Customer Reviews

Naked Is the Best Disguise: My Life As a Stripper

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

lauri writes well of her life experiences and her experiences in boston's combat zone where she strips for 4 years, ending her career in 1980 (or 81). she tells of the struggle of coming to terms with herself, her job, the other women, her lover, her family and her cocaine habit. although not all questions are answered by the end of the book, you still feel a hope for her that you might not have felt at the beginning of the book. this book is graphic and depressing, but the honesty and soul searching in it are what make the book a worthwhile read. as a dancer myself, i was interested in her experiences, as a person i was touched by them.

for the people who wrote bad reviews of this book, it may not be the best written - but it's not terrible, and the person who stated in their review that theydon't believe she danced for more than 2 weeks - i knew lauri lewin at the time of the book, and i kept in touch with her; we went to school together during the time the book is about, and were very good friends. there ARE people who are somewhat naive and at16 years old, her family abandoned her, with the exception of her sister, with whom she was very close - hardly "fierce competition" - and lauri was dancing bcs she had to do something for money. she WAS an honor student, and she WAS ignorant about those bars, but learned - and danced for 5 years. she was very little girl looking which was popular with men and bar owners, who hired her. i know other dancers who quit certain clubs bcs at that time, they did force girls into prostitution. other places and clubs did not. i also danced, for 10 years, in a different area. lauri is now a PhD in women's history, successful author - besides this book - and popular university professor, wife, and mother of two girls. Eat her dust!!!

What a boring book. It's just another stripper story. Do all the strippers get together and agree on what their life story is going to be. I have dated several strippers and frequented many strip clubs and it seems they all have a sad, boring and depressing story to tell. This one is just a waste of time.

This is truly a lousy book & not worth the paper it is printed on. For five years Lauri Lewin, the child of a middle-class family, led a double life. In the mornings she attended classes at the University of Massachusetts and in the afternoons she worked as a stripper. As an American with so many opportunities, she could have been a nurse, doctor, attorney, or anything she wanted to be. In this book, she stated reasons--not enough money from her estranged family, boredom with office and restaurant jobs and fierce sexual competition with her older sister, who was also a stripper. These girls obviously had the morals of pigs!. She also alludes to, but unfortunately never expands on, a 'need to put myself in the most hostile environment and wage a struggle for survival there.'. . . Some of Miss Lewin's feminist insights seem to have been slapped on after the fact, and they have a flattening effect on her narrative. But she evokes the squalid atmosphere of the strip joint and the desperation of the strung-out women who work there with graphic authenticity. She talks really bad about all dancers, except herself. This book is a joke.