By 1980 travelling troupes were tearing off their trousers in towns as far as Concord, New Hampshire, where an overflow crowd stunned a local fire prevention officer. And male revues-like Los Angeles’ famous Chippendales-weren’t just for the big cities.
Some strip clubs reserved a few nights each month for male strip shows, with audiences restricted to “ladies only.” Between 19, the Twin Cities, for example, went from having a few dancers to having four clubs regularly stuffed with screaming women. However, over the course of the late 1970s male dancers became a regular feature at strip clubs across the country.
Another early appearance of the term comes in a 1974 report on Deviant Behavior, mentioning male strippers in a report on “ Marginally Illegal Occupations and Work Systems.” Through the mid-’70s men who took off their clothes in public were likely to receive a citation for indecency. This was a common problem for the early male stripper. Book him.” According to the article, no producers came calling, but the cops did. In 1973 Jet told of one such dancer who “peeled down to a black G-string, handcuffed himself to the fence outside” Big Ben and bore a banner labeling him as “The body divine-Angel, the lovely male stripper. And there are only a few known reports of male strippers before the late ’70s. While musclemen have been paid for popping their pecs and otherwise showing off their bodies since at least the late 19 th century, it’s only in the ’70s that stripping became a co-ed profession.
When did men start stripping professionally?