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Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper
Decreed by David Letterman (tongue in cheek) on CBS TV’s The Late Show to be the pick of “Dave’s Book Club 2006,� Candy Girl is the story of a young writer who dared to bare it all as a stripper. At the age of twenty-four, Diablo Cody decided there had to be more to life than typing copy at an ad agency. She soon managed to find inspiration from a most unlikely source� amateur night at the seedy Skyway Lounge. While she doesn’t take home the prize that night, Diablo discovers to her surprise the act of stripping is an absolute thrill. This is Diablo’s captivating fish-out-of-water story of her yearlong walk on the wild side, from quiet gentlemen’s clubs to multilevel sex palaces and glassed-in peep shows. In witty prose she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at this industry through a writer’s keen eye, chronicling her descent into the skin trade and the effect it had on her self-image and her relationship with her now husband.
212 pages, Paperback
First published December 29, 2005
122 people are currently reading
8,374 people want to read
About the author
Diablo Cody
11Ìýbooks255ÌýfollowersBrook Busey, better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American Academy Award-winning screenwriter, writer, author, journalist and blogger. First known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in her Pussy Ranch blog and her 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, Cody won wider fame as the writer of the 2007 film Juno, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
A sitcom written by Cody, called The United States of Tara, based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, is currently in pilot stage at Showtime. She has several other scripts in the development stage at various studios.
A sitcom written by Cody, called The United States of Tara, based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, is currently in pilot stage at Showtime. She has several other scripts in the development stage at various studios.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,707 reviews
November 21, 2008
(This is from my review on Amazon)
I never worked with Diablo Cody (she was before my time), but I know someone who did. She was the one who suggested I read the book. Afterwards, we both talked about how we want to write the anti-Diablo Cody strip-club book. This book is like A Million Little Pieces, but because of the veiled nature of the industry, the facts are harder to check. I think the book is disgraceful, but the fallacies and exaggerations are mostly hidden to those who have never worked in the industry.
For the record, for six months she worked in the Dollhouse in Sexworld, which is a peepshow. While that is part of the sex industry, it is a very different job from dancing. In fact, as she points out in the book, anything involving penetration is illegal in MN, yet the Dolls could get away with doing it. Because of this, I find her attitude of being "above" the "dirtiness" of certain clubs disingenuous, and her condescending description of dancers an insult to any woman in that occupation. Her sudden vague-ness when describing what occurred in the Loft at Deja Vu also begs the question of how candid she really is. The few things she actually mentions are blatantly illegal, things that many dancers never do, yet despite this lack of willpower in the face of a generous and pushy client, she still expresses her belief in her own mental superiority to other strippers. I guess she didn't see the irony.
For the most part, her book revealed a few important things about the industry (club fees, work expenses, irritating customers) but did little to explain stereotypes, or even debunk them. Instead, her patronizing descriptions of dancers (either blond fake-titted bimbos at Sheiks, or drug-addicted boorish wrecks at Skyway) simply echoed the two most common stereotypes of strippers. For someone whose writing exposes their obvious belief in their own superior intellect, she was far less observant than most "dumb dancers" I know.
I think one reason is because she went into the job from a research angle. Most of us get into the industry (as staff or entertainers) because of a financial need it would fulfill, like supporting kids, paying for school, getting out of debt, etc. It is an industry that can open doors for women (and men) and give us opportunities we may not have had otherwise. The sense of solidarity between individuals can be quite strong, although it was notably absent in Cody's case.
The title really says it all: "A Year in the Life of an UNLIKELY Stripper". Her assumption, (obviously supported by many people, much to my chagrin), that a nerd, educated woman, geek, etc etc simply doesn't fit the mold of "stripper". My friend who worked with her (call her B) said that, when Cody expressed surprise that B was going to college, B pointed out that most of the dancers at the Choice were in school. Cody responded with disbelief and dismissal "No they don't"*eye roll*. I think that pretty much sums up Cody's attitude towards the people in the sex industry, and explains why she felt girls were "mean" at the Choice. I currently work with many of the former staff from Sheiks, and they complained that she turned the club into a generic, faceless place when there was so much personality and dynamics to be explored in both the customers and the dancers/staff.
I think that the 6 months she spent as a DANCER is very significant. Most strip club workers (dancers and staff) are excited at the money, the change in lifestyle, the flexible schedules, and the newness when we first start the job. I also think that most of us, after the first year, are more reserved and realistic in our enthusiasm because we've had plenty of time to reflect on how the industry has changed us, and we have seen plenty of men and women go through a less than desirable change. Perhaps, with a more empathetic attitude, Cody would have had a more realistic view of the industry, one focusing on individual change beyond her own self-centered story. Somehow, after speaking to B and others who remember her, I think I'm being a bit optimistic.
Diablo Cody held herself aloof out of a sense of intellectual superiority, and thus blinded herself to the wealth of information and reality that she could have revealed to an (obviously) captive audience. It's a shame.
I never worked with Diablo Cody (she was before my time), but I know someone who did. She was the one who suggested I read the book. Afterwards, we both talked about how we want to write the anti-Diablo Cody strip-club book. This book is like A Million Little Pieces, but because of the veiled nature of the industry, the facts are harder to check. I think the book is disgraceful, but the fallacies and exaggerations are mostly hidden to those who have never worked in the industry.
For the record, for six months she worked in the Dollhouse in Sexworld, which is a peepshow. While that is part of the sex industry, it is a very different job from dancing. In fact, as she points out in the book, anything involving penetration is illegal in MN, yet the Dolls could get away with doing it. Because of this, I find her attitude of being "above" the "dirtiness" of certain clubs disingenuous, and her condescending description of dancers an insult to any woman in that occupation. Her sudden vague-ness when describing what occurred in the Loft at Deja Vu also begs the question of how candid she really is. The few things she actually mentions are blatantly illegal, things that many dancers never do, yet despite this lack of willpower in the face of a generous and pushy client, she still expresses her belief in her own mental superiority to other strippers. I guess she didn't see the irony.
For the most part, her book revealed a few important things about the industry (club fees, work expenses, irritating customers) but did little to explain stereotypes, or even debunk them. Instead, her patronizing descriptions of dancers (either blond fake-titted bimbos at Sheiks, or drug-addicted boorish wrecks at Skyway) simply echoed the two most common stereotypes of strippers. For someone whose writing exposes their obvious belief in their own superior intellect, she was far less observant than most "dumb dancers" I know.
I think one reason is because she went into the job from a research angle. Most of us get into the industry (as staff or entertainers) because of a financial need it would fulfill, like supporting kids, paying for school, getting out of debt, etc. It is an industry that can open doors for women (and men) and give us opportunities we may not have had otherwise. The sense of solidarity between individuals can be quite strong, although it was notably absent in Cody's case.
The title really says it all: "A Year in the Life of an UNLIKELY Stripper". Her assumption, (obviously supported by many people, much to my chagrin), that a nerd, educated woman, geek, etc etc simply doesn't fit the mold of "stripper". My friend who worked with her (call her B) said that, when Cody expressed surprise that B was going to college, B pointed out that most of the dancers at the Choice were in school. Cody responded with disbelief and dismissal "No they don't"*eye roll*. I think that pretty much sums up Cody's attitude towards the people in the sex industry, and explains why she felt girls were "mean" at the Choice. I currently work with many of the former staff from Sheiks, and they complained that she turned the club into a generic, faceless place when there was so much personality and dynamics to be explored in both the customers and the dancers/staff.
I think that the 6 months she spent as a DANCER is very significant. Most strip club workers (dancers and staff) are excited at the money, the change in lifestyle, the flexible schedules, and the newness when we first start the job. I also think that most of us, after the first year, are more reserved and realistic in our enthusiasm because we've had plenty of time to reflect on how the industry has changed us, and we have seen plenty of men and women go through a less than desirable change. Perhaps, with a more empathetic attitude, Cody would have had a more realistic view of the industry, one focusing on individual change beyond her own self-centered story. Somehow, after speaking to B and others who remember her, I think I'm being a bit optimistic.
Diablo Cody held herself aloof out of a sense of intellectual superiority, and thus blinded herself to the wealth of information and reality that she could have revealed to an (obviously) captive audience. It's a shame.
February 25, 2008
Just a disclaimer here: I recommended this book for book club and was thoroughly humiliated as a result. Now, I don't consider myself a prude by any stretch of the imagination, and am usually willing to stand by my recommendations. However. When it came time to lead the discussion group, I felt myself groping for questions. It seemed a little odd to open the session with, "What was your reaction when the author was working peep shows and would watch men jisming over the plate glass? Were you horrified? Gratified? Both?"
Obviously, this was my bad. I can't blame Cody for not having written a good book club book. (Actually, this probably goes in the "plus" column as far as its literary merit is concerned.) I don't know why I was shocked that a book about stripping would be so graphic, but there you have it. I'm an idiot.
That being said, I think Candy Girl suffers from Cody's stringent desire to defend her career choice. While I understand this impulse (I, myself, get a little tired of people painting EVERYONE who works in the sex industry as "perverted," "amoral," "disturbed," etc.), I still felt that Cody wasn't being honest about her motivations for working in an industry that is physically demanding, emotionally draining, and not even that financially rewarding. (I was shocked to learn how much the "house" takes from its strippers. These gals have got to unionize!)
After reading the book, I suspect Cody was testing the idea that the corporate workaday world is just as illegitimate and corrupt as the sex industry. The only difference is that the former pretends to be decent while treating people like crap, while the latter is honest about exploiting its workers and customers. This false distinction enrages me, too, and I'm totally with Cody on that score.
Still, I did wince at some of the stuff the author was expected to do. Somehow, I had an image of stripping that was akin to Gypsy Rose Lee coyly dancing behind a bubble, when in reality it involved laying spread-eagled on a stage while college guys sprayed your vagina with water pistols. An eye-opener, to say the least!
I guess I was wanting a little more vulnerability from the author. One of the few times I felt her letting down her guard was when she described being devastated when a group of women come into her peep show and openly mock her as she lays prone on a chaise longue. I guess the fact that there was a layer of glass between them made the ladies feel bold. Still, it was an awful moment and I really liked how Cody described how hurt she was as a result.
I also adored the fact that she would do karate kicks to heavy metal standards during her dance routines. She sounds like my kind of stripper!
I've heard Diablo talk about how she thought the job would cultivate a strong bond among she and her fellow strippers. Instead, the opposite was true. Everybody became ultra-competitive as a result of vying for dances. I wish she would have written a little more about that.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that her movie Juno has done so well. I suspect it's because she wasn't writing about herself. In creating fictional characters, she was able to drop the tough girl act and expose their vulnerability. And consequently, her own. Personally, that's the incarnation of Cody I most enjoy. I respectfully leave Cherish (her stripper ID), back at the pole.
Obviously, this was my bad. I can't blame Cody for not having written a good book club book. (Actually, this probably goes in the "plus" column as far as its literary merit is concerned.) I don't know why I was shocked that a book about stripping would be so graphic, but there you have it. I'm an idiot.
That being said, I think Candy Girl suffers from Cody's stringent desire to defend her career choice. While I understand this impulse (I, myself, get a little tired of people painting EVERYONE who works in the sex industry as "perverted," "amoral," "disturbed," etc.), I still felt that Cody wasn't being honest about her motivations for working in an industry that is physically demanding, emotionally draining, and not even that financially rewarding. (I was shocked to learn how much the "house" takes from its strippers. These gals have got to unionize!)
After reading the book, I suspect Cody was testing the idea that the corporate workaday world is just as illegitimate and corrupt as the sex industry. The only difference is that the former pretends to be decent while treating people like crap, while the latter is honest about exploiting its workers and customers. This false distinction enrages me, too, and I'm totally with Cody on that score.
Still, I did wince at some of the stuff the author was expected to do. Somehow, I had an image of stripping that was akin to Gypsy Rose Lee coyly dancing behind a bubble, when in reality it involved laying spread-eagled on a stage while college guys sprayed your vagina with water pistols. An eye-opener, to say the least!
I guess I was wanting a little more vulnerability from the author. One of the few times I felt her letting down her guard was when she described being devastated when a group of women come into her peep show and openly mock her as she lays prone on a chaise longue. I guess the fact that there was a layer of glass between them made the ladies feel bold. Still, it was an awful moment and I really liked how Cody described how hurt she was as a result.
I also adored the fact that she would do karate kicks to heavy metal standards during her dance routines. She sounds like my kind of stripper!
I've heard Diablo talk about how she thought the job would cultivate a strong bond among she and her fellow strippers. Instead, the opposite was true. Everybody became ultra-competitive as a result of vying for dances. I wish she would have written a little more about that.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that her movie Juno has done so well. I suspect it's because she wasn't writing about herself. In creating fictional characters, she was able to drop the tough girl act and expose their vulnerability. And consequently, her own. Personally, that's the incarnation of Cody I most enjoy. I respectfully leave Cherish (her stripper ID), back at the pole.
December 18, 2011
Some American prose achieves a poetry unavailable to Europeans. The breakneck compression of pop culture references, loopy neologisms and fractured marketing-derived syntax stretches all the way from John Dos Passos via every hardboiled detective, through Chuck Berry through Thomas Pynchon and on to Nicholson Baker, Don DeLillo and James Ellroy. It’s not limpid, it’s hectic and the non-Americans have to hang on as best they can. Diablo Cody has this style down. Here’s a two sentence example :
At a strip joint, a new girl might as well don veal underwear and dance the watusi through a gauntlet of jackals. Most veteran strippers are punch-drunk on Haterade and they’d sooner dredge their Vuitton clutch in a cow pie before mustering a pixel of common courtesy toward their fellow woman.
Here’s the merest handful of the arcane (for me) Americana which bejewels the pages of Candy Girl, plus a translation in brackets. It may be the sheltered life I lead but all these needed explanations for me.
Camacho (a cigar, I think)
tuna sashimi (a dish)
Samsonite (luggage)
Pink Squirrel (cocktail)
BaByliss Babylon (hairdryer)
schmattes (old rags, cf schmatter)
Gisele Bundchen (Brazilian model)
Fuddruckers (a hamburger)
Tawny Kitaen (model who appeared in Whitesnake vids)
gopher-guts gross (from a revolting playground song "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts� Compare with the British “Green snot pie and a dead dog’s eye� which John Lennon quotes in I Am the Walrus)
disco biscuits (ecstacy)
wide-wale (type of corduroy)
Old Navy careerwear (lower class clothes)
squick (The physical sense of repulsion upon encountering a concept or situation one finds disgusting. The concept of the "squick" differs from the concept of "disgust" in that "squick" refers purely to the physical sensation of repulsion, and does not imply a moral component. Thus says the Urban Dictionary)
dimbulb arm candy (this is just an example of DC’s way with words � I get what she means)
Bonne Belle (cosmetics)
Manwich (American junk food - I thought it might be a slang name for an attractive male, as in "look at that by the bar, wouldn't mind chomping my way though that manwich" but no)
Bob Dobbs from the Church of Subgenius (need whole Wikipedia article to explain this)
Pez (either confectionary or Austrian collector toys)
Pop Rocks (low-grade confectionary)
the glory spot (don’t know but might be able to guess)
That was just from twenty pages or so.
So I loved the way DC told her tale. But what about what she was actually telling us, about, well, stripping and the sex biz and all. I admit � it was fascinating. And gross. You’d have to be a grim-faced Calvinist not to be carried along by DC’s good-natured insouciance. And she also immediately removes the guilt you may have been fearing � was it something grisly in her childhood and/or a bad coke habit and/or a gangster boyfriend which got her into the striptease business? No, she says, no, and no. Didn’t do drugs (okay, some grass); stable whitebread middleclass background; and gorgeous boyfriend who has a gorgeous little daughter. So she should have been on some fast-track young exec programme in a giant media conglomerate for sure. And this feeling of enveloping strangulating cosiness is probably, maybe, the thing that made her decide to have a go at removing her clothes in public. But you know, I’m not so sure. The way it reads, she did it for the hell of it. But it’s a hell of a thing to do for the hell of it. It involved a lot of public nakedness, you know, which subdivides into polework (not easy), floorwork (easier but not as dignified), lapdances (you know what they are) and bed-dances (like lapdances but you and your client are on a bed - huh!). And finally the one-would-imagine terminal humiliation and grossness that is the peep show, which is a euphemism, because no one has to peep. If you need to know the gory details of what’s involved, let me know and I’ll goose up this review with � pleasure.
So okay, Diablo Cody, what did you get out of this year of minimum clothing, these 12 months of hideous johns, this calendar of unspeakable secretions ?
My modicum of success at the agency [her straight office job:] meant nothing to me; it wasn’t an indicator of my worth as a person. Whereas a single good night of stripping [good = she made a lot of money in tips:] could elevate my sense of self to Kilimanjaro altitudes. That was real approval� I knew precisely how much my body was worth per pound on any given night at the all-girl charcuterie. This concrete information was reassuring, much more so than the bogus corporate praise I’d garnered in the past.
Well, if you say so Diablo. If you say so.
At a strip joint, a new girl might as well don veal underwear and dance the watusi through a gauntlet of jackals. Most veteran strippers are punch-drunk on Haterade and they’d sooner dredge their Vuitton clutch in a cow pie before mustering a pixel of common courtesy toward their fellow woman.
Here’s the merest handful of the arcane (for me) Americana which bejewels the pages of Candy Girl, plus a translation in brackets. It may be the sheltered life I lead but all these needed explanations for me.
Camacho (a cigar, I think)
tuna sashimi (a dish)
Samsonite (luggage)
Pink Squirrel (cocktail)
BaByliss Babylon (hairdryer)
schmattes (old rags, cf schmatter)
Gisele Bundchen (Brazilian model)
Fuddruckers (a hamburger)
Tawny Kitaen (model who appeared in Whitesnake vids)
gopher-guts gross (from a revolting playground song "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts� Compare with the British “Green snot pie and a dead dog’s eye� which John Lennon quotes in I Am the Walrus)
disco biscuits (ecstacy)
wide-wale (type of corduroy)
Old Navy careerwear (lower class clothes)
squick (The physical sense of repulsion upon encountering a concept or situation one finds disgusting. The concept of the "squick" differs from the concept of "disgust" in that "squick" refers purely to the physical sensation of repulsion, and does not imply a moral component. Thus says the Urban Dictionary)
dimbulb arm candy (this is just an example of DC’s way with words � I get what she means)
Bonne Belle (cosmetics)
Manwich (American junk food - I thought it might be a slang name for an attractive male, as in "look at that by the bar, wouldn't mind chomping my way though that manwich" but no)
Bob Dobbs from the Church of Subgenius (need whole Wikipedia article to explain this)
Pez (either confectionary or Austrian collector toys)
Pop Rocks (low-grade confectionary)
the glory spot (don’t know but might be able to guess)
That was just from twenty pages or so.
So I loved the way DC told her tale. But what about what she was actually telling us, about, well, stripping and the sex biz and all. I admit � it was fascinating. And gross. You’d have to be a grim-faced Calvinist not to be carried along by DC’s good-natured insouciance. And she also immediately removes the guilt you may have been fearing � was it something grisly in her childhood and/or a bad coke habit and/or a gangster boyfriend which got her into the striptease business? No, she says, no, and no. Didn’t do drugs (okay, some grass); stable whitebread middleclass background; and gorgeous boyfriend who has a gorgeous little daughter. So she should have been on some fast-track young exec programme in a giant media conglomerate for sure. And this feeling of enveloping strangulating cosiness is probably, maybe, the thing that made her decide to have a go at removing her clothes in public. But you know, I’m not so sure. The way it reads, she did it for the hell of it. But it’s a hell of a thing to do for the hell of it. It involved a lot of public nakedness, you know, which subdivides into polework (not easy), floorwork (easier but not as dignified), lapdances (you know what they are) and bed-dances (like lapdances but you and your client are on a bed - huh!). And finally the one-would-imagine terminal humiliation and grossness that is the peep show, which is a euphemism, because no one has to peep. If you need to know the gory details of what’s involved, let me know and I’ll goose up this review with � pleasure.
So okay, Diablo Cody, what did you get out of this year of minimum clothing, these 12 months of hideous johns, this calendar of unspeakable secretions ?
My modicum of success at the agency [her straight office job:] meant nothing to me; it wasn’t an indicator of my worth as a person. Whereas a single good night of stripping [good = she made a lot of money in tips:] could elevate my sense of self to Kilimanjaro altitudes. That was real approval� I knew precisely how much my body was worth per pound on any given night at the all-girl charcuterie. This concrete information was reassuring, much more so than the bogus corporate praise I’d garnered in the past.
Well, if you say so Diablo. If you say so.
July 13, 2015
After a seven week layoff from reading or reviewing books, I was looking to break my fast with the literary equivalent of a French omelette cooked quickly in a greasy diner. No Shakespeare, no epics, no complicated substitutions and no delayed gratification. I wanted to finish something quickly and enjoy its deliciousness. The book I pulled off my reading docket was Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody.
For the youngsters out there, Diablo Cody, aka Brook Busey-Maurio, grabbed attention as author of the weblog Red Secretary in 2005, documenting the trials and tribulations of a surrogate office drone in Belarus. Cody's verbosity and style with a word processor belied a brief career as a stripper in Minneapolis, which became the basis for this memoir, published in 2006.
As a screenwriter, she hit the sweepstakes, winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with Juno in 2008. Never passing up an opportunity to spend time with strippers, even retired ones, journalists fell in love with Cody. At the height of her prestige, she authored the screenplays for Jennifer's Body and Young Adult, created the Showtime series The United States of Tara and made her debut as a director with Paradise, none of which hit the zeitgeist like Juno did. The media moved on to the New Kid in Town.
As a book designed to parachute all of us flyover state squares into the underworld of stripping and peepshows, then safely retrieve us with a happy ending, Candy Girl is A-team caliber through and through. Cody's experience as a blogger and columnist seem like the perfect field training for a mission like this, and if true, her fearlessness and threshold for skeeviness won me over. This is a sharp, funny and hugely entertaining book.
Cody's adventure begins with her leaving her hometown of Chicago to move to Minneapolis for her beau Jonny, a fellow vintage record collector and music lover she meets over the Internet.
Cody finds work as a typist in an ad agency and segues into the unlikely role of stepmother to Jonny's daughter. Faced with the prospect of becoming a real live adult in her mid-twenties, she decides to show up for Amateur Night at one of the city's handful of strip clubs, the Skyway Lounge. It takes her a year to get off the stage.
Shot glass wit on display:
-- I had always imagined all strippers as sinewy, exquisitely painted Jezebels, airbrushed by genetics and smelling of exotic fragrances like Elizabeth Taylor's "Passion". But there in the sallow light of the dressing room, I saw nails nibbled to the quick, prickly hedgehog vulvae, breasts that hung like worn athletic socks, and bodies of all makes and models, from Ford to Fuck'd.
-- The only thing I lacked was a stage name before I could be a genuine wind-up doll. I needed something cheeky, yet alluring. The kind of moniker that oozed molten sex, but satisfied my retro fix. I decided on "Roxanne," since that sounded like the kind of girl who lives in a boardinghouse, drinks Pink Squirrels and fucks old men for gold pocket watches. Easy.
-- There was one inviolate principle that even I came to recognize: Men dig white shoes. A girl invariably made more money when she wore shining white stripper-stilts instead of black. White shoes evoke summertime, innocence, the ruddy-chested ICU nurse bearing post-tonsillectomy marshmellow sundaes, the girl on the pier in seersucker shorts who remained 99.44% pure until college, new roller skates. Good girls wear white. Men respond in kind.
I think I need a cigarette after typing these excerpts, and I don't even smoke. I do not find sex trade workers alluring in the least. Cody compares the strippers she worked with to bank tellers: robotic, clocking in, engaging in dull and repetitive tasks, clocking out. I hardly find this sexy. As for whether strippers are feminists or an affront to feminism, Cody briefly addresses this topic as well. Either can be rationalized depending on the immediate needs of the worker.
