Cross-Dressing Striptease Performers
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. . . young gay men went to Seattle burlesque houses in the
1930s to cruise and to watch the women dancing in the line.
The queens — the gay men — and the women in burlesque
were always friendly and would go together to speakeasies after
the shows. Sometimes, men would be hired to join the chorus
lines in drag to dance and even to strip, although the secret was
usually kept from the audiences. (Paulson & Simpson, 1996, p.
7-8)
Still, chorus line work and legitimate stage stripping, up yonder past the kleig
lights and under the proscenium’s protective bower, is way different from the
intimate bump-and-grind of a runway club.
Meanwhile, transvestite shows, such as the enduring Jewel Box Review,
were popular. For example, in early 1950 the JBR played the Turf Club in Denver.
Booked for two weeks, it packed the house for eighteen. A competing strip bar
took advantage of the publicity to run counter advertising pointing out that, “The
Tropics features all girls — real girls — and Native Dancer” (Paulson & Simpson,
1996, p. 88). Native Dancer, a famous race horse of the period, was, in this case, a
headlining stripper. On the sly or not, female impersonators developed methods of
perfecting their craft. One retired performer recalls that,
[an experienced dancer] made my G-string. It had a thin elastic
string that would go inside the skin, in the folds. My testicles
would go up into the sockets and my penis would be pulled flat
between my legs by the G-string. (Paulson & Simpson, 1996,
p. 107)
While this method works, and is apparently approximately standard within the
community, it did have certain problems, being a sort of best of a bad situation
cosmetic fix — “the larger the penis the harder it was to pull off. After awhile, it
would become uncomfortable and it was hard to sit down and could be quite painful”
(p. 107).
Robin Raye, an exotic dancer and stripper on the female-impersonator
circuit, comments that audiences familiar with the performers “real” gender were
in part amused by the “fool the eye” aspect. According to Raye:
How we tucked away our genitals was always the gossipy
discussion at the tables. Jackie Starr and I did it basically the
same way. We pushed our testicles up into the sockets and a
pouch held our penis back between our legs so it would be flat