Gaps between white experiences and non-white experiences pop up in the strangest places.

Raven-Symoné has a new comedy on ABC Family called State of Georgia. This is her first comedy series where she will be playing an adult role and it’s been interesting watching that transition. I had planned to tune into the premiere, but it moved up in priority when I read the producer, Jennifer Weiner, talking about Raven’s weight loss in USA Today:

Q: Tell us about the show’s star, Raven-Symoné, who plays Georgia.

A: What we were looking for was a larger-than-life, bubbly, exuberant, confident young woman who was convinced of her own worth even when the world couldn’t see it. I really think that’s what we have with Raven. She’s this incredibly natural comedienne.

Q: Is Georgia a classic Jennifer Weiner character?

A: The original intention was for Georgia to be a big, curvy girl, and that would be one of the obstacles she dealt with while pursuing her acting career. She wanted to play the ingénue and the bombshell, and people would want to cast her as the funny best friend. Raven has lost a lot of weight, and that’s been a challenge we’ve been dealing with. But in terms of her sense of humor and outlook on life, Georgia’s going to feel familiar to anyone who loved Canny in Good in Bed or Becky in Little Earthquakes and Addy in Best Friends Forever.

…

Okay. I’m very familiar with Weiner’s work, having read most of it, and I get it – Weiner writes curvy heroines. She is most comfortable writing about larger women trying to make their way in the world. And there have been a great many discussions (like this one from Women and Hollywood) on the debates around Raven-Symoné’s weight loss and how it impacted what they were doing for the show.

But I’m puzzled. Did no one ever point out that black, thin and thick actresses face that same problem in terms of always being cast as the funny best friend? Come on, now, it’s even got a TV Tropes entry. The same jokes wouldn’t fly, but I am sure there are plenty of women who could help the writing team come up with amazing bits about how screwed up the acting world is to women of color. They could call Angela Nissel and Aisha Tyler in for writing assistance, and ask for people like Gabrielle Union and all of the women on this list to provide real life anecdotes for the show.

Or is that just too scary of a topic?

By Sunah, cross-posted from Thick Dumpling Skin

I often jokingly say that I decided to live in the States because I fit into an Extra Small size here whereas I couldn’t wear anything but Large in Korea. My American friends find it hilarious. Well, to be honest, it’s not a joke. It’s half of the truth.

Growing up in Korea, I had always been one of the big girls. I was athletic and loved physical activities. I jogged in my neighborhood, where no one else ran unless he or she had to chase somebody. I rode in-line skates when people didn’t even know what they were. I played tennis in college, and practiced martial arts. I was fit, but not slim in Korean standards.

There were hardly any female TV personalities who weighed more than 100 pounds. One time in a game show, the show host made a famous female singer step on a scale. She was one of the few “chubby” ones on TV in that era. She was reluctant, almost horrified, but everyone urged her to do it just for laughs. She finally did and broke down in tears on camera. She was my size. After the show, she disappeared from the TV for a few months and came back 25 pounds lighter. She was very talented and had a voice that nobody could imitate. But it was her lighter body that gave her the total self-confidence. That’s the way it was and it most likely still is in Korea.

Nobody called me “fat” or “chubby” in my face. People called me “big” and “healthy-looking.” One of my friends, however, once called me an “elephant.” She was a size 44, which doesn’t exist in America. It’s more like size minus 2.

I experimented with all sorts of diets, but was never good with calculating calories. I preferred fasting since it was simpler and produced better results in a shorter period. I’d fast for 5 days and lose 10 pounds. I’d be happy for a week or two. Then the weight would bounce back. I went through this fasting ritual at least a few times a year. I was very healthy, could play tennis for hours and guys couldn’t keep up with me. But I wasn’t happy with my body.

