Welcome to the world of "sexual subjectification", where middle-class, professional women get a kick out of pretending to be strippers and performing various acts of public exhibitionism:
… Cake, an outpost of mainstream, third-wave, sex-positive feminism, where women are encouraged to be as wild as they want to be — and reminded to respect themselves in the morning. A New York City institution after only five years, this woman-run, woman-centered "sexuality enterprise" wants to start a new branch in San Francisco. The company offers a helping hand to primarily hetero, well-off young ladies, giving them a space to publicly explore and express their sexuality…
"Things have progressed," says Cake co-founder Melinda Gallagher in a later phone interview from New York. "We've gotten over the large myths and misconceptions; we've accepted that women's sexuality is a good, positive thing, with pleasure and all that. Now it's about the details. It's about getting down and dirty with yourself."
Cake has provided a wildly popular venue for that dirtiness, both in New York, where parties easily draw 800 people, and at its more recent satellite location in London. Women strut their stuff, and men are allowed past the velvet rope only if escorted by a lady. Some of the group's events have a more educational theme, like the lesson on female ejaculation (partygoers cheered on the demonstrator), and others have played with male exhibitionism, with men recruited to be amateur strippers and lap dancers. But those affairs are outnumbered by the strip-a-thons, lingerie parties, and regular events at which hordes of women turn out to take it off. Cake has succeeded because it taps into a trend that's much larger than the group itself: In a cultural moment defined by porn chic, the sexual habits of the mainstream American female are raunchier than ever before.
Instead of these women paying money to go to a club to see professional strippers and sex workers perform, they pay money to do the performing for their own pleasure. Some say this is feminism, and that it is done in an environment that is non-threatening, because the men in attendance are all kept on a tight lease.
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