Everyone knows that summer is a time for idleness, procrastination, and general lazing about.  That’s my excuse for not posting in the last few weeks, and I’m sticking to it.  But now it’s September – time to get real!  I’ve been doing a lot of reading about marriage lately (including Pamela Paul’s The Starter Marriage and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed), so expect a feature on that subject in the near future.  I’m also hard at work assistant-developing an exhibit for the Field Museum on the largest published book in the world – not as sexy as my usual blogging topics, but I’ll probably still devote some space to it at some point.

But for now, back to burlesque.  Since ending my Basic Burlesque class earlier this summer, I’ve really struggled with how to sum up the experience (thus the major delay on this post).  To be perfectly honest, I thought it would be more inspiring – not life-changing or revolutionary or anything, just . . . affecting.  Instead it was a pretty standard dance class, with sexy music and more ass-shaking.  I mastered the art of the shoulder shimmy, but I didn’t feel any sexier, more confident, or even more coordinated.

I’ve realized, the neo-burlesque community is like a sparkly, naked, very intimidating sorority that I want to rush.  I find it to be equal parts aspirational and anxiety-inducing.  When I leave a show, I’m filled with the buzz of an empowerment contact high, but some part of me also feels uncool and unworthy – ever the high school outcast.  Burlesque class brought this to the fore in a dramatic way, which is probably why I found it fun with a side of humiliation.  In spite of my control freak nature, I’ve never felt in control of or in touch with my body, and that’s the main quality that I envy in burlesque performers.  The democratic promise of the modern burlesque movement is that this can be learned – that anyone can acquire (or at least ape) that brand of sexiness, confidence, and poise, no matter who they are or what they look like.

I’m not there yet.  But last weekend, I got a little closer, while simultaneously fulfilling a dream I’ve had since the early days of my burlesque research:  I got to see Miss Dirty Martini perform live.  For those not familiar with her, Dirty Martini is one of the biggest stars (pun most definitely intended) of the international burlesque scene.  She’s based in NYC and often performs in Paris, but she put in a rare Chicago appearance at the Superstars of Burlesque show in August, and I was lucky enough to be in the audience.

Dirty Martini is a plus-size burlesque superheroine, a true living legend.  When I finally got to see her onstage – bursting with vitality and sensuality, totally dominating the space – it was beyond inspirational:  it was thrilling.  I was sitting so far towards the edge of my seat, I almost fell off.  And to think that most women with bodies like hers are ashamed; they cover themselves up, they slouch and shrink and hide.  Our culture tells fat women that they’re disgusting and undesirable, and most of them listen.  But not Dirty.  She stands up tall and shakes it.  She’s strong and proud and magnetic, and watching her perform makes you feel like anything is possible.  Every move she makes draws shouts and applause from the crowd, but her power doesn’t come from public adulation.  It’s entirely from within:  the confidence she radiates from every inch of her body, that incomparable “you know you want to see me naked” attitude.  And let me tell you, no matter what you’re attracted to, no matter what physical type you prefer – once Dirty steps onto the stage, you will want to see her naked.

Burlesque promises that sexiness can be learned, but here’s the part I was missing:  it can be learned, but no one can teach you.  It’s not about your body or your clothing or your walk or a bunch of choreographed dance moves, it’s about how you feel and what you project to the world.  And that’s true whether you’re stripping out of a glittery costume on stage, or schlepping to work on the train wearing blue jeans.

On that rather unacademic, new-agey note, I’m going to be taking leave of my burlesque research for the time being.  I’ll still be indulging my fangirl side at shows, of course, and I hope to take Studio L’amour’s Intermediate class some day, finances permitting.  For now, though, it’s so long, sequined sisterhood – but not goodbye.

Summer is coming to a close, and with it, the end of Guilt-Free Trashy Reading Season.  The title of this post is sort of misleading, because, though I live about two blocks from a beach, I choose to do all my reading indoors, like the sunshine-averse mole creature that I am.  But here are my picks for trashy-fun summer books, perfect for either sand or sofa:

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl by Belle de Jour

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

At first glance, these books are all about “girls behaving badly.”  What I love about them, though, is not the tawdry, shocking content (of course, that’s fun, too), but the expectation-busting intelligence, wit, and self-awareness that the authors display.  These women are not victims or fools; they’re brave, ballsy, and smart.  And most importantly, they don’t apologize for their experiences.  Their tenures as (respectively) a stripper, a prostitute, and a harem girl are not presented as guilt-drenched youthful mistakes or transformative traumatic ordeals, but rather as integral aspects of their fascinating (and still-ongoing) life stories.  All three books give you a glimpse not at a stereotypical “bad girl,” but at a complete, complex woman.

Plus, they have lots of great sex scenes.  So check out Candy Girl, Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl, and Some Girls before summer ends, and we all have to go back to reading serious literature again (yeah, right).

Got any summer reading recommendations for me?  Leave them in the comments.

So You Think You Can Dance is one of my very favorite reality shows (yes, I watch enough of them to play favorites).  More talent, more hotness, and much better music than American Idol, it’s the perfect summer guilty pleasure.  So in honor of the season finale this week (go Lauren!) . . . I’m going to critique the show’s insidious homophobia.  Fun for the whole family!

For a show about the dance world – where, let’s face it, men are presumed gay unless proven otherwise – So You Think You Can Dance seems to have some real issues surrounding homosexuality.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise, really; after all, SYTYCD comes from the same producing team that tried to keep this man in the closet for an entire TV season:

(Bitch, please.  Glambert cannot be contained.)

Just a note, before we begin in earnest:  I don’t (and can’t) know for certain the sexual orientation of any of the contestants on So You Think You Can Dance. I have a decent sense of these things, though, as any degree in theatre arts pretty much comes with a concentration in Advanced Gaydar Calibration (although my partner somehow missed this – he had to be told that Rupert Everett was gay).  So what we’re really talking about here is not “gayness,” but the portrayal of non-traditional masculinity:  male dancers showing typically feminine qualities in their onstage style or offstage presentation of self.  The show seems, as a whole, to be very uncomfortable with this type of gender presentation and tries to quash it whenever possible.

The vast majority of this heteronormative policing seem to come from judge and exec producer Nigel Lythgoe, who has publicly professed a distaste for “effeminate” male dancers who “mince around the stage.”  ”Dancing is role-playing most of the time,” he reasons.  ”And you need to be strong and lift girls. You need to look stronger than the girl you’re dancing with.”  Lythgoe’s homophobic attitude has been apparent on the show for years, but the pièce de résistance came in season 5, when a couple of male ballroom dancers (one gay, one straight) auditioned together in Denver.  Lythgoe reacted to the pair with a mixture of bewilderment and abject horror, claiming that they would “alienate” the show’s audience and insisting again that he likes to see “guys be guys and girls be girls” onstage.  According to this AfterElton report on the incident, there was much more that didn’t make it to primetime.

It seems what Mr. Lythgoe is really saying here is that effeminate men are incapable of being a) physically strong and b) good actors.  The latter point sounds a lot like what Ramin Setoodeh attempted to argue in his infamous Newsweek article about gay actors playing straight.  And it’s still just as ridiculous; if we’re incapable of separating offscreen persona from onscreen performance, that’s an issue of audience sophistication, not acting talent.  As for physical strength – well, let’s just take a look at season 7 contestant Alex Wong:

Yeah, looks like a weak little sissy boy to me.  Wong is a male ballet dancer who always presented as quite effeminate on camera – but those rippling muscles look like they could rip the likes of Nigel Lythgoe in half.

Overall, the show’s oppressive brand of heteronormativity demands that effeminate male dancers at least attempt to “pass” as straight and\or traditionally masculine, in both their performances and interviews.  They’re often prompted to talk about crushes on their female dance partners, girls from back home, etc., but I’ve never heard even the barest mention of same-sex attraction.  Even judge Adam Shankman, who is openly gay in life but not so much on the Dance stage, seems inclined to play along.  Lythgoe frequently looks to Shankman for backup when making appreciative (read: lecherous) comments about the comely female contestants – an appeal he never directs at judges Mary Murphy or Mia Michaels – but Shankman doesn’t seem to be permitted to admit lust of any kind for the male dancers.

That’s not to say that there’s no guy-on-guy action on So You Think You Can Dance.  Traditionally, the dancers perform in all possible combinations during the finale, so there’s always a routine featuring the two male finalists.  This season, male contestants have danced together even more frequently, as a new elimination system left only one woman in the running by halfway through the season.  These male-male dance routines follow a certain pattern, though:  they’re never romantic, never sensual or overtly sexy (which the male-female choreography often is).  Instead, they’re confrontational and even violent, usually pitting the dancers against each other in some sort of competition.  The classic of the genre is Danny and Neil’s “Two Princes” number from season 2, which had the guys playing rival brothers fighting over a crown, complete with shoving, strangling, and faux-swordfighting.  In the past few weeks alone we’ve seen two male breakdancers facing off in a routine that resulted in one of them “defeating” the other and rushing to pull “Excalibur” out of a stone (more phallic sym- . . . I mean, swords), a number involving two men competing for the attention of female passersby (street harassment – now with more high kicks!), and a dance that cast one dancer as a hunter and the other as his prey:

(Apparently, it’s not homoerotic if you’re a jungle cat.)

Let me be clear:  I don’t think sexual orientation should be an issue, on this show or anywhere else.  A contestant’s skill and talent as a dancer is what’s important, not his or her private life.  But it seems a shame to me that a show that purports to be representative of the incredibly diverse dance world can’t at least, I don’t know, admit that a gay man is gay.  Or at least make room for some more progressive images of masculinity.

Perhaps an even bigger issue on So You Think You Can Dance, though, is the COMPLETE invisibility of lesbians or more masculine women on the show.  The femme-y boys may have to play it straight, but at least they get to play.  At this point, ladies don’t have a chance in hell of getting on the show unless they look like this:

But that’s another post for another time.  For now, I’m going to turn off my brain and look forward to the finale extravaganza.  (Lauren for the win!)

Apologies for the lack of updates lately; I’m sure all 5 of you who read this blog regularly have been waiting with bated breath . . .

I was hoping to do a summer movie-themed post, as there’s little I love more than a good summer blockbuster, but this year’s crop has proved sadly lacking in both entertainment value and blog topic fodder.  I had high hopes when I went to see Salt this past week, but it turned out to be a ridiculous mess that not even the sexy trifecta of Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor could redeem for me.

Even though I can’t in good conscience recommend Salt (or any of the other blockbusters out now – even Inception left me underwhelmed), I can recommend this terrific piece from Bitch blog Snarky’s Cinemachine about the critical reaction to the character of Evelyn Salt, the cold-blooded, ass-kicking superspy played by Angelina Jolie in the film.  Apparently several critics have complained about how “icy” and “repellent” Salt is, devoid of any recognizably feminine personality traits.  Having seen the film, I can’t say that description of her is entirely off-base, but it’s hard to imagine a critic writing something comparable about Tom Cruise (the original star of Salt, when the film was still in development).

There is an expectation that mainstream female action heroes must be not only tough and competent, but also possess an easily-accessible brand of sex appeal.  See:  Charlie’s Angels, Catwoman, Jolie’s own Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movies.  An unsexualized, uncompromising female protagonist like Evelyn Salt, who resists objectification and even simple categorization, is received as off-putting and threatening – especially when brought to life by someone like Angelina Jolie, who we’re accustomed to viewing as a sex symbol.  As the Bitch blogger snarks:  ”Damn it, Evelyn Salt, why won’t you smile more? You’re a woman for goodness sake; it’s about time you started acting like one!”

I really appreciated this commentary, because it brought to mind another issue that’s troubled feminists for years:  let’s call it the “Smile, Honey” effect (check out some great discussion of the subject here).  This is when someone – often a stranger, almost always a man – comes up to a woman and tells her to smile.  As in, “What’s wrong, honey?  Smile!”  As a less-than-perky woman who typically goes around wearing a serious expression (or, as I like to call it, “bitchface”), I’ve been on the receiving end of this treatment more than once in my life.  It always irked me, but for years I couldn’t figure out why.  Now I know:  when someone says “smile, honey!”, chances are they’re not expressing genuine concern about your emotional state.  They’re asking you to perform appropriate femininity like a dancing bear – to make them feel comfortable, not you.  And by policing your gender presentation in this way, they’re reinforcing some obnoxious traditional expectations of women (i.e. that we’re supposed to be friendly, accommodating, and – let’s not forget – sexually available at all times).

So even though I didn’t enjoy the film Salt, I appreciated that Jolie’s portrayal of the title character so vehemently refused to cater to patriarchal expectations of femininity.  She didn’t wear a catsuit or seduce anyone with her feminine wiles or “giggle and jiggle” (as Snarky’s Cinemachine puts it) through her fight scenes.  If only Hollywood could generate this kind of character with a female star in mind; a woman as remarkable as Angelina Jolie shouldn’t have to take Tom Cruise’s absurdly-plotted castoffs.

Now, seriously, can someone recommend a good summer movie to me?  At this point, I’m hanging all my remaining summer movie season hopes on Step Up 3-D, and I know that to be folly of the worst kind.

I recently wrapped up my four-week foray into beginners’ burlesque at Studio L’amour.  I’m still processing the experience, which turned out to be both more and less than I anticipated – so you can look forward to a philosophical, gender theory-rific wrap-up post in the near future.  I’m also hoping to take the next class up (Beginning\Intermediate, in which you spend 8 weeks learning a complete routine), though financial issues will prevent me from enrolling in the fall session this year.

But for now, I thought I’d address the question that seems to be on everyone’s minds:  what exactly do you do in burlesque class?  First of all, there’s nothing salacious or shocking about it.  As I mentioned in my previous entry, the basic classes have absolutely no nudity (though instructor Vivian did flash her bra at us as part of a, shall we say, “teachable moment”).  It’s basically just a sexy dance class, with three basic moves:  the bump, the grind, and the shimmy.  These moves are the building blocks of burlesque, and they’ve been around for decades.  Allow vintage performer Crystal Starr to demonstrate (the images are from a YouTube video, which you can watch following the cut at the bottom of the post):

The Bump – a sharp, staccato thrust of the hip, to the front or the side (or, less commonly, the rear).  This is, Vivian taught us, the most aggressive move in the basic burlesque arsenal, very in-your-face (though not literally in your face, cause this isn’t commercial stripping).  The bump is usually done in time with a drum beat or other hard-hitting point in the music.  The most important thing is not to clench your butt; when you’re doing it right, there should be a “rebound” of jiggly flesh.

The Grind – the sinuous counterpoint to the bump, in which hips rotate in a circle to the right or left.  The grind can be slow or fast, small or large, but it should always be smooth and sexy.  Some tips for this move that stuck with me:  don’t put your hands in front of your hips, or you’ll block the view.  And don’t forget to stick out your ass!

The Shimmy – there are two basic kinds of shimmies, top and bottom.  To do a “top” shimmy, you hold your arms out to your sides and push your shoulders forward and back until you get some momentum going, then shake your tits with abandon.  Anyone can do this move, but it is easier for the large-breasted among us (no wonder it’s my favorite . . . ).  To do a “bottom” shimmy, you bend your knees and move them back and forth until everything from the waist down is shaking.  Once again, the point is to shake, shake, shake until you jiggle like Jell-O (so much more fun than sucking in your flab!) – but only on one half of your body.  Vivian gave us some great tips for working on these muscle isolations, like sitting on the floor to keep your bottom half from moving while you shimmy with your torso.

She also explained just why the shimmy used to be so scandalous:  when burlesque striptease first became popular, women’s fashion was so restrictive (all those layers of corsets, girdles, etc.) that men rarely saw any quivering flesh.  Now we can see jiggly ladyparts every day on the bus, the street, in the store, etc., so the shimmy isn’t quite as special.  In fact, to our modern sensibilities, there’s something charmingly innocent about it.  By way of illustration:  check out my favorite part of the Crystal Starr video, when she (around the 1:50 mark) looks down at her shimmying chest with an adorable sense of wonderment.

So there you have it, a few burlesque dancing basics.  Please do try this at home.  (And check back soon for my Basic Burlesque wrap-up.)

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I watch online porn like it’s my job.  In fact, it is my job, believe it or not.  I work as a consultant for a technology company, and my professional responsibilities include rating adult websites for their relevance to search terms.  So, for example, if someone types in “hot librarians naked” (an actual search term that recently led to this blog, according to the ever-helpful Google Analytics), I would look carefully at the sites returned by the search engine to determine if they contained librarians of suitable hotness and nakedness to (ahem) satisfy the searcher.  (Obviously, this blog is not a good match for that search term – at least not yet.  You never know what the future might hold, dear readers . . . )

In the past few weeks alone, I’ve spent upwards of 30 hours looking at pornographic materials.  This is not as fun as it sounds.  I’ve seen some things that I can never unsee (beloved Disney characters in incestuous embraces, several instances of the “Two Girls, One Cup” video, and a seriously disturbing act involving a live octopus).  But overall, I remain, as I was before I took on this project, a feminist woman in favor of porn.

