University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Pansies and femmes, queens and kings: queer performers in the tease business

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Pansies and femmes, queens and kings: queer performers in the tease business

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Content PANSIES AND FEMMES, QUEENS AND KINGS:
QUEER PERFORMERS IN THE TEASE BUSINESS
by
Rachel Symons
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL
FOR COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
May 2020

ii
Acknowledgements
I am grateful and humbled by the trust each performer put in me to write about some of
the most vulnerable moments of their lives, both on and off stage. Your passion and generosity
are what made this project possible. Thank you to Kirby LaBrea, Tito Bonito and Steph J. for
spending many hours with me over food and laughter while sharing your stories. Thank you
also to Robert Ramos and Rosa Lee Bloom for taking the time to interview with me remotely
amongst busy schedules. Many thanks to Dustin Wax and Michelle Baldwin for enlightening me
on the history of burlesque and bringing these stories of burlesque legends to life.
My deepest appreciation to Sandy Tolan. This simply would not have happened if it was
not for your genuine support, patience and guidance throughout this entire program. Thank
you to thesis committee member Laura Castañeda for your interest in this topic which pushed
me to write about it for my thesis. Thank you also to committee member Joseph Hawkins for
bringing your expertise to this topic and providing the guidance for my research that I so
enjoyed learning. Thank you also to my sister, Ashley Symons, for being my steady motivator
and reliable (and I am sure sometimes reluctant) first reader throughout this program. You are
always my inspiration.
Lastly, thank you to all the burlesque performers who put their bodies and souls into
sharing burlesque with the world and continue to make this artform thrive. It is artists like you
who inspire hope, adapt, innovate and lift us up even during the most difficult times for
humanity.

iii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iv
Introduction 1
Cross-Dressing and The Origins of American Burlesque 8
Impersonation and The First Burlesque Revival 14
Neo-Burlesque and The Queer Gaze 22
References 32

iv
Abstract
This thesis explores the performances and meanings behind the growing queer presence
on burlesque stages over the last three decades through the lens of burlesque history. With
interviews from five queer performers from around the country and burlesque historians, it is
clear that the “new bump-n-grind” has changed the queer community, and that the queer
community has changed the power of the tease. Born from a history filled with humor,
horsewhipping, leggy heroines and drag kings and queens, burlesque was destined to be a
steamy romance between rebellion and acceptance, fantasy and authenticity, love and
suffering.

1
Introduction
Fashion and imagery hold power, which is precisely why the state
seeks to regulate and constrain such self-representations to this
very day.
– Reina Gossett, Trap Door
1

Ten o’clock on a Thursday night at Redline Gay Bar in Downtown Los Angeles looks like
any bar at this time of night: a crowd of regulars roaming around bar stools, scattered empty
chairs, couples buried in intimate conversations hunched over low cabaret tables and fake
candlelight. Its docile circa 1920s jazz club vibe is interrupted only by dim turquoise and violet
neon lights outlining a low stage backdropped in black velveteen curtains with no purpose
other than decorative sensuality.
Yet, beyond the bar, through the swinging kitchen doors and down the stairwell in a
converted storage basement, half-dressed performers race in and out, primping and priming in
front of mirrors in this makeshift dressing room. Warumono stands in a crucifix pose as he pulls
on his needle-tipped gloves, careful not to pop the multicolored balloons affixed to his black
dominatrix harness.
As it nears 10 o’clock, the crowd swells and there is standing room only. The show’s
producer and host, Tito Bonito, welcomes the audience to the Pansy Craze Peepshow.
Warumono, the second performer of the evening, carefully makes his way up the stairs while
Kirby LaBrea drops his stuffed gym bag in front of a mirror next to drag king Manny Pocket

1
Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. Introduction to Trap Door, ed. Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley
and Johanna Burton (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017), xvi.

2
Rocket, who is shirtless except for his chest binds. A ragged black beard hangs on the hook next
to his mirror. Contessa, dressed in a full penguin suit, waddles out from behind a small pantry-
like room. Lemon Meringue follows Contessa up the stairs painted in head-to-toe drag clown
garb. As they disappear up the stairs, rapid-fire popping latex signals the finale of Warumono’s
helium-filled act. Deflated, he returns to the basement where Manny Pocket Rocket and Kirby
LaBrea are busting out impromptu Beyoncé and Phantom of the Opera medleys in between
delicate strokes of eyeliner.
Backstage of the Pansy Craze Peepshow is stepping into a world reminiscent of late 19
th

century burlesque shows– far from the Vegas lights and Hollywood glamour. Unlike its nouveau
riche predecessor, here is a campy affair that invokes the origins of burlesque. This is the nitty-
gritty body-positive tongue-in-cheek burlesque that encompasses everything from striptease to
standup comedy. It is a variety show that harkens back to the Golden Age of burlesque, but
with one difference: Queer performers makeup almost the entirety of the show’s lineup.
“We have drag queens, drag kings, a singer, trans performers who are doing burlesque.
Boys that are dressing like girls doing burlesque. And then we have boys wearing makeup doing
burlesque. But then me regularly doing burlesque and females doing burlesque. So it’s a great
representation of how much different burlesque is out there,”
2
says Tito Bonito.
Tito Bonito, the “Cuban Missile Crisis of Burlesque,” is an international award-winning
performer, host and producer and was ranked one of the top 50 most influential people in
burlesque in 2018 and 2019 by 21
st
Century Burlesque Magazine. His sought-after comedic

