Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000)

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The Lusty Lady is a peep-show strip club in San Francisco whose dancers were not happy with management. While the club paid good wages and the performers didn't have to participate in legally iffy practices such as "private lap dances," they made no provisions for sick days, gave Caucasian dancers priority in scheduling over African-Americans, pressured dancers into "dating" friends of the management, and allowed patrons to videotape their performances without their knowledge or consent for amateur porn films. So the women of the Lusty Lady, in the grand tradition of the American labor movement, decide to unionize. When negotiations with management broke down, the dancers went on strike, with both the strippers and their customers picketing the club. The documentary Live Nude Girls, Unite! offers a witty but sincere look at the Lusty Lady strike, which paved the way for unionization of exotic dancers in a number of other major American cities. Co-director Julia Query was also one of the club's dancers as well as a key organizer in the strike, and the film also takes a look at her sometimes rocky relationship with her mother, feminist activist Dr. Joyce Wallace. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi