Girls get strip act cancelled

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 8

Girls get strip act cancelled

PA Auckland A strip club has abandoned plans for a “schoolgirl” strip act in the face of a threatened picket by S”i from a nearby girls’ 1. Mr Rainton Hastie, proprietor of the Pink Palace of Pleasure, said yesterday that he had no desire to upset local people. “It was just a gimmick, a harmless bit of fun,” he said. “No-one was meant to take it seriously.” Pupils of Auckland Girls’ Grammar School had

planned a week-long protest outside the club to oppose the concept which they said was “sick” and a direct incitement to child abuse. Billed as the Strippergram,. the out-call service offered at $lOO a visit a “schoolgirl” clad in a gym slip and a black suspender belt, with pigtails and a large lollypop. The Strippergram was also performed for patrons at the club. The school pupils, led by a fourth-former, Sally Curtis, said that the service

fuelled power fantasies of the intimidation and control of schoolgirls. “We are intensely angry at the whole idea and some of the advertising has made people think it is schoolgirls who are stripping,” she said. The issue was raised by the school principal, Miss Charmaine Pountney, last week in an assembly talk about the differences between good male-female relationships and abusive or exploitative ones. She said that the Stripper-

gram was a fantasy of child abuse and promoted the image of a nymphette — that girls always “asked for it,” no matter how young they were. Mr Hastie said yesterday, that the club had been doing schoolgirl strips since 1963. Although the “extremely popular” call-out service was no longer available, the show would still be run on stuse. “It is no big deal,” he said. “We have lots of other novelties — girls leaping out of cakes are still a hit.”