Customer Reviews

Stripped - Exposing the Business of Baring It All

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Finally, a doc that tells the truth about strippers!!!

I used to dance, so this film really appealed to me. The women were sexy, fascinating, and intelligent. It was cool to see how articulate women view the industry.

Last year, I watched G-String Divas in horror! There was not one ounce of truth in it. Just a softcore service for its viewers. STRIPPED drives home the reasons why women dance, why it's soooo hard for them to quit and how it can be quite addictive in so many ways. Very moving and insightful.

Thanks for making a movie like this!!!! If anyone wants to be blown away by truthful storytelling abut this industry, BUY STRIPPED!

Bravo Jill!!!

Kirsten

Since Jill Morley worked as a dancer she tells the true story of the profession. If you don't want to spoil the illusion or fantasy about women in this profession then this isn't the film for you. It is about women on the job and like most jobs some hate it and some love it but mainly they are there to make a living just like everyone else. This film is not about the titilation you get from most films on the subject but about real people with real lives. (Some of which are tragic.) So if you are interested in a truthful look behind the glitter this is for you.

Now I can hardly wait for Ms. Morley's next film which will be about the neo-burlesque movement.

I've seen this film several times and every time it's made me laugh...and cry. Director Jill Morley gives us honest-as-hell, fully rendered portraits of 5 dancers who emerge as funny, smart women dealing with different degrees of emotional damage. Along the way we meet the male characters that populate this world, from the illusion-free sweetheart who drives his "girls" to and from the clubs to the tipsy customer who tells Jill, "I would never sleep with a go-go dancer...I'd bleep her and go home!" A very entertaining and insightful film.

I will have to say this documentary really is great. It is especially great for anyone who is enamored with going to strip clubs to seek satisfaction from giving a woman their money in exchange for seductive acceptance.

These are the profiles of desperate women who are burdened by insecurities from their past, seeking to gain self-acceptance by proving that they have what it takes to be flamboyant, thereby eliciting shock to those that they've been close to. Some of these women are older and very jaded, and it's apparent by the collective tone that they hate their career as a stripper but feel trapped and must milk it until they can no longer. It's very apparent that they are desensitized and incapable of having a satisfying, normal monogamous relationship with anyone. These dancers by and large- with the exception of Jill- are not really that likable, and it's difficult to imagine anyone giving them much in the way of their time or money. I found it very difficult to empathize with most of the characters. One woman who was interviewed with her boyfriend present recounted a time when she was dancing for her father, and she had to force herself to not touch herself in a sexual manner. The boyfriend, who seemed like a complete moron, got a cheap thrill as he actually began telling the story. Another dancer talked about how men's hands felt to her like sandpaper without money in them, and how she would advise her clients to keep her at ease by making sure that if they did touch her, that it was with the paper currency in their hands. She seemed to infer that her breast cleavage was a cash register slot.

I sort of chuckled at the overtones expressed by the interviewees in this documentary; how they aren't right for the corporate world, tried to make a living as an artist but could not, or dignify their predicament by saying that they are in school and just need the money. They blame their desperation on having been ostracized by their conservative fathers, or on having experienced rejection when they tried out as a Broadway dancer, leaving them with no esteem in either instance. The common denominator across all of the women profiled in this documentary is that they are deeply flawed in some way, and are desperate to make a quick buck at the expense of some suckers who think these women are all about them. The dancers actually ridicule their clientele, joking about the facade they present to get the most money they can. It's ironic that these women work in a profession that caters to the desires of men, yet they mock them with contempt. Of course the angle of the documentary isn't to show how these men they speak of, their customers, are classy upstanding family men, but rather to show how they are in fact exploiting these women who pretend to want them, and how these clients are perpetuating their everyday return to this godawful profession.

The best thing this documentary does is shine a bright light on a sick and delusional industry. The profession itself- a sexy woman seductively exposing her breasts to a man in exchange for money- really is not. It's more so the portrayal of these women working as strippers as normal people who have normal families and are in normal committed relationships. It's the delusion that stripping is a great career alternative to working in a corporate environment, and that the power you have while seducing a man as a dancer is far less demeaning than rejection on Broadway. It's the delusions of the women who believe that this is a great way to fix financial woes quickly. And most of all, it's the delusions of the poor sucker fishing a dollar bill through the G-string of some jaded broad who couldn't care less about him.