The construction of appearances:
“Parisian striptease – is based on a contradiction:
A woman is de-sexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked... a spectacle based on fear.
[...] the furs, the fans, the gloves, the feathers, the fishnet stockings, in short, the whole spectrum of adornment, constantly makes the living body return to the category of luxurious objects which surround man with a magical décor... and give her something like the enveloping memory of a luxurious shell... the nakedness which follows remains itself unreal, smooth and enclosed like a beautiful slippery object, withdrawn by its very extravagance from human use: this is the underlying significance of the G-String covered with diamonds...
This ultimate triangle, by its pure and geometrical shape, by its hard and shiny material, bars the way to the sexual parts like a sword of purity, and definitively drives the woman back into a mineral world ... the irrefutable symbol of the absolute object, that which serves no purpose.”
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: The Noonday
Press, 1975. Print. pp. 84-85.