Stripper To Appear At Edinburgh Fringe
July 11, 2008
False teeth, sagging breasts and varicose veins might not combine in a conventional image of the body beautiful, but a 75-year-old stripper from San Francisco believes that she can storm the Edinburgh Fringe with a show that will explode society's obsession with youthful good looks. Lynn Ruth Miller, a former journalist who has only been stripping for three years, said that she was “living the dream” in an act that celebrates every fold and crease of her body, “revelling in the disasters” that the ageing process wreaks.
“If you want to feel old and inadequate, that's up to you, but there is a choice. I look like an old lady, I know I do, but I never suffer pain, I never get tired and it is so exhilarating to communicate with people. When I'm on stage, I'm talking to the world, saying, ‘Don't sit in your rocking chair - get out there and live',” she said.
For her show, Aging is Amazing, Ms. Miller has devised an eye-catching opening sequence that echoes Samuel Goldwyn's dictum: start with an earthquake and build up to a climax. Emerging to the tune of the Strip Polka, over the next four minutes she sheds a robe and several chemises, to be left standing in front of her audience clad in billowing underwear, elaborately decorated with a fringe, bells and feathers.
Those who have seen her performances are rarely left unmoved. “I swear the audience went completely bonkers when this crazy lady stripped down to her granny panties,” one admirer wrote. Despite this unabashed exhibitionism, Ms Miller describes herself as a good girl with a 1950s mentality. A former teacher and librarian, she spent most of her career working as a newspaper columnist. She loves classical music and her first experience of the Edinburgh Festival was to sit enraptured at symphony concerts at the Usher Hall.
“I've coped with the dips and the valleys and experienced the highs. I've never taken any pills or drugs. I've lived a totally conventional life. And now, if it means taking off my clothes to make people notice me, why not? I'll do it,” said Ms Miller, who has been married twice. She admits that she probably terrifies her former husbands.
Her stage career began less than five years ago after she devised a stand-up comedy act about her experiences as an older woman. In 2005 she was booked to perform at a venue that was also promoting burlesque and decided to embrace this most risqué of art forms. Her strip routine was born.
She made her mark straight away, performing at a birthday celebration by dressing up in a black chemise and stockings and bursting out of a giant cake. Later, performing on stage at an upmarket hotel, she provoked a ripple of emotion from the well-heeled audience by lobbing her underwear at them.
Of course she was younger then, only 72, but she will reprise her bra-throwing routine this year in a second Fringe show, Grannies Gone Wild, in which she also sings a song written by the Sex Pistols. It is all for comic effect but Ms Miller's performances are driven by her hatred of discrimination. “Most comedy springs from anger, and it's ageism that infuriates me. My routines attack the notion that old people don't remember who they are, can't walk up a stair and have to wear nappies,” she said. “I'm thrilled that I'm ageing. I like it all. My show is about all the things that happen to you but I let the audience know I'm still having fun. And I am.”
In Edinburgh's “pubic triangle” - a grubby area of the Old Town notorious for its lap-dancing bars and strip joints - there was scepticism about Ms Miller's act. “In this industry it's horses for courses,” said Jay Drummond, the owner of Hooters bar.
“Certain people like certain things - tall, short, blonde, dark, big boobs, small boobs, fat, thin. It's a weird and wonderful world out there. But I've not had much call for 75-year-olds.”
Philip Walker, of the Campaign Against Age Discrimination in Employment, said that he was fully behind Ms Miller's show.
“Just because you're older doesn't mean you can't live, that you're past it. If she looks good, and she obviously looks good to herself or she wouldn't be doing it, why the hell shouldn't she?” he asked.
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