Men and women have differing reactions to staring at naked people of the opposite sex.
We men can’t seem to get enough of unclothed and partially unclothed women and are prepared to pay top dollar for the privilege of being teased by them in public places. For women, the appeal of places like “Chippendales” seems a bit more complex. Sure, many women don’t mind seeing scantily clad hunks lumbering about, but I’m not certain there’s the same joy that guys experience and some women seem to hate the whole idea. Maybe male strip joints are just a form of revenge at us guys for wasting all that time and money. But I’m a male, and therefore completely stupid on this whole subject. Women’s ambiguous responses to unclothed males are, by their very nature, a “girl thing” and I’ll never completely understand.
Which is why I’m not certain I’m getting 100% of Rachel Max’s animated short, “I Was a Strip Club Virgin.” This crudely animated slice-of-life tells of Ms. Max’s initiation into the world of male strippers when she joined a Boston bachelorette party at a nightclub-cum-strip-joint. She is repulsed by the male strippers and the annoying dance music (amusingly simulated on the soundtrack by Ms. Max and Patrick Harvey) but what happens seems all too realistic and not quite strange or funny enough to sustain even such a short film. Perhaps a bit less truth and a little more invention might have livened things up.
Nevertheless, there’s a certain baseline level of cleverness to the character designs and animation that makes me want to encourage Ms. Max. Try again, only next time try exaggerating!
