Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power
Written by Jennifer Worley
Narrated by Eileen Stevens
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
A riveting true story of a young woman’s days stripping in grunge-era San Francisco where a radical group of dancers banded together to unionize and run the club on their own terms.
When graduate student Jenny Worley needed a fast way to earn more money, she found herself at the door of the Lusty Lady Theater in San Francisco, auditioning on a stage surrounded by mirrors, in platform heels, and not much else. So began Jenny’s career as a stripper strutting the peepshow stage as her alter-ego “Polly” alongside women called Octopussy and Amnesia. But this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill strip club—it was a peepshow populated by free-thinking women who talked feminist theory and swapped radical zines like lipstick.
As management’s discriminatory practices and the rise of hidden cameras stir up tension among the dancers, Jenny rallies them to demand change. Together, they organize the first strippers’ union in the world and risk it all to take over the club and run it as a co-operative. Refusing to be treated as sex objects or disposable labor, they become instead the rulers of their kingdom. Jenny’s elation over the Lusty Lady’s revolution is tempered by her evolving understanding of the toll dancing has taken on her. When she finally hangs up her heels for good to finish her Ph.D., neither Jenny nor San Francisco are the same—but she and the cadre of wild, beautiful, brave women who run the Lusty Lady come out on top despite it all.
A first-hand account as only an insider could tell it, Neon Girls paints a vivid picture of a bygone San Francisco and a fiercely feminist world within the sex industry, asking sharp questions about what keeps women from fighting for their rights, who benefits from capitalizing on desire, and how we can change entrenched systems of power.
Jennifer Worley
Jennifer Worley is a professor of English at City College of San Francisco and President of the faculty union, AFT 2121. Her film Sex On Wheels, documents the history of San Francisco's sex industry and sex worker activism and has played at film festivals and universities worldwide. Her writing has appeared in Bitch, Captive Genders, Invisible Suburbs, The Queerist, and PRI's Outright Radio.
Related to Neon Girls
Related audiobooks
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camgirl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ethical Stripper: Sex, Work and Labour Rights in the Night Time Economy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex and Social Media Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Post Grad: Five Women and their First Year Out of College Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ilana Glazer: The Planet Is Burning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Generation F: Why we still struggle with sex and power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine (An Untamed History of the Cat Archetype in Myth and Magic) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girlvert: A Porno Memoir (Anniversary Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Feminist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jokes to Offend Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts: A History of Sex for Sale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead--My Life Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing: Feminism, Misogyny and Where We Go From Here Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand on Menstrual Equality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Raising Them: Our Adventure in Gender Creative Parenting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker: An Analysis of Media Representations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGetting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing Will Be Different: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFace Value: The Hidden Ways Beauty Shapes Women's Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Female Husbands: A Trans History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/590s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Coitus Chronicles: My Quest for Sex, Love, and Orgasms Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Not Wives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Stay Married Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Choice: Escaping the Past and Embracing the Possible Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Out of the Wreckage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Neon Girls
9 ratings0 reviews