Burlesque West
Subtitle: showgirls, sex and sin in postwar Vancouver
By: Becki L. Ross
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 373
ISBN-13: 9780802096982; 9780802096463
Description: "After the Second World War, Vancouver emerged as a hotbed of striptease talent. In Burlesque West, the first critical history of the city's notorious striptease scene, Becki Ross delves into the erotic entertainment industry at the northern end of the dancers' west coast tour - the North-South route from Los Angeles to Vancouver - which provided rotating work for dancers and variety for club clientele. Lavishly illustrated and thoroughly documented, Burlesque West is an ambitious and engaging social history that looks at the convergence of the personal and the political in a phenomenon that combines sex, art and entertainment, and commerce."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [297]-333) and index.
Table of contents: title: Preface : beginnings, backlash, and brazenness; title: 1. Uncloaking the striptease past; title: 2. 'I ain't Rebecca, and this ain't Sunnybrook Farm' : men behind the marquee; title: 3. 'We were like snowflakes; title: no two were alike' : dancers and their gimmicks; title: 4. 'Peelers sell beer, and the money was huge' : the shifting conditions of selling fantasy; title: 5. 'Everyone wanted to date a dancer, nobody wanted to marry one' : occupational hazards in the industry; title: 6. 'You started to feel like a dinosaur' : exiting and aging in the business.