I came to the States for ESL program after graduating college. All of the sudden people started calling me “petite.” I had to look up a dictionary to find the meaning since the word was so unfamiliar to me. I shopped at the ‘Petite’ section in a department store and sometimes even Petite Small was too big for me. I was happy. For the first time in my life, I stopped watching my weight. My program fee included three meals a day in the school cafeteria, so I ate like Americans did – thick slices of pizza, spaghetti with meatballs, steaks and burgers, soda and juice. I stared wearing tank tops, mini-skirts and leggings. I continued to work out since physical exercises are one of my favorite things to do anyway, but I started gaining weight and I didn’t know it.

Six months later, back in Seoul, my younger sister described the moment she saw me coming out of the airport terminal gate as such: “A big black hog rolling through the gate.” Yes, that’s the family for you. Brutally honest and forever judgmental. But you love them to death anyway. Well, I was tanned to the degree it was unfashionable, and gained 20 pounds. But I was in a tight tank top and a black mini-skirt. “A Black Hog,” I truly was.

But there was another thing I gained in America. Self-confidence about my body. And it didn’t go away despite the teasing and criticisms from my family and friends.

I learned that our body size existed in the realm of relativity, and whether I wore Large or Small didn’t really matter. There’s a big world out there where I’m considered “petite.” So why should I be bothered by the opinions of people in this tiny peninsula that is even smaller than one quarter of California State?

So I didn’t go back to my usual fasting ritual. I didn’t feel the necessity. Those extra 20 pounds were shed naturally several months after I got back on my usual Korean diet and exercise routine.

Now I try to maintain my weight. It’s by no means skinny, but over the years I realized that it is where my body feels most comfortable and energetic. I dance and exercise regularly and put down my spoon the moment I feel full. It sounds easy but it takes a lot of discipline. I’m sure the readers of this blog understand it better than anyone. So, when many of my non-Asian American friends tell me that I have it easy since I’m Asian, I’m inclined to protest. “Come on, give us a credit. We work really hard to look the way we look!”

I lost my father and a younger sister to cancer. We don’t have to go through such heartbreaking events to realize what matters most is our health. Every morning when we wake up without feeling any kind of physical pain nailing us down onto the bed, we should get up and celebrate. Dance, exercise, play! Then healthy appetite and body will come as a matter of course.

Something is lacking in the current push to include plus-size models in mainstream fashion publications (or “separate-but-equal” media outlets such as Vogue Italia’s “Vogue Curvy”). What’s lacking, specifically in the fashion establishment but less so in the satellite world of “fatshion” blogging, is representation of models/women of color. I want to speak specifically about black plus size models/women because there is a very particular perception of blackness conflated with female fatness as compared to other races, and it’s an identity I inhabit on a daily basis.

A popular (white) misconception is that fat is more acceptable in the black community. This is patently untrue. Hip-hop culture is often pointed to when one is making this argument. If you watch any hip-hop music videos at all, it’s clear to see that the fat on the women featured is in specific places. Booty, hips, tits. As the inimitable Sir Mix-A-Lot stated, “When a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing [booty] in your face, you get sprung.” (emphasis supplied) There is definitely a line between acceptable fat and unacceptable fat. Those fat women who are fortunate enough to be considered “thick” are subject to an even more extreme hypersexualization of their bodies than average sized or thin black women are. As the features considered sexually desirable not only by black men but also white men are exaggerated on a fat female body, these women are often portrayed as more sexually available, yet can also be portrayed as ghetto princess or hoochie — “Jezebel” and “Sapphire”. But cross that line dividing “thick fat” and “just fat” and you quickly enter the territory of the desexualized fat black woman: the Precious, the mammy. Let’s take the recent example of Gabourey Sidibe, who portrayed Precious, and who basically served as a dumping ground for all the issues people have with fat, specifically, black female fat. This is the type of fat black woman continually mocked by black men in drag. Namely, characters like Eddie Murphy’s Rasputia in Norbit, Tyler Perry’s Madea in any number of his movies, Martin Lawrence’s Shanaynay and Big Mama, and Jamie Foxx’s Wanda on In Living Color. These characters are either considered too old to be sexual and are subject to the mammy stereotype, or their sexuality is portrayed as a joke, something disgusting to be avoided. Clearly the black community is not the utopia of body acceptance white America often believes it to be.

Of course, the way fat is treated in the black community only reflects how fat is treated in mainstream culture and the fashion community. However, as “curvy” — not too fat, now — is becoming more acceptable in the fashion world, it’s clear the main shade of acceptable curvy is white. When Glamour magazine featured 7 nude plus size models in their November 2009 issue, only one — Anansa Sims, daughter of straight size supermodel Beverly Johnson — was black or even of color. This despite the fact that there are many more black plus size models out there, and despite the fact that the fat fashion blogosphere — an engine driving the plus sized clothing industry — is filled with examples of fat black women interested in fashion and modeling their clothes. In fact, one of the first and most popular fat fashion blogs, Young Fat & Fabulous, is run by a black woman.

So why are black, female, fat fashion bloggers, many of whom drive considerable income towards the plus size fashion industry via their blogs, not seeing themselves adequately represented in this new curvy trend? The “fatshion” movement has made it obvious to the maintream fashion establishment that there is a market out there for fashion-forward clothing in larger sizes. Any survey of the fatshion blogosphere will tell you that a great percentage of that market is black. Why are mainstream fashion mags so reluctant to include black plus size models in their spreads, and why do the “high fat fashion” retailers use all white faces as their representatives? It definitely has something to do with the aversion to using black straight size models on runways and in fashion spreads. Unless you’re Alex Wek and the photographer needs the color of the clothes to “pop” against your dark skin. If thin blackness is unwelcome, imagine a double-whammy of fat blackness. Since black women’s bodies tend to have an exaggeratedly feminine shape, it could be the tendency of fashion designers to pick androgynous shapes to model their clothes. Plus size white models don’t usually have a very exaggerated sexualized shape. So this goes back to society’s issues with black women’s bodies in general. Since black women are stereotyped so often as being loose or hypersexual, any emphasis placed on sexualized body parts due to their size compounds the problem. Better to leave that can of worms alone and just work with the non-black models.

Until the straight size world fully accepts their black models, plus size black models are unlikely to achieve any more success than their thin sisters. Unfortunately neither of these things seem likely to happen soon. We as plus size women are expected to be happy with what we’re given, sighing “At least we’re making some progress.” Yet in the fashion world progress is so often followed by regress. We as fashion consumers and drivers of commerce need to continue to work to represent our diversity in the hopes that mainstream fashion will take notice, and that this won’t just be another trend. Hopefully the increasing popularity of blogs such as Young Fat and Fabulous, Musings of a Fatshionista, and on the Latina spectrum, Fatshionable will send a message to the plus size fashion establishment that we want representation of all plus size women, not just the white models we see all too often in plus size spreads. Tokenism is not acceptable. Throwing one model of color in there to satisfy all people of color is unacceptable. Real diversity needs to occur before the typical plus size fashion model truly reflects those who drive the industry’s commerce. Retailers need to recognize the power these plus size blogging titans wield. Just by posting an outfit they threw on, these bloggers can inspire hundreds of fat women to go out and buy the exact same outfit.

This is an ongoing problem mirrored by the lack of meaningful inclusion of straight size black models, and like that problem, it will only be solved if we continually critique the fashion establishment and in the case of fat fashion, unpack the privilege that white plus size models (and white plus size women) enjoy at this point. Until the facts of the situation are laid bare, no work can be done to change it. With this, I’m attempting to lay down a foundation and start a dialog.

The Last Airbender director M. Night Shyamalan finally addressed the controversy over the white-washing of his film’s casting in a recent interview. Without further ado, here’s a few excerpts …

Here’s the thing. The great thing about anime is that it’s ambiguous. The features of the characters are an intentional mix of all features. It’s intended to be ambiguous. That is completely its point. So when we watch Katara, my oldest daughter is literally a photo double of Katara in the cartoon. So that means that Katara is Indian, correct? No that’s just in our house. And her friends who watch it, they see themselves in it. And that’s what’s so beautiful about anime …

I was without an agenda, and just letting it come to the table. Noah [Ringer, who plays Aang] is a photo double from the cartoon. He is spot on. I didn’t know their backgrounds, and to me Noah had a slightly mixed quality to him. So I cast the Airbenders as all mixed-race. So when you see the monks, they are all mixed. And it kind of goes with the nomadic culture and the idea that over the years, all nationalities came together.

On the casting of the Fire Nation, and Dev Patel as Zuko:

The Fire Nation was the most complicated. I kept switching who was playing Zuko. It was such a complicated and drawn out thing, about practical matters. But the first person that I was considering casting for Zuko was Ecuadorian. So I started thinking that way. Then when that person couldn’t do it, the next person who came in was much more Caucasian. And then we had to switch everything around …

… Dev ended up being my choice for Zuko, and I looked for an Uncle that could be in that realm, for a moment I thought about Ben Kingsley. But Shaun Toub, I just loved him in Iron Man. I thought this takes us into a Mediterranean kind of Arab and Indian world, and I can go as far as that, that will be the breadth of the Fire Nation, that kind of look.

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On the plus side, Angela Bassett playing DC Comics spy-runner Dr. Amanda Waller in Green Lantern should work: Bassett’s made a career out of playing strong characters, and if this version of “The Wall” lives up to her comic-book incarnation, Bassett will believably hold the line from Apokolips to Gotham. The thing is, the plus side doesn’t cover the plus-size.

Waller’s not a skinny woman by any means. It’s not like that’s played like a negative in her characterization – check out the picture above; does she look like a woman you’d want to antagonize? – and it’s refreshing to see a powerful woman who’s not built like the “superhero ideal,” especially without actual superpowers. But there’s a couple of odd things going on here.

First, it comes off like a late effort to counter-act Marvel’s inclusion of of Ultimate Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) into its’ film series. Early reports on the Lantern script made no mention of either Waller or a government presence in the film. And while it’s nice to see Waller going through a renaissance (a TV version of the character, played by Pam Grier, recently debuted on Smallville), making her conventionally “sexy” for the silver screen is a let-down. I mean, CCH Pounder not only voiced Waller convincingly on the Justice League Unlimited animated series, but anybody who’s watched her career over the years knows she could have played the character in a live-action setting, as well.
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Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer struck a decidedly sour note on twitter last week, when, in the midst of decrying Lady Gaga’s video for “Telephone” for its’ product placement, she posted this:

Luckily, LiveJournal user sparkymonster took the opportunity to give Palmer a quick lesson on good vs. bad irony (WARNING: images on the original link are graphic). From her post:

Showing Wonderbread is BAD

Unlike the KKK who murdered Medgar Evers by shooting him in the back. This is his wife at his funeral.

How did Palmer respond to the idea that having people give cash to the KKK isn’t f-cking funny? With this post, directing us toward a Klan-themed clip from Jerry Springer: The Opera. As somebody who really enjoyed her band’s show in my town a few years back, seeing this unapologetic descent into hipster racism is enough to get me to stop supporting either her own projects – or those of her husband’s.

I wrote this for AO (Adults Only) Magazine in mid-October last year, for Issue 3 that was meant to come out…now. I haven’t heard anything beyond “yes we got it”, and since some people have asked, I figure I’ll post my original article here. There weren’t pictures in the original submission, mainly due to copyright issues, but I’ll see if I can add some pics here.

Thank you to everyone who helped with research and quotes.  Feel free to share!

No one is jerkin’ while looking at my merkin, my skin is cracked like a shoddy creme brulee; not even a Prozac milkshake can shake my blues away – oh no, no no, it’s not a pretty princess day!

- Kitten on the Keys

My first taste of burlesque and pinup style was on my 21st birthday in Melbourne. A close friend had brought me to the Royal Melbourne Show (a massive carnival and agricultural show) as his present to me, and while there I spotted a tent advertising Old-Style Photos. I ducked in, put on a saloon girl costume – red bustier with white “boning”, a poofy red and black skirt, fishnets and a garter holding up a set of cards – and hammed up for a set of sepia photos that placed me in the Wild Wild West. I loved the outfit (which was surprising as I don’t normally like many things girly) and ever since then I had been hunting out for anything reminiscent of saloon-girl style.