2
Tito Bonito, interview, April 11, 2019.

3
performances and hosting often include social and political commentary addressing racism,
homophobia and xenophobia.
“I’m very excited to see the future of burlesque, especially the future of queer artists in
burlesque because I do think that LA has a thriving queer presence in burlesque and it’s
growing,” says Tito Bonito, “Especially in the last year I’ve seen so much new performers that
are awesome. That’s exciting. Because I don’t feel like that happened four, five years ago. I
think now it’s a new generation.”
The neo-burlesque movement has become a space for celebrating queerness and
creating community at a time when homophobia and transphobia are on the rise. In 2018, the
FBI reported 1,404 hate crimes based on sexual orientation nationally, over half of which were
anti-gay, and 184 hate crimes based on gender-identity, 157 of which were anti-transgender
crimes. These numbers have slowly increased since 2014, when 1,178 crimes based on sexual
orientation and 109 based on gender-identity, 69 of which being anti-transgender, were
reported. Crimes based on race and ethnicity continue to make up the majority of hate crimes,
according to the FBI report.
3
At a time of political and social backlash, the queer community is
finding a haven in the tease business.
“I feel like as queer people, it’s a struggle throughout daily life,” says Rosa Lee Bloom, an
Arkansas-based burlesque performer, “So having this, whether you do it as a job or a hobby,
having this separate world to go into and share your art with people– I’m very happy that it is
such a safe space.”
4

3
“2018 Hate Crime Statistics.” FBI. October 29, 2019, https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/incidents-
and-offenses.
4
Rosa Lee Bloom, interview, February 17, 2020.

4
Down in this bar basement is a family of performers singing together, laughing together
and supporting each other. It is a deliberately transformative space where clothing and
performance are sources of power, family and joy. “This is our Vaudeville,” says Mr. Hollywood
Burlesque 2015 winner Kirby LaBrea. “Burlesque is what drag used to be.”
5

What is perhaps most striking about this revolution within burlesque is that not since
the Victorian theater has queer representation seen such a profound change within an artform
that for most of its history rejected them.
“If you think about traditional burlesque, that has more of the classic world of
burlesque, [it is] a very straight vision of burlesque,” says Michelle Baldwin, aka Vivenne
VaVoom, author of Burlesque {and the new bump-n-grind}. Today, she says “the people who
are coming and supporting and are a part of it are extremely diverse, really embracing
something that didn’t really embrace them. I think it’s really wonderful to see so many people
discovering burlesque, interpreting it how they feel it should be presented.”
6

The roots of this new burlesque can be traced to New York City’s East Village, the home
of America’s underground punk scene. Gay artist, John Sex, known for his shocking spectacles,
would sing punk songs while nearly naked. His backup singers, the Bodacious TaTas, would also
often perform without clothes.
Modern male striptease is frequently attributed to Sex. The 80s revived many Latinx,
African American and queer performance and dance cultures, like punk and ball cultures, that
triggered the second major burlesque revival in the 1990s.

5
Kirby LaBrea, interview, August 28, 2019.
6
Baldwin, Michelle, interview, February 17, 2020.

5
James Tigger! Ferguson took burlesque stages by storm in 1988 and was crowned the
first ever “King of Boylesque/Mr. Exotic World” at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in 2006. Many
major male performers soon followed, including Maximillian and Paris Original and Trojan
Original.
“When Miss Exotic World started in 1991, there wasn’t an idea that there would ever be
male performers. So when a few men applied to perform in 2006, they didn’t know what to do
with them,” says Wax. “They created the ‘Best Boylesque’ category sort of on the fly to
accommodate what nobody could even then guess was going to become a major strain within
the burlesque world.”
7

Wax says the category has only grown since then. In the last few years, he says, the Hall
of Fame received about 45 applicants for the category and this year that number is about 75—
almost equivalent to the number of Miss Exotic World applicants.
“Nobody saw it coming,” says Wax. “We’re really at the beginning of any kind of
boylesque movement.”
However, the increase in “boylesque” performers reflects a broader movement
happening in the burlesque world that has more to do with the greater appeal to and visibility
of the artform to the queer community rather than the idea that male stripteasers—queer or
not—are a novelty in burlesque. These male-identifying burlesque performers are directly
confronting toxic masculinity while invoking queer body politics to challenge homophobia and
heteronormativity and open up burlesque explicitly to the queer community.

7
Wax, interview.

6
In fact, when Satan’s Angel returned to prominence on the burlesque stage in the 90s,
she openly identified as a lesbian performer because of how the scene had changed for queer
people in burlesque since her debut thirty years prior.
“That was something she really loved about being part of this new world,” says Baldwin
of her conversations with Satan’s Angel about her past career. “She could be completely out,
she could be completely who she was, she could show up to shows with her partner and
everybody embraced everyone. So that was something she really appreciated and loved about
the new burlesque world.”
8

Rosa Lee Bloom also praises the inclusivity of the burlesque community today and how
it has influenced her and the queer community in general.
“First starting, I didn’t realize how queer burlesque was and how fabulously gay so many
people are,” she laughed. “So that was a big plus.” Bloom says she was “like a sweet little timid
eighteen-year-old baby” before starting her burlesque career with the Foul Play Cabaret, the
troupe she still performs with today.
9

“Burlesque saved me as a person,” she says. “Being surrounded by so many queer
people– so many people of all genders and all expression– there’s something really beautiful in
that. And I’m in a tiny town in Arkansas, so being able to travel and getting that exposure in
that way, meeting a lot more gay people because my community is semi-small compared to the
world of burlesque […] I don’t know where I would be without that."

8
Baldwin, interview.
9
Rosa Lee Bloom, interview.

7
The origins of American burlesque were composed of aesthetics that are today being
revived and reworked by queer performers to create safe spaces for the queer community. Just
as male impersonators pushed boundaries in early theater and burlesque that served as an
outlet for many queer people, queer performers today ask: for whose eyes is this sexual
spectacle?

