Advent Calendar Roundup 2

Eartha Kitt, DeeDee Ramone, Dale Bozzio, Carmen Electra

Santa Baby

RCA Victor, 1953

Composed by Joan Javits, Philip Springer, and Tony Springer

Performed by Eartha Kitt (and later, much to her chagrin, Madonna)

Eartha Kitt is everybody’s hero for many reasons. She was an activist, an iconoclast, an unrepentantly individualistic performer and live-er of life.

Was she a sex worker? If so, I don’t know about it. However, I’m including her in this roundup for her golddigger/sugarbaby persona, evident throughout her career in songs such as 1956’s “Just an Old-Fashioned Girl,” featuring the lyrics “I want an old fashioned house, with an old fashioned fence/And an old fashioned millionaire,” and 1983 “Where is My Man?” featuring the lyrics “I need a man with a big… big… big… yacht.”

But probably her best known and most seasonally appropriate tune is her 1953 version of “Santa Baby,” in which she sings, “Santa cutie, fill my stocking with a duplex and checks.”

While some people are sick of this song, I just feel bad for them. I can’t get sick of anything Eartha Kitt has done or made famous, and I love to see new strippers finding new joy in it. Every XXXmas season, I’m tempted to revamp my own holiday number with this tune, in which I receive coal in my stocking, shove it into my pussy, and then use my kegels to crush it into a diamond.

53rd and 3rd

Sire Records, 1976

Composed and Performed by The Ramones

Memorable lyrics:

“Fifty-third and third standing on the street

Fifty-third and third I'm tryin' to turn a trick

Don’t it make ya feel sick?”

The Ramones’ self-titled first album is essential punk listening. One of the tracks, “53rd and 3rd,”is about a reluctant male street walker, trying to turn a trick that goes very wrong.

When I was in high school in the 1970s and was about half a punk, the Ramones were a lifeline to a world away from my uptight conservative high school The Ramones literally took their style from street hustlers and created one of the most iconic looks to come from punk, with Schott leather jackets, beat-up Levis, and weathered t-shirts. While the Ramones were perceived by many as the antidote to glamourous corporate arena-rockers, they developed their own fashion cult.

Dee Dee Ramone, a street hustler before the band’s success, was the bass player and the original singer, although the vocals ended up going to Joey because Dee Dee didn’t like to sing and play at the same time. He wrote most of the lyrics and even when not the sole writer for the band he co-wrote many of the songs. Joey Ramone himself said Dee Dee’s songs were his favorites.

Words

Capitol Records, 1982

Performers: Missing Persons; lead vocalist Dale Bozzio

Top US chart position: 42

Dale Bozzio wasn’t a full-time sex worker, but boy did she get hauled over the coals like she was. It might be hard to imagine now, but right after the first Missing Persons album was released in 1982, you couldn’t bring up the band (which also featured her husband Terry on drums—they met while working with Frank Zappa) or her in a crowd without someone attempting to diminish her by pointing out that she’d been a Playboy Bunny and a nude Hustler model. Holy crap, it was intense to hear, especially since I’d already been stripping for a few years at the time. I was defiant whenever I was given shit for being a stripper, but it was still harder to encounter on anyone else’s behalf. It made me feel vaguely protective of her, though she seemed tough enough to take care of herself — not to mention famous enough. Missing Persons, as a band, was everywhere in the early 80s, along with Dale’s outrageous style (which has influenced Lady Gaga among many other performers and fashionistas), so I got to hear her insulted for having posed for Hustler quite a bit. There wasn’t a high-profile anti-slut-shaming or pro-sex-worker movement at the time, and the assumption anyone made when they belittled her entire life for having done a day’s work always had a snide edge of, “Ah, but you forget, we’ve seen her naked so she’s really a nothing, and I have the moral and social high ground for pointing it out.” I’m so grateful people on the internet today have armies of people who will jump in whenever someone is slut-shamed. We didn’t have that. I mean to say: WE DID NOT HAVE THAT. We just had the shaming, which is why whenever someone was shameless, I went bananas for them.

Go-Go Dancer

Paisley Park, 1993

Written by Prince

Performed by Carmen Electra

Carmen Electra started her career as a dancer at an amusement park, then moved to Minneapolis and was discovered and mentored by Prince. Although her album both started and ended her recording career, she went on to become a 1990s It-Girl of sorts. She was featured in Playboy magazine many times, and had her acting breakthrough on Baywatch. She made lots of appearances on MTV and eventually won the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss in the remake of Starsky and Hutch. Her best-known on-screen moment may be from her appearing in the horror parody Scary Movie, in which she loses a breast implant to the serial killer’s knife. For Scary Movie 4, she won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress. This is how she popped up in my memories, since I’m wrapping up research for an article on the history of breast implants. She also hosted the Naked Women’s Wrestling League.

Most notable to me was her 2006 series of “aerobic striptease” DVDs, in which there was actually very little striptease. I’ve been doing a study of people teaching striptease, and this was had some of the most mainstream success, partly because of her appearances with the successful burlesque-inspired dance troupe/band The Pussycat Dolls.

I kind of love the story of her career. She’s done a lot of the weird, almost-sex-work type of stuff that beautiful girls get asked to do, but on a level more accessible to the public (and most likely better-paid) than most. She may have enormous potential as a camp figure for future generations. I think this little musical nugget, especially in context, deserves more appreciation.