What I did find thrilling was Cody's jetpack writing, which in addition to being very funny, involves very little moralizing. She seems well-tailored to zoom through a story like this in blog-sized bites, whereas if she were tackling an epic drama with this sort of Coco Puffs energy, I probably would've given up after fifteen pages. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a stylish, fast paced glimpse into the sort of dirty job that Mike Rowe has never gotten around to studying.
For the youngsters out there, Diablo Cody, aka Brook Busey-Maurio, grabbed attention as author of the weblog Red Secretary in 2005, documenting the trials and tribulations of a surrogate office drone in Belarus. Cody's verbosity and style with a word processor belied a brief career as a stripper in Minneapolis, which became the basis for this memoir, published in 2006.
As a screenwriter, she hit the sweepstakes, winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with Juno in 2008. Never passing up an opportunity to spend time with strippers, even retired ones, journalists fell in love with Cody. At the height of her prestige, she authored the screenplays for Jennifer's Body and Young Adult, created the Showtime series The United States of Tara and made her debut as a director with Paradise, none of which hit the zeitgeist like Juno did. The media moved on to the New Kid in Town.
As a book designed to parachute all of us flyover state squares into the underworld of stripping and peepshows, then safely retrieve us with a happy ending, Candy Girl is A-team caliber through and through. Cody's experience as a blogger and columnist seem like the perfect field training for a mission like this, and if true, her fearlessness and threshold for skeeviness won me over. This is a sharp, funny and hugely entertaining book.
Cody's adventure begins with her leaving her hometown of Chicago to move to Minneapolis for her beau Jonny, a fellow vintage record collector and music lover she meets over the Internet.
Cody finds work as a typist in an ad agency and segues into the unlikely role of stepmother to Jonny's daughter. Faced with the prospect of becoming a real live adult in her mid-twenties, she decides to show up for Amateur Night at one of the city's handful of strip clubs, the Skyway Lounge. It takes her a year to get off the stage.
Shot glass wit on display:
-- I had always imagined all strippers as sinewy, exquisitely painted Jezebels, airbrushed by genetics and smelling of exotic fragrances like Elizabeth Taylor's "Passion". But there in the sallow light of the dressing room, I saw nails nibbled to the quick, prickly hedgehog vulvae, breasts that hung like worn athletic socks, and bodies of all makes and models, from Ford to Fuck'd.
-- The only thing I lacked was a stage name before I could be a genuine wind-up doll. I needed something cheeky, yet alluring. The kind of moniker that oozed molten sex, but satisfied my retro fix. I decided on "Roxanne," since that sounded like the kind of girl who lives in a boardinghouse, drinks Pink Squirrels and fucks old men for gold pocket watches. Easy.
-- There was one inviolate principle that even I came to recognize: Men dig white shoes. A girl invariably made more money when she wore shining white stripper-stilts instead of black. White shoes evoke summertime, innocence, the ruddy-chested ICU nurse bearing post-tonsillectomy marshmellow sundaes, the girl on the pier in seersucker shorts who remained 99.44% pure until college, new roller skates. Good girls wear white. Men respond in kind.
I think I need a cigarette after typing these excerpts, and I don't even smoke. I do not find sex trade workers alluring in the least. Cody compares the strippers she worked with to bank tellers: robotic, clocking in, engaging in dull and repetitive tasks, clocking out. I hardly find this sexy. As for whether strippers are feminists or an affront to feminism, Cody briefly addresses this topic as well. Either can be rationalized depending on the immediate needs of the worker.
What I did find thrilling was Cody's jetpack writing, which in addition to being very funny, involves very little moralizing. She seems well-tailored to zoom through a story like this in blog-sized bites, whereas if she were tackling an epic drama with this sort of Coco Puffs energy, I probably would've given up after fifteen pages. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a stylish, fast paced glimpse into the sort of dirty job that Mike Rowe has never gotten around to studying.
December 16, 2015
Some books are meant to be kept in sacred spaces. Some books are so amazing, so wonderful, so full of personal meaning, that they can't even be kept on an ordinary bookshelf with the others, and need to occupy their own, special place. Some books deserve such honors.
And some books deserve to be kept in the bathroom. Which is exactly where the copy of Candy Girl currently resides in my apartment. (I can't claim responsibility for this placement - the book actually belongs to my roommate, but as far as I'm concerned any book kept next to the toilet is pretty much communal, so I helped myself.)
Don't get me wrong: the fact that Diablo Cody's memoir (I use the word only because that is how it's described on the front cover) is perfect bathroom reading isn't necessarily a criticism. Candy Girl is, in fact, probably the most perfect example of a bathroom book I've ever come across. You can read little bits at a time without having to bother following a continous plot, and if you just skip to all the dirty parts (where Cody is actually stripping or working at a peep show), you never miss anything important. She had a boyfriend at the time the book was written, and I guess we hear a lot about him, but frankly any part of the story that didn't involve stripping and/or frequent uses of the word "pussy" just bored me.
So, to sum up: the book describes a year in which Diablo Cody decides to try being a stripper. She spends several pages trying to rationalize this decision, but it can really be summed up in one sentence: "for shits and giggles, and so I can get a quasi-memoir out of it." (my words) Over the course of the story, she works at three different strip joints, a peep show, and also has a brief stint as a phone-sex worker that's so brief I don't know why she bothered mentioning it at all. In between there's lots of stuff about her boyfriend, his young daughter, and Cody's boring day job, but as I said, these parts can be easily skipped. As for the writing itself, I'll just say that it's very easy to believe this woman wrote Juno. Which is by no means a critique, but it does make it a bit jarring when Cody manages to produce writing that is actually well-done, maybe even meaningful. Luckily, this doesn't happen often and we quickly resume our regularly scheduled program of pop culture references and exclamations of "shazbot!"
And some books deserve to be kept in the bathroom. Which is exactly where the copy of Candy Girl currently resides in my apartment. (I can't claim responsibility for this placement - the book actually belongs to my roommate, but as far as I'm concerned any book kept next to the toilet is pretty much communal, so I helped myself.)
Don't get me wrong: the fact that Diablo Cody's memoir (I use the word only because that is how it's described on the front cover) is perfect bathroom reading isn't necessarily a criticism. Candy Girl is, in fact, probably the most perfect example of a bathroom book I've ever come across. You can read little bits at a time without having to bother following a continous plot, and if you just skip to all the dirty parts (where Cody is actually stripping or working at a peep show), you never miss anything important. She had a boyfriend at the time the book was written, and I guess we hear a lot about him, but frankly any part of the story that didn't involve stripping and/or frequent uses of the word "pussy" just bored me.
So, to sum up: the book describes a year in which Diablo Cody decides to try being a stripper. She spends several pages trying to rationalize this decision, but it can really be summed up in one sentence: "for shits and giggles, and so I can get a quasi-memoir out of it." (my words) Over the course of the story, she works at three different strip joints, a peep show, and also has a brief stint as a phone-sex worker that's so brief I don't know why she bothered mentioning it at all. In between there's lots of stuff about her boyfriend, his young daughter, and Cody's boring day job, but as I said, these parts can be easily skipped. As for the writing itself, I'll just say that it's very easy to believe this woman wrote Juno. Which is by no means a critique, but it does make it a bit jarring when Cody manages to produce writing that is actually well-done, maybe even meaningful. Luckily, this doesn't happen often and we quickly resume our regularly scheduled program of pop culture references and exclamations of "shazbot!"
October 19, 2020
“Of course, the strippers also take pains not to appear too innocent, valorous, or bookishly inclined. (In direct opposition to the Swayze Mandate of 1987, everybody puts Baby in a goddamn corner.)�
� Diablo Cody, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper
If one is looking for a slow burn type novel..a slow moving and languid read, filled with ever growing intensity as it takes you on a long and patient tour into quiet and astonishingly complex Historical and Literary places , that takes days..maybe weeks to read..and leaves you shaken and stirred, mind reeling, as you contemplate the month long philosophical journey you just experienced..this is not your book.
Sorry about that. However all is not lost. If you want a short and fast paced attention grabbing book..something quick witted, and eye popping, trashy and flashy, vulgar and glittery, with Prose that one will either love or loath (or both) written by an Avant-Garde Oscar winning Film screenplay writer who once worked as a stripper AND peep show girl AND phone sex operator..congrats! This is your book.
And judging from the thousands of reviews on here I am not the only one who could not resist. How could I? I have seen some of this writer's work. In case you have not, she got the Oscar for writing the screenplay for the movie "Juno" but she also has other film work, including "Young adult" a great film starring Charlize Theron. However, before she became this Film Maker, she took a bit of a walk on the wild side. Actually..more than a bit.
Diablo Cody certainly marched to the beat of her own drum. And I tend to love gritty reads so I was all in on this one.
The thing is..I didn't like it at first. The writing style grew on me however and I did fly though the book. I would rate it 3.5 stars.
To really do my review properly, I must compare this to another book I read on the same subject, many years ago. It is called "Ivy League stripper" and was written by a student from Brown university who paid for college by stripping. I will be comparing the two books a few times through this review.
These are the only two books I've really read that go into the weeds on the subject by writers who have been there, done that. I think this one was quite a bit better then Ivy League.
First off, STRIPPING..SEX..PEEP SHOWS..PHONE SEX.. NOT PG RATED!
This book is vulgar as I said but it pulls no punches. It makes no attempts to glamorize the industry and while I myself was never a dancer, I've had friends who have been and I've been inside these clubs. I know this is not a life of glamour and celebrity.
That was my main dislike of Ivy League. I did enjoy that book but felt many times like the writer was writing about an Oscar party. She prettied the work up to the point where you had to wonder if it was all real. I mean..she made it almost sound like nirvana at times and although she did not pretty up everything,..there were some dark things described.. there was a bit to much...."this is great" and "hot girls making money" aspects involved in the writing, for me to take it as seriously as I'd have liked.
Not so here. Diablo will take the blinders off any rose colored glasses wearing gal. Her writing is punchy and quick, an homage to gritty Rocker girl Prose and quirky Film maker. One thing's for sure. Her style is utterly unique.
So I sure learned alot. For example..and I will keep this part brief..I never knew Phone sex operators get scripts or that Peep show girls have "day shifts". Also there are the strip clubs. Diablo worked at several and the one thing they all appear to have in common was their seeming desire to rip the girls off as much as possible.
So it was a wild and furious read and while I enjoyed it, I changed my mind about giving it a four for one main reason.
I did not get the depth I wanted. It is a pretty short book and I never really found out WHY she chooses to become a stripper. I also never got the sense of the other gals in the business. Ivy league did that really good as you did get the sense of the other workers as their own individual selves. Not so here. Most were in it only briefly and most felt like caricatures..I never really felt I knew them
I wish the book had been longer. I am very impressed at the self depreciation that Diablo has which is something Ivy League never had. That writer seemed obsessed with her own beauty to the point where it felt like I was reading a love letter from the author to herself. Not so in Candy Girl.
Diablo Is unafraid to poke fun at herself, at others, at just about everyone and everything, ( which at first annoyed me and then intrigued me and then had me roaring with laughter.) And her musings were at times painful. I could relate much more to her then the writer of Ivy League.
In closing..if you like gritty reads that are edgy to the core and are interested in the subject matter, this might be for you. I mean it IS fascinating but not for the faint of heart, not this book. It is good to know she got out of that life and became an award winning film maker. Her writing of this book makes clear her creativity and is worth reading just for that.
� Diablo Cody, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper
If one is looking for a slow burn type novel..a slow moving and languid read, filled with ever growing intensity as it takes you on a long and patient tour into quiet and astonishingly complex Historical and Literary places , that takes days..maybe weeks to read..and leaves you shaken and stirred, mind reeling, as you contemplate the month long philosophical journey you just experienced..this is not your book.
Sorry about that. However all is not lost. If you want a short and fast paced attention grabbing book..something quick witted, and eye popping, trashy and flashy, vulgar and glittery, with Prose that one will either love or loath (or both) written by an Avant-Garde Oscar winning Film screenplay writer who once worked as a stripper AND peep show girl AND phone sex operator..congrats! This is your book.
