In March 1983, inside a Broward County courtroom in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, three women mounted an extraordinary defense against charges that struck at the heart of their profession. They were not accused of committing violence, theft, or any tangible crime. Their alleged offense was performing their jobs as exotic dancers—specifically, wearing garments deemed too revealing under a municipal indecency ordinance.
The women—Denise Pence, Deborah Lowe, and a third dancer—had been arrested during a routine performance at the Button South nightclub. The charge was straightforward: violating a Fort Lauderdale city ordinance that prohibited any woman from appearing in public wearing attire that did not “completely cover the nipple and areola” and required that “underwear—consisting of a panty, G-string, or thong—be fully and opaquely covered.” The arresting officers, working undercover, claimed that the dancers’ outfits—specifically, G-strings covered by translucent “pasteese” coverings—constituted illegal exposure.
The case, known as Bono v. City of Fort Lauderdale, was never really about nudity. The dancers had not removed their garments onstage, nor had they engaged in any sexual contact with patrons. What was at issue was the perceived scandal of their attire itself: a subjective judgment that certain pieces of dancewear crossed an undefined boundary into criminal indecency.
The dancers’ attorney, Hugh P. Carter, devised a defense as bold as it was simple. Photographs and written descriptions of the dancers’ costumes, he argued, could not convey whether the outfits truly violated the ordinance’s requirements. The only way to determine whether the clothing concealed the requisite areas, he contended, was to witness the performance itself. Carter requested permission for his clients to demonstrate their routine in court.
The presiding judge, Mark A. Speiser, initially hesitated. Allowing a dance performance inside a courtroom was unprecedented and carried obvious risks of controversy. However, after deliberation, he permitted the demonstration—with strict conditions: no stripping, no sexual contact, and no audience participation. The performance would be limited to the precise attire and movements that had prompted the arrests.
On March 10, 1983, the three dancers took the witness stand and transformed the courtroom into a stage. Dressed in the same outfits that had resulted in their arrests—G-strings covered by translucent pasteese—they performed a two-minute routine to the Donna Summer song “Hot Stuff.” The choreography was standard go-go dance: high kicks, hip isolations, pelvic thrusts, and floor work. No clothing was removed, no explicit sexual acts were simulated, and no part of the dancers’ pubic areas or nipples was exposed.
The effect was decisive. As the dancers executed their routine, the prosecution’s case began to unravel. Several of the arresting officers, who had previously testified that the dancers’ attire amounted to “full nudity,” were forced to admit under cross-examination that the performance contained no nudity whatsoever. One officer conceded that, despite the provocative nature of the movements, the disputed areas remained covered throughout the demonstration.
The live performance exposed the fundamental flaw in the prosecution’s case: the indecency ordinance relied not on objective standards of exposure but on the subjective discomfort of the observer. What one undercover officer perceived as obscene criminal exposure, another was compelled to acknowledge as fully covered under the plain language of the law.
In his ruling, Judge Speiser sided unequivocally with the dancers. He declared the city’s ordinance unconstitutionally vague and overbroad as applied in this case. The law, he wrote, failed to provide sufficiently clear and objective criteria for distinguishing lawful performance attire from criminal indecency. Without precise, measurable standards, the ordinance permitted arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement, allowing individual officers to criminalize dancewear based on personal sensibilities rather than verifiable violations.
The dismissal of the charges marked a rare and resounding victory. The dancers had not merely defended themselves; they had compelled the court to confront the reality of their work on its own terms. By refusing to allow their bodies and performances to be judged through the filtered, often prurient, descriptions of others, they stripped the prosecution’s case of its primary weapon: the power of insinuation.
The Fort Lauderdale courtroom demonstration stands as a powerful example of embodied resistance against laws that seek to regulate women’s bodies through vague prohibitions on dress and movement. It revealed the absurdity of attempting to legislate morality through ordinances that hinge on subjective perceptions rather than objective criteria. The dancers did not back down from the challenge of performing in the one place where their bodies were most explicitly on trial. Instead, they demonstrated that what had been labeled indecent was, in fact, neither nude nor obscene by any measurable standard.
More than four decades later, the case retains its significance. It serves as a foundational precedent in the ongoing legal struggle to define the boundaries of expressive performance, particularly nude and semi-nude dancing, under the First Amendment. The lesson is clear: when the state seeks to criminalize the visual presentation of the female body, it must do so with precision. Subjective discomfort, however earnestly felt, cannot serve as the sole arbiter of criminality.
In that Broward County courtroom, three women took a stand—not by pleading or apologizing, but by doing exactly what they had been arrested for. They danced. And in doing so, they forced the law to contend with the unassailable truth of what it sought to condemn.
