Ask a Stripper
After taking all our clothes off
(so emblematic of what we’re up to),
Stacey (the Ethical Stripper) and I –
DOCTOR Sarah Vernon, aka, Gypsy Charms
(Ph.D. in Sociology, Glasgow University) –
open ourselves to a conversation,
whatever the audience wants to talk about.
We guide punters through the bump’n’grindy world
of tits, tease and ten-pound notes.
Our venue’s the Illicit Thrill,
Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s shadiest nightspot.
We’re comedians, as well as strippers, you see,
but we satisfy your curiosity in oh so many ways.
Do we ever date customers, you ask?
How do we prevent ingrown hairs, razor rashes?
Shaven versus unshaven pubes?
Can a stripper also be a feminist?
Of course, my stage-name –
Gypsy “Fur Coat Nae Knickers” Charms –
a not-so-subtle nod to Gypsy Rose Lee;
when I saw Gypsy at the Edinburgh Playhouse,
my brother one of the troupe,
I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up!
My work’s brought me to support
IUSW (International Union of Sex Workers),
campaigning to improve safety and working conditions
for the women working in clubs.
I run the Academy of Burlesque and Cabaret here,
Forest Road, Edinburgh, encouraged
Mitzi von Wolfgang to start her own in Milan.
As well as dance classes,
we sponsor what Brits (and Scots) call hen parties.
Loads of fun!
Come on – you can ask us anything!
A Modern Modest Model
“I didn’t think it was immoral,”
she told the interviewer years later,
“but I didn’t want to cause problems.
It might have embarrassed my future husband,
and it would have upset my family.”
Playboy had threatened to sue Betty Brosmer
for breach of contract
when she refused to pose nude.
“I wore sort of a half-bra,” she remembered,
“a low demi-bra, nothing showing.”
Playboy eventually dropped the case,
the photos sold to Escapade.
A popular pin-up model, Betty first appeared
in a Sears & Roebuck catalog at thirteen,
would go on to appear on the covers
of all the pulps and men’s magazines,
working with top photographers like Alberto Vargas,
posing for Christian Dior, fashion modeling,
winning beauty contests left and right,
including the title Miss Television,
appeared on TV with Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason.
“When I was fifteen, I was made up to look
like I was about twenty-five,” Betty mused.
“In 1956, Modern Man called me
‘Hollywood’s Most Chased Chaste Pinup Girl.’”
You can see her pin-ups on the barrack walls
in The Dirty Dozen, and in Pumping Iron.
“After I married Joe in 1961, changed my name
to Betty Weider, I stopped doing pin-ups,
but I got into fitness, my husband’s field,
appeared on the covers of Muscle Builder and Vigor,
wrote a column for Muscle and Fitness.”
Married for over fifty years, until Joe’s death,
they donated a million bucks to the University of Texas
for their Physical Culture and Sports Center.
“I never needed to flash flesh
to excite the imaginations of young men;
my form was there for all to see and savor.
But I never posed nude. Not even once.”
Strippers Unite!
“Stripper Safety Over Bosses’ Profits!”
my placard declared, on the picket line
with my colleagues, Lilith and Velvetta,
outside the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar
in LA’s North Hollywood neighborhood.
We need protection from wage theft; we need
a guaranteed minimum, overtime protections,
and of course, Social Security.
If Starbucks and Apple can do it,
so can strippers! But the last straw?
When management turned a blind eye
on customers who fondled and abused us.
They actually fired three dancers,
barred another fifteen from entering the club
just for raising these concerns.
So we started organizing at Star Garden.
We’re not the first. The Lusty Lady Club
made that history in 1997, San Francisco,
the first strip club to unionize.
When management cut dancers’ wages in 2003,
they all struck, and won, then bought
the club from management, ran it
as a worker-owned business for ten years,
until they had to close in 2013, broke.
The Actors’ Equity Association, 51,000 members,
including Walt Disney World and Broadway talent,
is going to be representing us here in LA.
“Support Sex Workers or Get Off the Pole!”
©2023 Charles Rammelkamp All rights reserved.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.
