I first thought about reading Tori Alexander's Trixie back when my brief stint in stripping ended. The back cover says that Trixie is a book about what stripping would be like if women dominated the scene. But how can women dominate or control this particular part of the sex industry over men? I was intrigued about hearing
how women could control other women and how those of the same gender could essentially sell themselves. At least that’s what I thought Trixie was about from reading the back cover.
Trixie
isn't about that at all. The main characters are women and do dominate the reader’s mind. The men are just background, even though the owner of the club is a man (of course), and the customers are men. But Alexander focuses
chiefly on the main characters, who are all women.
Trixie is the main character, but she is not the point-of-view character at all in the whole
novel. That role falls to another stripper named Pixie. Pixie draws comparisons throughout the story
between her own mother and Trixie, both strippers who died in the end for the
love of a profession that they couldn’t even consider leaving for a man.
The story is candid and real. You can’t help but feel the sad longing between Max and Trixie, or the despair of the men who walk through those red double doors into the girlie playhouse, looking for some entertainment other than their wives.
Stripping is perceived to be dominated by women, but it’s the perverted men who ultimately rule that world. Without men, strippers couldn’t do what they do. Rarely if ever do women own or manage the clubs.
In the end, though, I really loved this book even with the sad ending, maybe
because I could relate to a lot of what was happening in the pages. This one's a
keeper.