Felt Pleasure or Performed Pleasure?
We must acknowledge a distinction between felt pleasure and performed pleasure.
While Lorde articulates that “The erotic functions for [her] in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person,” she later distinguishes between the sharing of feelings and the using of someone’s feelings, the latter signifying disempowerment (Lorde 57).
A collection of interviews of many professional strippers from 1968 exhibits how the sharing of pleasure and the giving of (and subsequently the spectator’s “using” of) pleasure plays out in the industry of stripping during this time period. Some of the strippers allude to the sharing of pleasure, whether that pleasure refers to eroticism, or enjoyment. One woman explains that “a good act is one that customers like, and that you like to put on.” Another account of an interview explains how one stripper described “an ability to stimulate the people and also feels that there is also some stimulation that is given back by stimulating other people.” This language suggests an equality between the performers’ felt pleasure and the audience’s felt pleasure.
Although some of the language suggests a sense of “sharing,” many of the interviews suggest that the stripping performances were crafted so that the spectators could “use” rather than “share” felt eroticism. In other words, the strippers’ goal was to pleasure her audience, not to feel her own pleasure. One woman explains how what makes a successful act is “studying what people want and giving it to them,” and portraying the attitude of “here I am, take me, love me.” On top of this performative mindset, these same strippers explain that they were in the business for the money, not because they necessarily enjoyed stripping. Many of the strippers from the interviews articulate that they preferred to perform in theaters rather than clubs because in clubs they feel pressure and expectation to mingle and interact with the customers, which is something they do not want to do. This exemplifies a lack of “sharing” the pleasure. In addition, many of the strippers articulate that they refer to themselves as dancers rather than strippers, which suggests a sense of shame associated with the act of stripping for a viewer, and catering to spectators' pleasures in that way.
Although many of the accounts from the interviews suggest that the stripteases exhibited the performance of pleasure for the purpose of pleasuring spectators, the portrayal of pleasure, whether authentically felt or simply enacted, still has a potential for empowerment. On the contrary, Lorde argues in congruence with anti-pornography scholarship, how “pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling” (Lorde 54). This suggests that if the feeling of pleasure is not actually felt, it cannot be powerful. Similarly, many anti-pornography scholars suggest that pornography is inherently degrading and dehumanizing to woman, portraying an unjust subordination that exists in our society; because the porn actresses' erotic feelings may not actually be felt, and are instead performed for the pleasure of the viewer (commonly assumed to be the male gaze), the porn star is dehumanized, and objectified. Similarly, as we can see through the interviews with the strippers, a lot of the time pleasure was indeed performed, with the goal of pleasuring an audience. But Lorde also suggests that eroticism, especially female eroticism, is silenced in our society. Burlesque, and stripping in particular, portrays and celebrates otherwise-hushed sexuality and eroticism. Similarly, Nadine Strossin, in her essay, “The Feminist Critique of “the” Feminist Critique of Pornography” cites feminist Sara Diamond: “‘Feminism and porn have something in common. Both insist that women are sexual beings. Both have made sex an experience open to public examination and…debate’” (Strossin 1133). Although I do not deny that burlesque is crafted to please a gaze, (most commonly the heterosexual male gaze), and establishes a binding relationship of “performer to the scopic desires of her male patron” (Allen), I would also argue that burlesque shines light and celebrates female eroticism, empowering women as sexual beings in the grand scheme.
Watch the video below to see Blaze Starr perform what appears to be embodied and felt pleasure, in her 1950's stripping short film:
Works Cited:
Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Print.
Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 2007. 53-59. Print.
McCaghy, Charles and James Skipper. Binder of interviews. Series 6, Box 7. Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theater Research Institute, Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, OH. 2 Dec. 2015.
Strossen, Nadine. “A Feminist Critique of "the" Feminist Critique of Pornography”. Virginia Law Review 79.5 (1993): 1099–1190. Web. 21 October 2015.
