There is a long and honorable tradition of military wives (and, these days, military husbands) going the extra romantic mile for spouses returning from war. A quiet weekend without the kids. Candlelight dinners. Some slinky lingerie.

But striptease?

Enter Ms. Burana, an exotic-dancer-turned-writer-turned-Army-wife who has endured her own deployment blues and is now trying to channel the cultural mash-up of her life into a morale-boosting quest. She calls it Operation Bombshell.

Every few weeks, Ms. Burana travels to some strip-mall-laced military town and offers 60-minute classes in basic burlesque. Though she knows a thing or two about removing her clothes to thrumming music, nothing much comes off in her classes except boas and gloves. It’s part aerobics, part Bob Fosse and part Gypsy Rose Lee, punctuated with a few tricks of the trade. Done properly, she demonstrates, even the faintest lift of the shoulder can say, “Over here, big boy.”

It is all quite retro and strictly P.G. “This is more Ava Gardner than Britney,” she said.

Ms. Burana, who lives in Beacon, N.Y., started her class with a quick lesson in burlesque fundamentals. These included the glove strip (pull four fingers with the teeth, bend, slip the tips under a foot and pull off the rest as you stand); the showgirl bounce (hands on hip, right foot forward, a slight dip at the knee); and proper boa tossing (like snapping a whip).

“A little of this stuff goes a long way,” she instructed.

No one expects Operation Bombshell to save marriages, though if it encourages a bit of hanky-panky, that would be fine, Ms. Burana figures. “You don’t owe me a book report,” she told the women. Mainly it is about breaking the doldrums of long, lonely deployments.