An Exotic Balance

By Charlotte Rand

A dark figure sits stiffly perched in a wooden chair, adorned in a golden headdress and dripping in gold jewelry. The figure watches over the quiet studio, which has vibrant magenta walls and loud zebra print furniture. On the walls: testimonials, articles from the Boston Herald and Boston Globe, pictures, and a framed letter from the Pope. The figure just watches silently. It is a mannequin. Wendy Reardon bustles in from another door: “Oh, that’s just Ralph – we used to use him for lap dances.” Of course.

This is Wendy’s home away from home, and Ralph is just one of many eccentric things that fills the front reception and lounge area of Gypsy Rose Exotic and Pole Dancing Studio. A pair of exhausted black pleather boots, with heels at least six inches high, lay slumped on the floor, next to a closed door labeled “Costume Room.” “Hard Times” Barbie (formerly American Idol Barbie) is posed with her fishnet-covered leg wrapped around a miniature pole on the main desk. Next to Barbie, a silver name placard that reads: “Wendy Reardon, CEHo” – Chief Executive Ho.

Wendy continues to bustle around the studio, checking voicemails and flipping on light switches that reveal walls proudly displaying Wendy’s achievements and passions. One of several articles from the Boston Globe bears the headline, “Following an Exotic Path into Papal History,” and shows a serious looking Wendy in business attire and with her arms crossed. The picture is very different from the Wendy currently moving about the front room, wearing sweatpants, sneakers, a pink zip-up, with a high ponytail, hauling a laundry basket brimming with crumpled clothes across the floor.

Between pole dancing, running a business, and studying the history of the Roman Catholic popes and the Middle Ages, she finds a way to fit everything she loves – even the contradictory things – into her life, which empowers her and makes her the best CEHo Boston has ever seen.

Wendy plops down into a fuchsia high-heel shaped chair, pulling the laundry basket between her legs, and tugs at a piece of sequined and stringy clothing until it’s freed from the jumble. It’s an electric blue skimpy little hooker dress to be added to the racks and racks full of day-glo Lycra dresses, spandex booty shorts, and bedazzled belly shirts in the costume room. “Sometimes I’ll put crazy stuff in there just to see if people actually wear it,” Wendy says slyly, as she puts the dress on a hanger, “I’ve got to amuse myself.”

Wendy, now 39, has come a long way to own and finance her studio, including each flashy costume she hangs up. As a college kid, she flew out to California on the Emerson College Los Angeles Program to pursue a job in animation. After trying her hand as a lowly production assistant at Hanna Barbera, though, Wendy realized it wasn’t for her: “I was a secretary. And I suck at being a secretary because I don’t care about them [her superiors]. I’ve got my ambitions.”

To earn some extra money, Wendy wanted a temporary job that was flexible – literally. That’s when she randomly placed the life-changing phone call to Snookie’s, a bikini bar in LA. She started dancing at Snookie’s, and having no experience, she learned how to work the pole and tease men by watching the other girls. What was supposed to be a three-month job turned into a three-year gig, before she continued to dance in London (full-naked!) for another year and a half. “It’s addicting. It’s really addicting. The money is good and to just get all dressed up – I mean – it’s a great ego booster. I had no confidence when I started. Absolutely none.” Looking at her now, you would never know. She exudes confidence; every inch of the studio that is not filled by some unique or stripper-esque artifact is filled by her persona.

Dancing has helped her reach all of her goals and opened more doors for her than she could have ever imagined. “There was a plan – the plan to write animation. Or marry someone rich in Los Angeles and have a family,” Wendy says, almost laughing at herself, “I’m so glad that didn’t happen. I hate kids. I need to be able to just pick up and do what I want.”

Not all strippers are as fortunate, though. A study published in the journal Violence Against Women in 2002 found that close to fifty percent of women in the sex industry – which includes exotic dancing, prostitution, and pornography – were sexually abused as children. Professor Barbara Gottfried of Boston University’s Women’s Studies Department, voiced her opinion, saying, “She [Wendy] is the exception – not the rule. The majority of female sex workers don’t get to make a business out of it or get an education.” Professor Gottfried, who has been teaching women’s studies for almost twenty-five years, refers to stripping and exotic dancing as “sexual exploitation.”

