Katherine Liepe-Levinson has spent three years researching heterosexual female and male striptease in North America. The result of this research is "Strip Show: Performances of Gender and Desire": the first full length theoretically informed study of striptease. Liepe-Levinsons's travels took her to over seventy different strip bars, clubs, theatres and sex emporiums ranging from elaborate lap-dancing and couch-dancing 'gentlemen's' clubs in New York, Houston, and San Francisco; to Peoria's unisex cabaret where women strip for men downstairs, and men for women upstairs; to nightclubs in Montreal. The book is based on interviews with participants as well as Liepe-Levinsons's own analyses of these events. The focus of the study is on the theatrical elements of striptease shows including choreography, costumes, and design. But a variety of methodologies are drawn upon to review long standing and new theories about representations of gender, heterosexuality, and erotic desire, and to discover why it is that striptease continues to provoke and fascinate.

List of illustrations, Acknowledgements, Introduction: Strip show: Performances of gender and desire, 1 Urban locations of desire: A tale of five cities, 2 Interiors, 3 Costume dramas and sexual subjectivity, 4 Choreography I: The basic moves, 5 Choreography II: Structure, pleasure, and "confessional" narratives of the body, 6 Performing spectators: The pleasure of mimetic jeopardy, 7 Epilogue as intermezzo: The saga of the strip show, or the battles over sexual representation rage on..., Appendix, Notes, Select bibliography, Index