The light follows her sultry prowl toward the “naughty” bachelorettes, who squeal in anticipation. As I step up to the egg, Ming drapes her boa over the bride-to-be, flossing it across her chest vigorously enough to set the girl’s penis-tipped tiara askew. The table erupts in peals of laughter, and the bride shimmies her shoulders, sending her ample cleavage bobbing. Ming releases the woman, who earns a few stray feathers in the process, and sashays toward the stage.

I cast a wary eye over the crowd. The show attracts a varied audience. For many, the high price tag makes the experience a novelty, a place for a special event, like bachelorette parties or birthdays. Others are assorted couples who are out for a night of rowdy, consensual objectification in a comfortable environment that serves a killer plate of mussels and frites. We also appeal to large groups of wealthy Russians, who, I suppose, merely enjoy seeing women disrobe without dying of exposure. Minor celebrities roll in with their entourages, hiding behind dark glasses that make their navigating the stairs to the bathrooms a study in unintentional comedy.

Burlesque is niche enough that these groups have had to seek us out, and most attendees know what to expect and how to conduct themselves.

Others . . . not so much.

Most offensive are the young Wall Street types. They do coke in the bathrooms and sneer at performers whose bodies don’t fit their narrow standard of desirability; one look at Ming’s dimpled backside and they’re shaking their heads in disgust. They’re infuriating. And bewildering. In New York, no one is ever more than two blocks from the abundant cleavage of a Victoria’s Secret billboard. If they want a display of scantily clad, conventionally attractive female bodies to drool over, all they have to do is look up. But they come here, where the variety in the human form is celebrated, and they can’t cope.

Women in the audience fall into this trap, too, but with a response so coded, I doubt they’re even aware how patronizing it is. They watch Ming take the stage and whisper about “bravery,” like Ming’s performing despite her proportions. These women can’t imagine someone with Ming’s build feeling comfortable enough to bare it all in public.

If such a woman is anywhere, she’s often with a bachelorette party. But as I survey the three groups, their attendees are watching Ming with the appropriate degree of reverence. They’re spirited but not sauced, and the whole room has a good energy for eight o’clock. Not an empty seat in the house.