8
Cross-Dressing and The Origins of American Burlesque
The influx of queer visibility on burlesque stages is
only a recent occurrence in burlesque history. However, the
origins of burlesque are rooted in satire, social criticism and
cross-dressing, which is today very much a burlesque
standard as more shows like Tito Bonito’s include drag,
comedy and political commentary.
The earliest traces of burlesque in American history
began in the late 19
th
century. Lydia Thompson, the
“Queen of Burlesque,” and her British Blondes were the
most notable early female burlesque troupe to bring
burlesque to George Wood’s Broadway Theater in New
York City in 1868 with their lauded adaptation of the Greek myth Ixion.
10

“She seems to be a sort of Prometheus in ardor and ambition, and breathes the breath
of life into everything she does, whether it be in making wicked advances on the wives of the
gods, or singing local songs,” wrote the New York Times. “It is hard to judge of her as an actress,
in disguise that robs her sex of all its charms, for Miss Thompson has to swear, swagger and be
otherwise masculine as Ixion, but as to the manner in which she plays this part this must be
said, she is lively, vivacious and spirited, and although some exceptions may be taken to her

10
Allen, Robert C., Horrible Pettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. (The University of North Carolina Press,
1991), 3.
Photograph of Lydia Thompson, ca. late 19th c. Guy
Little Collection. © Victoria & Albert Museum

9
costume and that of her companions, no one can do so from artistic reasons; the statuesque is
certainly not violated in this respect; nature has her own.”
11

The group often donned blonde wigs and wore male clothing– showing more leg than
acceptable for women– to play male characters or prominent male figures of the time. Lydia
Thompson took the aesthetic of breeches actresses and turned it into a saucy satirical
burlesque spectacle.
“To be blonde in the 1860s meant you were suspect,” says Dustin Wax, Executive
Director of the Burlesque Hall of Fame. “The fact that none of these women were blonde, I
think only one of them was blonde [Pauline Markham], which means the rest wore wigs or dyed
their hair. And both of those things were A, signs of prostitution, and B, signs of being some
kind of suspect, overly-sensualized person. The fact that they put it on, and not just put it on,
but beat at the meaning of it, they were reveling in their own suspect-ness, the suspicions they
arose about themselves as loose women. That’s always been part of burlesque.”
12

While burlesque performers of the Victorian era were using male impersonation to
mock men, serious male impersonators, called “breeches actresses,” were evaluated on how
well they could pass as men to prove that they could do anything as well as a man could, even
“wear the breeches.”
13
There was also often an association of cross-dressing actresses with
lesbianism. Being a lesbian in Victorian times meant being any woman who reflected more
masculine qualities. The freedom to wear the breeches on a public stage, however, did allow

11
“Amusements: Theatricals.” The New York Times. October 1, 1868. The New York Times Archive. Accessed
February 21, 2020.
12
Wax, interview.
13
Mullenix, Elizaabeth Reitz. Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage. (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2000), 267.

10
many queer people an outlet to express their gender
identity in ways they could not do as openly day-to-
day.
14

Burlesque took this a step further into the
world of comedy and satire, playing men but all the
while criticizing masculinity and gender roles. The idea
was to impersonate these great men of literature and
culture and to take the encoded messages of wearing
the breeches and put them squarely in the audiences’
lap.
“They were playing towards people of the
lower classes. They wanted an evening of escapism,”
says Baldwin, “Part of the root of burlesque is the idea
of humor and satire, so they were taking songs and changing lyrics and making fun of the upper
class and the monarchy and people who were in power.”
15

According to the documentary Exotic World and the Burlesque Revival, burlesque was
also an alternative to factory work, pink-collar jobs, childbearing and compulsory
heterosexuality.
16

14
Mullenix, 291.
15
Baldwin, interview.
16
Exotic World and the Burlesque Revival, Tremmel.
Photograph of Lydia Thompson in The Volunteer Quick
Step, ca. late 19th c. Guy Little Collection. © Victoria &
Albert Museum

11
“Especially for working-class women,” says Wax, “the idea of using your physical
attributes, but also your wit and guile and grace and whatever to kind of fleece these rich men
throwing their money around has a lot of appeal. There’s a sort of Robin Hood aspect of that.”
17

However, Thompson did not just bring burlesque to American audiences. She did so
with a flourish. Before her anticipated arrival to the United States, according to burlesque
historian Robert C. Allen, the press received an eight-page biography of Thompson and her
troupe at the behest of their shrewd publicist, Archie Gordon, which read:
“At Helsingfors her pathway was strewn with flowers and the streets illuminated with
torches carried by her ardent admirers. At Cologne, the students insisted on sending the horses
about their business and drawing the carriage that contained the object of their devotions
themselves. At Riga and other Russian towns in the Baltic, it became an almost universal
custom to exhibit her portrait on the side of the stove to correspond with that of the Czar on
the other side. At Lemberg, a Captain Ludoc Baumbarten of the Russian dragoons, took some
flowers and a glove belonging to Miss Thompson, placed them on his breast; then shot himself
through the heart, leaving on his table a note stating that his love for her brought on the fatal
act.”
18

Apparently, this was just the kind of diva that did it for Americans. Deliberately luring
and mocking their male audience, the troupe’s shows continued to sell out across the country
and receive praise from even their most skeptical critics. However, this praise was short-lived.
Thompson’s success and reputation also brought with it an emerging anti-burlesque sentiment

17
Wax, interview.
18
Allen, 7.

12
that followed her into the following years. Conservatives and feminists alike disapproved of the
sexual spectacle and media frenzy that Thompson brought with her to the stage.
19

As she garnered this notoriety, the press turned on her, and she and other performers
who donned stockings were criticized for their sexually explicit attire (for the times) and
associated with the likes of whores. One such critic was Wilber F. Storey of the Chicago Times.
In response to his review criticizing the Blonde’s “lewd” performance, Thompson and Markham
cornered Storey and horsewhipped him, earning Thompson the nickname “lesbian attacker” in
the press

