Related News Article : Take It All Off -- or Not
For these suburban women, stripping lessons are about much more than sexuality.
By Kathy Bunch WebMD Medical News Reviewed by Craig H. KligerMarch 5, 2001 -- Ever since she can remember, Eileen Rosen has felt ugly and ashamed of her body. She hid her figure with baggy clothes, and by age 59 says she felt like "a crone."
"I felt ugly, non-sensuous. I was a totally nonsexual human being, and I didn't want to ever draw attention to myself," says the divorced mother and art teacher who lives in West Chester, Pa.
It's hard to reconcile that image with the Eileen Rosen of today, who wears short skirts, tight tops, high heels, and can be found slithering across a stage, rolling her hips, running her fingers through her hair, and looking like she is ready to take it all off.
Meet Eileen Rosen, exotic dancer. "It's changed my life," she says of her newfound hobby.
You won't find this gray-haired mother of two in a go-go bar. Last year she took a course in exotic dancing at the Learning Studio in Malvern, Pa. Others come here seeking fulfillment in Thai cooking, yoga, and upholstery classes. But so far, Rosen and some 1,800 other mothers, businesswomen, and girlfriends with otherwise sensible suburban lifestyles have come to the studio to learn to strip.
Indeed, the class has proven so popular here on the Philadelphia suburbs' historic Main Line -- a bastion of wealthy WASP society -- that the studio's owners hope to start classes in other adult education schools around the country.
They have even made a video -- The Art of Exotic Dancing for Everyday Women -- that features nine graduates of the course, along with Laurie Conrad, the tanned, taut, 44-year-old instructor and New Age devotee who has been a professional dancer for 23 years. With her enviable body, mane of frosted hair, long painted fingernails, and stiletto heels, she looks every bit the pro.
But Conrad wants to do more than teach women to remove their clothes. She wants to help them shed excess emotional baggage as well.
"When you learn how to reach deep down inside yourself and find things that you've never been able to express, you grow and stretch as a woman," she says during a demonstration at a woman's show in West Chester. "And when you grow, you have something to give. Not just this body, but so much more."
Stripping as therapy? Her students certainly think so. They come seeking empowerment, confidence, and self-discovery. Most say the class is more about connecting with other women than with men, though a friskier sex life is often an added bonus.
Tammy Leitzel, 29, says she was raised in a strict Mennonite family where sexuality was never mentioned. Her parents didn't even want her to attend college, though a grandmother encouraged her to go anyway.
"There have been generations of repression in my family," says Leitzel, who looks a little like actress Drew Barrymore. "I never felt connected to my sexuality. I never had a way to say I'm a woman -- I'm a beautiful woman."
Since taking the class, "I no longer have to be a shrinking violet. I'm more confident in myself and I'm not intimidated by other women's sexuality," she says.
Even her mother has given the class a nod of approval. "She said, 'Your grandmother would be proud,'" says Leitzel, who is studying to be a massage therapist.
Patti DiFrancesco, 30, took the class because she wanted to put a spark in a relationship but discovered, "I needed a spark in my own life first."
Stripping, she says, has helped her come out of her shell sexually and increased her self-confidence. "I walk more proudly, I look others in the eye. It really changed my life. It made me feel comfortable with who I was," says the former health systems analyst who also is studying to be a massage therapist.
After 15 years of marriage and four children, Molly Dorais, 38, felt as if she had no identify other than wife and mom.
"I thought, God, there's got to be more to me," says the willowy homemaker, who had intended to take an upholstery class at the Learning Studio.
She took exotic dancing instead and found out there was a sexy woman lurking inside. Not only did it make her feel better about her looks, she says, but it also gave her marriage a jolt.
"I'm still a mom. I'm still a wife. But I can do a mighty fine hip roll," says Dorais.
She showed just how fine as she and five other women who appear in the video did a G-rated bump-and-grind.
With Conrad leading the way in spandex pants and sleeveless shirt, the women sashayed across the stage, rotating their hips to down-and-dirty soft-porn music. But there was no mistaking these dancers for anything unseemly. Trim, attractive, and demurely dressed in slacks, skirts, and blazers, they looked more like the well-heeled members of a gardening club than stripper wannabes.
"Unlock those arms and roll those hips. We're sisters here," calls out Conrad, her tiny body showing no evidence that she is a mother and grandmother.
Though most people view strippers as powerless, Joy Miller, who recruited Conrad to the Learning Studio three years ago, says, "What she brought to us was a tremendous sense of power."
Indeed, Leah Stauffer, who owns the Learning Studio, says she was amazed at the difference in the women after they took the class. "One husband said that other than the birth of their children, he had never seen his wife so transformed by anything," says Stauffer, who is making a documentary about the class.
Though Conrad's students come from a far different world than hers, there is mutual admiration and a feeling that they have a lot in common. Rosen calls her "an amazing woman."
"Take away the makeup, the augmented breasts, and tight clothes, and there's a very deep, spiritual, questioning, loving woman in there. And she's an amazing teacher," Rosen says.
Conrad, for her part, says her students are "God's greatest gift to me. ... There's no woman on the face of the planet who can't help me grow."
It comes as no surprise that Conrad yearns to shed some baggage of her own. She is hoping to become a therapist and has started taking college courses.
Her path from stripper to teacher started when she went to the Learning Studio to teach a New Age course. But when Miller found out that she was a stripper, she asked her to teach that instead. She was terrified but desperately wanted to make a change in her life. She hated dancing in bars and was looking for an out.
"I hate compromising myself for money," Conrad says. "I hate being sexualized by men. There's still something in me that says, 'Laurie, you shouldn't be doing this.' This class, I'm not doing it for money. There's nothing else I've ever done that connected me to people in such a spiritual way."
In class, Conrad is as supportive and nonjudgmental as the therapist she wants to be, albeit one who encourages her students to "experiment" with their bodies. Her students hoot and howl with approval as she shows how a pro does it, gracefully sliding out of a fanny-baring black dress, or denim cut-offs and cropped t-shirt, embracing a pole and sliding sensually down a mirror. (Hint: Wear a shirt so your back doesn't stick.)
In the video, Conrad demonstrates the basics: Walking, smiling, bumping-and-grinding, and direct eye contact, which she says is a real turn-in for men. The women follow along. They take turns telling their personal stories of mid-life doldrums, sexual repression, jealousy, and fears, and how the class helped them find their inner stripper.
For Anne Marie Waxman, 52, a marketing professional and grandmother, the class was a chance to "stop playing it safe and do something that intrigued me."
"I learned more than how to dance," Waxman says. "Being with all these different women, I learned we all carry the same stuff. What I did was connect with these women and really grow. And it was a hoot."
Back to the Dance Videos
EMAIL | MAIN PAGE