When I first got into burlesque, it was partly because I was looking for something "cheeky" and "out-there" to do after graduating university and just before having to return to Malaysia - and partly also I had been cast in the role of the vagina-loving dominatrix in The Vagina Monologues and wanted some help building my role.
I had not considered anything erotic or sexual before; I grew up asexual in a country & culture that found any mention of sex to be taboo and shameful, never really had the interest anyway, and always figured that any sort of erotic venture would ruin my chances at changing the world. However, I had just burnt out from years of being an alternative education & youth empowerment activist, and after the breakdown of a major dream project and the disillusionment that came along with it (long story) I wanted to do something different. I've always loved performing, though only really got the opportunity to give it a go once I moved to Brisbane from Malaysia in 2006. This seemed like as good a start as any.
I fell in love. Here was a change to perform pretty much anything I liked, without having to worry so much about nailing a canon of prescribed moves. I could transfer my four-dimensional imagination, rich with sound and texture and visuals, into something for the stage. I had loved music videos as a teenager (and wrote quite a few treatments, mostly for Savage Garden songs) and I felt that this was pretty close to making a music video - short bursts of creative mayhem. It suited my temperament: random, silly, outspoken, brash at times and subtle at others. I got more and more involved, and started building a name for myself, as well as (what I thought was) community.
My family, Bangladeshi Muslim migrants to Malaysia, were not as amused. Their only connection to burlesque was historical Malaysian exotic dancer Rose Chan, who is still fondly remembered back there despite getting up to shenanigans in the 60s that would get her immediately arrested on immodesty clauses now. My parents had the impression that she was a prostitute, and assumed I was one too. They came across videos and photos of my work and got at me for "ruining my dignity", "exposing myself" - this is not in our culture. It didn't matter how much I talked about what I did, how cultural attitudes to nudity differ, why this meant a lot to me: to them I was always the innocent little girl, and any deviation from that was unthinkable.
I kept on for a while, finding any opportunity I could to perform. I gained a lot of acclaim for my first solo piece Lullaby, looking at the cross (and crashes) between my Muslim upbringing, my current sexual reawakening, and the assumptions one has about the other. "You're sexual; that means you can't be dignified or spiritual!" "You're a poor oppressed religious woman, no way do you have control over your body & desires!" I wanted to challenge people's stereotypes, and tell my story my way.
And that's when trouble started.
I would get introduced before performing as "the Bollywood princess", despite not having anything remotely resembling Bollywood in my repetoire. Outfits from general sources like thrift stores were suddenly "ethnic costume" on me because they happened to have gold or red threads. I talked about encouraging a wider variety of burlesque costumes asides from corsets & high-heels, feeling discomfort with the idea of constricting my body (which already got plenty of backlash for being "Fat" and "flabby"), and was told "if you don't like corsets then get out of burlesque". The performance in the video above came out of a frustrating conversation with my former burlesque mentor after seeing photos of her in a ridiculously stereotypical "Oriental" act and trying to broach the topic of appropriation and racism as gently as I could, given my great respect for her - only to be yelled at rudely and without compassion. And that was just the start.
I couldn't reach out to my family for support: my art and sexuality had become a "don't-ask-don't-tell" minefield, and I had the distinct feeling that if I ever said I was having trouble I'd be told "I told you so". Even the more liberal members of my family could not be trusted anymore. I shared my frustrations with random friends and acquaintances, some of whom got my angst, and some who took me for yet another Anti-Racism 101 school lesson. I was tired and frustrated. I just wanted to do what I thought was fun and lovely; I didn't need yet more reminders of the racism and stereotyping I had lived with since childhood.
Along the way I got to know other people who knew of the issues I faced, and dealt with them with equal parts fierceness, elegance, and power. One of my earliest burlesque educational experiences was with Vixen Noir, whose work is passionately centered around queer women of colour, and the classes on Unleashing Your Erotic Power that I've had with her have been one of my strongest influences on my performance style. Through her show I met Sunny Drake, who reached out to me as a friend and mentor even before I dared ask for help, and whose keen awareness of politics & privilege supported me in times where I felt like I was the only one who felt what I felt. I was elated to meet with the Ladies of Colour Agency in Melbourne, a strong trio doing pretty much the sort of work that I was doing (or hoping to do), and similarly Brown Girls Burlesque in New York.
There were others along the way, people I mostly knew online (so many of them were based in the US, where there seems to be more of a precedence for discussion racial politics through art), people whose art and words and efforts made me go "HELL YES" and inspired me to keep going on my route. Some of them I've had the blessing and pleasure of meeting - especially heartening were those that had heard about me and had praises for me, speaking up and sharing my thoughts. Apparently my old Tumblr was used as a key resource for many people, especially other Queer Women of Colour, who wanted to get into burlesque or other erotic arts but were turned off by the whitewashing and appropriation.
I started hearing directly from these women, especially other South Asians since our presence in the erotic arts is especially minimal. As the years went past, my performance took more of a performance-art tone, and I started delving into much more erotic and directly sexual creativity. (I figured, if my parents were going to assume the "worst" anyway, might as well just follow my inclinations rather than worry about what they might say.) One thing kept coming up, over and over:
I wish I could do what you do, but my family will kill me.
I understood the fear, even if I don't share the morbidity. Sexuality is considered a private matter in many South Asian and related cultures; to expose yourself publicly, even to just declare yourself interested in sexuality, denigrated and defamed you. Yet reach out to people outside your culture and you may be ignored or ostracised. I remember a story by the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Association about two Sudanese refugee women who had found each other and fell in love with each other in Australia, but didn't quite know what to do since homosexuality was frowned upon. A counsellor suggested they just come out openly: big mistake. They were not accepted by the local queer communities because they didn't look the part, didn't know shared cultural references, and because there was (and still is) ingrained racism within the mostly-White queer communities. The local Sudanese refugee community, meanwhile, had ostracised them and shunned them for their sexuality. They were now cut off and alone.
It's not like there are plenty of role models to begin with: people who shared our cultural backgrounds, some of our concerns and worries, and could relate to our quandary of shame & stigma vs bigotry & isolation. Who wants to put themselves at so much risk of either being ignored or being harmed if the payoff doesn't seem to be much anyway?
But there are people who are interested and keen. People who do want to showcase their own ideas about sexuality, who do want to embody their own stories with their own bodies, who do want to learn more about the culture's history with gender and sexuality away from the suppressed version by their elders or the bastardised Neo-Tantra-New-Age stuff mushed by fake "guru"s. People who get shouted at, shut down, demonised, exoticised, pushed around, ignored - and have had enough.
And it's for these people that I am doing my MFA project. These people, including me. Trying to make peace with the hybrid of influences from home culture, diasporic culture, wider society, alternative subcultures, pop culture. Feeling like an outsider, an infiltrator, a traitor, a fraud. Just wanting to define our sexualities, our genders, our cultures, our bodies, on our own terms. Knowing full well that no matter how we identify ourselves, how we make sense of ourselves, we'll still be subjected to and processed by wider societal expectations and prejudices. Working hard to voice our own selves anyway.
I don't know what form my studies and explorations will take yet. I have ideas and dreams for photos, art films, workshops, performance nights, support systems. I would like to share what I come across, talk to people and share their stories, display my research for the world to see and share. But I haven't even started the course yet; hell I haven't even sorted out my visa. So many ideas and visions; so much really resting on the results of my explorations, not anything I can be didactic about.
It's a start. It's time to start.
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