I’ve never been to a strip club, not just because they’re degrading to women, but because they’re degrading to everybody. A red-lit room with ”college students” sadly gyrating to a Warrant song doesn’t sound great. And Hollywood has spoiled me on strippers—I am to presume they all are plucky, have hearts of gold, and/or enjoy taking their clothes off for weirdos with too many small bills.
Like Juno Temple in this week’s Afternoon Delight, here are 10 other movies with happy-go-lucky softcore sex workers.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”yJ6MtRfChg0″]Flashdance
Sort of like how your grandpa uses old-timey words (like ”breeches” instead of ”pants”), back in the old-timey days of the 1980s, they called ”stripping ”flashdancing,” and it was a good way to supplement your income as a steel worker and/or dance student.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”aTnY2RXrs1Q”]Closer
Nothing gets me hotter than when a stripper discusses gender identity and psychosexual politics during a lapdance. #notouching(becauseweareallofusemotionallyimmature)
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”nA3W36JVnRc”]The Full Monty
It’s charming, because the guys are nobody you would want to see naked, and they do it to earn money because they lost all their jobs, although I don’t understand how they make any money, because they are nobody you would want to see naked, and the audience is just their wives mostly, so it’s all the same money.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”Chf0ze80F3w”]Butter
Amidst this quirky comedy about Midwestern butter carving is Olivia Wilde as a batshit crazy stripper determined to destroy those who wronged her. She is frightening and hilarious.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”0Vsy5KzsieQ”]We’re the Millers
I have not seen this movie, but the ad campaign, which consisted entirely of ”JENNIFER ANISTON IS A STRIPPER IN THIS MOVIE,” was inescapable.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”MzhlV6Dzvus”]The Hangover
The always enthusiastic Heather Graham plays the world’s most enthusiastic stripper and shotgun stripper-wife.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”CRbUSIRV6i4″]Showgirls
Alright, so nothing in this movie is endearing, as the characters are all loathsome assholes. But Gina Gershon is really damn entertaining. As she’s explained before, when she got to the set, she realized the movie was going to be garbage, so she dropped all of her preconceived notions about her character and went amazingly, entertainingly, high-camp. This might as well be a drag show.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”DCFQtc6BzyM”]Planet Terror
I’d probably go to strip clubs if the strippers had leg-cannons.
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The Wrestler
A movie about someone getting too old for their jobs, which involves an increasingly uncomfortable physical intimacy performed while nearly nude in exchange for a lack of dignity and not much money. And Marisa Tomei plays an aging stripper, too.
[youtube width=”602″ height=”350″ video_id=”c3zEraHgfO4″]Dogma
Salma Hayek is a stripper, but really an immortal muse…but she refused to help get Home Alone made. Everybody has their standards.
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