The recipe for a typical bachelorette party requires a number of ingredients: A dangerously tipsy bride-to-be wearing a cheap tiara, multiple trays of shots (possibly of the Jello variety), plenty of tacky penis-shaped party favors…but most of all, at least one male stripper. Nowadays, a striptease performance is the centerpiece of any decent prenuptial send-off, whether the guest of honor is a woman or man. Unlike bachelor parties, however, which began centuries ago as relatively respectable gatherings, bachelorette parties were never anything but unapologetic celebrations of debauchery.
Until the 1950s and 60s, the only entirely-female parties for future brides beyond traditional bridal showers were “second showers,” held by some women for the purpose of knocking back a few cocktails (and opening risqué gifts) with a select group of non-judgmental friends, as TIME reported.
The sexual revolution changed all that. Finally, women had the chance to acknowledge and celebrate their sexuality in the same fashion as their male counterparts, and bachelorette parties were the perfect opportunity to do just that…even if, in a bitter twist, the whole point of those get-togethers was to relinquish those newfound sexual freedoms.
“Men were seen as having something to lose in marriage and women were seen as having everything to gain,” wrote sociologist Beth Montemurro in her paper, Sex Symbols: The bachelorette party as a window to change in women’s sexual expression. “The bachelorette party is a means for expressing oneself sexually and acknowledging the sexual element of one’s identity. Until recently, this aspect of women’s identity was assumed to be either nonexistent or inappropriate in public.”
The first mention of a bachelorette party in TIME appeared in an Aug. 6, 1979, feature about male strippers at clubs such as the Sugar Shack in Lake Geneva, Wisc., noting that “entire tables” were “booked for ‘bachelorette’ and birthday parties” and the “audiences seem a notably wholesome and ordinary cross section of women.” A few years earlier, one so-called “hen party” was abruptly shut down when a male stripper was fined for acting in a “lewd, obscene and disgusting manner,” according to History Extra.
The details of that particular instance of indecent behavior have sadly been lost to the ages, but thanks to Hollywood, it’s not too hard to imagine. Anytime a film or TV show plot includes a bachelorette party, it’s a guarantee that a male stripper character is going to show up at some point or another, more than likely kicking off a series of both salacious and slapstick hijinks. A male stripper’s demise serves as the central plot point for Rough Night (2017), starring Scarlett Johansson as a bride-to-be whose celebration goes off the rails after one of her friends (Jillian Bell) straddles the evening’s dirty-mouthed entertainment a little too enthusiastically, fatally knocking his head into the fireplace. It’s the arrival of another trash-talking stripper (Andrew Rannells) who plunges the evening into chaos in Bachelorette (2012), with Rebel Wilson as a soon-to-be-married woman who storms out of her bachelorette party after being insulted by the erotic dancer, leaving a trio of old high school frenemies (Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, and Lizzy Caplan) to accidentally destroy her wedding dress.
‘Bachelorette’ • RADiUS/TWC.
On TV, meanwhile, some of the most famous bachelorette party-themed episodes involve decidedly less-than-exotic dancers: Danny DeVito guest-starred on Friends as a past-his-prime stripper attempting to help Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) say farewell to her single life; on Parks and Rec, a scantily-clad Abraham Lincoln made Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) decide she wasn’t “in the mood for historical nudity.” (In another American history-inspired twist, on The Office, Phyllis –played by Phyllis Smith– got stuck with a Ben Franklin impersonator in lieu of a stripper at her bachelorette party/bridal shower.)
One of the most talked about examples of male strippers on screen, of course, is the 2012 box office smash Magic Mike (and its sequels, Magic Mike XXL and Magic Mike’s Last Dance). Those films are about the strippers themselves (particularly a sculpted Channing Tatum as the titular character and an equally chiseled Joe Manganiello), but the franchise inspired a live show in Las Vegas. Currently playing at Sahara Las Vegas, Magic Mike Live (conceived and directed by Tatum) is billed as a “fun night of sizzling, 360-degree entertainment” with “really hot guys.” According to one Reddit thread, however, the spectacle is more of a “stage show” than an “actual male strip club,” with some claiming the spectacle is “so tame.” (“You barely see one butt during the whole show,” complained one person, adding, “Go to Chippendales and sit close to the stage if you want a legit male revue.”)
Speaking of Chippendales, the iconic revue is going strong –and while it’s not exclusively an amusement for brides and their attendants, the official website does call the experience “the greatest bachelorette party in Las Vegas.” And those aren’t the only options in town, either.
It all adds up to big business. According to data collected by Business Research Insights, the worldwide bachelorette party planning industry was worth an estimated $650 million in 2024. A trend report for the same year released by the bachelorette party planning app Batch revealed the average cost per attendee to be $1,350.
But the question remains: Are bachelorette parties just the gender-swapped equivalent of bachelor bashes? While society has more or less turned a blind eye to the practice of men cheating on the eve of their nuptials (what happens in Vegas, as the saying goes), some still don’t expect women to do the same… even strippers themselves. In an interview with the New York Post earlier this year, Australian stripper Nath Wyld said he was “surprised” by how wild the women got when he started performing at bachelorette parties.
“Lots of girls tend to sleep with strippers in general, and they also might not tell you that they are cheating on their partner with you,” he said. “The narrative is always that the guys are always the worst, and they fuck up more, especially in a bucks party setting, but what shocked me is that women are no different.”
At least bachelorette parties are one place, it seems, where women aren’t held back by gender norms. And to that we say…Viva Las Vegas.
‘Magic Mike’ • Photo: Warner Bros.