.
20
(And apparently, sending throngs of angry women throughout the country to
“procure horsewhips” and go “about like roaring lionesses seeking whom they might
chastise.”)
21

“They were women whom he attacked,” said Thompson to her audience the night after
her arrest, “We did what the law would not do for us.”
22

Because of this theatrical debauchery, the rather confused and defensive journalists and
critics stirred up an overly-sexualized depiction of actresses both serious and burlesque. As
Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix points out in her book Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the
Antebellum Stage, the shocking performances that offended so many critics were based on the
fact that these women were mocking men– and doing so showing the shape of their leg. In
what is referred to as the “leg business,” Mullenix points to the fact that burlesque (often

19
Allen, 16.
20
Allen, 19.
21
“Heroines of Horsewhip.” The New York Times. September 28, 1870. The New York Times Archives. Accessed
February 21, 2020.
22
Allen, 20.

13
conflated with breeches actresses by journalists) was not as sexual as the press made it out to
be.
“Critics repeatedly feminized, infantilized, and sexualized the cross-dressed actress in a
deliberate attempt to show that her disguise was translucent,” writes Mullenix, “that no matter
how skilled she was in ‘wearing the breeches,’ her femininity was indelible.”
23
According to
Mullenix, the Thompsonian era scarred many serious breeches actresses’ careers by association
with the leg business, and most were forced into now one of the few places on stage women
could work: burlesque.
What today is often seen as a step up from the “gentlemen’s” strip clubs and an
objectification of the female body for men’s sexual pleasure, actually began as something that
allowed people to express more sexual freedom than typically allowed in their daily lives. Over
the next century, however, the road for queer people in burlesque would be littered with much
of the same homophobic and sexist backlash as the fight for equal rights spread throughout the
country.

23
Mullenix, 4.

14
Impersonation and The First Burlesque Revival
I won the fight for us to appear on stage, but I didn’t win the fight
for us to walk down the street.
– Sir Lady Java
24

One October night in 1967, one of the most
famous entertainers in Los Angeles stood outside
Redd Foxx’s night club holding a picket sign that read
“Java vs. Right to Work.” Sir Lady Java, who was
considered a “female impersonator,” was a femme
performer who deliberately used her performances
as a comedic commentary questioning the idea of
gender. She would walk on stage dressed as a
tuxedoed gentleman and slowly transform into a
femme à la Lena Horne or Josephine Baker before
stripping down into a sequined bikini.
25

By the press and audiences, Java was lauded
as “the loveliest female impersonator.”
26

“Sir Lady Java swept into the room– the Club Nite Life– with white, lace gown swishing
through the air,” wrote a reviewer for Sepia in March 1967. “With youthful agility, he climbed

24
Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It,” 11.
25
Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It,” 6.
26
“Sir Lady Java,” Transas City, WordPress, February 13, 2018, http://transascity.org/sir-lady-java.

Sir Lady Java in an advertisement for Memory Lane
Supper Club performance. Courtesy of Transas City
Collection.

15
the steps to the go-go type dancing cage and, as the jazz band ripped off an up-tempo number,
began a torrid, sexy dance that left the audience with mouths agape.” The review continued:
No woman could have appeared more feminine. Sir Lady Java’s hair was soft, shoulder-
length and beautifully ‘coffed’ (sic). His facial features were keen, of Creole complexation, and
totally without any mannish hair.
His act– in lady’s dress– was as striptease. Slowly, the white lace gown came off,
revealing a shapely, female figure, including pronounced breast-line.
As he watched Sir Lady Java, one man in the audience couldn’t contain himself. He
approached the club owner and said, ‘You’re putting me on. This isn’t a female impersonator.
This is actually a girl.’
’No,’ the club owner said, ‘Sir Lady Java is a man.’
’How do you know?’ the man persisted. ‘Have you ‘seen’ him?’
’Yes, I have,’ the club owner said.
The man went back to his seat, shaking his head. That’s the usual effect when Sir Lady
Java performers.
27

Despite her popularity and success, in the fall of 1967 police threatened Foxx’s business
license if he continued to book Sir Lady Java in the name of city ordinance Rule No. 9, which
read: “No entertainment shall be conducted in which any performer impersonates by means of
costume or dress a person of the opposite sex, except by special permit issued by the Board of
Police Commissioners.”
28
In response, on October 21 Java held a protest outside Foxx’s club

27
“Sir Lady Java,” Transas City.
28
Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It,” 10.

16
against the prohibition, which Java said was only
enforced by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)
primarily at black-owned clubs.
“We didn’t know of any establishment that
was white that they were stopping, but they were
definitely targeting me, because I was queen of the
Black ones,” Java said in a 2015 interview with Treva
Ellison, “it was against the law to wear women’s
clothing, you know that? They could arrest you if
you walk down the street in women’s clothing, in
male clothing.”
29

While the ACLU took on Java’s case, it wasn’t until 1969 that the ordinance was lifted
due to a different lawsuit.
30
During those two years, Java continued to perform by poking fun at
the law which required performers to wear three pieces of “proper” gendered clothing.
According to Ellison, she wore a wristwatch, bowtie and men’s socks in her act and other
gender non-conforming performers soon followed her example to continue to work at the night
clubs.
31

Java’s fight represented the state’s crackdown on queer and non-white bodies– any
bodies not approved by the cis-white male gaze– not only by means of dress, but also by
denying them access to employment and criminalizing the work they created for themselves.

29
Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It,” 10.
30
Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It,” 10.
31
Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It,” 12.
Sir Lady Java and Redd Foxx outside his club on October
21, 1967. Courtesy of Transas City Collection

17
Java said that those who were coded as gender nonconforming would not be hired for regular
daytime work. Their main source of income came from the night scene through sex work or
stage entertainment, both of which became highly regulated and criminalized. While not called
burlesque then, Java’s performance drew from Thompsonian burlesque with equal vigor. She
fought for a space for queer people to do burlesque at a time when the artform had otherwise
turned its focus to cis-gender and heterosexual representations of women.
In the late 19
th
century, there were few out queer performers on the burlesque scene
because of the societal stigma, particularly as the popularity of burlesque grew. Into the early
20
th
century, as burlesque became profitable, it attracted male comics who took over many of
the writing and speaking roles formerly occupied by women. The clubs no longer wanted a
tease, they wanted straight-to-the-point raunchy acts. To keep their jobs, women performers
had to recreate their roles by choreographing erotic movements such as stripping and
incorporating these into their acts to appease the male producers and audiences. The focus of
female burlesque turned to body movements and fashion rather than on writing and speaking
roles. Thus, the male drag and social commentary aspects of burlesque fell away.
By the late 1930s, as the acts became too risqué for the blushing government,
censorship (and probably the war, too) buried burlesque until the 1950s and 60s. Radio and
television became more profitable careers for men under censorship and left female striptease
as the basis, moving it from the high-class theaters during its popularity to the low-brow venues
once again.
32
It wasn’t until after World War II that the first major revival took place.

32
Baldwin, Michelle. Burlesque and the New Bump-N-Grind. (Denver, CO: Steck Press. 2004), 2.

18
The rise of go-go clubs and strip clubs in the 60s made it difficult for the modestly-
clothed burlesque performer to compete, however. As Baldwin quotes Satan’s Angel, “’It just
got to the point that they didn’t want a clean act, and the nastier you were the better they liked
it.’” Baldwin notes that at one point, Satan’s Angel was to perform directly after the viewing of
a porn film, “a difficult act to follow for someone who was trying to tease the audience by
keeping hidden the same body parts that had just been up on the screen, large and in color.”
33

The burlesque of this time was very much defined by the straight male gaze, picking up where it
left off in the late 30s. Because of this and social stigma, there were few out queer performers
in burlesque even at the height of the gay rights movement.
Christine Jorgenson was one of the few Hollywood stars who broke this mold. She
underwent the first successful sexual reassignment surgery in 1952 and became a Hollywood
entertainer. Likewise, Jennifer Fox, a prominent transgender stripper whose tagline “Isn’t He or
Isn’t She?” used humor to capitalized on the public’s fetishization of her identity as a
transgender performer.
34
However, drag remained one of the few spaces for queer performers
who were often also doing burlesque.
“The one place where there was actually a lot of really great burlesque that was
accepted as queer performance was in the drag community,” said Baldwin. “If you go into a lot
of the 1940s, 50s, 60s drag shows, they were doing burlesque and they often took on names
that echoed popular burlesque performers, and they were doing strip tease and they were

33
Baldwin, 14.
34
Wax, interview.

19
wearing the costumes of burlesque. That’s the one place where I feel like there was more of a
voice. An authentic voice.”
35

This revival of drag once again shaped and was shaped by notable burlesque legends
and influences including Mae West, whose scandalous self-made plays inspired generations of
drag and burlesque performers, and later, The World Famous *BOB*, who is most noted for her
female-female drag burlesque.
“This world gave them a kind of template to then build their own acts,”
36
says Wax.
Many burlesque performers also took performance ideas from drag, such as lip syncing, that
continue into the world of burlesque today.
Throughout history, the high times for drag and burlesque coincided with social
movements that brought women’s and queer rights to the forefront of national attention.
Often, drag and burlesque moved back into the underground spotlight when the state sought
to regulate women and queer people in public spaces. This backlash kept the legality of these
two art forms in tight bonds with each other.
In Los Angeles between 1932 and 1933, for instance, as drag’s popularity grew due to
vaudeville stars like Julian Eltinge, female impersonation was banned and the LAPD increased
their raids on pansy clubs.
37
Likewise, when *BOB* began identifying as a burlesque performer
in the late 1990s, the drag and burlesque scenes were already well underway in New York City
as the city government cracked down on sex work.

35
Baldwin, interview.
36
Wax, interview.
37
Treva Ellison, “The Labor of Werqing It: The Performance and Protest Strategies of Sir Lady Java,” Trap Door. ed.
Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017), 13.

20
“New York’s revived scene was not just a rebirth, but also a reaction to Mayor Rudy
Giuliani’s sanitization of the city– an act of survival,”
38
according to Baldwin. Burlesque
provided a space that performers could move into as Giuliani’s regulations closed down many
sex and strip clubs that employed women and queer folks. In true burlesque fashion, however,
it did so always with a satirical wink and a smile at the laws that desired to control it while
pushing boundaries and baring as much skin as was legally acceptable (or maybe a bit more).
This act of survival in burlesque is intimately connected to the ways queer people
organize and come together in the underground nightlife for their own survival. The later balls
of the 1990s, as documented in Paris is Burning and other films, were safe places for queer
African Americans and Latinx folks who were pushed out of their homes and public spaces.
Burlesque, in many ways, was the same for women. However, while women and queer
burlesque performers were beginning to make progress toward the big stages once again in the
1950s and ‘60s, it was still difficult for queer performers to hold gigs.
Satan’s Angel is largely considered a pioneer for queer burlesque performers within the
burlesque community. However, during her first run in burlesque in the 60s, she had to hide
her identity.
“She was out to her fellow performers, but there were times when she got thrown out
because a club owner found out she was queer,” said Baldwin, “so it wasn’t something where
she was going onto the stage and the audience knew anything. It wasn’t something that they
were presenting on stage.”
39

38
Michelle Baldwin, 28.
39
Baldwin, interview.

21
At this time, there were few queer people who made it openly into the spotlight. Wax
says that there were many transgender people coming in and out of the burlesque world at this
time, but few were out or could come out and keep their jobs.
40
As Satan’s Angel describes it
herself in Exotic World and the Burlesque Revival, “It was really hard for a lot of women in the
late 50s and early 60s who were lesbians,” she says, “Femme would be the dancer and [their]
suitcase butches, we’d drag them along and they would run their lights because a lot of clubs
didn’t have all of that. But then when they found out it was a girl, they’d end up firing you
anyways.”
The club owners’ push back against non-straight cis female performers reflected a
broader backlash by the state to regulate queer and non-white performers in response to gay
rights and civil rights activism. It would take another 24 years before the club doors cracked
open and burlesque would see more openly queer performers grace the stages.

