It was the 1890's. Respectable women wore corsets and long, flowing skirts that covered their shapely ankles. Queen Victoria reigned in England. Women in the U.S. did not yet have the right to vote. People put lacy covers over their table legs to avoid any hint of indecent behavior by their furniture. The U.S. Civil War had ended only 30 years earlier, and the country had celebrated its centennial only 20 years earlier.
U.S. attitudes toward people in show business were very, very different then, compared with what they are today. It was considered a major scandal if a member of someone's family became "one of those show business people" on the Vaudeville circuit or ran away to join the circus. Entertainers were a social class that "decent, church-going" people felt were beneath them.
Vaudeville was a raucous form of entertainment that "common people" enjoyed, but "decent people" condemned. A typical show consisted of a melodrama, ribald skits, and various song and dance numbers. White people put on black make-up known as "blackface" and did song & dance performances mocking the culture of former slaves. Popular songs were about love and romance.
In this environment, an event known as the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition made its debut in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. This was a ground-breaking event in many ways. The notion of a "carnival" with "rides" and shows was introduced for the very first time, in the form of the Midway Plaisance, a section of the exposition dedicated to entertainment. This was where the American public experienced a Ferris Wheel for the first time. This was also where the very first technology for making "moving pictures" made its appearance.
One of the attractions on the Midway Plaisance at the fair was a series of acts portraying the music and dance of various countries, including those in North Africa.
Even though the dancers of the Moroccan pavilion were fully clothed from head to toe, wearing long-sleeved outfits, the fact that they moved their midriffs so easily was very disturbing to turn-of-the-century Americans. Soon a Senator was trying to shut down the act, and newspaper headlines were screaming about the scandal. This, of course, led the public to become very curious, and they went to the fair to see what all the fuss was about. Fair promoters were delighted, and encouraged the scandal.
After the fair was over, many Vaudeville performers eagerly added the "hoochy koochy" (the name that arose for "belly" dancing) to their repertoires. Building on the scandal that originally made the dance famous, these all-American performers emphasized its sleaziness in a ploy to draw crowds. They succeeded.
Over the decades that followed, Vaudeville continued to integrate the "hoochy koochy" into the form of entertainment that came to be known as burlesque. Some performers like Mae West approached burlesque with elegance and a bit of cute naughtiness, while others took it to sleazy extremes. While sneering at what a low form of entertainment this was, Americans still filled the theaters to watch. Burlesque eventually evolved into stripping.
So you see, modern-day stripping in America has many historical ties to belly dancing, although today the two have diverged into very separate activities with very different goals. Americans took a healthy family-oriented dance form from another culture and twisted it into something very different and decidedly not family-oriented all in the name of profits.
