Cross-Dressing Striptease Performers
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respondents for this research has so far actually witnessed the unmasking of such
an imposter. Yet there is often a great deal of detail given in the narrative and, it
seems, there is usually a strong desire that the story be believed once it has been
offered. As might have been predicted, the traveling carnival is often the site of
these bogus exhibits^ Not only is the carnival a traditional site of imagined or real
trickery and scofflawry, it has the benefit of being mobile. Thus, any question
about why no record exists of the incident is automatically answered: they left
town before the sheriff could do anything about it.
Unfortunately, the carnival is often a liminal zone. Camy life had, and
largely still has, a cultural mileu attractive to fringe dwellers. If these incidents of
male cross-dressers pretending to be female strippers (again, not a La Cage An
Folles type transvestite review) did take place, the carnival midway might well be
a place for them. This reasoning raises a problem. Take, for example, the urban
legend that earth worm rather than beef was being used in a particular hamburger.
A fundamental question would still remain — Why? Earthworm is substantially
more expensive than cheap, Argentine beef What would be the motivation to lose
money in order to put one’s self out of business? Likewise, there is every reason to
believe that a transvestite review, along La Cage an Folles lines, would frequently
be more profitable than a straight striptease. Why would these unusual events be
offered?'^
One respondent who’d worked her way through graduate school stripping,
including doing out-call dancing at Michigan deer camps, said she’d never even
heard such a thing, adding: ‘‘No, 1 honestly can’t say 1 have ever met a man [or a]
customer in a club that thought any of the girls may be men. 1 also have never met
a man performing as a woman in a straight club. It would be very hard to do, t-bars
are pretty small and tight — you would be hard pressed [1 don’t think she meant
this literally] to hide that. I have met plenty of cross-dressers performing in gay
clubs. But they don’t strip.”"
What Some Transvestites Say
Several good memoir sources exist covering this topic. These are
sometimes quite explicit and, for the doubting Thomases, apparently a photographic
record of sorts also exists. It is important to keep in mind that the performative
component of this data set makes it extraordinarily difficult to separate fictive
elements from fact. Pointedly, several of the older sources do relate the anecdotes
of passing for female strippers while on the camy circuit. Of course, as suggested
above, there is a fine camy tradition of fooling the rube.
Almost certainly the most famous group of transvestite performers were
those associated with The Factory and Andy Worholl’s several films. Holly
Woodlawn recalls being arrested early in her career, saying that [she] “had no idea