40
Wax, Interview.

22
Neo-Burlesque and The Queer Gaze
In burlesque, girls can have curves, often big curves. They can be loud
and funny and still be sex symbols. The basic elements of burlesque
are things that are missing from contemporary life.
– Michelle Baldwin
41

It’s very characteristic of queer people to create the things they don’t
have, that they don’t see out in the world.
– Steph J.
42

When I was 22 years old, my cousins took me to my first burlesque show in downtown
Denver, Colorado. Below the D&F Tower off 16
th
Street, we filed down stone steps and entered
the dim lit Clocktower Cabaret. The three of us crowded around a small round candle-lit table.
A server handed each of us a noisemaker, the ones you twirl in the air and make a sound like a
toy chainsaw. We ordered drinks when the master of ceremonies came on stage making cheeky
banter and bad jokes about ta-tas, pasties and his bisexuality.
The only knowledge I had of burlesque was from what I’d seen in brief TV bar scenes of
half-naked women stripping down to show their barbie-like physiques and the fishnet-clad
murderess Vaudevillian showgirls of Chicago. As soon as the lights dropped, the warbling
trumpet filled the room, and the first performer slinked on stage, I saw that the burlesque I
thought I knew was not the same burlesque titillating audiences today. Instead, the performers

41
Baldwin, 30.
42
Steph J., interview, November 18, 2019.

23
were thin, curvy, tall, short, busty and flat-chested, and flaunted their cellulite and stretch
marks with the eroticism of Mae West.
During intermission, the MC asked the audience to make noise if they were celebrating
a special occasion. One party near the front of the room threw up their hands and twirled their
noisemakers in the air. They told the MC they were having their bachelorette party.
“And who’s the lucky man?” The MC asked.
“It’s a woman!” The bride-to-be shouted and the entire audience cheered and hollered.
It was just one year after Colorado legalized gay marriage, one month after I started
dating a person of the same gender, and less than one week since I came out to my cousins
sitting at that table with me whooping and applauding. This was the first time I’d seen a room
cheer so freely for someone being gay. This was burlesque.
Being a queer woman sitting in that audience watching other women tease, strip and
gyrate discredited what I had always thought of as a heteronormative spectacle. It was then I
realized that burlesque was more than the glammed-up objectification of women’s bodies for
straight male pleasure. This was a performance for everyone who did and didn’t fit into beauty
and sexuality norms. The reveal was as much for the performer’s pleasure as for the audience’s.
It was a moment of shared vulnerability and trust. This is burlesque.
“Burlesque was and is about fantasy,” writes Baldwin, “the difference now is that
though audiences are still going to burlesque shows to see a body, the audience is mostly
women and they want to see someone with a body like theirs doing things they only dream of
doing.”
43

43
Baldwin, 59.

24
The last performer of the evening tip-toed on the blue-cast stage wearing a short white
iridescent 40s wig, a tutu and ballet slippers and holding two large blue feathered fans. The
eerie symphonic timbre of Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” played and the performer flew
pirouettes and chassés around the stage, using the fans like wings to reveal and conceal as she
took off each piece of clothing. Will you still love me / When I’m no longer young and beautiful?
/ Will you still love me / When I got nothing but my aching soul? As the song faded, the
performer melted to the stage floor bowing her head with her fans forming a puddle around
her bare body. The haunting juxtaposition between her bare skin and the song lyrics made the
audience hesitate before standing in applause. Her act captured the nature of a neo-burlesque
scene simultaneously reveling in the classical aesthetic while calling on audiences to challenge
society’s expectations of beauty and sexuality that often act as a double-standards for women
and queer people. This is neo-burlesque.
Today, queer burlesque performers are continuing to unapologetically bring their
identities to the spotlight, either through producing shows featuring queer performers or
performing in some of the world’s most renowned burlesque shows.
“Just being on stage, undressing as a queer person and identifying as that is so political
in and of itself,”
44
says Tito Bonito above the din of dishes and chatter at Langer’s Deli off
Alvarado Street in East Los Angeles. Tito Bonito has influenced the burlesque world by hosting
and performing in some of the biggest shows in the world. In Los Angeles, he has hosted and
performed in one of the city’s most classical shows, Tease If You Please. However, his

