AIBU to think that burlesque is a bit crap?

[TiggyR]

My friend phoned out of the blue last week and asked if DH and I would like to join them to see a burlesque show in the London. I said yes, because
a) I like going out and don't get to go out often enough,
b) there was talk of dinner after,
c)I didn''t have the heart/guts to say 'Good God woman, what on eath do you want to sit through that cheesy tripe for?'
d) I was caught unawares and panicked.

Now I am not a prude, at least not where a consenting couple and a a bedroom are concerned. I have been known to be a bit inventive/naughty on occasion, and I have had a passing aquaintance with bumsex, bondage etc, so NOT a nun or a repressed saddo, and do I realise that burlesque is not full-on pornography, but I just find the thought of all that cheesy old fashioned titillation caberet-stylee excruciatingly embarrassing and cringey. I don't find it sexy, I find it a bit seedy and sad. I won't know where to look. I can't bear to think I'll be in a room with two hundred bald fat middle aged men who are all pretending to enjoy the 'art' and the music, and the spectacle, when actually their eyes are glazed over and they've got a hard-on under their popcorn. ICK!
I can't bear the chippendales, stripograms, hen-nights or lap-dancing or anything that's designed to get people horny whilst in a room full of strangers. Its all so undignified and cringey and desperate!

I googles the 'artiste' I'm going to have to sit through, and watched a video of her stripping (artistically) whilst singing some crap caberet style song, and I felt a sickeing feeling of impending doom. I'll be fidgeting in my seat all night, for all the wrong reasons and looking through gaps in my fingers.

Am I wrong?

"stripping for chubby, middle class goths"

Best description of burlesque I have ever read!

Oh, yes, Cadelaide! 'Kittylette' or summat was her nickname on here.

All about 'keeping your man sweet' and such bunk as that.

YANBU OP.

Now, the time I went to Torturegarden and saw a woman stick hooks into herself all over and then be hoisted to the ceiling, then perform an elaborate air-borne dance before returning to the stage, stripping completely and pretending to take a chainsaw to her minge.... that was talented. It was all to Frank Sinatra as well, if I recall rightly.

Watching a chubby, middle class girl renamed Kitty parade around with her arse hanging out? No siree bob.

It is a fashion thing atm and will disappear as quickly as Madonna's flirtation with hunting shooting and fishing!

i think of it as a goth type thing for some reason. my neice is always a torturegarden domesticslattern, youth of today huh!

YANBU

its stripping tarted up

It's crap. And it is really, really overexposed (excuse the pun!) at the moment.

DH and I sometimes go to an alt.cabaret night at our local theatre. We've been going for years. When we first started, there would be a real variety of acts on: magicians, comedians, loads of alt.circus performers, firedancers and the odd raunchy dancer. Recently, bloody burlesque has taken over. Ten years ago, there were female performers in all of the above categories, often fully-clothed. Now, a depressing number of them are doing cool stuff like firedancing or object manipulation, but with an overpowering burlesque slant. If I'm sitting down watching a contact juggler with a giant ball, I don't need corsets and wiggling bums and trumpy trumpet music. I just want to see some great juggling that I'd never be able to do myself.

Okay, rant over.

domesticslattern - I can Torture Garden top trump you.

A woman in a pvc snow white outfit in a glass coffin laid there as anyone grabbed at her body through holes in the top. People then gradually filled it with water until she had almost drowned and the top was lifted off.

Once in a lifetime experience going there, really.

Why is everything now a consumer activity?

I refuse to pay for sexual titillation.

I don't like public gatherings where I'm not sure what my face is 'supposed' to be doing. Watching people do impressions also makes me a bit panicky.

wildfig - I so agree with you on that. I've rapidly gone off Come Dine With Me since it became almost obligatory to introduce after dinner 'entertainment' courtesy of the contestant's daughter playing guitar and singing her own song, or the next door neighbour drafted in to belly-dance, or whatever. Just excruciating. In a brightly lit room with an audience of four! WTF are you supposed to do/say? Even from the safe distance of my sofa I find it too much to bear.

