Abstract

This article examines the social and symbolic aspects of female performers’ nudity in Parisian café-concert at the end of the nineteenth century. The study of this scenic phenomenon is based on the example of Le Coucher d’Yvette [Bedtime for Yvette], whose popularity, renewed by numerous imitations, prefigures the later vogue of the effeuillage genre [striptease] in the programming of Parisian shows in the twentieth century. The analysis draws on manuscripts of effeuillage shows preserved in stage censorship archives, as well as on iconographic sources and various discourses revealing the contemporary reception of female stripping on stage. It thus sheds light on the craze generated by the eroticization of this gesture and the impact of this reception on the history of the body and gender in that period.