Recent experiments indicate that the tendency toward the formation of unidirectional charge density waves ("stripes") is common to various underdoped cuprates. We discuss momentum-resolved spectral properties of valence-bond stripes, comparing the situations of ideal and short-range stripe order, the latter being relevant for weak and/or disorder-pinned stripes. We find clear signatures of ordered stripes, although matrix element effects suppress most shadow band features. With decreasing stripe correlation length, stripe signatures are quickly washed out, the only remaining effect being a broadening of antinodal quasiparticles. This insensitivity of photoemission to short-range stripe order may be employed to distinguish it from nematic order, e.g. in underdoped YBa₂ Cu₃ O_{6 + δ}.