The Fantasy that Changed Female Friendship Forever

Of all the made-up holidays that sitcoms have graced us with — Friendsgiving, Festivus, Chrismukkah — none is more wholesome or more necessary than Galentine's Day. Leslie Knope, the main character of the NBC show Parks and Recreation, explained the holiday to the world this way: "Every February 13, my lady-friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style. Ladies celebrating ladies."

Galentine's Day emerged as a less-debauched alternative to the more traditional ladies' night out (though a mimosa-fueled brunch can leave participants as sozzled as a night spent bar-hopping). And just as Galentine's Day has become a holiday not only about female friendship but feminism, so too did the rising popularity of ladies' nights become a central part of the debate about feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. And the core of that debate took place at the most unexpected of places: Chippendales.

Yes, that Chippendales. The male dance revue where men stripped down to padded thongs while throngs of women gasped and ogled and cheered. Founded in 1979 by Steve Banerjee, an Indian immigrant attempting to turn his run-down nightclub into a star-studded must-visit venue, Chippendales arrived on the scene after a decade of feminist activism was beginning to hit a wall. As the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment stalled in the states, Chippendales offered a new version of women's equality: the right of women to lust after scantily clad men.

That, anyway, was the sales pitch: that women could turn the table on men by coming down to the club on the west side of L.A. to watch them strip. That it would be empowering. Liberating. And while that peering-at-pecs-as-praxis may seem eye-rolling today, one feminist saw Chippendales as an opportunity to press the case for equality.

In 1980, Gloria Allred, who at the time was president of the Women's Equal Rights and Legal Defense Fund, sparked controversy when she chose to hold a fundraiser for the group at the LA club. She treated it as a lark, a way to raise money, generate press and have a laugh. "Feminists are always accused of having no sense of humor," she told the Los Angeles Times. "Well, we do, and we think it will be fun." Banerjee, always eager to court press attention for the club, also pushed the feminist line. Watching men strip down to their thongs was, he insisted, "a very, very liberated thing to do."

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Allred wasn't able to turn Chippendales into a feminist paradise (in fact, she would later sue the club for discrimination, arguing that by not allowing men in as patrons, it was engaged in sex discrimination). Nor was Banerjee, who was more invested in making himself and his male partners wealthy through the club, and assorted criminal activities, than creating a place where women felt safe and empowered.

But one group of people did find a way to turn the club into a place of friendship and feminism: the women patrons themselves. At least for some women, Chippendales served as a place where they could bond with other women without being hit on by men, a slice of women's-only nightlife that could rarely be found elsewhere in the city (though Chippendales did open its doors to men after the last pair of tear-away pants had been shed). As Candace Mayeron, a Chippendales' associate producer in the 1980s told us for the podcast "Welcome to Your Fantasy," which delves into the history of the Chippendales, women at the club confided they found it a "safe, insulated environment."

Even though these off-stage bonding moments were largely hidden from public view, Chippendales had a real impact on rituals of female friendship. It played a role in transforming bachelorette parties from at-home gift extravaganzas to the night-on-the-town debauchery that gained popularity in the 1980s, and has expanded into the full-blown bachelorette weekend at destinations like Las Vegas and Nashville.

By the 1990s, though, men in Spandex grinding on stage were no longer the center of conversations about women, sex and friendship. They'd been replaced by women in Jimmy Choos downing cosmos, as "Sex and the City" offered the same thrill of sex and mostly naked men but placed far more focus on the way friendships could serve as the primary relationship in women's lives.