Operation Bombshell

by Rebekah Sanderlin

“Just bend on over and shake that girl-flesh,” is what she said, as she leaned over the chair and wiggled her bottom to demonstrate. So that’s what we did, though some of our “girl-flesh” kept on shaking long after we’d intended for it to stop.

The room had already been transformed into what the instructor, Lily Burana, described as a “patriotic chicken apocalypse.” Red and white feathers from our boas were everywhere. So many feathers had shed from the boas that feathers covered the floor, the chairs and our bodies and it was nearly impossible to avoid inhaling them. But, extra jiggling girl-flesh and flying feathers be damned, we military spouses participating in the “Operation Bombshell” workshop near Fort Bragg had been transformed into burlesque goddesses.

Burana goes from base to base to teach the class to military spouses completely free of charge. (She says “spouses” and not “wives” because, though she has yet to have a male spouse attend, she says she would eagerly welcome any man with that much courage). Her goal is simple: She wants us to feel sexy.

“I started Operation Bombshell because when my husband was deployed, I was depressed, isolated, and under-active,” said Burana. “I know that as a generation of military wives under a lot of stress, we need to lighten up, come together, and move, move, move. We're happy to support our husbands, our kids, and our country, but how about something that's just for us, the wives?”

Burana’s history with burlesque, like her history with the Army, is colorful. Though already an accomplished writer, she gained national attention and praise in 2001 with her memoir Strip City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America. In that book Burana wrote about her experiences as an exotic dancer.

Since she got married in 2002, she has been known in the Army world as the wife of a recently retired Lieutenant Colonel who teaches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Not exactly a role or place where you’d expect to find a former stripper and Playboy model, but Burana’s never been overly concerned with doing what others expect of her. In her most recent book, I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles, she writes candidly and at length about her life as an Army wife.

But, back to the Operation Bombshell class. This class was held in the Just Poling Around dance studio in Fayetteville, NC, where classes on how to dance sexy and hang off stripper poles and are taught – by military wives, incidentally – to women who would probably never have the courage or desire to get naked in a strip club. These are fitness classes, not stripper training courses, making the dance studio a perfect fit for Operation Bombshell. Burana has taught her class in a variety of locales, including a huge roller rink at Fort Hood, so she says she’s open-minded about the venue. Give her warm bodies, a sound system, some chairs and 90 minutes and she’ll turn out a room full of feather-clad vixens. Whether they are nine months pregnant (as was the case with one of the Fort Hood wives) or just a few months pregnant (as was the case with a woman in the Bragg class), Army sergeants or PTA presidents, Burana is confident that she can make them look and feel sexy.

“I would describe Operation Bombshell as a private class in which military wives of all skill levels can enjoy a little ‘me’ time by learning a tasteful, saucy dance routine in the tradition of Broadway greats like Bob Fosse,” Burana said. “Certainly, it's not as extreme as anything you'd see in a strip club or a Britney video.”

My class was a motley bunch, a mix of Army and Marine wives, some in the military themselves, ranging in age from the mid-20‘s to the mid-40‘s. We wore yoga pants or leggings and t-shirts and most of us went barefoot or wore sneakers. We looked more like we were on our way to a step-aerobics class than old-school stripper training and we giggled enough to annoy even a room full of Jonas Brothers fans, but we were ready, willing and excited to be there.

Burana explained what we’d be learning and then took us into an adjoining room that had rows of chairs and more space for dancing. We each took our places by the chairs as Burana passed out the boas, took her spot at the front of the class and cued up the music – Peggy Lee’ classic show tune, “Hey Big Spender.” For the next 90 minutes she slowly walked us through the routine.

We sat backward in the chair at first with the boas draped in the crooks of our arms. Then we moved slowly around the chair and added the more overt sexy moves – like the girl-flesh one described above. We shook the boas, dangled and dropped them, we crossed and uncrossed legs and demurely shimmied. We sat forward in the chair, bent over the chair, moved around the chair and propped a leg up on it. After the hour and a half was over every woman in the class had the routine down and was comfortable enough with the steps to stop giggling and start adding in her own shimmies and sexy pouts.

When the class ended no one wanted to leave. Several women alluded to plans to do the moves for their husbands that night. One woman said she was going to do it for hers – a soldier deployed to Afghanistan – over Skype. Inspired to take it further, a few others asked the dance studio owner for more information on the pole dancing classes.

If the mission of Operation Bombshell was for Burana to make military wives feel sexy and desirable, despite the frumpiness and exhaustion created by years of deployments, then her mission was definitely accomplished.