Description
NPR’s Best Books of 2020
“Galvanizing and urgent….a slice of queer urban history and a necessary rethinking of sex work as a site of collective labor struggle.” -National Public Radio
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.
How did a group of dancers change labor history forever?
- Sex Worker Activism: Follow the inside story of how a group of dancers, facing discriminatory practices and hidden cameras, organized the world’s first strippers’ union.
- A Feminist Workplace: Discover the Lusty Lady, a peepshow unlike any other, where dancers discussed feminist theory and swapped radical zines between sets on the mirrored stage.
- Workers’ Rights in Action: Witness a revolutionary moment as the women risk everything, refusing to be treated as disposable labor and taking over the club to run it as a worker-owned co-operative.
- San Francisco Memoir: Step into the world of grunge-era San Francisco through the eyes of “Polly,” a graduate student navigating the exhilarating and emotionally taxing life of a stripper.
Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Jennifer Worley
Published: 06/09/2020
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780062971326
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 0.80″ H x 8.00″ L x 5.50″ W
About the Author
Worley, Jennifer: – 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.
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