I always thought my sister had the perfect best friend. Her best friend took my sister along on fancy vacations to Club Med. She shared her family’s box seats at Madison Square Garden. They wore each other’s clothes. But after reading Strip City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America (Talk Miramax Books, $23.95), by Lily Burana, I know that I was wrong. Burana is a stripper and writer who is both wild and kind, and after reading her memoir, which is filled with both theory and thongs, I have changed my mind. Lily Burana, I realize, is the perfect best friend. And reading Strip City is like taking a road trip with her.
Strip City is from the much hullabalooed union between Talk Magazine, Miramax Films, and Hyperion Press. Amazingly, it combines all three mediums. There’s the book cover that looks like the splashy front of a magazine with a titillating headline, witty and irreverent writing, and enough fabulous images to fill a movie screen.
But it is the author herself who won me over. Burana, an independent New York journalist, has, at the start of Strip City, fallen in love and become engaged to a man who lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. She has decided to move life and limb to the Wild West, where she will give up stripping for good. But before doing so, Burana has decided to take a yearlong road trip, paid for completely by stripping. From Anchorage, Alaska, to New Jersey to Tijuana, Mexico, the author takes her readers inside the glitziest and seediest strip clubs in the nation.
The author is a fascinating companion. Her bag contains “thongs in fluorescent pink, red, and leopard print,” a “baby doll minidress made of insect-print fabric,” “silver metallic thigh-high boots,” and, of course, the “Day-Glow orange-and-black zebra striped bikini.” But Burana is also armed with a good deal of feminist theory, research, and unflinching opinions about the sex-worker trade. Although the author does not plan to continue her “Lycra lifestyle,” she admits that “the kicker is that I am one of the success stories. I entered the sex industry at a young age and came out the other side with a decent career, a home, a stable family life, friends, loyal partner, no substance abuse problem. Such as can be done, I did everything right. And this business still kicked my ass sideways.”
This article appears in September 28 • 2001.