Booty shakin’. Thumping beats. Tuck students catcalling from the shadows. Sounds like any another Friday night on the Dartmouth frat circuit, but this time it’s Tabard’s Lingerie Show—one of the most controversial events on campus. As freshmen, we opened our “Lingerie” blitzes blushing and bewildered. Little did we know what Lingerie actually entails—creative costumes, choreographed dance, unchoreographed grinding, and varying degrees of nudity. What?! People get naked at Lingerie? Now informed, we chose to either bolt for a familiar frat basement or stick around and see just how “scary” Lingerie really is. Luckily, I chose the latter.

The Tabard, a Co-ed house located in the Montmartre district of Frat Row, hosts Lingerie every Wednesday before big weekends—Homecoming in the fall, Winter Carnival in the winter, and Green Key in the spring. The show sets the tone for the next three days of indulgence. But Lingerie isn’t just another glorified dance party. It has a purpose. “Lingerie is a celebration of the body. The goal is that everyone leaves the stage feeling beautiful,” says three-time lingerie host George Neptune ’10. Neptune feels that many don’t perform in Lingerie because they fear the audience won’t appreciate their nearly nude form. But heckling is, “not allowed at Tabard.” Indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects of Lingerie is the audience’s observation of protocol. No one is allowed to take pictures, except the official Tabard photographer, and for the most part nobody does. Well, at least they don’t surface on Facebook, which Neptune feels very strongly about “because we’re all friends with our Moms.”

Who even goes to Lingerie? Prospies? Jim Kim and family? The Sun God? Probably. No one can say for sure who’s in the audience, but it doesn’t really matter because they’re all part of the community. As soon as the audience members enter the Tabard’s cavernous theater, they sign an unspoken yet irrevocable contract to support each performer. Abby McCann ’11, who has performed three times in Lingerie, said “It’s interesting. Half of them are there because they don’t know what it is, and their jaws drop, and the other half are people you know. But by the end of the show, it’s much more of a homogeneous crowd. Everyone’s into it, everyone’s totally hooked.” The audience assumes this attitude independently, but it is Neptune’s job as host to get the energy up to the level the performers need to feel comfortable letting loose and enjoying themselves on the catwalk. His approach? “The first few minutes of the show are about me trying to figure out what the audience is about. You almost have to mold their response and find something that evokes a response. This term I found that they responded when I made dirty jokes about them.” The audience is an integral part of Lingerie, because without its energy the performers would wilt. In this sense, Lingerie is theater in its truest form. Christian Brandt ’12, who has performed in Lingerie twice bluntly said, “If there wasn’t an audience, there wouldn’t be any point.” McCann agreed, “When you’re onstage you’re relying on everyone in the audience to support you and not judge you, and if you’re in the audience, you’re completely connected to the performers.”

Dartmouth is a self-obsessed campus where “facetime” can feel like a fourth class. This might be the only place in the world where rainbow hair is a status symbol. Yet, we still blush when we hear that people actually get NAKED at Lingerie. Brandt attributes our embarrassment to an American phobia of nudity, which is more pronounced than in Western Europe. Brandt’s frustration with this taboo influenced his decision to go full frontal at this term’s Lingerie show. He also felt the need to spice up what he perceived to be a somewhat bland show: “The rest of the acts were more or less the same. What sets you apart is choreography and actual nudity. People have such an ‘issue’ with nudity that they don’t think people are actually gonna get naked, especially penis! Because there’s more of a taboo against genital nudity.” Continued Brandt, “I could have stripped naked in the basement of Tri-Kap, but nobody would have appreciated it.” For many, Lingerie is a release. It is their single chance to go buck wild in public and still be accepted at Dartmouth. Neptune echoed Brandt’s sentiment; saying, “if you’re going to make facetime, might as well make some asstime too!” It’s fantastic that Lingerie can provide individuals with such a confidence boost, but is making asstime at Lingerie the only opportunity we have to express ourselves fully in the Dartmouth social scene?”

McCann recounted her first experience performing in Lingerie: “[It was] terrifying, I was wearing these booty shorts and we had to bend over, and I was so worried that I was going to show everything to the whole world. But then I just got up there and I totally lost all my inhibitions. That’s what Lingerie is all about. The audience is screaming and the lights are all on you. And you feel totally safe even though you’re putting your body out there.” McCann feels that, particularly as a woman, to feel sexy and safe in a social space at Dartmouth is extremely rare. She attributes this contrast to the fact that Tabard is a Co-ed: “Especially as a woman, if Tabard were a fraternity, I would feel like I were performing for men, like in a real strip club. The fact that Tabard is a co-ed also encourages everyone to get up there and perform—same sex couples, same sex groups. I think also it would be hard for a fraternity not to advertise it as kind of a skeevy thing.”

Perhaps the embarrassment with which some students regard Lingerie stems not only from American cultural taboos but also from Dartmouth’s frat culture, which thrives on segregation of the sexes, unquestioned ritual and secrecy. Brandt remarked on the hypocrisy of Dartmouth students criticizing nudity in the Lingerie show, saying “People don’t seem to have any conception of how inappropriate or appropriate sex is in frat basements. People gratuitously make out in a basement, but then go to Lingerie and are like, ‘That’s gross!’” There is a lot of shame inherent in a society that appreciates sex and the human anatomy only in certain basement corners, only on certain weekends, and only after a certain amount of alcohol. Maybe if we appreciated each other’s bodies every day the way we do during Lingerie, campus date rape statistics would go down. Maybe we’d be one step closer to doing away with our Greek system.”

Performing in Lingerie is like flying. Underneath the blinding lights it’s just you, your snakeskin banana hammock, your whip, and your co-performer. You might remember your “routine” or you might just let the music and the cheering shape your movement for the next two and a half minutes. This is what it must feel like to be Jesus. The only mistake you can make is to believe that you can actually defy gravity on that creaky wooden box runway. It’s really narrow. Especially in four-inch wedges. But even if you fall, like I have, you’ll still feel sexier than you ever have before. And you know what else you’re not worrying about? Your muffin top. And that’s a beautiful thing. Lingerie is also one of the few activities at Dartmouth in which you can participate without having to go through a rigorous and ultimately demoralizing audition process. As a performer, it reminds you that you are beautiful and beloved by your community. And as an audience member, it reminds you of the fierce love that holds Dartmouth together, underneath the hard guy façade.

“It’s not about you,” said McCann. “It’s about what we’re doing together. It’s not about ego—it’s about glorification of the body.” So, ‘13s, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. Check out Lingerie next term. But a word of caution, you may soon end up on that stage yourselves. Butt. Ass. Naked.