ABSTRACT
The choreography of contemporary female and male strip shows extravagantly ranges from party dancing, slam dancing, disco, ballet, and jazz to pantomime, gymnastic feats, martial arts, body-building, and circus-like stunts with fire and animals. Judith Butler posits that traditional female and male gender roles in everyday life are choreographed, like the sundry forms of dance, through specific stylizations of the body. These particular stylizations-“femininity” and “masculinity”—are constructed out of age-old repetitions of certain movements, gestures, and stances that have, as Butler puts it, “congealed” into what we now understand as the natural and distinct body languages of women and men.2
