History
The term 'striptease' was first recorded in 1938, though 'stripping', in the sense of women removing clothing to sexually excite men, seems to go back at least 400 years. For example, in Thomas Otway's comedy The Soldier's Fortune (1681) a character says: "Be sure they be lewd, drunken, stripping whores". Its combination with music seems to be as old. A conclusive description and visualization can be found in the 1720 German translation of the French La Guerre D'Espagne (Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1707), where a galant party of high aristocrats and opera singers has resorted to a small château where they entertain themselves with hunting, play and music in a three day turn:
The third day, dedicated to ball and dance, was used for the finest entertainment to divert the men; their eyes were given the opportunity to see all the pleasures nature could offer; and if the pleasant aspects of a well shaped young lady are able to arouse the mind, one can say that our princes enjoyed all the delicacies of love. The dancers, to please their lovers the more, dropped their clothes and danced totally naked the nicest entrées and ballets; one of the princes directed the delightful music, and only the lovers were allowed to watch the performances.
Other possible influences on modern stripping were the dances of the Ghawazee "discovered" and seized upon by French colonists in nineteenth century North Africa and Egypt. The erotic dance of the bee, performed by a woman known as Kuchuk Hanem, was witnessed and described by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. In this dance the performer disrobes as she searches for an imaginary bee trapped within her garments. It is likely that the women performing these dances did not do so in an indigenous context, but rather, responded to the commercial climate for this type of entertainment. Middle Eastern belly dance, also known as oriental dancing, was popularized in the United States after its introduction on the Midway at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago by a dancer known as Little Egypt.
Read more about this topic: Strip Club
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