 So I'm not buff enough to do this video shirtless, but if that's what you came here for, here's a brief montage of me working out that you should probably skip because it's not not going to be impressive. I've never had any real desire to go to a strip club. I mean, I almost worked background on an episode of SVU at one. And if that opportunity arises again, I'd most likely take it. But in any other situation, it just doesn't seem like my vibe, then again, what I think that vibe is comes almost entirely from media, dark yet colorfully lit rooms filled with sketchy men who want to either exploit the performers or like save them from some imagined horror that they must be living through. It doesn't sound appealing. Of course, those are quote unquote gentlemen's clubs specifically. There's a whole other kind that virtually never gets popularly depicted on screen, the male strip club. Sure, I have seen plenty of male strippers in movies, but it's always in the form of some joke being played on an unsuspecting protagonist, a scantily clad police officer shows up and starts taking it all off. Ha ha, good joke. But the joke is never at the stripper's expense. And that's kind of weird, right? Like, I'm sure this has already been delved into way better than I ever could. But it feels like another example of the general double standard we have around sexuality. Women are simultaneously over sexualized and criticized for owning their sexuality, while men don't face nearly that sort of stigma from either direction. And yeah, what we get instead has some pretty bad knock on effects of its own that it definitely fucked me up in a bunch of ways, and no one's going to pretend that male stripping is a respected profession or whatever. But that disrespect has different implications. Point is, based on a sample size of two movies in one franchise, male performer strip clubs seem like they're a lot more fun than their male targeted counterparts. I didn't see the Magic Mike movies for years because why would I? I like series creator Steven Soderbergh and star Channing Tatum, but neither enough to put the films at the top of my never ending list of things I should see until film Crit Halt came along beating the drum of the second film, Magic Mike XXL in particular. As one of only two people I follow on Twitter despite having never met slash worked with, I take his recommendations very seriously, even if I don't always agree with them. In the talk back after my London show which took place the afternoon after I attended the performance being discussed in this video, cool dude Christopher Lewis told me that he almost always disagrees with my conclusions, but he still watches my reviews because he enjoys following the logic that gets me to them. I thought about that a lot over the past couple months, but it was enough to get me to watch them both. And you know what? Maybe it is my thing, even if it's not my thing. Hello by the way and welcome to the week air of you, you can call me confident in my sexuality. And today I am talking about Magic Mike Live, an honest to gosh live show running in both London where I saw it and Las Vegas where I feel increasingly confident I will never go. Twitter is to blame and slash or thank for this too. Without it I'd have never known that reefer madness co-star Kristen Bell said that seeing Magic Mike Live was better than her wedding night after which former male stripper Channing Tatum tweeted an apology to Veronica Mars nepotism cameo Dax Shepard. It was one of those silly celebrity things that ended up on my timeline somehow right as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I was in London. And it was a flash of different in a West End schedule that was virtually identical to Broadway's. Between Bell's ringing endorsement and hearing that the live show inspired Sotterberg to come back for a third entry in the film franchise I mean it had to be cool. But what was it like was it a play set in the Magic Mike universe or a recreation of the types of dance shows that we see depicted in the films with some cinematic branding. The only thing I knew was that it had some feminist bent but that could mean anything or frankly nothing. How much story were we in for? As it turns out exactly enough. It is a pretty jarring intro though as a particularly misogynistic host comes out and starts making jokes at the audience. He tells women to show them her tits and when one girl obliged she said that if he were her son he would have never stopped breastfeeding that kind of thing. And it escalates and escalates until all of a sudden an on-stage incident sparks the voice of Channing Tatum as God or something. I don't know to banish all of the sexism and put a woman in charge by giving her Magic Mike. At the same time one of the servers named Mike gets pulled on stage and is invited to learn the ropes so that he can impress the ladies like the other dancers do. From there we transition almost entirely to the dancing slash musical performance portion of the evening as these absurdly muscular men start bumping and grinding and all sorts of moving on the stage and slash or consenting members of the crowd. And consent is the key word there. One repeated over and over again by both host and performers and that's great because consent is great. Seriously consent is the best and something that you need to get and maintain throughout any sort of sexual encounter. The instant somebody stops consenting the interaction has to end. And I'm going to be real. It feels bad. I've been in situations where people changed their minds or decided they didn't want to continue and and it made me feel awful. But I sure felt a whole lot less awful than I would have had I forced myself onto someone and been forced to face that face in the mirror for the rest of my fucking life. Your feelings don't matter in that moment. There's do. Although I will say there were a couple of moments where it felt like the structure of the show pushed back on the sort of affirmative consent idea into a generally assumed if you're here you want this because certain dancers went around the crowd so fast that there wasn't enough time to really check in with everyone. I found this slightly odd in the context of the show but at the same time it's probably true that all of the women in the room did in fact want those muscles all up in the business. And I say women because as you might expect they made up virtually the entire audience. I realized pretty quickly that there were more women with bride tiaras than there were men wearing any sort of shirt. And while there were a couple of throwaway mentions of us by the host this