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The Joy and Misery of Entertaining in the Nude
Do guys who strip for pay always have more fun than their female counterparts?
The 2003 British romp Calendar Girls aside, movies and TV rarely play women stripping strictly for laughs — unless the comedy is mostly unintentional (see Showgirls and Striptease). Marisa Tomei’s exotic dancer in The Wrestler led a pretty grim life that perked up only briefly after the arrival of Mickey Rourke’s troubled title character. Natalie Portman’s Closer ingenue didn’t fare much better working the pole. The female exhibitionists-turned-grifters in Hustlers traded lap dances for luxury, but in the end, they learned an inconvenient lesson: Crime — and seemingly by extension, stripping — doesn’t pay... at least when you’re a woman.
Meanwhile, guys who strip onscreen seem to have all the fun. The ones in Magic Mike, the 2012 film about a circle of bros taking it all off for cash, faced their own challenges, but ultimately, the movie’s presentation of the art of stripping was positive enough to spawn a 2015 sequel and a touring show. The original cemented Channing Tatum’s stardom, launched the Matthew McConaughey “McConaissance,” and revived the Hollywood trend of glamorizing male strippers.
On TV, shows from The Jeffersons and The Golden Girls to Days of Our Lives and General…
