The artist: Molly Crabapple
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Illustrator, founder of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School (mollycrabapple.com)

“I’m a working artist, so I tend to draw things I think will be more marketable,” says Crabapple. “People say sex sells—that’s not true. Sexiness sells. This was drawn from life at the Box, a burlesque supper club on the Lower East Side. It’s all celebrities and beautiful people. They have these wild, totally scandalous shows at, like, three in the morning. This picture is loosely based on the Porcelain Twinz, two ravishingly beautiful twin girls from Portland [Oregon] who do erotic shows together. They came out wearing George Bush masks, tore those off to reveal gas masks and then beat one another up with boxing gloves in front of an American flag.”

Charlie says: “I love this. I’m not sure what the artist is trying to say with the boxing gloves and gas masks, but I love the colors and the erotic play.”

Will says: “I get it: Men are pigs and throwing money at women strippers is odious. The girl in the corner made me think of Alice in Wonderland, with Samantha Stephens’s arched eyebrows. But I’m still not sold. It left me cold.”

Shmuley says: “It provides momentary titillation, but once you get over the shock value, you tire of it. Ask any man, ‘Who excites you?’ and he’ll say, ‘The naked women.’ But ask him, ‘Who intrigues you?’ and he’ll say, ‘The woman with the smirk.’ Sexiness is about mystery. The portrayal of patrons as submitting to an animal impulse is probably accurate, though. Eroticism and sexual titillation need not be accompanied by misogyny or by the degradation of women. And I can’t think of anything more degrading than putting two sisters into a sexual situation together.”