show was explicitly not for us. And that's fine. I don't think that every space needs to cater to every type of person. Last year I went to non-binary poet-turned-comic Alok's first stand-up show and Good Golly with that experience have triggered all them right-wing boys. Nearly half of the jokes were aimed directly at straight people, white people, or cis men. My politics are better than most of my described cohorts or the most cutting lines kind of glanced off me but it was still clear that I was in someone else's space. But I can still have a good time. The set was fine but Alok wasn't totally comfortable with the specificity of stand-up performance and so flubbed some punchlines here and there. I look forward to seeing them in a couple years after they've really gotten the hang of it. I wish I could remember the name of the opener who's another non-binary comedian who was funny as heck and clearly more practiced. But the New York Comedy Festival doesn't list their openers even though I tweeted at them like four years ago asking for that when I went to see someone who has since been canceled. Whoops, as long as I'm respectful and there for the right reasons. Straight women who grope gay men at gay bars and straight men who fake gayness in order to grope and get groped by straight women at gay bars are all bad people. But if my friend is having a birthday party at Ryze, I'm a go. I put a five-dollar bill in a drag queen's cleavage. It was an awesome time. What was I talking about? All right, watching men take their clothes off. Point is it is okay to try things that aren't meant for you. I recommend it. Your life will be actively improved by doing it. Worst-case scenario, you have a bad time. Best-case scenario, your mind is absolutely blown by a sensual Cirque du Soleil-esque rope act. Magic Mike Live is the best-case scenario. I wish I could show you some of this stuff. I had the opportunity to, like they encouraged us to take photos and video, but while I fully intended to capture more than the very beginning and ending, I was just too captivated by it. And I knew this video wouldn't do well enough to justify me missing some amazing moment because I was fiddling with settings. I could describe to you that aerial piece or the equally incredible water dance or whatever, but why even a recording wouldn't do the thing justice. You've got to see it yourself to really appreciate just how skilled these performers are. And that's the thing that us men, and especially straight men, apparently don't do. So why is that? I think there's two reasons that most men would only cop to the obvious one, which is that it's kind of gay. The reason straight men don't go to things meant to sexually gratify straight women is because we're sexually gratified by different things. And if we weren't, then at least one of us wouldn't be straight now, would we? Magic Mike Live is explicitly and intensely sexual, and I can see why that would be a turn off. But guys, fun fact, you don't have to be turned on to enjoy yourself. I've said before that I really like watching talented people be talented, and that's what this show is. Each of the performers gets a moment to shine, and they shine all upon that audience. So many women were given their moment to feel like a main character. All eyes on them as some dude's abs exfoliated their faces. I didn't feel a little bad for the heavier woman who is serenaded but not actually danced on, but otherwise I was happy for all of the people who are getting exactly what they wanted out of the night. Seeing people be happy is nice. I recommend it. But there's a second and rather darker reason why straight men would avoid a show like this. Jealousy. A lot of men would love to be able to grind up on random women and have them genuinely welcome it. It's literally Mike the Waiter's magic wish that the narrative of this show is ostensibly fulfilling. But I think everyone also understands that if Mike the Waiter were to grind on these very same women outside that venue without explicit permission, they wouldn't welcome it. Again, consent is key, and context is everything. But even if Mike the Waiter and his compatriots only have special permissions to be in women's personal space in this limited context, their giga-chaddliness doesn't go away when the metaphorical curtains close. These men are the Western ideal. Chiseled jaws, rippling pecs, that public V thing that people talk about, like put some spandex on them and they would slot nicely into some cinematic universe. The modern superhero look is everything that regular men aspire to be and that incels commit acts of violence because they can't be, I guess. And I appreciate recently ripped folks like Camille Nanjiani and Rob McLaney being open about the absurd amounts of work they go into achieving and maintaining that kind of physique, the hours of daily training and other sacrifices that have to be made. And if it's not your literal job, is losing the ability to eat donuts really worth having an abdomen that you can use as a tech-deck skate park? No, of course not. I don't know who that joke was for, but I liked it. But that doesn't stop me from feeling deeply conflicted every time I have one and usually throwing it away after a couple bites. It doesn't stop me from staring into the mirror from all angles for far too long every day. It didn't stop me from cutting back my food and water intake for the last couple of days, so I'd be just a little more spelt for this video's opening. Because deep or maybe not so deep down, I wish I looked like those guys. Fortunately, I have gotten past the worst of my self-image issues, so these performers' physiques are not the shotgun blast to my psyche that they would have been just a couple of years ago. But there's definitely still some jealousy there. And if you have any deep-rooted insecurities about the way you look, watching these sweaty dudes slide along the banisters in front of you as women swoon and scream, probably won't help. Or maybe it will. I don't know. I'm not a therapist. What I am is a guy who likes having fun and wants more people to do that. You know how to have fun? Fucking go see Magic Mike Live, 8.5 out of 10. Thank you so much for watching and thank you particularly to my patrons, my mom, my cat, Cat Saracota, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Elliott Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I Am The Sword, Liam Knipe, Claire Bear, Taylor Lindy's, Andrew Madison Design, and the folks who'd rather be read than said. If you liked this video, great. If not, oh well. If you want to see more, please subscribe. Hope to see you in the next one.