Grace Lark*, one of Wendy’s instructors at Gypsy Rose, and a former exotic dancer, sees it differently. “It’s dancing, it’s exercise, it’s cardio, it’s building self-esteem for a lot of people. None of those are dirty things like people think they are. How is it any more exploitative than putting toddlers in beauty pageants? People view things differently – that’s just a natural variant.”

Wendy has overcome the negative Coyote Ugly stripper stereotype, proving that instead of sexual exploitation of the female body, it is possible to exotic dance just because it’s enjoyable. And just like the best of entrepreneurs, she built a business doing what she loves. Moving to Massachusetts after another, and less pleasant, dancing job in Rhode Island, one day Wendy decided to teach an exotic dance class at the Boston Center for Adult Education (BCAE). The class was a hit, and sold out almost every week. After six months at the BCAE, Wendy realized that she could be making more than twenty dollars an hour and took out a loan to finance her own studio in Hingham, Massachusetts. Three years, and countless customers, later, Wendy moved the studio to the heart of Boston in Copley Square, where she has been more successful than ever.

“I was the first exotic dance instructor in all of New England,” Wendy says proudly. She stops hanging a bright red silk slip for a moment and states firmly, “I was it.”

Bernadette Barton, a professor of sociology at Morehead State University, writes in her book Stripped, “Very few dancers actually make something of themselves. Very few.” Just as Wendy proves this statement wrong, she also poses another unusual contradiction: balancing her passion for exotic dance with her passion for studying Catholicism and the popes. Around the age of twenty-six, Wendy spent her free time every day browsing the papal books in Barnes and Noble. She quickly developed an obsession.

Her face lights up talking about the popes, throwing out facts, dates, and stories about several of them. Wendy knows her stuff, inside and out. She even wrote a book in 2004, The Deaths of the Popes, after she “barely” made it through her Master’s degree in Medieval Studies at the University of Reading in England. “Success is the best revenge,” she said, saying that she mailed a copy to the British professor who gave her such a hard time. Pope John Paul II was also the lucky recipient of a copy. She pushes the basket away and walks over to the wall, pointing at a frame: “That’s my letter from the Pope, thanking me for the book.” Excitedly, she turns and points to the adjacent magenta wall that bears another little frame. “That – that is what made me happy.” The frame encases a book review from Choice Magazine of Wendy’s academic, yet colorful, text, which even includes the recipe for the pickled eels that Pope Martin IV choked on. “I can look at my work and be like, ‘Yeah, I wrote it,’ but so what? That review from Choice means someone else, an academic, highly praised my book.”

Although Wendy has dedicated a large portion of her life to studying papal history, she calls herself a “cafeteria Catholic” who holds her own beliefs on many issues the Catholic Church speaks out about. Regardless, her passion for the popes and the Catholic hierarchy is undeniable. “It’s a calling. No one knows where it came from,” she says. While Wendy’s family is Catholic, she admits that it’s been a while since she has attended a church service. She starts talking faster as she recounts her visits to Rome and the Vatican, explaining that to her, the cardinals and bishops are like celebrities. “Someday,” she confides, a determination in her voice, “I wanna be able to go to back there and give tours with the American Church in Rome, Santa Susanna.” “I’ve got the in with them,” she adds, making a gangster hand gesture, and continuing, “I don’t wanna give this [Gypsy Rose] up though, so I want to maybe go to Rome for three months out of the year and then come back here. They don’t even have to pay me.”

If Wendy says she doesn’t need to get paid, then she’s talking serious. She jokes that she never, ever dances to even a single song for free, but if she is willing to give three months of her time to be a tour guide in Rome for nothing – well, it just speaks to how much she loves it.

