Making a Show of It

Chalk it up to the contemporary blessings of a 9.1% unemployment rate and increasingly uninspiring beer ads, but gazing longingly toward the past is hardly a conservatives-only diversion. The urban educated have their fetish for Back Then™, too, as seen most plainly through the celestial ascension of Mad Men and American Apparel.

Even more curious may be burlesque. In an era of on-demand quadruple-penetration shots, the licentious—but not even double-penetrating!—Victorian spectacle is currently one of the most popular forms of live entertainment in New York City. Artist Molly Crabapple (not her real name), a former burlesque model who now oversees an empire of cabaret-themed drawing classes, has had no small part in this.