  Carmen Electra playfully strikes a pose from one of her aerobic strip exercise DVDs for our SUN photographer. (Photo: Alex Urosevic, SUN)
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Sexy but not trashy -- that is the mantra Carmen Electra is using to teach other women how to exercise and strip to turn on their husbands or boyfriends at home.
"It's not sleazy, it's sexy," Electra told the Sun yesterday during a Toronto visit to promote her new exercise DVDs, Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease and Carmen Electra's Fit To Strip.
"The DVDs are there for you, they're to help you. It's for you to be sexy for your boyfriend."
The DVDS are geared to woman, not men. "We teach!" Electra says. There is no nudity, no lingerie shots. Electra and two female friends stay in workouts clothes to strike their poses or to go through a series of low-impact workout exercises, albeit with a bump-and-grind component.
"So that's not intimidating to women, you know what I mean," Electra says. "It's not like we're nude on the DVD. That's not what we're about."
The 32-year-old Electra -- who was born Tara Leigh Patrick in Sharonville, Ohio, before taking her celebrity name from Bizet's opera Carmen and from the Greek goddess Electra -- is in Toronto for two days of high-profile marketing, including a 90-minute DVD autograph session for fans at HMV last evening.
While former boyfriend-mentor Prince tried to turn her into a rock star at 20, leading to the modest hit Go-Go Dancer, Electra is better known as a sexy pin-up girl, as a provocative Playboy model and as a sometimes campy actress in such flicks as Scary Movies and forthcoming fare such as Dirty Love and Getting Played. She is also a celebrity wife, first to former NBA star Dennis Rodman and currently to another tattooed hotshot, rocker David Navarro of Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. ("It's awesome!" she says of her 14-month marriage).
The exercise and strip DVDs are a new sideline that emerged from a burlesque show Electra did in Los Angeles two years ago. That's when she returned to dance -- her first love in enetertainment -- and found out how appealing that provocative but not-quite-nude performing can be to both men and women.
"The show that we were doing was like fun and sort of had a little campiness to it. And, even though it was sexy and it was striptease, it wasn't intimidating to women. It was more inviting. So that's what was so interesting to me. That's what I found to be so appealing, because I've done really sexy things that might attract men but not attract women. And this is a whole different thing."
DVD producers approached her during the burlesque show's run with the idea that led to the current DVD series, an enterprise that could turn Electra into the Jane Fonda of this decade.
Dancing in the original show toned up her own body, Electra says. "It was just something that I gradually noticed from dance rehearsals and performances. It was effortless and yet I noticed such an amazing change for me in my problem areas, the areas that drive me absolutely crazy."
Who knew that Carmen Electra had problems with her body? "People tend to say that but, when it's you, you know what I mean, you see things different. We're always much harder on ourselves. My tummy area, and the back of the thighs for me, are the two places (she hates in herself). And I noticed that fat starting to go away. So it just made sense. It just all fell into place so easily. That's how it all started."
Most exercise programs can be tedious, Electra says. "I go through a lot of different workout trends and I get bored and I'm always looking for the next new thing. And, to me, this is the next new thing. And it's fun. It helps build your confidence. You can do it in the privacy of your home, by yourself if you're uncomfortable, or you can to it for your husband or your boyfriend."
Electra herself now looks ... well ... electrifying. "When I'm really doing it, when I'm doing the DVDs, when I'm dancing, when I'm rehearsing, I feel like the sexiest ever!"
