Sugar Shack

On March 15, 1976, a significant stronghold and foundation of sexism began to crumble when the first male stripper took the stage of the Lake Geneva Sugar Shack. Dana Montana, past and present owner and operator of the Sugar Shack, struck a blow that severed the sacred soul of the position that men have taken throughout human history: that a woman is a man's possession, to be exploited economically, emotionally, politically and sexually. What Hugh Hefner offered men, Dana Montana provided for women. She turned the tables on the sex exploitation industry.

Among the many hallmarks of the American Feminist movement, Dana Montana's courageous and contentious decision to provide sexual fantasy fulfillment for women, sent a social seismic wave through our culture that continues to generate aftershocks. Ms. Montana was not driven by a desire to rise to the forefront of a great cause; she was driven to fulfill the most basic of human needs--to love and be loved, and the most fundamental of all needs--to survive. Will she be remembered in the same breath as Susan B. Anthony, who wrote and submitted to congress the right-to-vote amendment? She should be. Now, over twenty years later, it is time to look back, at the life of Dana Montana and assess her influence on the world we live in today.

When Betty Friedan's, The Feminine Mystique, was published in 1963, provoking the second significant wave of the American Feminist movement, Dana Montana was being fitted for a "Bunny" costume at the Chicago Playboy Club. Although the consciousness of the country was being raised regarding women's rights issues, Dana was positioning herself to exploit her particular personal assets in an institutionalized bastion of antifeminism; Playboy International, Inc. During the next ten years, rapidly changing events, both in Dana's personal life and in the moral life of our country, eventually led to a Monday evening in March when Elliot Lanzanna, for the first time ever, began to strip away one of the most significant barriers blocking equality for women in America and in the World.