Naked Girls Reading invites you to Dallas’ best bawdy slumber party

by Brentney Hamilton

• Tweet
• Email
• Print
• 0 Comments

Bring War and Peace, but don't forget the fishnets and champagne.

Photo by Brentney Hamilton

(From left) Black Mariah, Bonnie Lou, Courtney Crave, Angi B. Lovely, and The Dirty Blonde at Naked Girls Reading

It’s bawdy, brash, nerdy, and funny, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: Naked Girls Reading, a sporadically reoccurring event at the Quixotic World in Deep Ellum, features five ladies from the thriving local burlesque community reading humorous selections from pieces as diverse as high-brow literature, scholarship, and poetry to hilarious Internet memes and wacky (but very real) state laws.

Each installment boasts a particular theme, and Thursday night’s Naked Girls Reading featured Black Mariah, Bonnie Lou, Courtney Crave, Angi B. Lovely, and The Dirty Blonde, talking, laughing, and, of course, reading about sexual fetishism in advance of this weekend’s 2012 Dallas Fetish Ball.

On its face, the event might sound a bit stale: five women, albeit beautiful ones, lounge topless on plush sofas on a stage reading stuffy selections from Psychology Today? However, the Naked Girls Reading troupe is anything but boring. Each event places audience members in an intimate – intellectually intimate – setting where everyone can, for lack of a better phrase, let it all hang out. Each reading is accompanied by wry ad-libbing from both the performers and the audience alike, as if Rocky Horror were to meet Pushcart.

Thursday's selections included pieces by Mary Gaitskill; a hilariously scathing response to Fifty Shades of Grey, replete with gut-wrenchingly bad quotes from the novel; a recitation and wry “translation” of “Baby Got Back” – which audience members gleefully supplemented with shouts at the appropriate moments; and an excerpt from a published short story by the group’s own The Dirty Blonde.

Naked Girls Reading is, obviously, not suitable for all audiences. While the actual “nakedness” is more about glamour and intimacy – burlesque is, after all, less about meaningless sexual exhibitionism than it is about liberation through physical agency – the language and content is not for the easily offended.

In fact, an evening with Naked Girls Reading is so liberated, so completely divorced from the demands of “polite” society, that it might best be described as a “bachelorette” version of The View starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Whitney Cummings, the last of whom wouldn’t even need to adopt a burlesque stage name.

Think of it as the best slumber party you’ve ever attended. Don’t forget the fishnets and champagne.