And judging from the thousands of reviews on here I am not the only one who could not resist. How could I? I have seen some of this writer's work. In case you have not, she got the Oscar for writing the screenplay for the movie "Juno" but she also has other film work, including "Young adult" a great film starring Charlize Theron. However, before she became this Film Maker, she took a bit of a walk on the wild side. Actually..more than a bit.
Diablo Cody certainly marched to the beat of her own drum. And I tend to love gritty reads so I was all in on this one.
The thing is..I didn't like it at first. The writing style grew on me however and I did fly though the book. I would rate it 3.5 stars.
To really do my review properly, I must compare this to another book I read on the same subject, many years ago. It is called "Ivy League stripper" and was written by a student from Brown university who paid for college by stripping. I will be comparing the two books a few times through this review.
These are the only two books I've really read that go into the weeds on the subject by writers who have been there, done that. I think this one was quite a bit better then Ivy League.
First off, STRIPPING..SEX..PEEP SHOWS..PHONE SEX.. NOT PG RATED!
This book is vulgar as I said but it pulls no punches. It makes no attempts to glamorize the industry and while I myself was never a dancer, I've had friends who have been and I've been inside these clubs. I know this is not a life of glamour and celebrity.
That was my main dislike of Ivy League. I did enjoy that book but felt many times like the writer was writing about an Oscar party. She prettied the work up to the point where you had to wonder if it was all real. I mean..she made it almost sound like nirvana at times and although she did not pretty up everything,..there were some dark things described.. there was a bit to much...."this is great" and "hot girls making money" aspects involved in the writing, for me to take it as seriously as I'd have liked.
Not so here. Diablo will take the blinders off any rose colored glasses wearing gal. Her writing is punchy and quick, an homage to gritty Rocker girl Prose and quirky Film maker. One thing's for sure. Her style is utterly unique.
So I sure learned alot. For example..and I will keep this part brief..I never knew Phone sex operators get scripts or that Peep show girls have "day shifts". Also there are the strip clubs. Diablo worked at several and the one thing they all appear to have in common was their seeming desire to rip the girls off as much as possible.
So it was a wild and furious read and while I enjoyed it, I changed my mind about giving it a four for one main reason.
I did not get the depth I wanted. It is a pretty short book and I never really found out WHY she chooses to become a stripper. I also never got the sense of the other gals in the business. Ivy league did that really good as you did get the sense of the other workers as their own individual selves. Not so here. Most were in it only briefly and most felt like caricatures..I never really felt I knew them
I wish the book had been longer. I am very impressed at the self depreciation that Diablo has which is something Ivy League never had. That writer seemed obsessed with her own beauty to the point where it felt like I was reading a love letter from the author to herself. Not so in Candy Girl.
Diablo Is unafraid to poke fun at herself, at others, at just about everyone and everything, ( which at first annoyed me and then intrigued me and then had me roaring with laughter.) And her musings were at times painful. I could relate much more to her then the writer of Ivy League.
In closing..if you like gritty reads that are edgy to the core and are interested in the subject matter, this might be for you. I mean it IS fascinating but not for the faint of heart, not this book. It is good to know she got out of that life and became an award winning film maker. Her writing of this book makes clear her creativity and is worth reading just for that.
March 15, 2008
Diablo Cody wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for the smart and funny movie Juno. As one might expect, her memoir about a year spent working as a stripper is also smart and funny, but much, much harder edged.
Cody was working as an office drone in Minneapolis when she spontaneously decided to try out "Amateur Night" at a nearby strip dive. Though her first attempt garnered her all of nine dollars, she was so fascinated by the world she saw she got herself put on the schedule at an upscale strip club.
Driven in part by a last-ditch rebellious desire to escape the cubicle farm hell of "respectable adulthood" as well as by an urge to master the secrets of a mysterious profession in which successful dancers could make thousands of dollars a night, Cody worked in half a dozen different clubs. In her quest for sex-industry success, she also transformed herself from a pink-haired, punk nerd girl into a fake blond with hair extensions, lacquered death nails and more make-up than a circus clown.
Cody is unflinchingly honest as she describes the stripping profession from the inside. Earning a living by removing one's clothes, it turns out, is nowhere near as easy as one might presume. Bored customers, passive-aggressive DJ's, and extortionist club quota policies that can leave dancers in debt to the house at the end of a slow night are just a few of the challenges she had to overcome. Cody eventually figured out how to play the game well enough to sock away a down payment on a house, but that cash came at the expense of physical and emotional exhaustion, not to mention permanent foot damage from those towering stripper shoes.
While Cody's smart insights into this unfamiliar, forbidden world make for fascinating reading, much of what she relates is so graphic there were places I learned more than I wanted to about what really goes on behind those blackened windows. There is a decidedly un-sexy reality behind the cold, hard commercialization of sex, one that even Diablo Cody's skilled storytelling and punchy humor is hard pressed to balance out.
Cody was working as an office drone in Minneapolis when she spontaneously decided to try out "Amateur Night" at a nearby strip dive. Though her first attempt garnered her all of nine dollars, she was so fascinated by the world she saw she got herself put on the schedule at an upscale strip club.
Driven in part by a last-ditch rebellious desire to escape the cubicle farm hell of "respectable adulthood" as well as by an urge to master the secrets of a mysterious profession in which successful dancers could make thousands of dollars a night, Cody worked in half a dozen different clubs. In her quest for sex-industry success, she also transformed herself from a pink-haired, punk nerd girl into a fake blond with hair extensions, lacquered death nails and more make-up than a circus clown.
Cody is unflinchingly honest as she describes the stripping profession from the inside. Earning a living by removing one's clothes, it turns out, is nowhere near as easy as one might presume. Bored customers, passive-aggressive DJ's, and extortionist club quota policies that can leave dancers in debt to the house at the end of a slow night are just a few of the challenges she had to overcome. Cody eventually figured out how to play the game well enough to sock away a down payment on a house, but that cash came at the expense of physical and emotional exhaustion, not to mention permanent foot damage from those towering stripper shoes.
While Cody's smart insights into this unfamiliar, forbidden world make for fascinating reading, much of what she relates is so graphic there were places I learned more than I wanted to about what really goes on behind those blackened windows. There is a decidedly un-sexy reality behind the cold, hard commercialization of sex, one that even Diablo Cody's skilled storytelling and punchy humor is hard pressed to balance out.
January 1, 2008
So why does Diablo Cody spend a year stripping? Well, because she was bored with her all-too-ordinary life, and wanted to be rebellious. At least, that's what I think she meant, in her last chapter where she sums things up. And that kind of spoils the book for me. If she needed the money, if she had a habit she needed to support - you know, your more everyday reasons for getting into stripping. Or if she was introduced to it by a friend, rather than ardently pursuing it herself. But her reasons were so flimsy that I kept wondering why on earth she kept going back to these strip joints, and getting ripped off by management.
The little window into the stripping life is kind of interesting, but without much reflection as to what it meant to Cody, or to her co-strippers, there's not a lot of insight to be gained from this book. Cody's dialogue (at least, the dialogue she's writing for herself) is painfully self-conscious and witty. Yeah, we get it, you're the educated stripper! You're incredible. Candy Girl is fluff without much substance.
The little window into the stripping life is kind of interesting, but without much reflection as to what it meant to Cody, or to her co-strippers, there's not a lot of insight to be gained from this book. Cody's dialogue (at least, the dialogue she's writing for herself) is painfully self-conscious and witty. Yeah, we get it, you're the educated stripper! You're incredible. Candy Girl is fluff without much substance.
August 18, 2008
Self-involved, overeducated, privileged girl in the throes of post-collegiate depression decides really self-consciously to take a walk on the wild side. Yawn. a) the side is not that wild, and she's not the real deal anyway and b) who cares? Only the titillating subject matter (and haven't we all wondered about the economics of being an 'exotic dancer'?) could have made this book such a hit with the crowds. The writing itself was pretty painful...the author doesn't let a paragraph go by without an appropriately self-conscious figure of speech (Look, ma! I made a simile! With a pop-culture reference!). It's like she's trying to hit a quota or something. Yikes.
February 26, 2009
This was a very interesting book about the world of stripping, written in Cody's unique voice. It is not for the prudish, however, especially the part about when she worked as "booth doll" at a place called Sexworld. Enough said.
January 9, 2008
I picked this book up for a couple of reasons; first, I keep hearing buzz about Diablo Cody, who wrote the screenplay for Juno, and second, because I spent several years waitressing/bartending/DJ-ing at a Deja Vu club in San Diego. I know that SD is unique in its approach to "gentlemen's" clubs- clean to the extreme, entertainer's licenses and all- so I'm always interested to hear stories about what the industry is like in other parts of the country (Cody dances in Minneapolis). I figured since this was a memoir, maybe for once there would be a realistic depiction of a strip club instead of the dreck you see in movies like Striptease and Showgirls.
Candy Girl is and isn't that depiction. Cody admits that she never quite fit in at the clubs where she danced. She isn't a good dancer, doesn't put much effort into her appearance, and she doesn't ever connect with the other dancers or staff at the clubs. She is almost an outsider looking clinically in, an undercover blogger who is in the clubs because she's looking for a "transgressive experience." Reading her descriptions of her co-workers, I felt like I was reading about an anthropologist describing exotic creatures, rather than someone who was truly one of the "peelers" talking about her experiences.
Cody does, however, describe the inner workings of a club fairly accurately. This is the first time I've ever seen the payout system really addressed- if anything, I'd like strip club patrons to read the book, so they understand why it's important to pay the girls and to tip them. I also appreciated that Cody didn't stick to just the high-end clubs; she ventures from the upscale Scheik's to the grimy arcades of an adult superstore, and she does embrace her time in these places fully. I just wish that the tone of the book had embraced the story she was telling in the same way.
Overall, though, I really liked Cody's narrative voice. She has a very clever way with words, and I read the book mostly in one go, largely due to the almost conversational style in which it was written. I would absolutely read another book by her, and I do want to see Juno. If I put aside my own concerns about the strip club industry and how the people who work in the clubs are depicted, the book was quite good. It just wasn't totally what I was hoping for.
Candy Girl is and isn't that depiction. Cody admits that she never quite fit in at the clubs where she danced. She isn't a good dancer, doesn't put much effort into her appearance, and she doesn't ever connect with the other dancers or staff at the clubs. She is almost an outsider looking clinically in, an undercover blogger who is in the clubs because she's looking for a "transgressive experience." Reading her descriptions of her co-workers, I felt like I was reading about an anthropologist describing exotic creatures, rather than someone who was truly one of the "peelers" talking about her experiences.
Cody does, however, describe the inner workings of a club fairly accurately. This is the first time I've ever seen the payout system really addressed- if anything, I'd like strip club patrons to read the book, so they understand why it's important to pay the girls and to tip them. I also appreciated that Cody didn't stick to just the high-end clubs; she ventures from the upscale Scheik's to the grimy arcades of an adult superstore, and she does embrace her time in these places fully. I just wish that the tone of the book had embraced the story she was telling in the same way.
Overall, though, I really liked Cody's narrative voice. She has a very clever way with words, and I read the book mostly in one go, largely due to the almost conversational style in which it was written. I would absolutely read another book by her, and I do want to see Juno. If I put aside my own concerns about the strip club industry and how the people who work in the clubs are depicted, the book was quite good. It just wasn't totally what I was hoping for.
January 20, 2009
Wow, this was really poorly written. Which is weird, since this is the woman who wrote the screenplay for Juno - which was fantastic. To be fair, I think the book is best described as a train wreck. Terribly written, unnecessarily graphic (I recognize that it's a book about stripping, and some things need to be graphic to get the point across, but there is absolutely no need to describe a woman's brown lip liner as 'scat-colored' - that's just nasty.) ... but I couldn't look away. I learned some things that were interesting, how the money changes hands at strip clubs, who gets what percentage, etc. What the different rooms and types of dances are... How strange some people really are. But, I have to imagine that a book written on this topic by a good writer would be significantly more interesting to read than this one.