My foray into burlesque as an apprentice performer and enthusiast meant many hours of looking up photos and art of burlesque performers, many echoing the pin up art of people like Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vagras. Around this time rockabilly and alternative modelling also came in vogue, with many pinups sporting cherry A-line dresses and full-sleeve tattoos. Hollywood and mainstream pop culture also caught on to the cheesecake, with Vanity Fair continuing the tradition of casting upcoming movie starlets in classic poses as part of their annual Vanities Girls series.

While quite a number of the photos and performers were eye-catching, and often inspiring (that dress! that fascinator! THOSE PASTIES!), after a while they started to all look the same. The same poses, the same tropes – naughty teacher, just out of bed, exotic princess – the same look. The same tattoos on the same curvy bodies. The same buxom blondes, devillish redheads, sultry brunettes. Hardly anyone darker than milk chocolate – though if they were they either fit the same poses or had animal print thrown onto them.

Burlesque and pinup has been celebrated lately for its acceptance of diverse body images, and for its openness towards amateurs and hobbyists. There’s no need to look like the models in those magazines, no need for trim bellies and thin thighs; anyone can be beautiful. But does the current scene have standards of its own? What happens if you’d rather not be in a cherry A-line dress or have a tattoo, would prefer your waist be set free than wrapped in a corset, can’t stand a couquettish smile and would rather hold a sneaky sneer?

A few months ago I explored the issues of racial representation in burlesque performance, mainly dealing with cultural appropriation – could a performer take on artifacts from a foreign culture, and how does that affect the people of the original culture? My article on this on Racialicious, a blog dealing with race and ethnicity in pop culture, generated a lot of discussion from within and outside the burlesque world. Some applauded me for reflecting their concerns and worries; others thought I was imposing my assumptions onto a culture I was barely acquainted with.

In the interest of fairness, and also to broaden my own mind on this area, I decided to poll various people involved in the burlesque and pinup scenes about how they feel beauty standards played into their creative scene.

The first thing I noticed was there was a subtle split over whether burlesque and pinup had their own set of beauty standards and expectations. A few of my respondents contended that there were no such thing as set standards – that a “burlesque beauty” could look like anything, be any size or any colour. British performer Tempest Devyne describes beauty as “seeing someone confident in their own skin, it’s a sparkle in the eyes that shows an awareness, a softness, a kindness of heart”, while Rev. Jay Leal, producer of USA’s Curl Up & Dye Burlesque, describes a burlesque beauty as “the sexy / naughty underbelly of vintage class and elegance”.

The others described a set of traits defining a burlesque/pinup beauty, many repeated: hourglass figure, pincurls in highlight-less dark hair with a Bettie Page fringe, alabaster skin, well-placed tattoos. Perth’s Iskra Valentine and England’s Lucy Longlegs, who both had darker complexions thanks to Russian-South Asian heritage, described teenage years of attempting to bleach their skin with lemon juice, tumeric, and other concoctions to better match the looks of people idolized within their gothic alternative communities; the already-pale Miss Bertie Page of Brisbane has talked about touching up her crotch before shows.

Another factor that was often repeated was the importance of good grooming – tidy hair, polished feet in stockings, fully shaved, well-done nails and makeup. Mackenzie Dulcet of Canberra talks about choosing clothes that flatter one’s body – “I know most burlesque gals just love their frilly boyshorts and g-strings, but my stumpy legs are always going to look better in a pair of lacy briefs so I break those babies out!” – while Melbourne’s Lil’ Thelma Thunderbird expresses her disappointment at attending burlesque shows where she sees “girls with stockings but no shoes, no stockings with dirty bare feet, costumes that need mending, no nailpolish or makeup”.

