The neo-burlesque movement seeks to restore a sense of glamour, theatricality, and humor to striptease. Neo-burlesque performers strut their stuff in front of audiences that appreciate their playful brand of pro-sex, often gender-bending, feminism. Performance studies scholar and acclaimed burlesque artist Lynn Sally offers an inside look at the history, culture, and philosophy of New York’s neo-burlesque scene. Revealing how twenty-first century neo-burlesque is in constant dialogue with the classic burlesque of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she considers how today’s performers use camp to comment on preconceived notions of femininity. She also explores how the striptease performer directs the audience’s gaze, putting on layers of meaning while taking off layers of clothing. Through detailed profiles of iconic neo-burlesque performers such as Dita Von Teese, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and World Famous *BOB*, this book makes the case for understanding neo-burlesque as a new sexual revolution. Yet it also examines the broader community of “Pro-Am” performers who use neo-burlesque as a liberating vehicle for self-expression. Raising important questions about what feminism looks like, Neo-Burlesque celebrates a revolutionary performing art and participatory culture whose acts have political reverberations, both onstage and off.

Style-based subcultures, scenes and tribes have pulsated through the history of social, economic and political change. From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats; through 1950s rock ’n’ rollers, beatniks and Teddy boys; 1960s surfers, rudeboys, mods, hippies and bikers; 1970s skinheads, soul boys, rastas, glam rockers, funksters and punks; on to the heavy metal, hip-hop, casual, goth, rave, hipster and clubber styles of the 1980s, 90s, noughties and beyond; distinctive blends of fashion and music have become a defining feature of the cultural landscape. Research into these phenomena has traversed the social sciences and humanities, and Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change assembles important theoretical interventions and empirical studies from this rich, interdisciplinary field. Featuring contributions from major scholars and new researchers, the book explores the historical and cultural significance of subcultural styles and their related music genres. Particular attention is given to the relation between subcultures and their historical context, the place of subcultures within patterns of cultural and political change, and their meaning for participants, confederates and opponents. As well as Anglo-American developments, the book considers experiences across a variety of global sites and locales, giving reference to issues such as class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, creativity, commerce, identity, resistance and deviance.

• Learn how to become a professional burlesque dancer, with clear detailed steps illustrated by real-life examples of famous performers from the 20th century and current stars, and beneficiate from a former performer’s insight • Discover the legends of the art form and its origins, find out what kind of performer you want to become, enter a world of glamour and glitter you never suspected existed • Practice the basics of burlesque dancing with step-by-step explanations of moves, poses, walks, and a detailed analysis of famous classic burlesque routines like the fan dance • Read tutorials on how to create or customize your own costumes and props, learn how to style your hair like a burlesque starlet, try out professional make-up tips to look your best onstage • Develop your first burlesque routine with clear advice and examples on themes and songs, find out how the pros rehearse backstage to dazzle onstage • Get useful advice to interact with your audience and make the most of your first time performing a burlesque routine at an event, looking every inch the professional • Find out tips on getting your first burlesque bookings and the fees you might expect, and learn how you can develop your career and start working as a professional burlesque dancer full-time About the Expert Emilie Declaron is a content writer and literary translator with over ten years of experience. She speaks five languages including English, French and Bulgarian, and currently works all over the world. Emilie performed as a burlesque dancer in her twenties, mostly in the UK where she lived but also in continental Europe. She ran her own burlesque show from 2012 to 2015, the Lady Loco events in the North East of England, and also organized one-off variety events in various venues. She still is an avid supporter of the scene and follows closely any recent development in the burlesque world. HowExpert publishes quick 'how to' guides on all topics from A to Z by everyday experts.

Stripped examines the ways in which erotic bodies communicate in performance and as cultural figures. Focusing on symbols independent of language, Maggie M. Werner explores the signs and signals of erotic dance, audience responses to these codes, and how this exchange creates embodied rhetoric. Informed by her own ethnographic research conducted in strip clubs and theaters, Werner analyzes the movement, dress, and cosmetic choices of topless dancers and neo-burlesque performers. Drawing on critical methods of analysis, she develops approaches for interpreting embodied erotic rhetoric and the marginal cultural practices that construct women’s public erotic bodies. She follows these bodies out into the streets—into the protest spaces where sex workers and anti-rape activists challenge discourses about morality and victimhood and struggle to remake their own identities. Throughout, Werner showcases the voices of these performers and in the analyses shares her experiences as an audience member, interviewer, and paying customer. The result is a uniquely personal and erudite study that advances conversations about women’s agency and erotic performance, moving beyond the binary that views the erotic body as either oppressed or empowered. Theoretically sophisticated and delightfully intimate, Stripped is an important contribution to the study of the rhetoric of the body and to rhetorical and performance studies more broadly.

