Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna

This text puts women back into the history of camp, a story long confined to gay male practice. Emphasizing the distinctive roles which women have played as producers and consumers of camp, Pamela Robertson links her subject to feminist discussions of gender, parody, performance, and spectatorship. She examines figures like Mae West, Joan Crawford and Madonna, located within a tradition of feminist camp - a female form of aestheticism related to masquerade and burlesque, parallel to but different from gay male camp. Analyses of film - notably "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "Johnny Guitar" - video and television, show how the gold digger is to feminist camp what the dandy is to gay male camp: its original personification and defining voice. The author shows how feminist camp flourishes during periods of anti-feminist backlash and how it reflects a working-class sensibility, attuned to changing attitudes toward women's work and sexuality.