But what really defines good grooming? Many women find the prospect of shaving or waxing body hair to be problematic politically and personally (Hair in Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues opens with a statement on the topic’s high contention amongst the people surveyed for the play): would they lose out for having fuzzier legs than normal? Who ultimately decides what is “flattering” – the wearer of the outfit, or the people running fashion lines and beauty magazines?

Such expectations, says Rev. Leal, exist from established burlesque traditions. But where did these traditions come from, and what happens if you decide to break with tradition? You may end up with Simone de la Getto, who started all-black troupe Harlem Shake Burlesque in San Francisco in 2003 after being tired of being the only black performer in her area. In an Hour.Ca interview, she describes the reaction from one of their earlier shows:

Before I would never notice, because I would go on stage and do my thing and love it, be happy, la la la la la, and my friends would be like, ‘Okay, the audience was in shock. They’re there with their mouths open.’ And I’d be like, ‘Really?’ Because I’m just there on stage, making sure I don’t fuck up, listening to the music and trying to keep the choreography, and smiling and having a great time. And then one day I actually saw the audience while we were performing, because the light bounced off the stage and I could actually see who I was dancing for – and here I was looking at people with gaping mouths. They’d been screaming for the group before, but for us… so I was like, ‘What, are we bad? Are we doing something wrong?’ And then at the end, we got this uproarious applause. I was so confused.

de la Getto is hardly the only performer from an ethnically diverse background to elicit such a reaction. Lucy Longlegs, who has a background in bellydance, mentions being told that her act based on the legend of the Seven Veils was deemed “too political” simply because it made some references to Middle-Eastern culture. Mackenzie Dulcet talks about how performers from ethnic backgrounds are often expected to perform something related to their culture, “as though the audience wants an explanation”. Iskra Valentine had trouble earlier this year being accepted into a local burlesque troupe because she was not keen on 40s style vintage. A few months ago I performed an act based on my teenage love for Savage Garden – none of my props, music, or costumes suggested anything about my cultural background. Yet the host insisted on introducing me as “the Bollywood princess”, despite me specifically requesting her to do otherwise.

Performers like us may have run into the expectations of what enthusiast Bobby Hogg calls the “collective audience”. According to him, this collective audience “wants to see Hollywood type beauty of the 1940’s/50’s. A performer can be Black, Asian, Hispanic, or White, but any performer will notice that as she molds her looks towards those 40’s & 50’s archetypes, she will become more succesful.”

These archetypes, say other performers, are examples of “altruistic glamour” and “self-created beauty”, more attainable in contrast to the highlights and tans common in mainstream media. Some say that “they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t like it” and claim that it is easy to achieve – but is it really easy to tame wild hair in tight curls or stuff ample bellies into crushing corsetry? How many put themselves through a style that is not necessarily their own to get a step ahead?

Even the mainstream media and fashion world has caught on to the pinup vibe, with performers such as Dita von Teese making deep red lips, waspy waists, and old-style glamour trendy again. The resurgence of the heydays of the 20s to the 50s, including the steadily growing popularly of burlesque and its crossovers into other facets of pop culture – such as von Teese’s appearances on Eurovision – have brought on a lot of new events promoters and agencies putting on “burlesque” shows that more resemble “historical reenactment than progressive performance art” (as mentioned on leading industry web forum Ministry of Burlesque). These promoters have a limited understanding and appreciation of burlesque, picking only conventionally-attractive performers to adopt the same corset-and-feathers-pinup styles, increasing the pressure for emerging performers to fit in to get exposure.

British journalist Laurie Penny uses her experience of being in a burlesque troupe that slowly lost its progressive edginess as proof that modern burlesque was nothing more than “fancy stripping” for the male gaze. Her article in The Guardian garnered a lot of discussion from others in the burlesque scene, saying that her perspective was short-sighted and that not every performer does strips for men’s benefit – but Penny does have a point. Newer audiences may not have a full appreciation of the diversity within burlesque, and it’s usually easier for newcomers to adopt the usual safe styles instead of taking a risk on something groundbreaking.

