Anne McLean

p. 18-19.

Taking it off: A strip act with a difference

The flyer began as follows:

Dance Workshop
by Margaret Dwight-Spore

1. Building up and stripping down
   The The Feminine Clown
2. Group Ritual

and ended with the lines:

Let us mobilize around the material at hand — traditional feminine gear. Together we will transform their oppressive matter into oxygen. When the feminine clown is the feminist clown the revolution will begin.

The workshop was held on a weekend in February, in a women's centre in Toronto. Half a dozen women were there. Some at first were very nervous about the whole thing: it wasn't your typical women's movement function.

Some had met Margaret at a women's conference in Ottawa a few months earlier. There she had performed a strip act for an audience of women, on a stage constructed out of two tables pulled together. She had talked while she took her clothes off. Among other things in her impromptu monologue, she'd said:

"Where's the stripper? Bring on the stripper! I'll help her!" (This in a typical strip club audience voice.)
"Why don't you strip?"
"Oh, me, I don't have the body for it. It's been ruined by childbirth."
(pause) "Does anybody have the body for it?"

Considering the feminist politics of the audience, the reaction to Margaret's dancing had been surprisingly positive. One woman wrote an enthusiastic review for The Other Woman, a Toronto feminist newspaper, describing part of the act as follows:

Margaret said it takes a lot longer to strip with Adidas on. When she couldn't get her pants off because they were rolled over and trapped inside her socks, her friend, all dressed in cap, scarf and jacket, came out of the background and helped her remove them. The dance workshop later in Toronto incorporated Margaret's concept of the stripper as archetypal Feminine Clown. It began with group experiments in make-up (self-painting) and costume, and ended with each women taking her clothes off in front of the whole group. It was a celebration of certain traditional feminine arts, applied in a feminist context, by women, for women. And a number of performances, according to Margaret, were very imaginative and very funny. One of the participants in the weekend workshop, Gay Bell, described it as "absolutely inspired", and felt that she and the other women had learned a tremendous amount about their own sexuality and ways of expressing it.

But would-be clowns need sensitized audiences. When Margaret attempted to strip for the first time at an all-women's dance at Powerhouse Gallery a year ago, she was deftly and graciously led off the stage by an unidentified woman from the audience. The effect on Margaret was devastating.

"Here was this woman, deciding for the whole audience that what I was doing was anti-woman and couldn't be allowed to go on. I'd just come to Montreal and I had never done anything like that in front of women before. After that experience I went into retirement for a few months."

Margaret Dwight-Spore. Photo by Len Lue.

A year has made a difference. In Montreal's sociable feminist community, Margaret is now accepted as an entertainer, along with poets, singers, tapdancers and jugglers. Last spring, invited to strip at a women's dance, she came on in a sexy black sheath and performed a stocking act complete with the "spreads" which are illegal in Toronto nightclubs. She struck a variety of coy and wicked poses throughout the stylized grinds and sensuous, rippling movements. When the music stopped, there was loud applause, and even a few cries of "bravo". But one woman did go up to the microphone afterwards to protest, "I don't know about the rest of you but I for one am for Woman's Liberation."

Margaret insists that the most daring and significant thing a woman can do is to "liberate her own territory", not abandon it. Not surprisingly, she is critical of certain women's movement conventions which have been elevated to the status of sacred norms. "I get tired," she says, "of women in Jackboots and army shirts telling me I have a "male defined" image.

When she performs for a women's audience, Margaret always gets a reaction. Whether the tone is friendly or hostile seems to depend less on the performance itself than on the context set up either at the beginning of the show, or in the advance publicity. Female audiences seem to respond less defensively when they have been informed ahead of time that Margaret is "not really serious". They then can relax and enjoy the performance as political comment, as sophisticated joke, or exotic pastiche. It is impossible to say how many women respond to the erotic content of the dancing itself, and how many are just caught up in the novelty of the idea.

There is no doubt that Margaret herself would like them to get turned on. As a dancer she would like to become a mirror in which women might see their own alienated sexuality. In that mirroring role, she sees herself as a means through which women could recover their own "sexual essence" which for so long has been appropriated, subordinated, and distroted by male culture.

Margaret's "Feminine Clown" grew out of her experience dancing in clubs in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. She learned about the world of prostitutes, strippers and pimps and became fascinated by the personal qualities of these strong, cynical, sometimes violent women. She is convinced that the "older" female professions have a great [deal] to teach feminists. In the comments below, she describes some changes in her attitudes since she began stripping.