Union NUDE$...

Bad Girls like Good Contracts

Live Nude Girls is a documentary film that focuses on stripper’s situations and their fight to form the first stripper union through their experiences at the Lusty Lady. This is a better insight on the sex world and the working conditions. This group of woman opened the door for many other females to come. The main focus of the film is on a woman named Julia Query. Julia made a decision to leave graduate school and start stripping. She is a Stripper/Comedian that helped create the first union of exotic dancers in the United States.

Most of the women working at this location are going to college or supporting their families. The performers at the Lusty Lady have children to raise and tuition to pay, and the claims they make aren’t extravagant: job security, paid sick days, a safe working environment. These female performers work at the Lusty Lady where their clients sit in a booth and receive a peep show. The girls are in a big room that was described as a fish bowl. The working condition within this peep show was better than similar venues which put pressure for illegal contact. Performers at the Lusty Lady were given no sick leave, salary reductions, and ethic-minority scheduling by race, hair color, and breast size. 

Some of the windows onto the peep show stage where one-way mirrors which allowed customers to secretly videotape the workers and these videos could show up anywhere even the on the internet. Also, before these women started to unionize they were being routinely fired and discriminated.

The women fighting for the union went on strike after management fired an employee ‘Summer’ because they claimed she broke a rule. When the ladies picket-line chant was, “2-4-6-8, don’t go in to masturbate!”  Most of their loyal customers supported the ladies and didn’t go in. Management then did a lockout as an attempt to scare the girls. This didn’t work and they later met the demands and allowed Summer to gain her job back.

This film followed Julia Query through her fight and struggles with starting the union. It showed an insight into Julia’s comedy and why she chose to become a stripper. The film also showed her telling her mother she is a stripper. Julia’s mother is a well known doctor that helped start/run a program for prostitutes and was in shock when her daughter told her about being a stripper. Julia grew up with very strong Jewish traditions and her mother couldn’t understand where she went wrong.

This film relates to the course work in many ways. I feel that it has given me a better understanding and appreciation of these performers. This subject is very hard to talk about in society because society likes to keep strip clubs as their dirty little secret. But traditions like the bachelors party is normally involved with strip clubs, having lap dances, and drinking. This is The Mans last chance to be free before he falls in the stereotypical roll of the husband in a monogamist relationship.

Something that I disagreed with was how Julia could stand up and tell everyone that she was a stripper but when it came to talking to her mother she couldn’t. I feel like she held a feeling of shame and dishonor because she was being deviant. In the end her mother still accepted her chose but simply didn’t agree with it.