October 28, 2008
Cody's writing is funny to me in the same way as Chelsea Handler's books, or even the stand-up comedy of Dane Cook, in that the stories they tell aren't necessarily funny, but the way they're told, the delivery itself, makes them exceptional. Word choices, phrasing, going out of your way to make everything count and pack as much punch as possible into each sentence, casting all generic bits to the side. I just like people who put forth a lot of effort to amuse me, and squeeze whatever humor they can out of everything they write about. I especially like that she makes up her own terms, such as "clit-pink," "stunt-cunt," and "sales-gays." She makes a lot of literary and pop-culture references like these: "There was a sinewy Russian girl onstage, a trained ballerina who whirled in reckless circles as though the grand prize for effort was a Baptist's severed head," and, "I ordered a vodka Red Bull: upper meets downer in an effervescent hybrid of bubble gum and junkie piss." If you don't think that's funny, then fuck you. What about this: "She was healthy. Cheap. She looked like she'd spent the day roller-skating at the beach, then accidentally pitched face-first into a vat of Bonne Belle warpaint." Or this: "Vagina going once, going twice... SOLD to the fellow in the Timberwolves cap and the Manwich-stained fleece pullover!" Here, read this and tell me if you think it's funny: "I spotted a blonde girl working the floor in an outfit so tight I could clearly see her nipples, labia, individual goose bumps, hair follicles and DNA helix." If that didn't make you at least chuckle inside your head, we will never be friends and you can suck it hard. As an added bonus, there is plenty of dirt on the seedy inner-workings of the Minneapolis world of stripclubs, but the topic itself was probably just chosen because it made easy fodder as a vehicle for Cody's wit. Anyway, she's originally from Chicago, so I was happy to see her win the screenplay Oscar, even though my niece said she was putting herself on suicide watch if "Juno" won best picture.
March 21, 2024
The Girl Buffet
As a 24 year-old college graduate holding a series of entry-level office jobs, Diablo Cody moved from Chicago to Minneapolis to live with her new boyfriend, Jonny. In Minneapolis, Cody continues to be bored with her white-collar day job and with her rather commonplace life. She gradually entered the world of the strip clubs and spent about a year working as an "entertainer". In her short memoir, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper" (2006), Cody tells her story.
The book gets off to a slow start. The book adopts a clever, punchy writing style that at the outset of the story seems affected. We haven't learned enough about the protagonist to make the writing effective. I thought it strained and felt put-on. I got to like the writing style and the book more as it progressed.
The story begins with Cody deciding, on an impulse, to enter an "amateur night" contest at a working-class club on Hennepin Street. From there, she moves to an evening job as a dancer at a club catering to an executive clientele. Both these clubs serve alcohol. In Minneapolis, clubs that serve alcohol are restricted to topless dancing. Some of the scenes in these clubs are tame compared to what follows in the book Cody is awkward as a dancer and has ambiguous confused feelings about her new life and the money it offers.
Cody becomes a dancer at an all-nude club which doesn't serve alcohol. She then takes a job at a place called "Sex World" in which she dances nude one-on-one in a glass-enclosed booth. She returns briefly to dancing at a club and then, burned out, leaves the life of an entertainer. In the interim, Cody has quit her day job, married Jonny, who has been extraordinarily supportive of her efforts, worked towards becoming a good stepmother to Jonny's young child, and used the proceeds from her work as an entertainer to help buy a house. Only near the end of the book does Cody describe her earlier life raised as a Catholic in a suburb of Chicago. Cody is more surprised than the reader that someone with her upbringing found herself a sex worker for a time. Her surprise struck me as due to youth and inexperience.
The book offers convincing descriptions of the clubs and their environs as seen from Cody's standpoint. Cody gives substantial attention to act of the dance - the stages and the music - themselves. In particular, she discusses pole dancing - where the entertainer slides up and down doing gymnastics upon a long metal pole. Cody portrays the exploitative, driven nature of the clubs as the dancers are required to hustle customers incessantly for various types of "private dances" and sometimes end an evening owing the club money. There are interesting portrayals of Cody's relationships with other dancers and with her male clientele. The sleaziness increases as Cody gets deeper into the industry. The most effective scenes in the book are the tawdriest -- those at Déjà vu, the nude club, and at Sex World.
As the book goes on, Cody discusses what the customers get out of the clubs and the nature of her attraction to a business she finds increasingly hard to take. She doesn't have much beyond contempt for her customers. But in a scene near the end of the book, she and Jonny go to a club and an entertainer dances for them. For a moment, this allows Cody to see from the customer's point of view. Cody also comes to characterize the life of the clubs as a "girl buffet" where "girls that could halt midday traffic at Nicollet Mall were rejected by fat guys wearing Zubaz." (p.196) Cody concludes: "I hated the girl buffet. I deserve better presentation, I thought. We all did". (Id.)
Cody has written a good tough-minded book on her experience in the sex industry which left her both fascinated and repelled. I had the same reaction to her portrayal of "the girl buffet".
Robin Friedman
As a 24 year-old college graduate holding a series of entry-level office jobs, Diablo Cody moved from Chicago to Minneapolis to live with her new boyfriend, Jonny. In Minneapolis, Cody continues to be bored with her white-collar day job and with her rather commonplace life. She gradually entered the world of the strip clubs and spent about a year working as an "entertainer". In her short memoir, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper" (2006), Cody tells her story.
The book gets off to a slow start. The book adopts a clever, punchy writing style that at the outset of the story seems affected. We haven't learned enough about the protagonist to make the writing effective. I thought it strained and felt put-on. I got to like the writing style and the book more as it progressed.
The story begins with Cody deciding, on an impulse, to enter an "amateur night" contest at a working-class club on Hennepin Street. From there, she moves to an evening job as a dancer at a club catering to an executive clientele. Both these clubs serve alcohol. In Minneapolis, clubs that serve alcohol are restricted to topless dancing. Some of the scenes in these clubs are tame compared to what follows in the book Cody is awkward as a dancer and has ambiguous confused feelings about her new life and the money it offers.
Cody becomes a dancer at an all-nude club which doesn't serve alcohol. She then takes a job at a place called "Sex World" in which she dances nude one-on-one in a glass-enclosed booth. She returns briefly to dancing at a club and then, burned out, leaves the life of an entertainer. In the interim, Cody has quit her day job, married Jonny, who has been extraordinarily supportive of her efforts, worked towards becoming a good stepmother to Jonny's young child, and used the proceeds from her work as an entertainer to help buy a house. Only near the end of the book does Cody describe her earlier life raised as a Catholic in a suburb of Chicago. Cody is more surprised than the reader that someone with her upbringing found herself a sex worker for a time. Her surprise struck me as due to youth and inexperience.
The book offers convincing descriptions of the clubs and their environs as seen from Cody's standpoint. Cody gives substantial attention to act of the dance - the stages and the music - themselves. In particular, she discusses pole dancing - where the entertainer slides up and down doing gymnastics upon a long metal pole. Cody portrays the exploitative, driven nature of the clubs as the dancers are required to hustle customers incessantly for various types of "private dances" and sometimes end an evening owing the club money. There are interesting portrayals of Cody's relationships with other dancers and with her male clientele. The sleaziness increases as Cody gets deeper into the industry. The most effective scenes in the book are the tawdriest -- those at Déjà vu, the nude club, and at Sex World.
As the book goes on, Cody discusses what the customers get out of the clubs and the nature of her attraction to a business she finds increasingly hard to take. She doesn't have much beyond contempt for her customers. But in a scene near the end of the book, she and Jonny go to a club and an entertainer dances for them. For a moment, this allows Cody to see from the customer's point of view. Cody also comes to characterize the life of the clubs as a "girl buffet" where "girls that could halt midday traffic at Nicollet Mall were rejected by fat guys wearing Zubaz." (p.196) Cody concludes: "I hated the girl buffet. I deserve better presentation, I thought. We all did". (Id.)
Cody has written a good tough-minded book on her experience in the sex industry which left her both fascinated and repelled. I had the same reaction to her portrayal of "the girl buffet".
Robin Friedman
January 9, 2008
a couple of years ago, i read most of the third-wave feminist and post-feminist sex-worker-positive books available. this book, however, came out in 2006, well after my interest in the industry (& my own career) had waned, so it never made its way across my nightstand. recently, diablo cody wrote a script for a movie called juno, and this movie's release reminded me that i had never tackled candy girl.
fortunately, cody skips a lot of the critical theory, politicizing, philosophizing, and intense personal scrutiny that bogs down a number of her predecessors. some people might find this to be inadequate, but i appreciated her assumptive tone - OF COURSE we've already thought about the feminist implications of the skin trade, reclaimed our feminist guilt and dirty words like slut. we read carol queen, saw annie sprinkle's cervix, applauded the scarlet harlot, and now we just want to hear about your experiences taking it off for $billz in Minneapolis, with an appreciation for some rock n roll, wry commentary, and some humor.
not so good if you are trying to write a term paper or prepare for a debate with your stripper-hating father-in-law over holiday dinner. it's kind of an entertaining read if you're into that lapdancing self-conscious memoir.
fortunately, cody skips a lot of the critical theory, politicizing, philosophizing, and intense personal scrutiny that bogs down a number of her predecessors. some people might find this to be inadequate, but i appreciated her assumptive tone - OF COURSE we've already thought about the feminist implications of the skin trade, reclaimed our feminist guilt and dirty words like slut. we read carol queen, saw annie sprinkle's cervix, applauded the scarlet harlot, and now we just want to hear about your experiences taking it off for $billz in Minneapolis, with an appreciation for some rock n roll, wry commentary, and some humor.
not so good if you are trying to write a term paper or prepare for a debate with your stripper-hating father-in-law over holiday dinner. it's kind of an entertaining read if you're into that lapdancing self-conscious memoir.
August 2, 2024
finally finished it but not recommended
March 30, 2008
I'm not crazy about her writing style - way too many similes for me, and they seemed so consciously couched (not effortless), that they stuck out. And, anyone who uses the phrase "arms akimbo" (last time I ran across this was in my historical romance phase in 7th grade), well - that's just silly.
As for the subject matter-
I learned it's a fuzzy line between being a stripper and a prostitute. Both involve getting a guy off - the former in his pants, the latter in one of your orifices. I was curious how the stripping affected her sex life with her boyfriend (there is a reference to an "increasingly unresponsive" body when she was working at the peep show, where she basically masturbated for her 6-hour shifts), but this isn't addressed. I just got the impression of fuzzy cuddliness with her boyfriend when she arrived home at 4 a.m. Also, it was interesting to see the slippery slope of the whole sex industry. She starts stripping at a place in which she remains partially covered and then goes to another where it's all nude, flashing her crouch with abandon (something she couldn't have imagined earlier in the book), and then ends up at the aforementioned peepshow where she masturbates behind plexiglass, while some guy jacks off on the other side. I also naively didn't realize about all the back rooms at strip clubs, too, where guys pay progressively more money to get jacked off in closer and closer approximations to the "normal" sex act. And then some, I'm sure. There is a scene in which she does the most she's ever done for money but, it's a lot of innuendo in a dark room. Given her frankness everywhere else, I found this to be a little coy.
As for the subject matter-
I learned it's a fuzzy line between being a stripper and a prostitute. Both involve getting a guy off - the former in his pants, the latter in one of your orifices. I was curious how the stripping affected her sex life with her boyfriend (there is a reference to an "increasingly unresponsive" body when she was working at the peep show, where she basically masturbated for her 6-hour shifts), but this isn't addressed. I just got the impression of fuzzy cuddliness with her boyfriend when she arrived home at 4 a.m. Also, it was interesting to see the slippery slope of the whole sex industry. She starts stripping at a place in which she remains partially covered and then goes to another where it's all nude, flashing her crouch with abandon (something she couldn't have imagined earlier in the book), and then ends up at the aforementioned peepshow where she masturbates behind plexiglass, while some guy jacks off on the other side. I also naively didn't realize about all the back rooms at strip clubs, too, where guys pay progressively more money to get jacked off in closer and closer approximations to the "normal" sex act. And then some, I'm sure. There is a scene in which she does the most she's ever done for money but, it's a lot of innuendo in a dark room. Given her frankness everywhere else, I found this to be a little coy.
