Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan
Book cover

Undressed for Success

Beauty Contestants and Exotic Dancers as Merchants of Morality

  • Book
  • © 2005

Overview

Authors:
  1. Brenda Foley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History (PSTPH)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 1-11

  3. “Stripping the Light Fantastic”: Historical Cross-Pollination in Staged Female Exposure

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 13-35

  4. “It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way What You Do It”: Segmenting Female Spectacle on the Basis of Constructed Morality

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 37-60

  5. Artifice and Authenticity: Parallels in Performance Approach

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 61-85

  6. Performing Normalcy

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 87-110

  7. Economics and Advancement: Or, Flesh-for-Cash Transactions and the Cinderella Myth

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 111-139

  8. Naked Politics: Regulating and Legislating Female Display

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 141-165

  9. Afterword

    • Brenda Foley
    Pages 167-171

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 173-231
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

Using the tools of performance studies, gender theory, and cultural history, Brenda Foley explores the striking similarities between beauty pageantry and striptease. For example, women in both project a 'normal' femininity and adhere to a strict hierarchy (Miss America contestants look down upon Miss Universe contestants, while theatrical 'burlesque artists' saw themselves as far above mere carnival strippers). Undressed for Success collects extensive primary source research - newspapers, journals, trade publications, photography collections, press releases, memoirs, and interviews with both strippers and pageant contestants - and employs a wide array of gender, feminist, and performance theory to analyze them.

Reviews

"This book covers a tremendous amount of ground and offers a complicated, interdisciplinary, and yet highly accessible approach to subjects that have mostly been treated separately: beauty contestants and strippers, Miss American Pageants and strip acts. Foley shows beyond any doubt that these two theatrical forms are historically and formally linked to one another. This is a tremendous accomplishment." - Carolyn J. Dean, Professor of History, Brown University

About the author

BRENDA FOLEY has taught at a number of universities, including Brown University, the University of New Hampshire, and St. Thomas University in Canada, where she is at present an Assistant Professor of English. She has published articles in journals such as Nordic Theatre Studies, Theatre InSight, and the journal of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA). In addition to her academic work, Brenda is a veteran Equity actress of twenty years with theatre credits including the La Jolla Playhouse, Roundabout, Studio Arena, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Indiana Rep, and Vienna's English Theatre, in Austria, as well as numerous Public Radio appearances.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation