Inside the topless sisterhood

As a young dancer with feminist tendencies Bee Rowlatt was scandalised to find herself on stage alongside topless dancers. Many years later, after writing a book about early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, she visited the Moulin Rouge in Paris to talk to dancers who bare their breasts in this unforgiving industry. And, as she describes here, she wavered.

The French writer and artist Jean Cocteau had a fondness for Moulin Rouge showgirls. He called them the "caryatids of that great and marvellous epoch that was ours". But maybe Jean Cocteau never had a thong heaved up his bum or got shoved over on stage, because these are my memories of showgirl life.
I was only a teenager when I landed my job at the Isla del Lago show in the Canary Islands. Until then I'd been a dedicated ballet girl with a growing tendency for feminist indignation and had no idea what I was getting myself into. The show was a high-kicking parade of gigantic feathers and eyelashes. But what the audience saw was nothing compared to the antics backstage.



Source: bbc