Indeed, there has been some concern with the upcoming film Burlesque, where a small-town performer (played by Christina Aguilera) joins a burlesque club (owned by Cher’s character) to make it big: as NYC performer Philly Caramel asks, “Will we then have a bunch of persons thinking that you can only succeed in burlesque by trying to look like whatever character Christina Aguilera will play?”

Fellow Black American performer Vagina Jenkins asks for perspective, nothing that things are much better for ethnically-diverse performers now than in the earlier parts of the 20th century. Performance legend Josephine Baker found it easier to break into the European scene than into the US, and – in an interview with New York burlesque queen Jo ‘Boobs’ Weldon – burlesque veteran Toni Elling spoke of Black performers in the 60s not being promoted, not being paid as much as other performers (in those days, Hispanic and Asian performers were considered “white” for booking performers), not being allowed be featured acts, and of always being named Samia Davis Junior. Indeed, she says that the one time she was not considered “Black” was when she was in Japan for Exotic World, where she was treated like a queen.

However, things may not have changed much in the last 40 years; there are still performers who employ cultural artifacts and stereoypes in their act, including blackface and “blueface” – evoking Hindu deities while portraying them as crazed savages instead of complex forces of creation and destruction. Granted, it’s a little difficult to book Krishna or Kali for a revue, but there’s already been years of Hollywood and mass media reducing Asian and Pagan deities to evil demonic beings (such as in Charmed) and in the process belittling the beliefs of millions of people around the world – does the burlesque world really need to perpetuate the same old damaging stereotypes?

Enthusiasts like Bobby Hogg may say that “there is no reason to get angry about these issues – no one will ever change the wants or the opinion of the audience collective, it must be accepted & worked with.”. There are, however, quite a few people in burlesque and pinup that are breaking away from the vintage mould, and getting quite a following as a result. Baroness Eva von Slut combines old-style glamour with heavy tattoos, gothic style, and the presence of a heavy metal band, while The Pinup Blog maintainer Tali Shapiro regularly trawls independent art, fashion, and design websites such as DeviantART for inspiration; her posts often display a broad definition of pinup that encompasses women of all outlooks and backgrounds confident and powerful in themselves, featuring such diverse work such as the Rosebud Burlesque Club, which uses burlesque to raise awareness of breast cancer, and Palestinian-American slam poet Suheir Hammad, whose poem Not Your Exotic smashes apart society’s concept of the “exotic other”.

Within the burlesque community, there is a growing appreciation of talent regardless of aesthetic; as Kellie Vella, one-fourth of La La Parlour comments, “looks are transitory and fashion-driven, but a hot/powerful/potent/clever/funny performance transforms the performer and the audience.”.

Burlesque and pinup are still in the beginning stages of their resurgence, which means there is still a lot of work to do to encourage a diversity of looks and body images. In many ways it’s not just limited to those scenes, but connected to societal pressure as a whole – many decades of conforming, pressure, and displeasure at anyone who doesn’t fit the correct “look”. Jenkins calls this “the everyday work of defying expectation, of claiming space and time on our terms that so many of us engage in and commit to in order to make it safer for future ecdysiasts to do their thing”.

Events and projects such as Kaleidoscope in San Francisco and the upcoming Shades of Burlesque Festival, as well as productions such as the queer, trans, and culturally-diverse Mangoes with Chili tour, provide opportunities to inject a little more colour in the burlesque scene, changing it from the days where people like Philly Caramel had no pinup performers or models to relate to.

Ultimately, though, one thing rang clear with my respondents, regardless of background: it’s talent that makes the difference, and each of them would like to be regarded as a talent in their own right – not as a Black performer or a lesbian performer or a plus-size performer, but as a performer with their own styles, tastes, and personality. With their own beauty.

Tiara the Merch Girl is an emerging burlesque/circus/improv performer who spends a lot of time analysing and researching ways to not just be the only South Asian performer in her scenes. She also provides in-character stage and production services to people who need an extra pair of hands to put on a show. Read more about her at http://themerchgirl.net and drop her a line – she’ll love to hear from you.