Every year in downtown Las Vegas, often called "Old Vegas," The Burlesque Hall of Fame reunion brings together members of the League of Exotic Dancers, one of the earliest unions for women in exotic entertainment, to perform their half-century-old routines. In this annual tradition, performers from the golden age of Vegas burlesque rally counter-culture neo-burlesque fans who both keep the tradition alive and add new meaning to it. Over the past four years, documentarian Kaitlyn Regehr and photographer Matilda Temperley have embedded themselves within this community-a group, which like Old Vegas itself, continues to survive and thrive sixty years past its supposed prime. Here, in a smoky, off-strip casino, they found women, at times well into their 80s, subversively bumping and grinding away preconceptions about appropriate behavior for a pensioner. This collection of interviews and photographs is drawn from the backstage dressing rooms, homes, and lives of this aging burlesque community, as well as the young neo-burlesque community who adore them. The authors present an inter-generational sisterhood that is both unique and socially significant. Through a range of experiences-from discussing struggles for wage equality, to helping stabilize an 85 year old as she steps into a sequined g-string-the authors describe the complexity of the lives of these performers and the burlesque history from which they come. Regehr and Temperley present multidimensional portraits of this community and conclude that they are at their most vital when read with all the nuances, troubles, trials, and triumphs that they formerly and currently experience.

The act of undressing has a multitude of meanings, which vary dramatically when this commonly private gesture is presented for public consumption. This ground-breaking book explores the significance of undressing in various cultural and social contexts. As we are increasingly obsessed with dress choices as signifiers of who we are and how we feel, an investigation into what happens as we remove our clothes has never been more pertinent. Exploring three main issues - politics, tease, and clothes without bodies - Acts of Undressing discusses these key themes through an in-depth and eclectic mix of case studies including flashing at Mardi Gras, the World Burlesque Games, and 'shoefiti' used by gangs to mark territories. Building on leading theories of dress and the body, from academics including Roland Barthes and Mario Perniolato, Ruth Barcan and Erving Goffman, Acts of Undressing is essential reading for students of fashion, sociology, anthropology, visual culture, and related subjects.

This book is a provocative new study of global feminist activism that opposes neoliberal regimes across several sites including Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States. The feminist performative acts featured in the book contest the aggressive unravelling of collectively won gains in gender, sexual and racial equality, the appearance of new planes of discrimination, and the social consequences of political economies based on free market ideology. The investigations of affect theory follow the circulation of intensities – of political impingements on bodies, subjective and symbolic violence, and the shock of dispossession – within and beyond individuals to the social and political sphere. Affect is a helpful matrix for discussing the volatile interactivity between performer and spectator, whether live or technologically mediated. Contending that there is no activism without affect, the collection brings back to the table the activist and hopeful potential of feminism.

This Handbook asks how competition affects the presentation and experience of dance.

Tattoos are a highly visible social and cultural sight, from TV series that represent the lives of tattoo artists and their interactions with clients, to world-class sports stars and the social actors we meet on a daily basis who display visible tattoo designs. Whereas in the not-to-distant past tattoos were commonly culturally perceived to represent an outward sign of social non-conformity or even deviance, tattoos now increasingly transcend class, gender, and age boundaries and arguably are now more culturally acceptable than they have ever been. But why is this the case, and why do so many social actors elect to wear tattoos? Tattoo Culture explores these questions from historical, cultural and media perspectives, but also from the heart of the culture itself, from the dynamics of the tattoo studio, the work of the artist and the world of the tattoo convention, to the perspective of the social actors who bear designs to investigate the meanings which lie being the images. It critically examines the ways in which tattoos alter social actors’ sense of being and their relationship with time in the semiotic ways with which they communicate, to themselves or to the wider world, key elements of their bodily and personal identity and sense of being.