We should start a Contact Embarrassment Support Group.

I have never been to a burlesque show that was full of fat balding middle aged saddos! It is not like Spearmint Rhino, and it I really enjoyed it. This is coming from someone whose idea of HELL would be a strippergram.

I also think it's different from the 'oh so ironic' trend for titty bar visits by mid-thirties Soho trendies.

It might not be up your street but that's fine, it's just all the rage at the moment. See what you think when you have been - it's unlikely you will go again soon, and the fashion will probably fade

OP, yanbu - I would feel exactly the same. criiiiinge.
And you say it so eloquently too

oh its a load of old shite.
Feign a sickie early afternoon of night in question

It's totally up to you hun. I am a burlesque performer myself (almost five years under the tassels!) and I love what I do, but that's me. I hate sport (especially football) and don't understand why people are paid to do what is essentially a kid's game, so I don't attend sporting events. If other people want to that's their business.

Be your own woman! If burlesque's not your cup of tea don't be shy to tell your friends you don't fancy it. Maybe suggest you'll sit the show out and meet them after for a lovely meal. It doesn't make you boring or a prude.
If they are real friends they will respect you more for being honest and saying it's not for you. You don't need to put something down or slag it off just cause it's not your thing, like some of the posters on here are doing. If something is not your pasion it doesn't mean you have to be derogatory about the people who do it or love it. That's just makes them look a little insecure and you don't sound insecure - you sound like someone who knows what they like and what they don't! If you find it cringey listen to your instincts - I find cabbage cringey so I don't eat it. BUT I don't go online and say rude things about people who cook with cabbage or like to eat it.

Live and let live, is what I say.
Just have fun being who you are and don't let other people try to pressure you into doing something that doesn't fit.
Best of luck
Emerald

By the way. Since this is primarily a parenting forum I would like to suggest that the boldly size-neagtive comments some ppsoters have made are a little unneccessary. Some of your children may grow up to be larger than average size. Do you really want them to grow up in a world where they are only considered attractive or valid if they conform to a media-driven image of body perfection? As a fairly run of the mill 36-28-37 measurement (neither super trim nor morbily obese) I would like to think that, as a performer my entertainment value was more important to audience members than the size of my costume.
Just a thought.
Best
Emerald

PS. Sorry, please excuse my spelling this evening. Should never type tipsy - I promise I am perfectly literate at all other times!

Hi Emerald, good to see a BWIer on here (I'm kittylou in disguise )

"don't understand why people are paid to do what is essentially a kid's game"

"You don't need to put something down or slag it off just cause it's not your thing, like some of the posters on here are doing."

Yeah. That would be an awful thing to do. Terribly rude and ignorant.

Emerald, just out of interest- would you call yourself a stripper?

Genuinely curious...

bruxeur I think she might possibly have been making that point

I went to a burlesque musical event about a year ago in London with a friend and it was actually pretty good - the musical element was entertaining and it was virtually all tease and no sleaze.

What was weird was the audience. I swear my mate and I were the only straight women there, and - even more peculiar when what we are talking about is basically arty stripping - all the men in the audience were gay as well.

Or maybe I just don't understand how young people in London dress these days.

Maybe I should get out more (fnaar fnaar... after all I am a chubby goth).

Hi, chubby goth here who had a burlesque themed hen weekend (last year) in a farmhouse with a burlesque class in the afternoon and a DIY variety show put on for me in the evening (by my mates).

One of my mates is hugely overweight (I'm not exactly a size 6 myself mind) and had never heard of Burlesque. She said she would only do it for me (not that I was piling on any pressure for anyone who was reticent), ordered herself a corset and was amazed at her own magnificence!

I think that Burlesque is bloody good fun.

Btw - am not middle class and haven't listened to The Cure in years.

Am fat though.