Because I felt like I just wasn’t getting enough porn at work (ha), I decide to do some reading about the state of porn in our culture today, in preparation for this very blog post.  I decided to read two pro-porn books and two anti-porn books, in the interest of fairness.  On the pro side:  Good Porn: A Woman’s Guide by Erika Lust (a birthday present from my partner, because he knows me so well) and The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn by Violet Blue.  And on the con side:  Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen, and Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families by Pamela Paul.

It should come as no surprise that I really enjoyed the Blue and Lust books, while I wanted to throw the Jensen and Paul books across the room (or out the window, or off of a really big cliff).  I do agree with them about a few things:  for one, that pornography addiction is real, and it can cause serious damage to relationships (as can, of course, any addiction or compulsive behavior).  I also agree that most mainstream porn is indeed extremely misogynistic.  But do you know what I find even more demeaning to women?  Anti-porn crusaders’ tired gender essentialism arguments.

Paul, in particular, is a student of the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus school of logical fallacy.  While she admits that some women do watch and purport to enjoy pornography, she tries to explain this away with some truly maddening gender stereotypes.  Women who watch porn, she argues, just do it to appease the men in their lives; they want to come across as cool and sexually free, not “uptight” or “prudish,” so they force themselves to tolerate pornography.  Or perhaps they do actually enjoy adult entertainment, but not the same content that men are turned on by.  ”When they refer to adult material,” Paul says, “women are often talking about erotica.”  ”True male-oriented pornography,” she writes, “still offends the vast majority of women.”  (Maybe so, but not the women I know.)  Paul also supposes that pro-porn women are just ignorant of the really hardcore pornographic content that’s out there.  ”In all likelihood, many of those who suggest that pornography is about sexual liberation have probably not seen the kind of pornography that many, perhaps most, men find alluring.”

Lady, let me tell you:  I’ve seen it.  I’ve seen it all.  I’d bet good money that I’ve seen more pornography than Pamela Paul, and even some teenage boys.  And there are a few things I’d like to get off my chest:

1.  All men have watched, will watch, or perhaps even at this very moment are watching porn.  There are, of course, some men who are just not that into pornography, but if you meet a guy who says he has never watched porn, he’s a liar.  I don’t have any scientific proof of this, but since Robert Jensen and Pamela Paul got entire books published without scientific proof for their ideas, I feel relatively okay going out on a limb here.

2.  Many women also watch porn, and not for the bullshit reasons that Pamela Paul cites.  This pretty much says it all:

3.  Though the mainstream porn industry gets a lot of flack for promoting only a cookie-cutter, Bleach and Breast Implant Barbie image of female attractiveness, modern pornography as a whole has made room for a vast assortment of different types of women (and men), depicting diverse ideas of beauty and sexual desire.  Pornography is one of the few contemporary entertainment mediums that honestly offers something for every taste and proclivity.  It’s not perfect, of course, but I think there’s something nice about seeing a plethora of body types represented, praised – and, yes, fetishized.

4.  Porn is to sex as romance novels are to love:  completely unrealistic fantasy worlds – fun to visit, but not where you want to live.  The problem is not with the fantasy itself, though, but with people who fail to differentiate between it and reality.  In the case of porn, comprehensive sex education can help with this, by showing people from a young age what “ordinary” sex looks like and how real women respond sexually (hint:  not like Jenna Jameson).

5.  Everyone deserves a private, individual sex life.  I firmly believe that your sexuality is about who you are, not just what you do with other people.  Both Paul and Jensen bemoan pornography viewing as something selfish, a tactic that men use as an escape from dealing with the complex needs of their real-life female partners.  And I say:  yeah, so what?  Who says that sexual expression always has to be about selflessness and sharing and connecting?  Especially when it comes to solo sex (which everyone has a right to, whether in or out of a relationship), selfishness and indulgence are kind of the point.  As someone in a monogamous relationship, I like to think of this as being physically faithful, but mentally slutty (in a good way).  You can’t police the thoughts and fantasies of your significant other, and I don’t know why people try.  Besides, even if your partner doesn’t have a porn habit, that doesn’t mean he or she is thinking of you and only you 24\7 – and it’s unrealistic (not to mention unhealthy) to expect that.

Thus endeth my Pornifesto.  I’m feeling a bit over-saturated on the subject of porn at the moment, but if anyone has suggestions for other books I should check out on the topic (for or against), leave them in the comments.

