The book I read was Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power by Elisabeth Eaves. I wish I could say I enjoyed this book. I really wanted to enjoy it. But I think I wanted a different book than what was written.

The concept of the book was so exciting to me. I always find the world of exotic dancers and the idea of women using their sexuality to their advantage fascinating. I am about as close to that world as I would ever get since I perform as a burlesque dancer as part of my drag career.

The writing in this book, though, was just boring. I didn’t end up finishing the book. I don’t even know if I got half way through. To me, it seemed like she talked in circles and over-explained everything. I think a lot of the stories she told and conversations she added in to the book were interesting. I just found myself put off enough by the writing style that I didn’t want to keep reading the book. I was just bored the whole time.

I think this could be a really interesting concept for a book. Working in a field as misunderstood and demonized as that of an exotic dancer could really bring up some interesting points. I just don’t know that she explored the points in a way that changed any preconceptions about the position. She actually seemed to kind of hate the work and think it was bad. Though that is a valid way to feel and I don’t criticize her opinion, the title of the book seemed like it was going to change some minds and really she was just like “people are right, it’s gross.”

It was also kind of hard to care about the author and her story when a lot of the introduction to the book was “in high school I was pretty and it was so hard to be pretty.” Those kinds of stories are never going to catch my interest and since that was a majority of the first chapter it didn’t bode well for the rest of the book.

Overall I wouldn’t recommend that someone read this book. It’s not what you would expect from the title or the cover. Also it doesn’t explore all of stripping as it suggests, it only talks about one specific peep show, which is a completely different type of work from a strip club.