More than just a pretty face

Monday, April 30, 2007 | 7:37 a.m.

Just call the male stripper "professor."

James Wilcox, the newest member of the Chippendale dancers, joined the show after two years as a teaching associate at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

But performing for hordes of excited women apparently was just what the doctor ordered.

"Chippendales seemed like an exciting way to make a living," the 32-year-old native of Washington state says.

And that's saying a lot since his packed resume includes triathlons, study abroad, Navy SEAL training, flight school and counterterrorism work.

But he saw the Chippendales' posters on a layover in Las Vegas and remembered how those old calendars delighted his female cousins.

"Even back then it seemed like those guys had the ultimate job," he says. "So I thought I should go over and check it out."

It took Wilcox - that's a stage name for James Wursterbarth - 13 months from lecture hall to runway. After a couple of auditions, Wilcox traded his academic robes for a G-string in October.

"It's everything I thought it would be and so much more," Wilcox says. "I knew it would be challenging and difficult learning the routines and working my way into the cast."

There's nothing Wilcox likes more than a challenge.

"I've always believed that if you work hard enough you can learn just about anything," he says. "Consistency and focus work. I don't think there's much a person can't do if he has clear goals and a determined focus."

He learned that lesson at age 13 when his father died from a brain tumor. He was 43.

"That taught me to never take life for granted," Wilcox says. "Never take one moment for granted. If you have dreams, try to make them happen. There's no promise that you're going to be around forever."

He developed a passion for nutrition and spent hours in the gym each day, developing the body that eventually landed him a position with Chippendales.

He swam and ran track in high school and college. He competed in triathlons. He sailed and taught sailing. He skied.

"I knew I wanted to do something exciting with my life, adventurous," Wilcox says.

He attended the University of Redlands in California, majoring in psychology and international relations and studying abroad at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics.

"I saw myself working in some aspect of international affairs," Wilcox says.

But he became a research analyst for a counterterrorism agency and then spent five years as a Navy officer, training with and then training SEALs and attending flight school in Pensacola, Fla.

After his discharge he worked as a personal trainer at gyms in the Washington, D.C., area before taking a job as a teaching associate for physiology classes at Johns Hopkins. "I couldn't be a professor because I didn't have a Ph.D.," Wilcox says.

The temporary job lasted more than two years until he joined the Chippendales.

"I planned on doing some teaching, some personal training, when I got to Vegas, but this has been such an all-encompassing job," he says. "My first 73 days in town, I worked 72 of them. When you're not performing eight or nine shows a week, you're in rehearsals or doing promotions or charity work or VIP escorts."

The stripper's loaded resume landed him a spot on the NBC game show "Identity," hosted by Penn Jillette.

After the Chippendales, Wilcox envisions himself returning to school.

"I'd like to knock off my Ph.D. in psychology and work as a psychologist," he says.

He provided a quick analysis of why women audiences are noted for tending to be more demonstrative at strip shows.

"In modern society I think women are still more repressed than men, and unfairly so," Wilcox says. "So when men go out to let off steam, they don't have quite as much to let off as women do.

"You wouldn't expect men to behave the way women behave in our shows, but it's good. It just let s us know we're doing a good job."

Give the "professor" an A.