At the end of the day, it is very bizarre to have someone so passionate about such opposite ends of the spectrum: explicit dance and conservative religion. Father Paul Helfrich, a Catholic Priest at Boston University for the past ten years, said, “I don’t know her [Wendy] as a person, so I cannot judge, but I can say that the activity of exotic dancing is very inconsistent with the Catholic principles. Dancing is fine, but dancing for the purpose of exciting people is very different.”

Although it may seem like a major contradiction to many people, Wendy has the full support of her staff at Gypsy Rose Exotic and Pole Dancing. “I think it’s fine,” Grace*, one of Wendy’s instructors, says, “As long as you have your own morals and stick with those, then it shouldn’t matter. I don’t even think it really is a contradiction. There are plenty of people who are devout Catholics but who are horrible, horrible people. The same holds true for the opposite. Following your own beliefs and staying true to yourself – there’s nothing wrong with that, and that’s what Wendy does.”

No matter what she does, Wendy does stay true to herself and makes it her goal to share what she loves – and her attitude – with people, whether it’s through writing a book or teaching lessons. At Gypsy Rose, the motto is, “Sexy is a state of mind,” and Wendy enforces it. “Look at me,” she says, pinching her love handles. “I’m just a regular looking schmuck. If I can do it, anyone can. I even had a 67-year-old in one of my recitals once… It’s about acting; it’s about feeling sexy. Just like if you hear enough negative things you believe them, well, it’s the same with positive.”

Wendy clarifies, however, that the point of her classes is not to “release your inner sex diva,” as she mocks other exotic dance studios’ mottos. “Some people come to me for confidence. If you find it, which most people do here, then that’s great. But trust me, I’m not gonna go looking for it,” she bluntly states. According to Wendy, a key part of feeling sexy and finding that confidence is letting go of every day life and becoming a different person in the studio. “That’s where stripper names come in,” says Wendy, a.k.a “Holly.” “You have to have one by the end of the second class or else you’re automatically ‘Chlamydia’ or ‘Gonorrhea,’” she jokes with a poker face. “It’s got to be something that makes you feel sexy. I’ve worked with girls named Kat, Lace, Saber…but some of my instructors just have regular names, like Juliana or Veronica. Whatever makes you feel sexy,” she emphasizes, sharing that she selected the name Holly because it sounds so innocent and sweet.

“There is a sign at the gates of Hell in Dante’s Inferno that reads: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ I want to make a sign for the studio that says, ‘Abandon your daily lives, ye who enter here,’” Wendy says, with a little laugh. “This is a safe place for women. No boys are allowed, and the lights are dark. They can dress like hoes, and it’s a judgment-free zone” – sounds pretty good, huh?

One week later, Wendy hobbles into the studio, her left leg in a cast. For the past year, she has developed plantar fasciitis, an excruciating condition where the tissue in the bottom of the foot tears and makes it difficult to stand for more than several minutes at a time. Wendy attributes it to the skyscraper platform heels traditional to exotic dancing, and sighs, knowing she won’t be back on the poles for at least another three months. In the meantime, one of her instructors, whose stage name is Vegas, covers Wendy’s Saturday morning class. She twirls around the pole in the dimly lit studio, making beautiful silhouettes and moving almost every muscle in her body as she pulls herself out of an upside down position, using only her thighs. It’s no wonder that there is a petition to make pole dancing an Olympic sport in the near future – when the song is over, Vegas lowers herself from the pole, out of breath.

Students each grab a pole and try to imitate some of the more basic moves, which even still require great physical strength. Wendy walks in, her cast clunking, and dishes out tips to the girls: “A little more momentum,” “Put your hand up higher.” While Wendy might be in a cast, she still holds on to her dream of giving walking tours in Rome and dancing again. She might have to retire her six-inch heels, but she will never retire the name Holly, nor will she ever give up doing what she loves, no matter how random or “inconsistent” it may be. “I’ve done a lot,” she says, “and I have fun. But I still have a lot more to do.”