44
Tito Bonito, interview.

25
performances and hosting style changes from the classic aesthetic at shows like Tease to more
modern queer-centered acts at the Pansy Craze Peepshow.
Tito Bonito’s boy scout act, for instance, is a comical look at the paradox of a
heteronormative pop culture. Originally named “Scout’s Honor,” the act has become known as
“Spread Eagle Scout” and involves a humorous interpretation of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.” He
created this character at the time when the Boy Scouts of America would not allow gay boys
into their ranks in order to mock the institution’s homophobia. Likewise, in the September
show, Tito Bonito revived his Vogue act, which pays tribute to ball culture and features him in a
tuxedo voguing to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.”
The first time I saw Tito Bonito perform at the Pansy Craze Peepshow, he opened the
show wearing a blue inflatable pool tube under a belt of long sparkling turquoise fringe,
matching blue arm floaties, a beige fedora with a band of black sequins around the base of the
rim, a sequined crème button-down shirt, brown pants and flip-flops. Everything sparkled.
The familiar fanfare of Celia Cruz’s “La Vida Es Un Carnaval” played and he broke into a
salsa, pausing to give a booty shake to the audience while teasingly taking off one arm floatie
and then the next. At a staccato peak in the instrumentals, he ripped off the sparkling button-
down shirt to reveal two sparkling tasseled nipple pasties—one of the Cuban flag and one of
the American flag. Twirling the shirt in the air before throwing it into the crowd, Tito wiggled a
classic burlesque shimmy that twirled the tassels in perfect circles. Sensually, like taking off a
pair of tight underwear, he peeled off the pool tube and the fringe belt. Tugging at the pants
zipper on the beat of the final trumpet fanfare —down, up, down, up—giving one last shimmy,
kicking off the flip-flops, and turning away from the audience, he bent over and pulled down his

26
pants. Underneath was a Cuban flag tied strategically around his waist. For the final reveal, Tito
ripped off the flag to show an American flag thong and two sequined ass tassels.
The music climaxed into to Gloria Estefan’s “Conga” as he thrust into a sequence of
shimmying and shaking the tassels: bending over with hands on the floor and twirling the ass
tassels; climbing up onto the window sill at the back of the stage and kicking one foot into their
air, shaking it to twirl just the one tassel. The music dipped back into the vocal solo as he jazz
slid to the center of the stage. Someone from the crowd threw a wad of dollar bills onto the
stage. He gathered them up and threw them into the air while lip-syncing the final lyrics. Come
on shake your body, baby. Do the conga!
The audience shouted and whistled as more
dollars rained onto the stage. Tito grabbed the
microphone, still dressed in just the pasties, thong
and fedora, and gave the audience a taste of
comedic banter before exiting. He returned to the
stage wearing his scout uniform adorned with
sparkling patches of American flags and rainbows.
He grabbed the microphone, which cut in and out.
Finally, he put it down and yelled into the audience:
“I’m you host for this evening! I’m Cuban as shit, I
don’t need a microphone!”
Tito Bonito after his final reveal at the Pansy Craze
Peepshow performing "Cuba Libra.”

27
This act, entitled “Cuba Libre,” is a comedic political commentary on the Cuban
immigration of the 1960s. Using comedy is one of the ways Tito Bonito says he engages
audiences with what are otherwise serious issues.
“We’re so fucked up with sexuality, but so desensitized with violence. I think burlesque
is fantastic because it’s an artform kind of like the n-word or the way that a lot of gay people
use faggot. It’s taking back something that was used against you,” he says, and a way “to have
women and queer people, minority people, be in charge of creating their own spaces.”
Particularly for young women and queer men, seeing so many different performers on
stage celebrating their bodies is a meaningful part of the modern burlesque movement.
Particularly for those who are bullied and ostracized for their looks, gender identity or sexual
orientation, burlesque provides a rare and untapped platform for body positivity.
“It is an empowering position to be with your clothes off and staring down that
audience and then dancing for them because they’re watching. It’s a very curious effect that I
find very empowering,” says Kirby LaBrea.
45

I met LaBrea on a sunny afternoon at The Grove in West Hollywood back in April of
2019. Wearing ikat printed pink pants, a fur scarf, headphones rested casually around his neck
like they were just another accessory, and a sideways baseball cap, he exuded the same warm
exuberant baseball diva that he presents onstage.
“I feel like being a black queer man from Los Angeles in 2019, it just can speak for so
many young men who are living a different life that I lived and probably think nothing else is

45
Kirby LaBrea, interview.

28
possible,” he says. “I feel like those are the men who could benefit from having a role model in
this place.”
I first saw him perform in December 2018 at The Bacchanal holiday show produced by
my own burlesque instructor, Erika Tai, aka Maxine Fatale. Like many, it was the first time I had
seen a male striptease burlesque dancer. Performing his most popular act—and the one that
won him Mr. Hollywood Burlesque— Kirby LaBrea skipped on stage wearing a red baseball
jacket with the words “LaBrea” embroidered on the back in tribute to his Los Angeles roots,
black and white striped pants, a red baseball hat and holding a miniature bat that twirled so
furiously around his head as he did multiple pirouettes, I was afraid it might just fly off into the
audience. In the tiny packed bar at Gravlax, I looked around at the heterosexual couples
pressed against bar stools wondering what they were seeing. Yet, it didn’t take long for the
crowd to whoop and holler like they had with the previous female performers as he began the
tease: taking off the jacket, the pants, and then the booty shorts. His precise technique paired
with his jubilant smile and mesmeric energy made it impossible to take your eyes off of him out
of fear of missing another turn or booty shake.
“I’d always pictured myself when I was listening to music on the way to school doing a
dance number by myself and something would just rip off, but then I’d be like, ‘what’s under
it?’ And now I know: It’s sparkly underwear.”
Like Tito Bonito, Kirby LaBrea says he wants to use burlesque to give back to the queer
community both by being a role model and by performing in more shows that are by and for
queer people.