Bonus post!  I just got back from seeing Eclipse, and though I can’t bring myself to write a full-fledged post about my shameful fascination with the Twilight franchise (maybe when Breaking Dawn comes out), I just had to say something.  The third movie really is the best of the series (not that the bar had been set terribly high), featuring a surprising amount of actual character development and even some half-decent acting.  If you’re not already hooked on this crap, though, I beg of you – don’t start!  Save yourself.

If there’s anything I love more than mocking Twilight, it’s over-analyzing Twilight.  So I was very interested to note the changes made by screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to Eclipse’s final scene between Edward and Bella.  Bella gives a speech, as far as I know not included in the novel (though if there are any rabid Twihards out there dying to correct me, feel free), about how her choice had been not between Jacob and Edward, but between “who I should be, and who I am.”  She elaborates on her decision to become a vampire, characterizing it as a journey of self-actualization, rather than just a desperate attempt to stay with her One True High School Love forever and ever.  When she’s done, Edward asks, “So it’s not just about me?”  ”No, sorry,” Bella replies.

I’m not sure what to think about this.  Is Rosenberg really trying to plop a quasi-feminist cherry on top of Twilight’s retro-conservative worldview?  Can that one glimmer of independence serve to negate all the pathetic, obsessive, self-destructive behavior Bella has engaged in up to this point in the story?  If you ask me, it’s too little, too late – but it is an intriguing twist on the character, making her an ever-so-slightly less awful role model for all the young girls who idolize her.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  So I’ll just leave you with a bit of offsite feminist criticism . . .

Captain’s Log: What Do You See in Him Again?
(signs that Edward Cullen is an abusive boyfriend)

Bitch Magazine: Bite Me! (Or Don’t)
(Twilight as “abstinence porn”)

Jezebel.com: Twihard With a Vengeance
(a few positive aspects of the Twilight franchise – no, really!)

YouTube.com: Buffy vs. Edward
(if you haven’t seen this, shame on you)

. . . and barely legal man candy.

(Okay, so he may have been somewhat less than legal when this picture was taken.)

(No, I’m not proud.)

When I tell people about my burlesque research, the number one question I’m asked is:  ”Have you ever done it yourself?”  And I’m forced to admit that my personal experience doesn’t go beyond some amateur glove peeling and tassel twirling in a two-hour workshop.  Truth be told, I haven’t performed in any capacity at all since I was 18.  I did a fair bit of acting in high school, but I always felt self-conscious and stiff on stage.  I was terrified of embarrassing myself – which, of course, is anathema to good acting.

I’m both awestruck by and deeply envious of burlesque performers.  I want to be more like them:  the way they look, the way they move, the way they hold an entire audience captivated with a smile and a twist of their hips.  For all this time, though, I’ve never been quite sure if I just want to emulate their supremely sexy confidence, or if I actually yearn to do what they do:  that is, get up on stage and take my clothes off.  In public.  With people watching.

There’s only one way to find out.  To that end, I’ve enrolled as a student at Studio L’amour, a burlesque school here in Chicago owned and operated by the legendary Michelle L’amour.  Last week was my first class, Basic Burlesque, and after 4 weeks of Basic, I can enroll in Beginner\Intermediate Burlesque.  There’s no nudity in either of these courses; that comes later, if Michelle asks you to join the Advanced class, which culminates in a recital.

But first things first.  Studio L’amour is in the West Loop, otherwise known as the ShoOp (the “Shadow of Oprah” – the Big O’s studios are down the street), which is a train and a bus ride away from my apartment.  I overestimated my commute time and ended up with 20 minutes to kill, so I walked up the street and around the block, whipping out my cell phone every few minutes to anxiously check the time.  By way of preparation for class, I tried to concentrate on standing up straight, throwing my shoulders back, and walking with a sexy, Joan Holloway-esque swivel in my hip.  I probably looked like I was having some kind of seizure, but luckily the streets were mostly deserted.

A few minutes before the start of class, I file in to the building behind several other women and climbed the three flights to Studio L’amour.  I immediately notice that I seemed to be one of the only people there alone; most everyone else had signed up with a friend for moral support.  While waiting to use the studio’s single bathroom, I strike up a conversation with a tall brunette with thick-rimmed glasses and a sexy, throaty voice.  We both confess that we brought heels, but aren’t sure whether to wear them.  ”I will if you will,” she offers, so we put them on.

Our teacher is Vivian Velvet, a local performer who’s a member of Michelle L’amour’s troupe The Chicago Starlets.  Vivian is slender with auburn hair and porcelain skin; when she’s on stage, she looks like an old Hollywood movie star.  Her performance style is very classic and subdued – “like Ginger Rogers taking her clothes off,” as she said in class.  I remember seeing her at the Exotic World Pageant in 2007, where she competed for Best Debut Performer with a gorgeous act involving a fan and a billowing red satin dressing gown.

As Vivian is supplying us with a brief primer in burlesque history, I glance up and down the line of assembled women in the studio’s wall-to-wall mirror.  It’s a rather heterogenous group, I realize:  we all look to be in our mid to late twenties, falling into conventional parameters of size and attractiveness.  I’m one of the largest (but, I reason, that just gives me more to work with).  I was hoping for more body diversity at the very least, though this is still an improvement on the pole dancing class I took in Ohio.  There my fellow students were primarily gym-toned bleach blondes who limited their conversations to diets and boob jobs, leaving me feeling fat and pathetic (though more than a little smug about my all-natural rack).

Next, Vivian takes us a through a warmup, which begins with swaying our hips back and forth in time with music.  Watching my substantial hips swing to and fro in the mirror, I feel fantastic:  voluptuous and womanly and in control.  Then she tells us to take three steps forward, and three steps back.  Now, I’m fully able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but apparently incapable of walking and being sexy at the same time.  I’m almost immediately out of step with the rest of the class, and I feel my dreams of becoming a stripteasing sex goddess evaporating before my eyes.

But eventually, I get the hang of it, and I manage to keep up as Vivian leads the class in a series of bumps, pelvic thrusts, hip circles, shimmies, and pinup poses.  The main lesson this week is on burlesque walks, and we learn three:  a sexy, hip-thrusting strut, a perky bent-knee bounce, and an elegant sideways glide.  I’m best at the bounce, though I feel a bit ridiculous when Vivian tells us to wave to our reflections and blow kisses as we trot past the mirror.  I catch a glimpse of myself, though, smiling with a unusually self-assured sparkle in my eye, and I realize that I’m having a blast.

Stay tuned for the next three weeks, as I’ll be chronicling all the ins and out and bumps and grinds of my burlesque education.  But I’ve already learned my first important lesson:  don’t wear a sports bra to burlesque class, even if it’s pretty and purple and shows off your tattoo.  Free the girls, free yourself.

I’ve been an off-and-on practitioner of yoga since college (more off than on).  For me, yoga is more than a workout, it’s a lifestyle and mentality that represents everything I’m not now and would like to be someday:  strong, healthy, flexible, centered, calm.  Yoga forces me to be present in my body for an hour or so – and since, as an incurable introvert, I’m “in my head” all the time, that’s something I desperately need.

Last December, I started taking Bikram yoga classes – that’s the kind in the hot, humid room (up to 105 degrees).  It appealed to my competitive, perfectionist nature, but ultimately it was too intense for where I am physically.  I messed up my neck about two months ago, and I decided to take a break.  Who wants to exercise in a glorified sauna during the hottest part of the year anyway?  I’m planning to go back to Bikram eventually, but in the meantime I’m embarking on a “yoga odyssey” through Chicago, checking out the wide variety of classes the city has to offer.

I started out last Wednesday with a class at the Field Museum, where I’m a volunteer.  Once a week, they hold an after-work yoga session for staff members in the Maori Meeting House exhibit.  So you get to stretch and meditate under the watchful gaze of these guys:

Believe it or not, it’s very relaxing.  Here are just a few of the other wacky and wonderful yoga options I’m hoping to sample here in the Windy City:

Millennium Park Workouts – free outdoor yoga at Pritzker Pavilion, every Saturday all summer long (there’s also aerobics, Tai Chi, etc.).  The only catch?  It’s at 8 AM.

Candlelight Flow Yoga at Nature Yoga Sanctuary - evening yoga, with open flames!  I’m acquainted with Rich, who teaches this class on Sundays, because he was in a play a few months ago with my partner.  He radiates an amazing energy, and I’m eager to see what he’s like as a yoga teacher.

Yoga Booty Ballet at Indigo Studio – fusion of yoga and cardio dance.  The name alone is enough reason to go – it sounds just humiliating enough to be awesome.

Fly Yoga at I.D. Gym - yoga meets Cirque du Soleil.  In this class, you’re suspended above your mat on a silk hammock.  I think I’ll save this one for last, lest I break something.

Wish me luck!  And if anyone knows of any other unique yoga offerings in the Chicago area that I should try, let me know.

Finally – because this blog is, after all, called “Librarian Hot” – a yoga-related book plug:

My mother-in-law got me Robert Love’s The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America last month for my birthday. The book recounts the story of how “Dr.” Pierre Bernard, a barber’s son from Iowa turned self-styled guru to the rich and famous, made yoga into a scandalous national craze during the Roaring Twenties.  It involves socialites gone wild, tantric sex rituals, and trained elephants – and I highly recommend it.

I read Susan J. Douglas’s new book Enlightened Sexism almost a month ago, but I was unsure what I wanted to write about it.  The book is almost epic in scope:  in just 306 pages, Douglas attempts to take on every sneaky form of sexism in recent pop cultural memory, ranging across all forms of media.  The author’s ultimate point is that, despite what you may have heard, feminism is not obsolete:  society today may tell women they are equal to men, but pop culture shows us a very different story, insidiously reinforcing toxic gender roles under the guise of harmless entertainment.

Just to give you an idea of the breadth of subject matter here:  one chapter is about the news media response to women behaving badly (Lorena Bobbitt, Tonya Harding, Amy Fisher, et. al.); another tackles “Warrior Women in Thongs” (Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft); yet another examines the “sassy black woman” stereotype in shows like Living Single and Grey’s Anatomy.  The Spice Girls, Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, reality TV, women’s magazines, Gossip Girl, Hillary Clinton, paparazzi photos, plastic surgery – Douglas covers it all.  It’s a daunting project, but I think, for the most part, it succeeds.  Enlightened Sexism is a fantastic basic primer on feminist media criticism (if you can handle the information overload).

Douglas also discusses how intelligent feminists (herself included) manage to rationalize the consumption of pop culture that is so obviously disparaging to women.  The most common coping technique?  Laughter.  Making fun of vapid television shows like The Hills and America’s Next Top Model is a common pastime for educated young people today – including me, almost all of my female friends, and even some of my male ones.  When I was in college, I would get together with several fellow feminists to watch (and mock) Top Model every week.  Now I watch with my partner; he could care less about the modeling industry, but he seems to enjoy ridiculing each new crop of girls just as much as I do (since he’s a professional actor, the models’ train-wreck commercial shoots are a particular source of amusement).

“[P]art of the fun here,” Douglas says, “is collectively performing your outrage at how empty-headed and materialistic the girls on the screen are while still becoming enmeshed in their stories.  This public, group ridicule says, ‘We are not dupes’; it is an emphatic performance of media sophistication.  It affirms viewers’ power, both over the media and over the representation of girls as shallow and frivolous.  The pleasure comes from feeling that you are reading against the grain, seeing through and deconstructing this media sludge.”  That is, the dumber the Top Models seem, the smarter we viewers can feel in comparison.  In this context, she explains, ”reality TV is flattering to us:  we are either hailed as obviously superior to the dysfunctional or superficial participants in the show [. . . . ] or as highly competent judges with just as much expertise as anyone to assess which participants are worthy of admiration and which ones should be asked to get off the screen.”  (Or in the case of ANTM, both.)

This practice of sofa-bound judging may seem innocuous (after all, it’s not like the contestants can hear us), but Douglas argues that it’s a bit more meaningful.  In judging wannabe top models (or Real Housewives, makeover subjects, drunken starlets, etc.), she says, “we are encouraged to enforce a set of powerful, and sexist, gender codes [ . . . . ] Even as we dismiss particular situations or conflicts as exaggerated, even staged, we still use these situations to infer some ‘truths’ about women’s proper roles and behaviors.”  When reality show contestants, celebrities, and other women in the spotlight are policed for their appearance, behaviors, relationships, etc., “we are all policed.”

So does making fun of dumb bitches on a modeling show make me a bad feminist?  Well, I’ll admit it’s not exactly a productive or substantive use of my time.  But Douglas does offer up one positive take on this social ritual:  ”while it’s only a start, laughter – especially derisive laughter – may be the most empowering act of all.  This is part of the ongoing, never-ending project of consciousness-raising.  Then we can get down to business.”  Mocking these shows is better than buying into them, simply because it requires some level of criticism and awareness of their antifeminist aspects.  But it’s only one small step.  And I have to agree with Douglas that, while it may be fun, we shouldn’t call it enlightened.