, burlesque and stripping, because
you know, the point of stripping isn't to you know,
perform and I don't know entertain and show off like
comedic wit at all. It's you know, should get naked,

(15:24):
whereas with burlesque it is more of an entire production. Right,
But both make people uncomfortable because just because burlesque can
be campy, it doesn't mean it's not arousing. Yeah. So
the fact of the matter is is societies will probably
always be uncomfortable with things that are designed to provoke
and arouse. Yeah, it's still very sexually provocative, and I

(15:46):
would say even more provocative sometimes because the women like
you mentioned earlier aren't actually getting completely naked. I mean
the fact that we have you know, such you know,
quick access to you know whatever kind of um, don't know,
pornography you want to see, you know, this idea of
a woman, not even or a man if you're if
you're a dream bear. Um getting down to just next

(16:09):
to nothing and just taking you up to that point
and then kind of dropping you off and walking off
the stage is almost, i would say, even more provocative.
So I think, Molly, this is the time to turn
it over to our listeners. I would like to know
what you guys think about burlesque and whether or not
um it is something that's a positive form of entertainment
or if you think that it should just be equated

(16:31):
with with stripping and more heavily regulated. All right, let's
you guys. Yes, mom stuff at house, stuffwork dot com. Men, women,
please tell us your thoughts or you're just your thoughts
on I Dtavantie's Mina married Marilyn Manson. Yes, indeed, if
you're listening, just let me know. And speaking of writing in,
I got a couple of emails to read. We've gotten

(16:54):
so many responses from you guys, great stories from uh
the episode on whether women should give up their maiden names.
And I have one from Katriona aka Cat in l
A and she says, I felt you too missed a

(17:14):
point that irks me personally. I'm sorry, Cat, maiden names
aren't really feminine. For example, if I was getting married
and was choosing between my fiance's name and my maiden name,
what I'm really choosing between is my fiance's name and
my father's name. Even my mother's maiden name is really
my grandfather's name. All of my choices are men's name,
and no last name is truly my own. So it's

(17:36):
a very good point. The cat brings up men always
keeping the ladies down. And uh, now I've got one
from Michelle, and uh, she says. You mentioned a bit
about world traditions, and I wanted to add that in
many countries in Asia, that the child takes the father's name,
women never changed their last name after marriage. I've always

(17:57):
found this interesting because keeping your last name in the
US is considered freeing, but in Asia, um, which is
still very much conventional, it is tradition. And I've heard
two reasons as to this. One. It keeps a woman
as part of her proud family. And there's great importance
placed on family names in Asia, which is why its
last name, then first name, once said or written she

(18:18):
I didn't know um, and then number two though she
marries into the family, traditionally living with the extended family,
she's still not part of it, and this is also
a way of keeping her apart. There are many horror stories. UM.
I've also heard um that it's to not let her
have claim on her children who take the father's last name. Granted,

(18:38):
since Asian surnames aren't that varied, there may not be
any difference between the couple's last names Asian Americans who
are raised in Western society. However, I've noticed you all
three things change, keep, and hyphenate. Interesting. Yeah, so thanks Michelle,
and to continue with around the world tradition, we got
several emails from Canadians who pointed out that UM, in

(18:59):
the French Canadian in province of Quebec, women must keep
their maiden name when married and so um as I said,
numerous listeners emails about this, but I'm going to read
from Elizabeth, who copied and pasted the law which says
both spouses keep their birth names after marriage and continue
to exercise their civil rights under that name, i e.
They must use their birth name and contracts on credit cards,
on their driver's license, etcetera. This rule applies to all

(19:22):
spouses domiciled in Quebec, even if they were married outside Quebec. However,
women married before April Scode who were already using their
husband's surname before that date may continue to exercise their
soul rights under their married name, and Elizabeth goes on
to explain that this ruling was adopted in one to
promote both gender equality and to preserve the heritage of

(19:42):
traditional French surnames. Nearly as can go through the same
legal official name change application process as somebody wanting to
change their name for other reasons. However, marriage is not
listened listed as one of the reasons for a name
changed to be granted, and as such women are usually
forced to keep their main name. It was contentious issue
among some Quebecer's and adds to its perpetual fire between

(20:02):
English and French speaking equippickers. Very cool and to round
things out, Molly, I have a correction that I caught
when I was listening to our podcast on um whether
or not menstruation is the Last Taboo? And I miss
correct incorrectly said that Susanne Summers was a star in

(20:24):
All of the Family and I am so wrong. That
was three three company right, yeah, yeah, Um it was
actually Sally Struther's character that I was trying to refer to.
So I'm sorry, I'll doubles all in the family fans.
I realized my mistake and it was Sally Struthers and
that's it. So, guys, if you want to check out

(20:45):
what me and Molly are doing during the week, head
over to you your blog called how to stuff. And
if you um want to read about a lot of
different things, not burlesque, but a lot of different things
aside from burless, you can go check out our wonderful
website called how stuff works dot com for more on

(21:08):
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