29
“I feel like with straight audiences a lot I’m viewed as a novelty, like I’m probably the
gayest thing they’ve seen all night. And sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s cute, but it
gets old. So it’s fun to not be the gayest person in the room sometimes.”
He says his dream show would be a boylesque drag show performing with drag queens,
“I love doing shows with drag queens because being a boy with a bunch of girls is fun, but being
the one boy-boy in a drag show, I feel like on another level. If I could do be doing that every
night, a boylesque drag, that would be the dream,” he says. “It’s very much my style because
it’s my people, it’s queer people, it’s the audience that I really would love to be performing for.”
At the same time, he acknowledges that having male striptease in shows with primarily
straight audiences is important on combating toxic masculinity and homophobia, especially for
straight men who are often uncomfortable watching other men strip. Like Tito Bonito, as the
only male performer in many shows, Kirby LaBrea sees the audience’s reaction when the MC
announces his name. He says people have even walked out in the middle of his performances.
But the ones who stay find it hard to look away.
“I’ve seen my ability to change people’s minds in the moments that they see me
perform. Straight guys will come up to me and say, ‘Wow, man, that was mind-blowing. I don’t
like guys, but I could not stop watching your performance,’” he says.
When I met with him again in September, this time backstage at the Pansy Craze
Peepshow, he was frazzled having been stuck in the notorious LA traffic after rushing out of the
house and forgetting his baseball bat. Yet, without missing a beat, he marched up the stairs,
took a breath and flew out from behind the black curtains to an ecstatic– and by this point,

30
quite inebriated– audience. The bat was soon forgotten as his voice rained down from the
speakers purring Beyoncé’s “Before I Let Go.”
“I just feel like now, when I perform and I post videos of my performances, I love that
people are getting that I’m just happy being unapologetically me and that’s what the world
needs, is more people to show that it’s glorious to be your unapologetic self.”
Moreover, a growing number of gender nonconforming and non-binary performers and
companies are challenging the need for any gendered divisions at all. Quintessential Wonder
Nasty (QWN) is just one gender-fluid sex-positive burlesque company challenging gender and
sexuality stereotypes in burlesque. The Los Angeles-based company is one of a handful around
the world embodying “queerlesque.”
“Burlesque, stereotypically, and for a very long time has been about the male gaze,
heterosexuality, what the hetero cis male wants from a hetero cis female. And queer is a big
umbrella term, in my opinion, for all different types of gender representations and sexualities,”
says Steph J. (she/her/they/them), founder of QWN, as we sat at the bar at Gracias Madre in
West Hollywood, “So ‘queerlesque’ is taking what this heteronormative burlesque form is, and
opening it up, breaking it open to just be whatever. It’s about community. It’s about bringing
people together. It’s about creating dialogue.”
For others, performing burlesque is about self-acceptance, self-discovery and
challenging beauty norms. Robert Ramos, a.k.a. Annie Malé who is one of the QWN Babes, says,
“I never felt like I belonged. I never felt at peace with who I was” growing up in a small town
that was not accepting of queer people.
46

46
Robert Ramos, interview, November 26, 2019.

31
Now, he says, burlesque is “taking the hidden parts of yourself, the parts you’re
ashamed of, the parts that brought some sort of negativity, whether it be physical, mental,
whatever, you take those things and you honor them and you love them because they are parts
of you.”
“Nowadays, I really like getting pretty. I love doing my makeup and picking out an outfit
and getting the shoes and all my stuff together. I look really good. And I get such a positive
response from everyone I meet. And If I don’t get a positive response, I just feel so much more
powerful in myself.”
Queer representation on a burlesque stage is just one way these performers are giving
back to the queer community by creating a safe space.
“We’re all in this together. You’re one hundred percent valid as a human and whatever
expression you are and we’re here to show you our furthest extremes so you can go there, too.
It’s like permission,” says Steph J. When asked what it means to them to have queer performers
on stage, she says it means “I’m valid. And I don’t have to have shame over all of the things I
am.” This is burlesque.

32
References
“2018 Hate Crime Statistics.” FBI. FBI, October 29, 2019. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-
crime/2018/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses.
Allen, Robert C., Horrible Pettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. The University of North
Carolina Press, 1991.
“Amusements: Theatricals.” The New York Times. October 1, 1868. The New York Times
Archive. Accessed February 21, 2020.
Baldwin, Michelle. Burlesque and the New Bump-N-Grind. Denver, CO: Steck Press, 2004.
Ellison, Treva. “The Labor of Werqing It: The Performance and Protest Strategies of Sir Lady
Java,” Trap Door. Edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. 1-21.
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017.
Exotic World and the Burlesque Revival. Directed by Red Tremmel. 2012. Portland OR: Red
Vaughan Tremmel, LLC.
“Heroines of Horsewhip.” The New York Times. September 28, 1870. The New York Times
Archives. Accessed February 21, 2020.
Mullenix, Elizaabeth Reitz. Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage. New York,
NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. Introduction to Trap Door, xv-xxvi. Edited by
Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017.

33
Robinson. “Guy Little Theatrical Photograph.” Victoria & Albert Museum Collections. S.141:746-
2007. Accessed February 17, 2020.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O176856/guy-little-theatrical-photograph-
photograph-robinson.
Woltman, Nick “That time a Pioneer Press columnist called Elvis Presley a ‘male burlesque
dancer.’” Pioneer Press, May 13, 2016.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis explores the performances and meanings behind the growing queer presence on burlesque stages over the last three decades through the lens of burlesque history. With interviews from five queer performers from around the country and burlesque historians, it is clear that the “new bump-n-grind” has changed the queer community, and that the queer community has changed the power of the tease. Born from a history filled with humor, horsewhipping, leggy heroines and drag kings and queens, burlesque was destined to be a steamy romance between rebellion and acceptance, fantasy and authenticity, love and suffering.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Symons, Rachel Marie (author)

Core Title Pansies and femmes, queens and kings: queer performers in the tease business

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 04/21/2020

Defense Date 04/21/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag burlesque,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance art,queer,striptease,Theater

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Tolan, Sandy (committee chair), Castañeda, Laura (committee member), Hawkins, Joseph (committee member)

Creator Email rachelmarie.symons@gmail.com,rsymons@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-285689

Unique identifier UC11674217

Identifier etd-SymonsRach-8297.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-285689 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-SymonsRach-8297.pdf

Dmrecord 285689

Document Type Thesis

Rights Symons, Rachel Marie

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA