I had to read Candy Girl after watching and completely ADORING the movie Juno, the screenplay of which was written by Diablo Cody.
Candy Girl is subtitled "a year in the life of an unlikely stripper" and does exactly what it says on the tin. After moving to Minneapolis, Cody was working in an advertising agency and living with a musician she met on the internet. Bored at work and passing a strip club one day, she wonders what it would be like to strip. And so she volunteers for amateur night.
Cody finds her first experience of stripping both terrifying and exhilarating and soon she's stripping regularly. From stripping she moves on to lapdancing, poledancing and more, eventually working in the Dollhouse, a revolting-sounding peepshow.
Cody's writing is enormously honest and entertaining, but even a couple of weeks after finishing the book, I haven't been able to work out what Cody got out of stripping. She suggests that she did it to challenge and frighten herself, but I didn't find that reasoning entirely convincing.
As I read the book, I argued with myself about whether I was for or against stripping - vacillating between it being a valid way to earn a good living by taking advantage of men's perversions and being, you know, a misogynist and patriarchal disgrace. By the end of Candy Girl I was totally resolved that it's a blight on society and no right-thinking woman should do it willingly. But, of course, I might be wrong.
Oh and remember when I read Good Vibrations and said there was one section that made me sick to my stomach? Well there's a bit in Candy Girl that's (arguably) even worse.
So Candy Girl is absolutely not for the faint-hearted, but it's a thought-provoking and entertaining read.
Rating: 4/5
Like this? Try Good Vibrations by Ayn Carrillo