September 19, 2010
I find it difficult to take seriously professional writers who write paragraphs like "Thursday came too quickly; there´s a paucity of daylight hours during a long Northern winter and the days run together like the plasmic globs in an egg timer". Come on, my poor eyes! And this is just an example, the first chapters are hard hard going, the writing is not just purple, but purple-with-glitter on top and maybe leopard print fake fur trimming it. Being very indie and alternative does not make it tolerable nor ironical, just makes it bad writing with pretensions. The writing does gets a bit (relatively) simpler and better as the book progresses. Though the dialogue is always very precious and the author obviously has an addiction for adjectives.
My other big big problem is with how shallow the book is. I do not mean shallowness of intent, on what the book is supposed to be about. This is addressed in the last chapter (pompously called coda, but hey that is the type of writer the author is) and that acknowledgment is good. She was writing a for kicks prurient account of her career as a stripper, ok I get it, like an extra long story on a racy woman´s magazine. I am not condemning her intent to write an account without philosophizing or moralizing but the fact is that by being longer than a magazine story, by having many more details and characters some more *thought* is required and that is the shallowness I meant.
Some of her thinking comes out as seriously, well lacking better words, not deep thinking. Examples, using seriously phrases like "I wished those men would stay home and hire prostitutes , rather than coming into the club and demanding high-friction dances" and the quite unbelievable (and IMO unforgivable) "I was never molested as a child, probably because I wasn´t very attractive".
Another thing which bugged me was, since she chose to speak of her private life, she is rather coy about it. No details of what exactly she was doing with a russian speaking client, no criticism of her boyfriend or the last club she worked in when surely there must have been some negative moments, when finally addressing involvement in her boyfriend´s divorce, addressing it all ironically and skipping over details. Her introspection in this book seems to be only about her motivations for stripping and nothing else, even when related. And that makes it a very limited, and I feel not very honest, reading experience.
My other big big problem is with how shallow the book is. I do not mean shallowness of intent, on what the book is supposed to be about. This is addressed in the last chapter (pompously called coda, but hey that is the type of writer the author is) and that acknowledgment is good. She was writing a for kicks prurient account of her career as a stripper, ok I get it, like an extra long story on a racy woman´s magazine. I am not condemning her intent to write an account without philosophizing or moralizing but the fact is that by being longer than a magazine story, by having many more details and characters some more *thought* is required and that is the shallowness I meant.
Some of her thinking comes out as seriously, well lacking better words, not deep thinking. Examples, using seriously phrases like "I wished those men would stay home and hire prostitutes , rather than coming into the club and demanding high-friction dances" and the quite unbelievable (and IMO unforgivable) "I was never molested as a child, probably because I wasn´t very attractive".
Another thing which bugged me was, since she chose to speak of her private life, she is rather coy about it. No details of what exactly she was doing with a russian speaking client, no criticism of her boyfriend or the last club she worked in when surely there must have been some negative moments, when finally addressing involvement in her boyfriend´s divorce, addressing it all ironically and skipping over details. Her introspection in this book seems to be only about her motivations for stripping and nothing else, even when related. And that makes it a very limited, and I feel not very honest, reading experience.
May 22, 2008
This wasn't superbly written, sometimes it felt like I was getting slammed over the head repetitively with crass metaphors; which I loved, being a crass sailor swearing trooper myself. I also felt like I had ADD, spinning rapidly through a year of someone's life, jumping from person to experience to person without too much depth; or personal insight. But, the observations of Cody's time as a stripper are fascinating and I couldn't put the book down.
I read it in one sitting, rather enthralled but I still didn't really know how Cody felt about anything, other than her feet being sore. It was nice reading about people though, I was worried it was going to be yet another drug-addled, fucked up childhood style memoir. It wasn't, Cody is actually a rather ballsy, in-control kinda lady and she wields a hilarious tale.
I gotta admit, I loved reading it. I didn't even notice sentence structure or grammar, spelling or punctuation like I usually do; because I was so busy being told stories. Not saying my grammar/etc is good, because it's not, it's horrid. Just sometimes I get so bored by books that I can't help but be a matyr and criticise. And hell, after years - I'm still a mixed pot of what I think of the sex industry in relation to feminism.
But putting all that aside, I had a big fat crush on this bad-girl who's made it in so many ways, she's fascinating, funny, unbelievably rude and crude and brash and shameless and that makes for entertaining reading.
I read it in one sitting, rather enthralled but I still didn't really know how Cody felt about anything, other than her feet being sore. It was nice reading about people though, I was worried it was going to be yet another drug-addled, fucked up childhood style memoir. It wasn't, Cody is actually a rather ballsy, in-control kinda lady and she wields a hilarious tale.
I gotta admit, I loved reading it. I didn't even notice sentence structure or grammar, spelling or punctuation like I usually do; because I was so busy being told stories. Not saying my grammar/etc is good, because it's not, it's horrid. Just sometimes I get so bored by books that I can't help but be a matyr and criticise. And hell, after years - I'm still a mixed pot of what I think of the sex industry in relation to feminism.
But putting all that aside, I had a big fat crush on this bad-girl who's made it in so many ways, she's fascinating, funny, unbelievably rude and crude and brash and shameless and that makes for entertaining reading.
June 26, 2013
This is one of those faux memoirs, like when a privileged white person pretends to be black or poor or mentally ill to tell the rest of us what it's like - instead of us just listening to people who actually are those things.
Like an imposter who spends a year in a mental institution for research, all the while writing about how these people are "crazy" & how the author by comparison is not, this privileged college graduate with a reliable job decided to cash in on this voyeuristic, judgmental account of women who have no other choices.
Don't expect to gain any insight whatsoever about why women strip or what it's like for them. She was merely doing it as a social experiment, to have a book topic. And she was the least empathetic narrator I've ever come across, using the experience to say awful things about women she never took the time to know. She doesn't tell their true story or her own, she just writes a book of mean & petty punch lines.
Hard to believe a woman wrote this misogynistic bullying. Towards the end, when she feels the backlash of working in a peep show from female customers in a sex shop, she says "girls can be so mean." She says it with no sense of irony. She does not acknowledge that she has been acting the same way over the past year with her "Strippers are dumb, but I'm not! I'm an UNLIKELY stripper!" attitude, or her countless nasty remarks about other girls' appearance.
She tries to hastily end things by saying she quit stripping because women "deserve better" - despite the fact that she has painted these women as trash deserving her scorn. It's the most disingenuous ending of all time, but I bet her editor told her it needed closure. She could hardly be truthful, and admit she quit because she had enough material for her book, or because she didn't enjoy stripping & wasn't cut out for it. She also doesn't acknowledge that she, unlike most strippers, actually had the option of quitting. Deserving or not, many are just doing what they have to in order to survive. Others actually love what they do, and possess a talent for dancing, entertaining & conversing with men that the author didn't. She is the last person who should've wrote this book.
Lastly, she's a terrible writer. Something tells me that if she edited out all the clunky metaphors, pop culture references, hipster speak, thesaurus words & sick jokes, she'd be exposed as someone who has nothing to say. Even if she ever did have anything worth sharing, she still wouldn't have the talent to do so. But lucky for her, these gimmicks and controversial topic like sex work were enough to sell. Sex sells, after all.
Like an imposter who spends a year in a mental institution for research, all the while writing about how these people are "crazy" & how the author by comparison is not, this privileged college graduate with a reliable job decided to cash in on this voyeuristic, judgmental account of women who have no other choices.
Don't expect to gain any insight whatsoever about why women strip or what it's like for them. She was merely doing it as a social experiment, to have a book topic. And she was the least empathetic narrator I've ever come across, using the experience to say awful things about women she never took the time to know. She doesn't tell their true story or her own, she just writes a book of mean & petty punch lines.
Hard to believe a woman wrote this misogynistic bullying. Towards the end, when she feels the backlash of working in a peep show from female customers in a sex shop, she says "girls can be so mean." She says it with no sense of irony. She does not acknowledge that she has been acting the same way over the past year with her "Strippers are dumb, but I'm not! I'm an UNLIKELY stripper!" attitude, or her countless nasty remarks about other girls' appearance.
She tries to hastily end things by saying she quit stripping because women "deserve better" - despite the fact that she has painted these women as trash deserving her scorn. It's the most disingenuous ending of all time, but I bet her editor told her it needed closure. She could hardly be truthful, and admit she quit because she had enough material for her book, or because she didn't enjoy stripping & wasn't cut out for it. She also doesn't acknowledge that she, unlike most strippers, actually had the option of quitting. Deserving or not, many are just doing what they have to in order to survive. Others actually love what they do, and possess a talent for dancing, entertaining & conversing with men that the author didn't. She is the last person who should've wrote this book.
Lastly, she's a terrible writer. Something tells me that if she edited out all the clunky metaphors, pop culture references, hipster speak, thesaurus words & sick jokes, she'd be exposed as someone who has nothing to say. Even if she ever did have anything worth sharing, she still wouldn't have the talent to do so. But lucky for her, these gimmicks and controversial topic like sex work were enough to sell. Sex sells, after all.
December 10, 2009
3 Reasons You've Might Have Heard of Diablo Cody
1. She wrote the screenplay for Juno and won a screenwriting Oscar for it.
2. This summer, she wrote the screenplay for Jennifer's Body. It is doubtful she will win an Oscar for it.
3. She writes a column for Entertainment Weekly.
With that kind of resume, you may wonder why she was able to write a memoir about a year spent working as a stripper. Well, before she "hit it big," Ms. Cody was living in Minneapolis and working a "straight" job at an advertising agency. On a lark, she decided to strip at local strip club's amateur night to satisfy her curiosity about what it was like. The adrenaline rush (and the money) hooked her, and she ended up spending a year stripping at various clubs and working in a sex shop and as a phone sex worker.
5 Things I Learned About Being A Successful Stripper From This Book
1. Blondes get bigger tips so it is worthwhile investing in a wig.
2. Wear white for your stripping outfit.
3. Learn how to work the pole.
4. Pick your spotlight songs carefully. (Ms. Cody thoughtfully provides a list of good songs and bad songs to strip to in the book.)
5. Be prepared to sell more than lap dances. Many clubs expect you to sell a certain amount of drinks as well.
Ms. Cody is very candid about what it takes to be a stripper. She breaks down how the various clubs worked, explains the stripper hierarchy, describes what kind of strippers tend to earn the most, and offers (often hilarious) advice about the ins and outs of being a stripper. The book is very humorous and often very crude, and Ms. Cody doesn't take herself too seriously most of the time. It was a kick to get an inside glimpse at a world that most of us will never explore. The fact that Ms. Cody chose to pursue this lifestyle and wasn't forced into it makes a big difference as her story is one of a woman in control of what she is doing—not a woman who was forced by circumstances to pursue this line of work. Plus it helps that Ms. Cody is a darn good writer with a direct, conversational writing style. However, she didn't walk away from the experience completely unscathed.
3 Most Disturbing Things I Learned In the Book
1. There are really really disgusting freaky people in the world. (I guess I knew that but hearing about some of the people who would come into the sex shop where she worked toward the end of her stripping career was really disturbing. Really disturbing.)
2. If you strip for years, you'll probably end up with "hammertoes, coke-worn sinuses and intimacy disorders."
3. You cannot work in the sex industry without starting to lose some element of your humanity.
Her stripping career ends abruptly one day when she finds herself unable to stop crying. Allow her to explain:
"It wasn't the nudity or the grinding or any sex-phobic moral issue that was pinning me to my chair in a moment of blinding epiphany. It was actually the opposite. The one-on-one aspects of the industry made sense; it was the whole girls-in-bulk thing that repulsed me. Hundreds of girls on the floor at some clubs, all reduced to begging dogs for an army of smug little emperors. The rules of attraction were reversed at a strip club. Girls that could halt traffic at Nicollet Mall were rejected by fat guys wearing Zubaz. Joe Punchcard with $20 could toy with several dancers over the course of an afternoon, finally selecting the one who'd receive the dubious privilege of entertaining him for three and a half minutes. The rejected girls, regardless of how loved they were by husbands or paramours or infants at home, would feel worthless for an instant, and all because of ol' Joe. Those instances multiplied, and soon everyone felt like creeping crud, regardless of how much ego they projected."
3 Reasons To Read the Book
1. Diablo Cody has a conversational, honest writing style that is entertaining, funny and easy to read.
2. The book offers an inside glimpse into a world that not many people have experienced and written about.
3. You'll laugh out loud quite a few times.
3 Reasons Not To Read the Book
1. If explicit writing about sex and working in the sex industry isn't your thing.
2. If you are offended by the concept of strippers and strip clubs in general.
3. If you find bawdy, crude and explicit sex talk disturbing.
I really enjoyed this book and I'm giving it 4 stars. However, due to the subject matter, it isn't a book for everyone so I can't recommend it wholeheartedly. I suspect you already know if you want to read this book anyway.
1. She wrote the screenplay for Juno and won a screenwriting Oscar for it.
2. This summer, she wrote the screenplay for Jennifer's Body. It is doubtful she will win an Oscar for it.
3. She writes a column for Entertainment Weekly.
With that kind of resume, you may wonder why she was able to write a memoir about a year spent working as a stripper. Well, before she "hit it big," Ms. Cody was living in Minneapolis and working a "straight" job at an advertising agency. On a lark, she decided to strip at local strip club's amateur night to satisfy her curiosity about what it was like. The adrenaline rush (and the money) hooked her, and she ended up spending a year stripping at various clubs and working in a sex shop and as a phone sex worker.
5 Things I Learned About Being A Successful Stripper From This Book
1. Blondes get bigger tips so it is worthwhile investing in a wig.
2. Wear white for your stripping outfit.
3. Learn how to work the pole.
4. Pick your spotlight songs carefully. (Ms. Cody thoughtfully provides a list of good songs and bad songs to strip to in the book.)
5. Be prepared to sell more than lap dances. Many clubs expect you to sell a certain amount of drinks as well.
Ms. Cody is very candid about what it takes to be a stripper. She breaks down how the various clubs worked, explains the stripper hierarchy, describes what kind of strippers tend to earn the most, and offers (often hilarious) advice about the ins and outs of being a stripper. The book is very humorous and often very crude, and Ms. Cody doesn't take herself too seriously most of the time. It was a kick to get an inside glimpse at a world that most of us will never explore. The fact that Ms. Cody chose to pursue this lifestyle and wasn't forced into it makes a big difference as her story is one of a woman in control of what she is doing—not a woman who was forced by circumstances to pursue this line of work. Plus it helps that Ms. Cody is a darn good writer with a direct, conversational writing style. However, she didn't walk away from the experience completely unscathed.
3 Most Disturbing Things I Learned In the Book
1. There are really really disgusting freaky people in the world. (I guess I knew that but hearing about some of the people who would come into the sex shop where she worked toward the end of her stripping career was really disturbing. Really disturbing.)
2. If you strip for years, you'll probably end up with "hammertoes, coke-worn sinuses and intimacy disorders."
3. You cannot work in the sex industry without starting to lose some element of your humanity.
Her stripping career ends abruptly one day when she finds herself unable to stop crying. Allow her to explain:
"It wasn't the nudity or the grinding or any sex-phobic moral issue that was pinning me to my chair in a moment of blinding epiphany. It was actually the opposite. The one-on-one aspects of the industry made sense; it was the whole girls-in-bulk thing that repulsed me. Hundreds of girls on the floor at some clubs, all reduced to begging dogs for an army of smug little emperors. The rules of attraction were reversed at a strip club. Girls that could halt traffic at Nicollet Mall were rejected by fat guys wearing Zubaz. Joe Punchcard with $20 could toy with several dancers over the course of an afternoon, finally selecting the one who'd receive the dubious privilege of entertaining him for three and a half minutes. The rejected girls, regardless of how loved they were by husbands or paramours or infants at home, would feel worthless for an instant, and all because of ol' Joe. Those instances multiplied, and soon everyone felt like creeping crud, regardless of how much ego they projected."
3 Reasons To Read the Book
1. Diablo Cody has a conversational, honest writing style that is entertaining, funny and easy to read.
2. The book offers an inside glimpse into a world that not many people have experienced and written about.
3. You'll laugh out loud quite a few times.
3 Reasons Not To Read the Book
1. If explicit writing about sex and working in the sex industry isn't your thing.
2. If you are offended by the concept of strippers and strip clubs in general.
3. If you find bawdy, crude and explicit sex talk disturbing.
I really enjoyed this book and I'm giving it 4 stars. However, due to the subject matter, it isn't a book for everyone so I can't recommend it wholeheartedly. I suspect you already know if you want to read this book anyway.
February 26, 2008
I'm writing this on Oscar Day 2008, and that's a fitting time to consider meteoric screenwriter Diablo Cody's first book. Back in the day, young Cody spent workdays in the beige expanse of cubicle-land, and stumbled upon the world of stripping as she casted about for adventure. The book chronicles her year-long stint taking off her clothes, for money, in one of America's more liberal stripper towns (since no alcohol is served in Minneapolis' strip clubs, a good deal more fabric can come free than you might be used to, in your own locality).
She was interested in pushing her own personal envelope. Already in the midst of major life changes (having moved to Minneapolis to be with her soon-to-be husband), and less bound than many to preconceptions of what makes someone a "likely" stripper, Cody wanted to see just what the world behind the neon would be like, for someone like her. Someone without a lot of childhood trauma. Someone mostly aware of her own hangups and issues. Someone with a reasonably healthy gender philosophy. Someone with a media-studies degree.
And if there's a flaw in the book, that's it: Cody was famously discovered online -- segments of the book first appeared in serialized, short-essay versions. Looking at the finished product, it's as though Cody and her editors didn't make a firm decision about how many of the seams should be allowed to remain, and show, and to what extent the story should be re-structured to be more "book-like."
The early going sparkles with her capacity for language; there are flashy neologisms and verbal excesses just as in the "Juno" screenplay, but behind those are compact, evocative descriptions of places and people. But the strange thing is, the same style of storytelling by small doses that crackled on the screen and made "the Ranch" a daily reading destination works a little against itself in dead-tree form. The fun is still there in every bit, but viewed as an arc the story stubbornly defies expectations about structure, motivation, and Cody's "journey." There is no spoon-fed lesson here; no turning points. It's neither flawlessly smooth nor clearly episodic. It's time for her to do this thing, and then one day it's time to be done. Along the way, there are some key events, and some things get lost, and found. But it's told far more as journalism than Hollywood.
Once I realized I had been stuck in a "typical memoir" rut, the book was just plain fun to read -- and as Dave Letterman says, it's educational. For those with a lurid interest in what goes on backstage, Cody has an unflinching but ultimately sympathetic and matter-of-fact view (the economics of 'paying out' to the strip club management is pretty fascinating, actually). For those who muse about feminism and fetishism and the weird ways they can intertwine in our culture, she muses right along with you. For those who simply want to know what's up with this "former stripper" stuff Hollywood just CAN'T SHUT UP about, here's the deal from the woman herself.
[Full disclosure: I'm a friend as well as a fan. Cody was in Minneapolis writing the book during the period we and mutual friends hung out most Fridays. Discussions of "how was your week?" were a lot of fun.]
She was interested in pushing her own personal envelope. Already in the midst of major life changes (having moved to Minneapolis to be with her soon-to-be husband), and less bound than many to preconceptions of what makes someone a "likely" stripper, Cody wanted to see just what the world behind the neon would be like, for someone like her. Someone without a lot of childhood trauma. Someone mostly aware of her own hangups and issues. Someone with a reasonably healthy gender philosophy. Someone with a media-studies degree.
And if there's a flaw in the book, that's it: Cody was famously discovered online -- segments of the book first appeared in serialized, short-essay versions. Looking at the finished product, it's as though Cody and her editors didn't make a firm decision about how many of the seams should be allowed to remain, and show, and to what extent the story should be re-structured to be more "book-like."
The early going sparkles with her capacity for language; there are flashy neologisms and verbal excesses just as in the "Juno" screenplay, but behind those are compact, evocative descriptions of places and people. But the strange thing is, the same style of storytelling by small doses that crackled on the screen and made "the Ranch" a daily reading destination works a little against itself in dead-tree form. The fun is still there in every bit, but viewed as an arc the story stubbornly defies expectations about structure, motivation, and Cody's "journey." There is no spoon-fed lesson here; no turning points. It's neither flawlessly smooth nor clearly episodic. It's time for her to do this thing, and then one day it's time to be done. Along the way, there are some key events, and some things get lost, and found. But it's told far more as journalism than Hollywood.
Once I realized I had been stuck in a "typical memoir" rut, the book was just plain fun to read -- and as Dave Letterman says, it's educational. For those with a lurid interest in what goes on backstage, Cody has an unflinching but ultimately sympathetic and matter-of-fact view (the economics of 'paying out' to the strip club management is pretty fascinating, actually). For those who muse about feminism and fetishism and the weird ways they can intertwine in our culture, she muses right along with you. For those who simply want to know what's up with this "former stripper" stuff Hollywood just CAN'T SHUT UP about, here's the deal from the woman herself.
[Full disclosure: I'm a friend as well as a fan. Cody was in Minneapolis writing the book during the period we and mutual friends hung out most Fridays. Discussions of "how was your week?" were a lot of fun.]
May 4, 2022
I normally won't dabble in non-fiction, especially a memoir, but I have to admit this book caught my eye. The cover. The premise. I've heard of the name Diablo Cody but didn't know exactly where to place her. So I googled her and found out that she wrote the Academy Award winning screenplay for the movie Juno. Her writing is raw and descriptive and it pulls you in. Just in the few pages of this book I knew I wanted to know more about her year as a stripper.
Candy Girl is a memoir of a 24-year old woman the year she worked as a stripper. She was working at an advertising agency as a copy typist, where she was bored and feeling unsatisfied. Whereas you and I might escape our boredom by reading a book, she stumbled across a seedy strip club and tried out for amateur night. She didn't win but she didn't stop there either. She worked at several clubs in the skin trade, not because she needed the money and couldn't get a "real" job, but because she need to satisfy her inner rebel. She did it for fun. You'd think it would be awkward to scale a pole, window dance and prance around in your birthday suit in front of (and on top of) sober men. That's right. Sober men. Apparently, Minneapolis has an ordinance that states clubs cannot serve alcohol in establishments where the ladies are fully nude.
Candy Girl is an entertaining and funny read by a self-proclaimed sheltered geek, however, it is also very candid and explicit. Diablo is a fascinating woman. She possesses an ever-evolving look and reinvents herself at every chance she gets. When watching interviews of her on YouTube, I didn't recognize her until her name was mentioned. And in case you're wondering (because I was), her birth name is Brook Busey.
Candy Girl is a memoir of a 24-year old woman the year she worked as a stripper. She was working at an advertising agency as a copy typist, where she was bored and feeling unsatisfied. Whereas you and I might escape our boredom by reading a book, she stumbled across a seedy strip club and tried out for amateur night. She didn't win but she didn't stop there either. She worked at several clubs in the skin trade, not because she needed the money and couldn't get a "real" job, but because she need to satisfy her inner rebel. She did it for fun. You'd think it would be awkward to scale a pole, window dance and prance around in your birthday suit in front of (and on top of) sober men. That's right. Sober men. Apparently, Minneapolis has an ordinance that states clubs cannot serve alcohol in establishments where the ladies are fully nude.
Candy Girl is an entertaining and funny read by a self-proclaimed sheltered geek, however, it is also very candid and explicit. Diablo is a fascinating woman. She possesses an ever-evolving look and reinvents herself at every chance she gets. When watching interviews of her on YouTube, I didn't recognize her until her name was mentioned. And in case you're wondering (because I was), her birth name is Brook Busey.
March 23, 2025
This was a shallow and honestly reprehensible readðŸ˜â€”Diablo presents her foray into stripping as a “gap year,â€� a break from her reality as a copy-typist at an ad agency with a financially comfortable background…she cushions her narratives with similes that are either a) wildly offensive and oftentimes dehumanizing to sex workers who come from different circumstances than her or b) bursting at the seams with cultural references that feel saccharine and overplayed.
