Immodesty Blaize tells the Telegraph about her start in burlesque, the British burlesque scene and burlesque's appeal. "In an age where we're constantly being bombarded with sexual imagery, burlesque was going right against the grain. But what appealed to me about it was the idea of making erotic entertainment joyous and glamorous and tongue-in-cheek. In a funny way, burlesque reminds me of a horror film. You're always more scared when you haven't seen the monster than when you have. Although I don't know if that's a very good analogy."
In other news, everyone's chatting about what burlesque is ...
Dr. Wasabi offers his spin. "Burlesque literally means 'to turn upside down.' It was to parody. And old-fashioned burlesque featured singing, dancing, dirty humor and stripping. But neo-burlesque is different from stripping as it's practiced today, because stripping focuses on particular body types. Neo-burlesque is about all types of body and all genders."
The discussion continues with PhD candidate Alexis Butler, who says, "There's the neo-burlesquers who use the mechanism of burlesque, and maintain the issues of sexuality and gender as a means to burlesque popular culture now, so sending up everything from standards of beauty and desire, to mainstream film, mainstream music, whatever it may be -- politics. And then there's the other sort of more standard form that tries to imitate some sort of sense of a perceived historical tradition. They're sort of historical re-creationists in a lot of ways."
And Job Boobs explores the difference between stripping and burlesque. She'll peel away the layers of the debate even further in a panel discussion at NYU on March 12.
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