When my friends Christine and Jo invited me to go to see The Chippendales in San Diego for Christine’s birthday, I immediately said yes because I didn’t want to be rude, I don’t have that many friends in my new city, and because we had been drinking a lot of white wine mixed with Sprite, which makes everything your friends invite you to sound like an amazing and brilliant idea at the time.
But when I got home that night I had second thoughts. Did I really want to go watch men waving their junk around for a bunch of screaming women? That sounded kind of exhausting. I looked up the ticket information and discovered that all the sales were for standing room only and reacted like the eighty-seven-year-old soul I am by shouting, “GOD, STANDING ROOM?” and Googling “how long is chippendales show” to determine exactly how long I’d be standing. It was only seventy minutes. That seemed acceptable, so long as I was wearing comfortable shoes, but I had another couple of weeks to decide so I put it out of my mind.
The week of the show had been a hard one for me personally. My fiancé, who is in the Navy, had been at sea for almost two months and was due to arrive home the following week, but I didn’t know what date or time, or even have confident confirmation that they were coming home soon at all. It was the first time we had been through a significant military separation, and the uncertainty of his schedule and the anticipation of everything that could go wrong was putting me on edge. Additionally, I had started the process of transitioning my temporary work assignment into a permanent position, but things were moving slowly and I got disappointing information about my pay rate. I did a lot of whining on my Tumblr. When Jo messaged to reminded me of the Chippendales invitation, with sweet assurances that it was okay if I was too stressed to want to socialize, I immediately purchased my ticket. “I deserve have men wave their junk around for me!” I announced to myself. I decided to consider it a last hurrah with my lady friends before my fiancé returned, as if the previous two months had been a whirlwind of partying that needed a capstone rather than me gradually earning the amused pity of my neighborhood restaurant bartender by ordering salad and fries takeout for one twice a week and tormenting my imagination by watching every single episode of Forensic Files available on Netflix.
The day of the show I spent a lot of time debating what to wear. Since I came to Southern California, I’ve consistently found myself overdressed for almost every occasion, so I tend to put on one thing then go, “Okay, what has this vibe, but like six steps lower key than what I’m wearing now?” I started with a black silk mini wrap dress and then toned all the way down to black foldover yoga leggings, a grey top with a sheer black back panel, and a pineapple print cardigan. My one concession to the Occasion-ness of the occasion was to carefully apply bright red lipstick and tie a little black bow headband over my ratte- up ponytail. Jo and Christine pulled up in front of my apartment and Jo ran in to chug a big glass of water before we headed out for the night because hydration in San Diego is a constant battle of life and death, or at least of skin that stays on your body and skin that doesn’t.
When we all settled in the car we spent a moment exclaiming over how cute the others looked, and confirming that everyone else in our invited party had flaked. We drove downtown discussing flakey friends, flakey skin, and other stuff that lets us down. As we pulled around the corner of the performance venue we stopped talking. For blocks, a lined had formed. There were hundreds of women in their besparkled best. “I think we found it,” I said.
As we got in line, I realized that first of all we were vastly underdressed. At first we thought this was hilarious. Like, did you not Google “how long is chippendales show” once you discovered it was standing room only? And who are you trying to impress? But after a few minutes in line watching all these groups of chatty, excited, bedazzled women walk by, we started to be impressed. Because you know what? Who is going to appreciate your sparkliest dress and your torturous heels better than your friends? No one, and that’s the truth we all learn eventually. Not to mention that we saw gorgeous, non-skinny women confidently rocking all sorts of adorable body-con dresses and crop tops. It was a parade of fashion for fashion’s sake, the likes of which I’ve never seen in real adult life.
These ladies rocking their besparkled best were not about to pass the moment by without documenting it. The night sky was illuminated with the light of a thousand selfies. Again, it was easy to mock this at first, but the more I watched all the groups of friends pose and embrace and ask complete strangers to take their picture, and the strangers happily comply, the more I appreciated the very idea of the selfie, the fact that we have the ability to say hey, world, I’m out with my friends and I feel awesome and I look awesome and you better appreciate me.
Once we presented our tickets and IDs and made our way inside—and discovered that what we had thought meant the show began at 7:30 actually meant the doors opened at 7:30 and the show began at 9:00, to which Jo announced, “Well fuck this, then, I’m getting a drink”—we watched one woman in a particularly short, particularly shiny dress dance all alone on the stairs accompanied by the pop soundtrack. As the room filled up, we reflected on the fact that while standing in a big, closely packed crowd is never a pleasant experience, it’s infinitely more tolerable when you don’t have to worry about being groped all the time. In fact, the entire atmosphere felt safe, fun, and calm. A few weeks after the show, I read a Tumblr post about how safe and catered to the author felt attending One Direction shows with legions of teenage girls, and how bizarre it feels to be in an environment that anticipates and prepares for the needs of female guests specifically. This is the adult-themed version of that. This is a performance that says, “You deserve to have men wave their junk around for you.”
As the room filled up, groups grabbed hands to stay together in the crowd, and people jostled for position. Behind me was a short blonde girl with glasses who was probably the most aggressive person I’ve ever met in my life. As tall girls filed in in front of us, and I shrugged with apology at her for my inability to block them from getting past, she hollered, “I’m ANGRY, I’m HOT, I’m HORNY, I’m PMSing, and if any more bitches try to push past here I will PUNCH THEM IN THE THROAT.” Things got a little tense, as the crowd tried to balance the desires of groups to stay together with the crush of people, the tall women in heels, and the desire of tiny angry people to see. But once the music started, all the resentment was forgotten. To the pulse of the beat, our section rearranged itself so that the short girls could see. I grabbed the hand of the angry stranger in glasses, and shoved her in front of me to an open spot with a better view.
I have never screamed so much in my life. We all screamed. We screamed because it was cathartic, because the music was fun favorites, because there were men dancing for us. But mostly we screamed because why not? Because where else can a woman turn to another woman and announce that she’s angry and horny and PMSing? Where else can throngs of women assert their right to space and to see and to stay with their friends and to not be in a crowd without being touched in a way that makes them uncomfortable? Where else can we just scream because we know all the lyrics to “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” and that song is a classic that we secretly love? To be honest, I still couldn’t see much of anything, but it didn’t matter. The bachelorette party next to me was grinding girl on girl, the angry stranger in glasses was dancing with her hands in the air, anger forgotten. I truly believe that in that moment, anything could have been happening on that stage and the party atmosphere would have been the same. These women got dressed up and came out to have a good time and nothing could have stopped that.
After the show, having had several double Jack and Cokes and no dinner, I stumbled down the street pointing out other women I recognized from the concert hall and announcing how much I liked their outfits, and remarking without any volume control on the life affirming nature of the experience and, simultaneously, on my great need to use the restroom. Jo, the designated driver who had limited herself to one drink before the show started, guided Christine and me into the doorway of a sushi restaurant to use their restroom, and I walked triumphantly through not around a group of bros congregated in the doorway. NO, YOU GET OUT OF MY WAY, I thought, I’M HOT AND HORNY AND I HAVE TO PEE. And it felt like a victory.