A sharp exploration of gender and power dynamics, this unflinching insider's memoir illuminates the world of radical feminism in the sex industry.
While earning her master's and Ph.D., Jennifer Worley worked at the Lusty Lady, a peep show in San Francisco's Broadway red-light district. "The idea of stripping seemed anathema" to her "nascent feminism," but on stage, her alter ego, Polly, subverted "the stereotypical drag of female heterosexuality." She controlled how men behaved by withholding or allowing visual pleasures. In reversals of the male gaze, she and her comrades shamed a colleague's abuser using the theater's mirrors and PA system; in the street, they mocked an unnamed film director inside the glass of his "urban palace." Polly grew inextricable from Worley, creeping into her daily life as a liberating confidence, like when she infantilized a man publicly exposing himself ("It might still grow"). When management refused to schedule black women for "Private Pleasures" or to remove one-way windows letting customers secretly film performances, Worley and her "naked sisterhood" unionized and later became a worker co-op.
Worley's authoritative narrative combines memoir with discourse; she describes men masturbating in booths equipped with tissue dispensers alongside discussions of the economics of hustling sexual entertainment and the balancing act played by worker-owned businesses. By citing the forgotten history of unionization among strippers--the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot led by transgender sex workers and Margo St. James's efforts to decriminalize prostitution, among others--she honors a legacy of resistance, particularly in the QUILTBAG community. Neon Girls is a fantastic ensemble of diverse women fiercely asserting their humanity and raging against exploitation, misogyny and sexism. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer