Blogs and Stories
The Stripper Who Lost a Breast
Anthony Georgis
Viva Las Vegas was Portland, Oregon’s most famous stripper. After breast cancer left her with a mastectomy, she went through a period of soul searching—then got back on stage.
Viva Las Vegas’ Wednesday shift began at 4:45 in the afternoon. She climbed up to the stage in her Lucite heels, wearing a bright red kimono with her name sewn onto the back. Here at Mary’s Club—Portland’s oldest topless bar—the women only take off their clothes if there’s money on “the rack”—the name for the seats closest to the stage. Viva asked for a few dollars from the patrons for the jukebox.
Her first song was “Sunday Morning” by The Velvet Underground. She lay on her stomach and kicked up her heels. She stood and swayed, tapped her thighs and sang along. Her pixie haircut, a few months post-chemo, accentuated her ski-slope nose and flirty smile. After she finished her set and gathered the cash left on the rack, she smiled, made eye contact with the audience and cooed, “Thank you for supporting the arts.”
Viva started stripping 13 years ago, after she moved to Portland from Minnesota (by way of Williams College), where she grew up a preacher’s daughter. Last year, she felt she was approaching the end of her career. Time was taking its toll on her body. Then, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I thought that putting bags of silicone into my body to alter my chest from the way fate had designed it was monkeying with reality.”
Her memoir, Magic Gardens, documents her journey from twenty-something stripper to activist and acolyte. It’s also the exploration of fantasy versus reality, apt subject matter for a stripper who found herself suddenly bald and missing a breast.
After her set, Viva threw on her kimono and sat down next to me as a younger woman teetered onto the stage. “I think she was born in the ‘90s,” Viva whispered, cocking her head toward the dancing girl.
Magic Gardens: The Memoirs of Viva Las Vegas. By Viva Las Vegas. Dame Rocket Press. 176 pages. $14.95.
Magic Gardens shows Viva at about that same age, when she became a local spokesperson for the sex industry after agreeing to debate a woman who claimed stripping fed the porn industry and led to violence against women. The debate occurred face-to-face at the offices of Portland’s alt-weekly The Willamette Week, which ran a photo of Viva on the cover. Soon the television stations came calling for interviews. Her notoriety led to roles in numerous indie films, including Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park and The Auteur by James Westby.
But her career was derailed last year, when her boyfriend found a small lump in her breast. They broke up in the early stages of her cancer treatment, an event Viva says was worse than the cancer—she had a plan for healing and doctors who would help, but no plan for getting over her heartbreak. She stopped stripping and struggled with how she’d make a living during and after the three-month treatment—a mastectomy and chemotherapy.
“I felt like a failure for being sick,” she said, deflating for a moment over her Irish coffee. “I come from a family of health nuts and athletes. Having my body attack itself from within definitely felt like a major failure, and I tended to blame myself for causing the illness.”
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i've always liked the turn of phrase "she took a lover". This topic is honestly something i've never thought about. thank you
Thank you for this inspiring and beautifully written piece. It was informative, moving, and important.
Viva Las Vegas is the magic, and she is an even more powerful a voice for women and sex workers after this transformative experience. She is brave and beautiful, and her strength and splendor are articulated perfectly here.
Melissa Lion, can we hope for a review of Magic Gardens? I would also love to read more about Viva Las Vegas and Portland-area sex workers in general (though I frankly believe I would read the instructions on a box of tampons if you wrote it). Thanks again for this piece.
This stripper gets better healthcare than Obama momma
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr09-03-08.html
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gizellababcock Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment! Hope you check out Viva's book.
stoogepie Thanks! Portland sex workers are sort of a different breed. We're so lucky in this town to have so many. Normalizes the experience for everyone and allows us to dig a little deeper than the standard gawking.
Nickatdabeach Thanks for your comment!
Wow! This is so beautifully written! I'm absolutely going to read this book. Thanks for turning me on to it, Melissa!
She's a great writer and a fascinating person. I loved talking to her!
I read an excerpt of Viva's book in a magazine and was really impressed with her as a writer and a human being.
She was honest and revealing without being a drama queen, pretty amazing considering she loves the stage and was dealing with a potentially fatal illness. Her vulnerability and humor were inspiring.
It made me want to read more, glad to see her book is out.
She certainly knows how to connect to others. Very personable and introspective.
An article talking about a stripper with one boob is "must reading." I'm someone that would have never considered buying a book like that but now I'm dangerously close to sending my assistant to Barnes and Noble. great. :(
Is this number one in a series of upcoming stories? If not, can you please do a second installment?? I think it would be interesting to hear about other obstacles these stripping women have surmounted. Maybe a piece on battling drugs in the stripper circuit? How about a one armed or legged stripper? Well maybe that's going a bit far...however there was a one armed pitcher in baseball and I guess it only takes one arm to work the pole...I want another glimpse into the seedy underbelly of the stripper world!
It's a great book. Also, I'd like an assistant. May I borrow yours?
wow - i had no idea, so glad it worked out well. funny to think that heartbreak would be worse than chemo, but i guess i'm not surprised, assuming i know the parties involved. portland is not for the faint of heart! thanks for being a funny, beautiful inspiration, and for removing that conflicting feeling of guilt that has been around so long! i wish i had your wisdom when i was young. i'll get the book! thanks!
portland is not for the faint of heart! -- Indeed!
I read something she wrote in Portland Monthly and it has stayed with me, she certainly is an inspiration. Lovely.
That's a great article!
I find it fascinating that people continually seek after the things that are the most damaging. It is, of course, no new phenomenom, Stripping (and the entire sex industry) are exceedingly unhealthy, and yet articles like this serve only to glamourise and promote such behaviours.
'melissalion' comments that they're lucky to have so many sex workers in Portland!? That is hardly something to be happy about or greatful for.
Thank you for leave a comment. We will just have to disagree on the topic.
I have to disagree with you Evan. I don't believe she glamourized Viva at all - instead she took a topic (breast cancer) which relates to most women, and told a true story about how it relates to a woman (stripper) who is not relatable to most women.
As a woman with high risk for breast cancer, I often think about masectomy's and how not having one or both of my breasts would alter not only my physical appearance, but my identity and my personality too. I can't imagine that battle when your breasts are directly involved in your profession. It's another stake in the heart by a disease whose emotional underpinnings are often neglected, often times by men.
I have to second the small joy in the phrase "took a lover". It makes me wish it were that easy for a lot of people which might reduce the amount of hate in the world. But that's just hippie talk, I know.
Nice article.
Interesting take on breast cancer.
Most women are not strippers, yet any woman who deals with breast cancer has some of these same issues.
The courage with which many women cope with disease is amazing.
Doesn't mater if she is a mom and grandmother, or a stripper.
Breast cancer doesn't differentiate.
Maybe, at least in respecting courage, we shouldn't either.
Thank you.
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