Sunday, February 24, 2008

Candy Girl



A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody


I was seduced into reading this book after seeing the movie Juno. I thought the offbeat comedy pretty well summed up our wacky anything-goes world of 2007, yet it had an upbeat ending that buoyed your sense of hope. It seemed to say, Yes, life is a chaotic whitewater ride in which we constantly crash against boulders, but even if we fall overboard, we can usually climb back on board, shake ourselves dry, and keep on going––and later on we can laugh and tell stories about it. That, to me, is the magic of Juno, and the reason it so unexpectedly has caught the public's attention.

Anyway, afterward seeing the movie I was surprised to learn the author was an erstwhile Minnesota girl (who sometime hung out at the Tonka Lanes in Saint Louis Park, about a mile from where I live). I was further surprised to learn about her short-lived career as a stripper in Minneapolis, and I wanted to know how a person went from being a stripper to a famous Hollywood screenwriter. Still more intriguing—what made a girl with a typical Midwestern upbringing want to become a stripper in the first place?

After reading the book, I'm not entirely sure I have my answer. But I'm not really sure Cody does either. But I do have a theory.

First of all, I have to say that I've never understood the mystique of strip clubs. The first time I walked into one I could tell something was fundamentally wrong with the place. The experience was supposed to be sexy. But someone or something has sucked all the sexiness out of it, leaving just a few bored and forlorn naked girls grinding around a pole and a menagerie of creeps making rude comments. To me there's no such thing as sexiness without desire; there has to be heat, passion, and mutual lust, and it was obvious the strippers were only there for the money, and even the guys seemed to think it was a farce, at best a naughty diversion and at worst a way to hold power over the women onstage.

So Cody's romanticism of this, well––I have to say it––seedy environment struck me as odd. Giving stripping a shot, I understood. I did my fair share of outrageous things as a young man, sometimes just for the experience––but one has to be careful. Small risks can have big consequences. And just as casual drug use can lead to hard-drug use or even addiction, so does stripping often serve as an entry point for young women into the world of prostitution. And in fact, stripping today doesn't mean merely taking off your clothes—it means lap dancing: grinding your crotch against the crotch of a stranger until he comes—for money. So if there is a line between lap dancing and prostitution, it's so gray and so thin as to be nearly invisible. And that was just the beginning for Cody; she went deeper into this dangerous world than I ever thought she would, deluded into thinking it was okay because her boyfriend thought it was cool, and by the end you really got the feeling the adventure and fun were gone, and she was just another lost soul like so many of the strippers she felt sorry for at the beginning of her book.

Well, I guess we all know it had a happy ending. Cody burned out and got out before she got hurt or trapped. Fortunately she had many other talents. Such an ending has to make you glad. Because the one thing that keeps Candy Girl from being plain-old pornography (aside from the brilliant writing) is the openness and vulnerability of the author; you can't help liking her, and you really begin to worry about her and hope that she finds her way to a better life.

So back to my theory. I think that Cody got involved in stripping for the very same reasons that young men ride bulls at rodeos, play rugby, street race, or otherwise sow their wild oats. Candy Girl is a classic coming-of-age tale (excuse the pun), only told from a young woman's perspective—Cody's chance to be daring, outrageous, and seductive while she still can. After all, such opportunities fade soon enough as most of us settle into lives of middle-class respectability (or mediocrity). At least when she's 64, Cody can shock her grandkids with tales about stripping instead of boring them with the details of her graduation trip through Europe.

And now it seems she's better off than most of us. Good for her. I would like to think of Candy Girl as one of these crazy adventures one can take only when one is young, naïve, and resilient—a wild ride through the rapids of life, which for a time tossed Cody out of the raft, but by grit, creativity, and attitude, she pulled herself back in and kept on paddling. So I wish her the best of luck and a smoother ride down the river (if in fact that's what she wants), and, what's more, I look forward to hearing about it in her next book or movie.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Everyone fails to realize Cody is and has always been a writer. Even before experimenting with stripping the girl was banging out stories like you wouldn't believe.

Yup.

It is true.