Taking It Off, Putting It on: Women in the Strip Trade

This book is a careful, studied, theoretical walk through ''women and work.'' The author interviews female strippers to reveal the core of the world of the professional stripper. Bruckert contends that the audience's reading of the stripper's sexualised form does not erase her authorship; she is able to ''put on'' the audience while she is ''taking it (her clothes) off.'' Bruckert was herself a stripper, and writes of feeling objectified by the usual feminist analysis of strippers. These feelings were the catalyst for her interest in women and work. She uses her intimate knowledge of the world of the stripper to journey to the heart and soul of the industry and allows the voice of the stripper to emerge as the ''subject'' in an experience in which she is usually objectified