There was no resolve or period of gainful reflection—instead, when Diablo got tired of her “gap year,� she simply returned to her life in the suburbs, her “experiment� had reached its end…without any depth or nuanced conversation, this retelling feels inappropriate, painting her experience in the sex work industry as a phase when some sex workers don’t have the option to fall back on the same net of financial or circumstantial security…you might wonder why I kept reading (fair question), but I’ve resolved to finish the books I start…this was just all shades of misfire
There was no resolve or period of gainful reflection—instead, when Diablo got tired of her “gap year,� she simply returned to her life in the suburbs, her “experiment� had reached its end…without any depth or nuanced conversation, this retelling feels inappropriate, painting her experience in the sex work industry as a phase when some sex workers don’t have the option to fall back on the same net of financial or circumstantial security…you might wonder why I kept reading (fair question), but I’ve resolved to finish the books I start…this was just all shades of misfire
May 24, 2010
I found the whole thing to be, like I think Diablo Cody is at the core, disingenuous. She keeps harping on the fact she just really didn't know why she became a stripper, it can't be explained, just an adventure or lark, a desire to be naughty. Well, I can tell you what pulled her into it, a need to have something to write a memoir about so she could get published. You can almost imagine how she came to this idea: What can I get a book deal writing about: How about a punk rock fish out of water story with a little bit of sex and a bunch of four letter words and a healthy dose of name checking TV shows of the 80s and hair metal song/videos/bands?
I am not a fan of Diablo Cody's overly hipsterish, try-hardy style in her EW Magazine columns or her screenplays, but I had heard good things about this book and wanted to read it. I had a difficult time getting into the first few chapters, as from the first page, I felt Cody's syle is overwrought with too many pop-culture references and what she thinks is thought to be tough girl witticisms (using many four letter words starting with the letter "c" does not make you as "edgy" as you would like to think it does).
While I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at strip clubs, especially learning about the financial aspects, manditory minimums, the "payout system", etc., overall I could never connect with her or the book as I just didn't like her. I felt that she also spent to much time complaining about what an outsider she is/was. I can never understand how people who spend tons of time, effort and cash to have a "different" style in the ways that Diablo Cody does, then turn around and complain that are treated differently accordingly. I feel that many of the people who chose that personal style, like Diablo at the time she was stripping, are really just presenting a physical manifestation of the childish belief that 'deep down I am truly unique and different on the inside so I must show it to the world on the outside', but it is also a case of LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME, don't EVER STOP LOOKING AT ME.
I feel that Diablo felt that she was above it all, better than the other girls (she isn't from Minnesota, she has a desk job, she went to college, her parents are still boringly married) even as she is working at a sex show where she spends hours doing illegal penetration shows while men masturbate to her through a glass window. I also felt that her relationship with her boyfriend, now husband Johnny, was also phony in its representation. She kept going on and on about how cool he was about her foray into the sex industry, how accepting. I feel that acceptance showed a lack of love and respect for her, I cannot believe there was a total lack of jealousy there, and if so, the lack of jealousy must represent something deeper. I also find it odd that Diablo's insistence that Johnny's detailed interest in everything she did at work being a turn on to him as being a positive. I t is as if she is trying to justify her behavior to the reading audience and not being honest about how that work environment would affect someone's mental state, views of men in general and any romantic relationship one would be in. I would imagine it is more complicated then she was willing to admit or write about. If Johnny really was ok with her making men orgasm in their sweatpants every night during bed dances as long as Diablo could pay for a new car, a new house and things for his daughter then that is something she really ought to look more deeply into.
I have ZERO issues with people working as strippers for whatever reason they so choose, but don't make excuses or not own up to what is really the issue or reason behind your motivations to strip, Diablo.
I am not a fan of Diablo Cody's overly hipsterish, try-hardy style in her EW Magazine columns or her screenplays, but I had heard good things about this book and wanted to read it. I had a difficult time getting into the first few chapters, as from the first page, I felt Cody's syle is overwrought with too many pop-culture references and what she thinks is thought to be tough girl witticisms (using many four letter words starting with the letter "c" does not make you as "edgy" as you would like to think it does).
While I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at strip clubs, especially learning about the financial aspects, manditory minimums, the "payout system", etc., overall I could never connect with her or the book as I just didn't like her. I felt that she also spent to much time complaining about what an outsider she is/was. I can never understand how people who spend tons of time, effort and cash to have a "different" style in the ways that Diablo Cody does, then turn around and complain that are treated differently accordingly. I feel that many of the people who chose that personal style, like Diablo at the time she was stripping, are really just presenting a physical manifestation of the childish belief that 'deep down I am truly unique and different on the inside so I must show it to the world on the outside', but it is also a case of LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME, don't EVER STOP LOOKING AT ME.
I feel that Diablo felt that she was above it all, better than the other girls (she isn't from Minnesota, she has a desk job, she went to college, her parents are still boringly married) even as she is working at a sex show where she spends hours doing illegal penetration shows while men masturbate to her through a glass window. I also felt that her relationship with her boyfriend, now husband Johnny, was also phony in its representation. She kept going on and on about how cool he was about her foray into the sex industry, how accepting. I feel that acceptance showed a lack of love and respect for her, I cannot believe there was a total lack of jealousy there, and if so, the lack of jealousy must represent something deeper. I also find it odd that Diablo's insistence that Johnny's detailed interest in everything she did at work being a turn on to him as being a positive. I t is as if she is trying to justify her behavior to the reading audience and not being honest about how that work environment would affect someone's mental state, views of men in general and any romantic relationship one would be in. I would imagine it is more complicated then she was willing to admit or write about. If Johnny really was ok with her making men orgasm in their sweatpants every night during bed dances as long as Diablo could pay for a new car, a new house and things for his daughter then that is something she really ought to look more deeply into.
I have ZERO issues with people working as strippers for whatever reason they so choose, but don't make excuses or not own up to what is really the issue or reason behind your motivations to strip, Diablo.
December 11, 2023
It's fun and fast read. she's honest, very human and her writing style is though full of made-up adjective it never overflows.
the best part is that a story about stripers these days would have some kind of activist agenda. some feminist or anti-feminism theme trying to preach some life lesson; This is not that. Diablo Cody is just peeling off her life story one layer at a time.
the best part is that a story about stripers these days would have some kind of activist agenda. some feminist or anti-feminism theme trying to preach some life lesson; This is not that. Diablo Cody is just peeling off her life story one layer at a time.
November 23, 2022
I don't know why but I felt like this was a female version of Fight club; an everyday copist decides to start working as a adult entertainer in order to re-invent herself. Cody has certainly found her own voice and some parts made me laugh. Found the book a bit too long though.
December 6, 2015
This was between a 2 and 3 star book in my mind as I was reading it. What pushed it into 2-star territory, ultimately, was this cringey statement near the end of the book:
"Most sex workers (a classification that includes strippers) cite a past incident of sexual abuse in trying to explain the illicit path they've stumbled upon. I have no such justification. I was never molested as a child, probably because I wasn't very attractive."
Um, no? Even if you take the second part of that statement as kind of tongue in cheek (which, given that she later on that page repeats the "I was ugly therefore no one wanted to molest me" thing, in different wording, I don't think it was) the first part seems like...still no? You wanna cite some data for that? That was the first time she mentioned that in the book, it's not like she had a bunch of stories about strippers telling her exactly that, so I'm just wary of where that came from, seemed more like her personal prejudices against sex workers, than her (limited) experience with them, which is honestly how a lot of the book read.
I'm not nitpicking that statement, it's just a good example of the overall feel of the book, which is an "me versus them" kinda outlook, which comes across as holier-than-thou and obnoxious. She falls into the (all too common) small-minded-person kinda trap of seeing *herself* as a dimensional, complicated person, one aspect of which was (for a time) being a stripper. Whereas the other people (strippers) she talks about are stereotyped, one dimensional people. I'm sure if each of THEM wrote a book, they'd reveal themselves as real people too, you know?
Just seems like she didn't really learn anything, which is fine, not everything is deep as shit, fine, but then, why write a book about it? I mean, it is clear from the begining (though she didn't say this) that the main reason she wanted to do this in the first place...was to write about it. I'm not buying her bullshit epiphany at the end (spoilers, kinda?) (and, paraphrasing) which was like "other people become strippers because their life is so troubled, but I did it because my life was so privileged [this word she did actually use, and props to her for at least recognizing this] and I needed to do something crazy and wild".
Once again I'm kinda feeling like I'm rating the author, whose lack of insightful-ness kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Rather than rate the book itself, but in this case, I'm not sure how to separate the two. The book isn't about the sex industry, about strippers (those crazy *other* people she so clearly feels better than and separated from), it's about HER. Individual experience. So who am I too really say what she learned or how she felt, or if she was unfairly judgemental and pigeon-holey of others? It comes across that way, at least. To me.
Sooo. It is kinda interesting. But, all those reasons above kinda made it meh.
Alsooo, there's a hamburger phone reference (heh, Juno foreshadowing kinda?!).
"Most sex workers (a classification that includes strippers) cite a past incident of sexual abuse in trying to explain the illicit path they've stumbled upon. I have no such justification. I was never molested as a child, probably because I wasn't very attractive."
Um, no? Even if you take the second part of that statement as kind of tongue in cheek (which, given that she later on that page repeats the "I was ugly therefore no one wanted to molest me" thing, in different wording, I don't think it was) the first part seems like...still no? You wanna cite some data for that? That was the first time she mentioned that in the book, it's not like she had a bunch of stories about strippers telling her exactly that, so I'm just wary of where that came from, seemed more like her personal prejudices against sex workers, than her (limited) experience with them, which is honestly how a lot of the book read.
I'm not nitpicking that statement, it's just a good example of the overall feel of the book, which is an "me versus them" kinda outlook, which comes across as holier-than-thou and obnoxious. She falls into the (all too common) small-minded-person kinda trap of seeing *herself* as a dimensional, complicated person, one aspect of which was (for a time) being a stripper. Whereas the other people (strippers) she talks about are stereotyped, one dimensional people. I'm sure if each of THEM wrote a book, they'd reveal themselves as real people too, you know?
Just seems like she didn't really learn anything, which is fine, not everything is deep as shit, fine, but then, why write a book about it? I mean, it is clear from the begining (though she didn't say this) that the main reason she wanted to do this in the first place...was to write about it. I'm not buying her bullshit epiphany at the end (spoilers, kinda?) (and, paraphrasing) which was like "other people become strippers because their life is so troubled, but I did it because my life was so privileged [this word she did actually use, and props to her for at least recognizing this] and I needed to do something crazy and wild".
Once again I'm kinda feeling like I'm rating the author, whose lack of insightful-ness kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Rather than rate the book itself, but in this case, I'm not sure how to separate the two. The book isn't about the sex industry, about strippers (those crazy *other* people she so clearly feels better than and separated from), it's about HER. Individual experience. So who am I too really say what she learned or how she felt, or if she was unfairly judgemental and pigeon-holey of others? It comes across that way, at least. To me.
Sooo. It is kinda interesting. But, all those reasons above kinda made it meh.
Alsooo, there's a hamburger phone reference (heh, Juno foreshadowing kinda?!).
September 19, 2016
I didn't want to like Diablo Cody or her memoir but she's just irresistible. I couldn't bring myself to look away from this beautiful train wreck. Cody takes us through her time as a stripper and a "doll girl" and a phone sex operator. I think the appeal of this book, for me, is that I usually regard myself as "wordly" in terms of sex. But the lovely "Cherish" introduced me to fascinating forms of debauchery of which I had never even conceived. Example: One party animal got his rocks off by shining a flashlight up strippers' noses to examine their nasal cavities and the contents thereof. Another guy...well... it's too disgusting for me to even write here. I think a lot of people will dig this book. Those repulsed by EXTREMELY frank talk about sex will want to steer clear.
August 13, 2018
I enjoyed this read very much! For a heavy topic it read very lightly and quickly. The authors humor shone through and really gave me some good laughs
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