Army Wives Get Their Own Training: Burlesque

Operation Bombshell is not taking place in some far-off locale, but right here at home, and it’s our troops who are on the receiving end of some pretty heavy firepower: their wives’ burlesque talents. As a friendly neighborhood service, a dancer-turned-Army-wife is schooling her compatriots in some tricks intended to make homecoming that much sweeter. “A little of this stuff goes a long way,” she tells the New York Times.

Still, she says, there’s nothing extremely risqué about the moves. “This is more Ava Gardner than Britney.” She hit upon the idea, which she has taken on the road, when she ran into a Victoria's Secret employee wearing her deployed husband’s dog tags and decided “to give these women an escape by doing what I do best.” One student is blunt about the effect of the class. “When they first come home after a year away, you don’t really need burlesque. But maybe in a few months.” (More burlesque stories.)