Theatricalising Femininity: Part Three
The English style of burlesque – musical pastiche and parody, with risqué songs and bawdy humour - was introduced to America in the 1860’s, with the arrival of Lydia Thomson and ‘The British Blondes’, who were accused of violating ‘gender norms with their topsy-turvy bold speech and male clothing that revealed their female contours.’[1] This caused a panic, with burlesque being blamed for ‘diseasing and polluting the nation’s morality.’[2] But, alongside social and political changes allowing women increased public participation, traditional binary roles were already being disputed, and openly experimenting with gender performativity allowed performers to expose illusions of power and gendered behaviour.
Image Source: burlexe.com
Performers regularly appeared in suggestive photographs, and the prima-ballerina Cléo de Mérode ‘caused great outrage’ when she posed nude for artists and sculptors.[3] The naked female form is celebrated for artistic value, when filtered through the male gaze, whereupon men gain pleasure through ‘observing the passive female figure.’[4] Once women demonstrate independent agency, they are considered rebellious and dangerous, demonstrating ‘a kind of feminine behaviour that was pushy, assertive, sexual and free.’[5]
Culturally shaming language is intended to keep women in their socially assigned roles, however the Burlesque performer rebels against, and revels in this designation, with routines demonstrating autonomous female agency and physical repudiations of passive, male-gaze oriented historical depictions of women. The performer’s appropriation of the stage embodies a re-appropriation of this gaze.
The challenge to what is considered appropriate female conduct is, quite literally, provocative, but by transgressing ‘conventional standards and mores concerning sexuality and gender,’[6] the Burlesque striptease embodies the anarchic and liminal potential of the female body, through exploring, and exposing, behavioural constructs: rather than being looked at, the Burlesque dancer ‘looks back, smiles and questions’.[7]
Dirty Martini - Image Source: burlesquebeat.com
Burlesque was considered outdated and passé for several decades, but interest rekindled during the 1990’s. This was due, in part, to the Miss Exotic World pageant and Burlesque Hall of Fame, which were opened in Las Vegas by former Burlesque dancers Jenny Lee and Dixie Evans. The modern resurgence was stimulated, and is predominantly directed and controlled, by women, leading Burlesque to be considered ‘empowering’ for enabling performers to ‘wrestle with the objectification of women’[8] rather than submit to mainstream ideas of behaviour and appearance.
Von Teese writes that ‘Burlesque showcases a fabulous message of self-creation’[9] when set against the male-oriented sexualised imagery that dominate culture and society. Willson agrees, writing that women ‘felt that their body had been misappropriated by the media’[10] and Rose believes Burlesque striptease presents a means ‘to express your femininity in a way that is complex, rather than having it made smaller and smaller’[11] through cultural and mediatised stereotypes.
The widespread interest in Burlesque could, therefore, be attributed to a female-led backlash against a saturation of sexualised media which reduces feminine sexuality to reflections of male fantasy. By reclaiming sexual performance in a ‘female-identified sensual awareness’[12] women commandeer the dominant culture’s communication to undermine and usurp the male gaze.
Image Source: yorkshiretimes.co.uk
The newspaper's caption for this image notes that the crowd is 'mostly female' - a common sight at a contemporary burlesque show.
In recent years mainstream entertainment has embraced Burlesque, as seen in films such as ‘Mrs. Henderson Presents’, which tells the story of the Windmill Theatre, and by celebrities including Kylie Minogue. This may indicate that the genre is now popularly accepted, suggesting it can no longer be subversive or shocking, but Burlesque enables performers to explore notions of gender, sexuality, and self-presentation, and therefore ways in which identity may be able to be re-understood, and this will always be shocking to a mainstream sensibility.
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Burlesque has, throughout history, presented and parodied perceptions of female gender and behaviour. Burlesque performance can be considered an attempt to reclaim and redefine cultural concepts of what it means to be a woman, and what society considers to be beautiful, sexy, or sexualised. By challenging ‘those binary oppositions women are expected to assume’[13] Burlesque performers can re-appropriate and reconceptualise gender performativity.
Striptease as an element of Burlesque carries resonances including the literal ‘casting off’[14] of restriction; redefining stripping as an action performed for a male gaze, and ‘daring to hint at the sexuality bubbling under the surface of even the most refined lady’.[15] By shedding clothing the Burlesque dancer can display her natural, live body, and challenge assumptions of behaviour and appearance.
Image Source: independent.co.uk
Judith Butler writes that ‘social agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of social sign’[16], which leads us to suppose that, if social behaviours are constructed through performance, then Burlesque, through playing with identity and codes of cultural conduct, can depict new ways of understanding social roles, such as gender. Despite claims that Burlesque simply reinforces and ‘capitulates to the power dynamic’[17] performers often claim that they are ‘empowered through participation’[18] and that through recovering and ‘reconstructing traditional male images of women’[19], new conversations on can be initiated and examined.
Burlesque is a beautiful dichotomy, presenting the female figure as a site of conflict and contrasts; depicting through performance, and performativity ‘what it meant to be, look like, and behave like a woman’.[20] Performers use their bodies as staging grounds for representation, and re-presentation, of femininity, through characterisation of stereotypical aspects of the woman, and subversion through action.
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[1] Jackie Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque’, (London and New York: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2008), Amazon Kindle e-book, (Chapter 1, Paragraph 2, Location 427).
[2] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Chapter 3, Paragraph 2, Location 1675).
[3] Liz Goldwyn, ‘Pretty Things: The Last Generation of American Burlesque Queens’, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), p.4.
[4] Carly R. Poe ‘Burlesque: Sexuality in Defiance’, (Amazon Digital Services, 2015) Amazon Kindle e-book, (Chapter 3, Paragraph 2, Location 216).
[5] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Chapter 3, Paragraph 1, Location 1412).
[6] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Chapter 1, Paragraph 3, Location 619).
[7] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Introduction, Paragraph 1, Location 100).
[8] Claire Nally, ‘Grrrly hurly burly: neo-burlesque and the performance of gender’, Textual Practice, 23:4, (2009), 621-643, (p.638), <https://doi.org/10.1080/09502360903000554> [accessed 6 January 2018].
[9] Sarah Lindsay, ‘Dita Von Teese’, Burlesque Bible, (Bath: Anthem Publishing Ltd, 2011), p.17.
[10] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Chapter 2, Paragraph 2, Location 982).
[11] Tempest Rose, Interviewed by Essay Author, (London: December 27, 2017).
[12] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Conclusion, Paragraph 1, Location 3053).
[13] Nally, ‘Grrrly hurly burly’, p.623.
[14] Kirsty Lucinda Allan, ‘Embracing the Taboo’, Burlesque Bible, (Bath: Anthem Publishing Ltd, 2011), p.30.
[15] Willson, ‘The Happy Stripper’, (Chapter 1, Paragraph 1, Location 578).
[16] Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal, 40.4 (Dec 1988),, p.519.
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[19] Nally, ‘Grrrly hurly burly’, p.638.
[20] Poe ‘Burlesque’, (Chapter 2, Paragraph 2, Location 131).
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