Taking off your clothes for a significant other will no longer be an awkward ordeal for some Northwestern students thanks to “How to Strip for Your Lover,” a course in stripping 101 brought to NU on Tuesday by Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators.
Ms. Bea Haven, whose real name is JT Newman, instructed attendees on how to remove gloves sexily, take off bras one-handed and peel off underwear to music in vintage burlesque style, the roots of modern-day stripping. Audience members also learned how to bump, grind and walk with their hips on the stage of the McCormick Auditorium in Norris University Center. By the end, students learned and performed a routine for each other to “Big Spender” from the show “Sweet Charity.”
“Burlesque is as much about the tease as it is about being naked,” Haven said. Haven, 39, and an Evanston native, used to be too self-conscious to change in the locker room, so she turned to burlesque dancing to push through her body image issues.
Some attendees also wanted to learn burlesque to break out of their shell.
“I’m a pretty awkward person, so I could use a little help being sexy,” said Caitlin Hakala, a Weinberg sophomore. “[Now] I can seduce anyone in this room, male or female, and make them a victim to my wiles instantaneously,” she said with a laugh.
In this interactive course, everyone had to participate to find their “own sexiness”. Techniques for sexiness included keeping your head up and holding your chest out.
Mauricio Serpa, a Medill junior, said everyone’s involvement made for a more comfortable environment.
“I was fully expecting that I would have to get a little bit raunchy in front of a bunch of other people, but the fact I knew other people were going to do it alongside me made it a lot less awkward,” he said.
Not everyone was expecting an interactive class.
Aaron Jones, a Weinberg senior, assumed the course would be held in a lecture format. The wrestler and his friend Jean-Luc Kreitner, a Weinberg sophomore, only heard about the event moments before its 7 p.m. start-time and decided to see what it was.
“I wanted to watch, and [SHAPE members] said ‘you can’t go in unless you take your clothes off,'” Jones said.
Jones, Kreitner and Serpa were the only men in a class of 16. While female attendees practiced taking off lingerie worn over their clothing, the male students took off their hoodies and still learned the “dig and flick” method of removing a bra one-handed.
“It was a nice review on taking bras off,” Jones said jokingly. “It was cool seeing (stripping) from another perspective.”
Burlesque is different from modern-day stripping because of the performer’s intent, said Haven.
“In modern stripping, the idea is to completely please the customer and (express) your sexuality in a format the customer wants to see,” Haven said. “Whereas in burlesque, dancers express sexuality as they want to express it and in turn the audience is titillated.”
Stripping today is like the “great-granddaughter” of the burlesque of the 1920s to 50s, she said.
SHAPE members booked Haven, who is a producer of Girlie-Q Productions, a burlesque troupe, and a teacher of basic and advanced burlesque courses, through Early To Bed, the first feminist sex shop in Chicago. Members say learning how to strip and sexual assault prevention are related, despite appearances.
“Although they don’t seem related, events like this encourage a culture of comfort with communication with sex and consent,” said Cari Romm, a Weinberg junior and the director of SHAPE. “And being able to talk about what you want and don’t want and being able to communicate that with a partner can prevent assault.”
Emily Scherker, a Communication senior and events co-chair of SHAPE, said creating a forum where people can talk and laugh about taboo topics such as stripping makes these topics more comfortable to talk about.
“It makes something seem less wrong and taboo and makes people think of things more positively about respecting your own body,” she said. “You need to respect your own body before others can respect it.”
