Stripping Down: A Memoir [Paperback]

Sheila Hageman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2012

“I feel the weight of the hammer from the dusty workbench in my sweaty palm and hit the padlock. My heart thumps in my bony chest. I listen for the humming sound of my mother’s car backing into the driveway. I hit again. I listen. The lock pops open.”

At twelve years old, everything changed for Sheila with the discovery of her estranged father’s porn collection. Found locked away in a corner of the basement, the glossy images ignite in her an unrelenting desire for attention and adoration. Now, reflections on her past as a stripper permeate her thoughts as she takes on the new roles of mother, caregiver and wife. While helping her baby daughter take her first steps, she nurses her mother through the final stages of breast cancer. This powerful and beautiful story is a moving meditation on a woman’s life through her body, motherhood and loss.

Spiraling through memories and torn between the woman she is becoming and the woman she has been, Sheila Hageman is continually Stripping Down.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is not another stripper memoir. It's a powerful meditation on the body, on family, and ultimately on self-love." -- Kerry Cohen, Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

"A necessary and important book." --Louise DeSalvo, Writing as a Way of Healing

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Pink Fish Press (February 9, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0615584977
• ISBN-13: 978-0615584973
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #801,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sheila Hageman received her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, CUNY. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies: Uphook Press, Gape Seed: A Poetry Anthology, Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House, In the Company of Women: Poetic Musings of Wit and Wisdom, and Fat Daddy's Farm Press, Joy Interrupted: An Anthology on Motherhood and Loss. Her work has been featured in Salon, Huffington Post, Conversely, The Fertile Source, ken*again, Prime Mincer, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, Jet Fuel Review, Ginger Piglet Press, Xenith Magazine, Girls Can't What, and Mommy Poppins. She teaches Yoga and Writing. Visit Sheila's website at SheilaHageman.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Affirmation through Exotic Dancing? Maybe, as Memoir. March 9, 2012

By Scholasticus

Format:Paperback

I read this book in 2-1/2 hours, and could not stop once I started. In a series of flashbacks between her exotic dancing past and a life of taking care of a sick mother and a growing family, we read of Hageman's evolution in thinking about sex, love, and her own struggles with body image. As a pubescent girl, Hageman discovered the strange power that adult females might be able to exert over men, just by presenting their bodies in a certain manner. Her memoir explores this discovery over the course of at least six years as she drifted in and out of exotic dancing. One feels sorry for young Hageman as she tries to find love in all the wrong places, the most deplorable being on a Florida beach one early morning at the age of 19.

The most frustrating thing about the memoir is Hageman's revelation that although people loved her, she did not feel worthy of love, and undermined a few promising relationships due to that feeling of unworth. This led to exciting sexual escapades, such as stripping in clubs, casual sex, a threesome, and a bi-curious fling. Alas, it was part of a terrible cycle of trying new sex adventures in hopes of finding love, not getting it, and feeling unworthy. My question is how can one have so much sex and always feel bad about it? Was it fun, just once?

Writing therapy is expressive writing used to help lessen chronic stress induced by past trauma. This may be one reason Hageman chose to open her closet of shocking skeletons to the world. She is now a college writing instructor, after all, and what better subject to write about than one's own history? Hageman seems to be unremarkably bourgeois these days, married with kids in the affluent suburbs. Would she have reached this happy point without spending years looking for affection or affirmation in strip clubs?... It is a life mystery we shall never unlock. Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brave March 19, 2012

By KAG

Format:Paperback

Sheila is brave for dissecting her insecurities, brave for admitting there were things she liked about stripping-the attention, the power. Brave for revealing the effect that all of that can have on a young woman. She's brave for telling all. In dealing with her mother's passing, her bouts with depression, her early promiscuity, her attempts at marriage and now her new role as a devoted and loving partner and mother, she takes ownership over her past. Through her writing and her yoga practice she accepts her actions as they are part of her, allowing her to get closer to fully living in the present.

She writes in an honest way that is is more courageous than vulnerable, more introspective than preachy. We are all a work in progress. I admire that Sheila has taken such a bold, cathartic step in her own personal progression. This I can learn from her. I could not put the book down even as there were tears interfering with my reading.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing read - an amazing womyn March 18, 2012

By jancan

Format:Paperback

Ms. Hageman takes a rare and honest look at actual feelings, we have all probably thought but perhaps not admitted, about our history and our bodies. I was drawn to keep reading. It is so worthwhile examining how our pasts infiltrate our wonderful selves, stirring sexual feelings that have somehow become blurred through the many years. Bravo!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Sad, but in a pitiful way. October 27, 2012

By TW Brown, Author, Editor, and Reviewer

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Sheila Hageman's Stripping Down is an interesting read. That much I can say without any reservation. However, I guess I am from a different time. One of the problems I have with today's society is this whimpering, pass-the-buck, blame the world mentality that is so pervasive. Nowadays, everybody gets a participation trophy...coaches can't raise their voice... When did we stop being accountable.

The main theme here seems to be that, because the author found a box of Playboys as a young girl, she is overcome with image issues and fights depression for the rest of her life. When life does not work out exactly how she wants, there is this barrage of self-doubt mixed with a liberal dose of "poor me" from the author.

Okay, I'm a guy. So maybe I don't get it, but this is not something new. The EMO music genre has built itself on the idea that "my parents didn't hug me enough so I am messed up."

All that said, she does lay down some insightful moments. It is interesting to see through her eyes when she is dancing. I think the industry might dry up a bit if every guy who frequented strip bars had to read just the parts of the book that related to her time in that role. Also, the dynamics between the author and her dying mother with the added element of the author having her own daughter to raise makes for an interesting case study that psyche students would love.

Overall, the book is okay. It isn't salacious or titillating; it is an emotional catharsis laid out for the public to read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing May 7, 2012

By David M. Rheingold

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

A quote atop the cover bills this as "not another stripper memoir." Not being familiar with this genre, I can only attest that Sheila's journey is extraordinary by any literary measure. There is something universal in her struggle, in her suffering. Her first two marriages serve to reaffirm Helen Rowland's lament that "when a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one." Sheila receives more validation from her job than from her spouse, a situation to which many workaholics can relate. Her work forms a counterbalance to her family's needs, and Sheila nearly cracks under the pressure as her sense of guilt mounts. Ultimately she finds some release in the realization "that my depression is not something inescapable, but a reaction to the events of my life." Those who recite the Serenity Prayer would characterize Sheila as attaining the wisdom to distinguish between what she can change and what she cannot, and hence become aware the source of her depression is beyond her control. Yet she reaches this point not through the well-trod path of established religion, instead uncovering her latent spirituality in a language all her own.