In the 1980s, well before the days of autobiographical comics and everyday depictions of nude dancers, one woman decided to make a comic about her life as an exotic dancer. She worked in a club in downtown Montreal, and it didn’t occur to her that what she was depicting in her comic—basically sex-positive images of strippers—was novel for the time period. It was considered “pornographic” at the time, but this summer, it’s finally getting the attention it deserves.
Drawn & Quarterly published a 350-page collection of her comics, Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer. The stories, originally written in French with a bold black-and-white style, depicted the life of a nude dancer in a refreshingly realistic way. Melody and the other dancers in the comic love their bodies and get naked without shame or judgement. There’s also a lot of humor, showing how the life of a stripper is full of greedy bosses, needy customers and, at the end of the day, hustling to make a buck. Sex and nudity are not shown in a scandalous way: it’s all part of the job and of daily life.
Feel like having some natural, sexy experiences? Three cheers for sex positivity!
Read more about Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer here: https://bitchmagazine.org/post/long-lost-comics-about-working-as-a-nude-dancer-are-now-a-book
